A Mission That Changes Shape

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I thought I was going there to, if anything, to engage in armed combat with these two people. But now I'm there to to heal, to train, to to teach, to coach, to mentor. I was in a coma. I woke up to retrograde amnesia, not really knowing who I was anymore.

Tom Faust 0:51

And today we have Roger St. Julian, and we are going to be discussing a few things about his experience in the military, how he got to where he is, uh issues he's had and overcome, and uh maybe a little bit about third space therapy. So uh welcome, Roger. It's good to have you on here.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

Ah, yes. Good to be here, Tom. Good to be here, Chris.

Why The Military Meant Meaning

Tom Faust 1:15

See ya. Yeah. So why don't you start off by uh telling us a little bit about yourself, about your military experience, um, and we can take it from there.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

Of course. Um for me, the military felt like the only means of obtaining a life um that would enable me to pursue the meaning I sought. Um I came from Northeast Ohio, you know. I I didn't really see a path for me and any kind of you know labor outside of, you know, manual labor, blue-collar work. I mean, when I was growing up, you know, the steel industry was booming, but then it died. It died so quickly, and those jobs moved overseas. And for me, I wanted to get a college degree, and how else would I get a college degree except for the money the military would offer? Um, and it just made sense that that was the pathway for me to get the tools that I felt were required to pursue a life of quality, a life of meaning, a life of sustainability, I think is the way I would frame it. But uh yeah, so I did ROTC, um, Youngstown State University, and then um I graduated. I got a station at the 82nd Airport, and I was uh stationed in Fort Bragg for most of my uh active duty time, had one deployment overseas to Iraq and part of Operation Inherent Resolve. And I returned home and my service then kind of felt very empty is maybe the word I would use, but I think many soldiers don't feel comfortable in a being part of a peacetime army, you know, because it feels like any other kind of job where you're doing, you know, paperwork, you're doing training, you're doing drills, but for what? And it just it felt very uh void of the meaning that I sought in service, um, being part of a peacetime army, which is, I think, a very, you know, that was my orientation to it. You know, not to say that's right or wrong, but um more than anything, I think what I saw was to be of service, you know. I mean, growing up I wanted to feel that my contributions to the world were meaningful. Um, I wanted to feel that I was making a difference, you know, and I think the military offered me that chance to achieve that it's a reciprocal exchange of meaning in the sense that I I give my skills, my my leadership, my sacrifice in exchange for you know others' safety, their comfort, their stability. And within that, I received a renewed sense of purpose and meaning. So that exchange to me made sense, and I didn't feel that tangible exchange in any kind of other field. Um so yeah, it was a myriad of things that kind of led me in on the that path, you know. My father was uh in the army as well, but not a proud veteran, you know, he rarely spoke of his service, and I I thought that was interesting in the way that I feel so many veterans don't feel proud of their service, that they feel that they were soldiers, but their contributions were empty, meaningless, and so they don't feel that sense of pride instilled within them to be this source of admiration to other people who see you as a veteran, you know. I'm right of a quote by Viktor Frankel, and this is something that I'm very fond of. He said that meaning is often discovered through going beyond oneself in service of something or someone else. And in that way, we orient ourselves towards others in a meaningful mission, and the more meaning we often experience ourselves in that exchange. So I think that was what we sought in our service in a way.

Ranger School Failure And Identity

Tom Faust 6:09

Yeah. So, Roger, um one of the things you talked about was you never failed at anything before until Ranger School. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_04 6:21

Oh, absolutely. Um needed to do all that was required of me to be a leader, to be the leader. And you felt a lot of pressure as an officer in the United States Army to be the leader and to inspire and motivate your men and to be the example for them. And for me, that that was drawn in my head that you need that tab, you need to be that ranger leader. And it is true to reflect and say that up to that point, I had been very comfortable being in the top 10% of everything I ever did, you know, seemingly kind of without effort. And I think a lot of us can have that feeling of kind of coasting through life on cruise control, and then all of a sudden we reach a challenge we never experienced before, and all of a sudden we hit a brick wall. Um for me, Running School, it was more than a leadership course, you know. In a way, we kind of became a mirror, you know, in a in a way that it wasn't just disappointing to Phil, but a wound to my identity, you know, this this person I thought that I was, this leader I had imagined myself to be, this facade kind of crumbled before my eyes as I I struggled immensely, you know. You know, I just I'd fused my achievement with worth, like that sense of achievement, accomplishment, that's where my worth was measured by. And if I couldn't earn that tab, maybe I wasn't the officer, the leader that I wanted to be, not even not the man I was meant to be, you know. And I don't ask myself, how do I prove I'm enough? You know, if I can be this ranger leader, this the epitome of of leadership that, you know, as an officer we're taught to embody, you know. Therapy kind of helped me understand this. My own, my own, my own experience in therapy. Um prior to becoming a therapist myself, you know, I I had to really ask myself what part of me believed that I had to earn my worth in the first place, you know. I think we all kind of struggle with that at times, you know, like there's this feeling that worth and being worthy has to be earned through suffering, through hardship. And it's not something that's intrinsic. And I find that a lot in the clan population that I treat, young men especially, that there's a sense that they have to earn their worth, and it's not something that is innate and held within them. And the question also brings to mind for me, and this is going into my my work as a therapist again. This there's a story that I'm reminded of. It's an old Arthurian legend. Um, it's the tale of the Fisher King. Um, if I may, I I would like to recount it for you. So the Fisher King is not a villain, he's not weak, and he in many versions he's a good king. Um, but he suffered a wound to the groin or to the thigh, a place of symbolic, you know, masculine power. And that wound leaves him unable to fill his role as a king. And as he declines, so too does the kingdom around him. And that's a powerful metaphor for us in our life that our wounded pride, our wounded sense of masculine power, our kingdom, our life, our relationships, our goals, our pursuits are all in turn wounded themselves, and they they become barren, like a wasteland. And what's fascinating to me about that story is that you can't simply just fight harder. You cannot simply just fight harder or use more strength to fix that, you know. The only way the the king is healed is when a knight named Parcival asks the question to the king. The question is, whom does the grell serve? Whom does the grell serve? And I think that's a really interesting question because I think in our culture today we want the grell to serve us. You know, we we place ego at the center of everything. We put it on this altar of everything we seek to enhance, you know, that it is I that needs to be lifted to be raised. But the grill doesn't serve us. It can't. The grill serves the kingdom, it serves others. I think many veterans know this innately, that to restore their kingdom, they cannot focus only on themselves. That quote from Victor Frankel that I shared speaks to this as well. That only by shifting the focus from proving oneself to understanding that you know that one must serve others is a way to heal oneself. The wound itself is part of being human, you know. And the wound affects our relationships, our sense of purpose, our capacity to love and a lead, and when it begins to lose its vitality, we have to just become aware of that wound, bring awareness to it, and ask the question yeah, whom does the girl serve, you know? And I think for me, Ranger School kind of opened my eyes to that question. Because I when I felt I I felt that wound very deeply. I felt that wound in a way that made me question myself and my my thoughts of being a military leader, you know, and my purpose. And I felt that that wound to my masculine power, you know. And when I reorged myself after ranger school and learned that hard lesson of a single setback doesn't erase all the hard work that I've done. Doesn't erase my identity. If anything, it proves to me that I I will never quit, you know, because ranger school is tough, and I went all the way through it. Almost all the way through it twice. I fell to every single phase except for Mountain Phase, thank God. And if you've been in Ranger School, you know what I'm talking about. I do feel that that lesson, that hard won lesson of reordering my sense of meaning and pride and accomplishment from intrinsic to extrinsic to it's not in service of me that I try to do these things, but in service of my men, in service of the world, in service of the country. You know, and that reframe for me was the lesson I really took away from major school to failing.

Chris Faust 13:39

Yeah, that's kind of along the lines of when you you you learn more from failure than success. You know, if if you always succeed at things, then it's okay, yeah, you you you know you're doing that. But when you when you fail at something, you realize, okay, what did I do wrong? Now I can do better. I can do it better the next time. And then the next time you keep improving, that's better. As long as you're moving forward, then failure, while it sucks, isn't like the be-all-end all.

SPEAKER_04 14:10

Yeah, it's that winner-learn mindset, you know. Really that, you know, your worth is greater than a single setback. I think that's a powerful lesson for many people, you know, especially when you're so accustomed to success and to wins. You know, when you hit that wall and you you strike out when you fail at something, it's bitter. It's it's very easy to become defeatist, you know, and to give up, to surrender. But you can't. You can't. You have to you have to learn from that and go back into the fight.

Tom Faust 14:44

Um,

Training Iraqis And Feeling Hollow

Tom Faust 14:45

you had uh talked a little bit in our planning session about uh training Iraqi forces rather than being in direct combat and how that kind of gave you a hollow feeling. Can you uh tell us a little bit about that and uh what that meant to you?

SPEAKER_04 15:02

Oh, absolutely. So my deployment felt hollowed to me by comparison. I was inspired to pursue service by so many people that I looked at as heroes. You know, I had family members that deployed to Iraq, deployed to Afghanistan, and cousins, and they received some injuries. They lost limbs, very traumatized, and I felt that it was my place to do, I can do no less than them. And to your point that you mentioned earlier, that all I can do is raise my hand and say, I will go, send me. I'm ready to answer the call, but if the call never comes in that way, then where does that leave me? You know, I think that sense of going over to Iraq and then leading my men there on a training mission. So it was called BPC build partner capacity. Training an entire battalion of Iraqis was hard for my soldiers because they pulled me aside, sir. Sir, we're teaching these guys how to shoot. They were shooting at us like three years ago. Now I'm checking how to shoot better. And as a leader, I had to be like, hey, do your do your job, do your mission. You're gonna be safe. We have Overwatch, we have you know guardian angels. So my experience was very strange in that way. Because I wasn't meeting the enemy in the field. I was taking an enemy and teaching him how to do what we do. And in that way, I felt that the lesson I took away from my diploma was one of compassion and understanding that maybe you can't always, you know, win a war by smashing someone with your closed fist. Sometimes you have to reach your hand out and offer service in a different way. Trying to heal the wounds that were inflicted in these combat scenarios in years past, you know. At the same time, you know, that Iraqi army um battalion that we're training was being actively infiltrated by Shi militia groups, and we couldn't be, you know, confident we were safe at any time. So always having weapons trained on them, always having security, always having overwatch, and trying my best not to become complacent. Because it gets very you get very comfortable. Almost too comfortable to the point that um I had we had such good rapport with the battalion that we were training that we were selected, um my my platoon was selected to train an additional battalion. And at one point, I was having such um I had developed such good rapport that the Iraqi um soldiers had actually tried to play a fun game, they went to dogpile me. So they just jumped on me and you know, goofing around, just goofing around. They're just and they're just kids, just kids. And my soldiers didn't like that at all. They were very quick to jump in and almost, you know, of course we remove them butt-up. I just stopped them from you know, butt-strucking them and firing on them, but able to diffuse the attention of that situation very quickly. But um, to me, it's a very funny, it's a very funny antidote to you know how you can develop such a good rapport with people that I never would have thought that I would have that kind of relationship with. I thought I was going there to, if anything, to engage in armed combat with these people, but now I'm there to to heal, to train, to to teach, to coach, to mentor. If anything, that sense of that I was there to to nurture a relationship, to, to build, to, to train. I now have a new orientation to my service in a way that makes me feel proud and less ashamed, I guess. Because there is a strange feeling of shame that comes with feeling that you were unable to engage and to be called to action the way that others were called to action. That feeling of lesser, that feeling of comparison, I think is fading over time with the the new or an understanding that you can engage with the enemy in different ways, in ways that heal.

Chris Faust 19:23

Yeah, there's always going to be two sides to every war because a lot of people that were there that you're you know, like the ones you were training, weren't directly involved. They weren't the ones that instigated, they weren't part of the initial push. There, they're part of, hey, we want to be able to take care of ourselves kind of a thing. So you have the two sides. You have the active and then you have the re the recovery or the you know the reaching out an olive branch kind of a thing. But that kind of goes into it. Was a looking here at the notes, it was a fellow veteran that told you that your service wasn't lesser.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

Yes. For me, a really profound moment. I was on a um a Team Rubicon operation. Team Rubicon is a disaster response organization that recruits heavily from the veteran population and responds to you know natural disasters, floods, hurricanes, fires. And we're doing an operation where we had removed some some debris, some trees had fallen from a from a storm um in the southwest. And while we're working on this tree, it was me and two other veterans. One was a Gulf War veteran, another one was a Vietnam veteran. I was like, this is what an incredible opportunity to to voice my feeling of of admiration and respect for these men who had served in in very legitimate combat operations. And when I voiced my feeling of feeling lesser by comparison, that my service was not measuring up to theirs, they quite finally told me to shut up. And just what you said, Tom, that their words to me were very much the same, that you swore to execute a mission no matter what the mission was. And the fact that you weren't called to serve in the way that we were called to serve doesn't mean that you were lesser, that your your service was somehow inferior to ours. In fact, you know, you are more than equal. You're you're right here with us. And when they affirmed that in me, while we're together working on a as a team to fell this tree, a tree that is unhealthy, broken, unbalanced was my attitude and and demeanor towards my service. And these veterans taught me how to fell that tree in a way that was healthy and to let it fall to the ground in a way that I let my guilt and shame fall to the ground and just vanish from me. And to embrace this new feeling of respect and self admiration and feeling honor returned, honor restored. Yes. And I think that was a a complex, a big complex that I held on to for so long.

Tom Faust 21:52

I think a lot of uh non combat veterans kind of feel the same way. I I I did for a while, but Actually, through doing a number of these interviews is when other vets have told me no, it's basically the same story as you got, which is I was there, I signed up for whatever comes, and you know, it just turned out the way it turned out, but it's no less.

Civilian Life And Losing Brotherhood

Tom Faust 22:17

Yeah, and and I I think that kind of takes us into where I really want to get into in this conversation is about your transition, uh, you know, losing the the brotherhood, so to speak, um, and then how that affected you before your accident, which we'll get into in a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

Transition is always an interesting, an interesting story, I think, for many veterans. I think for me, oh, it was so exciting getting out. Oh, I had no big army. Oh man, I'm free. I can do whatever I want at any time. How exciting, how novel, you know. You don't expect to miss that feeling of being in active duty because I understand the the importance of that brotherhood that I felt, that camaraderie that I experienced, that I felt, that sense of the the man to my left or to my right would would lay down their life for me in order to save me, to protect me, and I would do the same for them. And that is a that's a sacred thing, you know, and you don't experience that in the civilian world at all. And for me, that was a rude awakening when I realized like people would just cut and run on you at the the the slightest inconvenience. And for me, there's there's hierarchical differences between the army and the civilian world in the sense that the values that I I held on to in the military didn't serve me in the civilian world in the same way. I was very much aligned with pursuing you know money as the the main objective. That was the point of you know me pursuing you know a career, a a job, a profession. You know, my my worth as a man was not measured by how much money you have, how big of a house you have, how nice is your car, you know, you know, how many women do you have? And that was something that was left from the military as well. The the glorification of call it hedonistic, you know, pleasure pursuits. And when I left the military, I was very much still in that frame of mind. You know, now I'm I'm chasing money, I'm chasing women, I'm chasing status instead of choosing chasing meaning. In a nutshell, that's it. Money over meaning. And that's where I really faltered and struggled. And yeah, I got that. I worked with a um agency that recruits heavily from the you know, transitioning military. Um, I got a very nice job with a very good salary at a customer service operations manager position um in Florida. And this is my first time leading civilians, and what a rude awakening that was. I think many veterans understand that leading soldiers and leading civilians are are very different experiences. If a soldier you know refuses to obey my orders, there are very harsh punitive measures that are then enacted upon them. Like it's very great, it's very serious for them to refuse an order. A civilian can just say no, and then maybe they'll get a write-up, and that's the end of it, if that. And so it's very different for me to know without a shadow of a doubt that my orders will be obeyed, to move into a place where everything has to be coast out of my my subordinates, and I have to really convince them that this is in their best interest. And that reframe for me was very difficult. Also, my my the way I speak to them, the way I spoke to them, I should say, the way I behave, the way I acted, I was very gruff, very rough. I'm using command hands. I'm saying, you will do this, you will execute this, you will, you will, you must, you must. Not can you, you know, not asking, demanding, commanding. I think that difference from command to ask was a a difficult transition for me. I think that's that's really when I I really felt that that missing sense of of meaning. It doesn't matter how much money I'm making, that the if the meaning isn't there, then my heart's not in it. And I'm very misaligned. And that that incongruency, I think, breeds a lot of negative emotions. You know, I started experiencing a lot of anxieties, a lot of depression, a lot of anger, you know, and I didn't know how to process these emotions on my own. You know, I've never to that point known that it was okay to not be okay. You know, in the military, we glorify emotional control, compartmentalization, mission first, task focus. You don't have time to not be okay, you know. But now, you know, the way I'm feeling, I don't know how to cope with these feelings. So what do I do? I reach for the same uh comfort that a lot of sorters had. The way our culture has taught us to kind of cope with these things is is alcohol is danger. That motion without meaning for me led to self-medicating with alcohol and normalizing that in a in a way that was very, very dangerous. Coming from airborne, you know, needing that that rush, that exhilaration, that adrenaline. You know, I couldn't be jumping out of planes as a civilian, but you know, I could still go really fast in a motorcycle. And that was my comfort, that was my my escape, my my supplement to that missing sense of of thrill, of danger, of excitement. And strangely, those those two collided drinking and riding motorcycles. Um that was really bred out of you know not being aligned with my values or a purpose outside of myself that allowed me to to lift the world in a meaningful way that I felt in in service to the country. You know, now I'm I'm a customer service manager, which what a terrible job for a transitioning activity veteran to work in customer service. I don't know what I was thinking, but um I was confident I knew how to lead. And to be proven wrong again in a way that showed me that transition is more than just putting uniform away, it's it's really slowing down and understanding that you have to adapt to a new a new world. The world you knew no longer exists. This is a completely different frame. If I could use a framework from combat operations, you have two kinds of operational tempos. You have rapid and forceful, and then you have stealthy and deliberate. And I was used to being rapid and forceful, you know, go, go, go, hard, hard, hard, faster, harder. And that worked for me very well in the military. But when I got out and I had that same approach, that same mindset, being a hard charger didn't fit. It didn't work in the ways that I that I felt that it should. It didn't produce the results I needed. And I need to reframe that for myself that I have to be stealthy and deliberate. So when I was let go from that job, because they were like, hey, you can't, this is not a good fit, and that feeling of like, oh, being fired from a job, but I'm I'm an army officer. I've never I'm I'm more than competent. I'm I'm very skilled, I'm better than people at this job. And being told that actually you're not, you're not good at this, you know, and being in front of that sense of, oh, I thought I was a leader, but now I'm not. Now I'm I'm I'm a failure, you know, and that that reorientation, that reframe from rapid and forceful to stealthy and deliberate meant slowing down. And okay, what does that look like? Okay, I became a waiter. I worked at a restaurant and I was, you know, waiting tables, serving food, um, worked my way up to bar back, then to bartender, and how how convenient for me? Oh, this access to alcohol, you know, that escalated, and it led ultimately to my accident. Having a great time, too good of a time, maybe. It I think was inevitably leading to a crash course, collision course was some some meaningful event that would hold up the mirror to me to show me that I was on the wrong path. Because I could not sustain my life in that way for long. I'm very grateful that I was pretty much the only one that was hurt. Yeah, it was back in 2016.

Motorcycle Crash And Amnesia

SPEAKER_04 30:58

I I was riding motorcycle, maybe drinking, maybe not. This is where the amnesia comes into play because when I was in my accident, I received a diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury. That is a specific kind of traumatic brain injury that the brain rotates it, it it bounces back and forth inside the skull, and there is a shearing effect that happens on the axons in your brain where the damage isn't localized, but it's the entire network of the brain is dislocated from the attachment points inside the skull, and the damage is pervasive throughout the entire structure.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

And what that looked like for me was what an experience that was.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

I remember I knew the face of my father, but that was about it. What I said to him was like, I know you. That's it. I didn't know who he was or his name, but I just I knew that I knew him. Then to slowly learn about the man that I was, the way you learned about a stranger, and learning that I don't know if I really liked this guy. I don't know if his priorities were right. This guy had a lot of faults, many failures. And then there was the experience of trying to go through the database of his social media, and what that looked like for me is like, okay, I don't have a you know, AJK no photo log of my life, you know, and have a journal or anything, but I have this Facebook profile of my life till now. And what I realized at the hardware was that what we have on social media is a highlight reel of the person we are. It is only the best, brightest moments, the happiest, the the most fun, the most exciting. And so going back through that, I was like, oh man, this guy was awesome. Man, he's having the best time. And then comparing myself now to that person felt very, very empty. I was like, oh man, how could I ever measure up to that person? He's he's amazing, he's so cool, he's having the best time. And then learning the hard way from narratives that my friends and family would, you know, recount to me that actually it wasn't all highlight reels. Actually, it was not the best time. You were struggling, you had problems, you were drinking too much, you were hurting a lot of people emotionally with your behaviors, and very selfish, very self-interested, and that was difficult to swallow. What ultimately led to my journey into the work that I do now, you know, this experience didn't come from a place of having all the answers. You know, it came from a place where I really had to engage with that vulnerability in a real way, to be in the thick of it, you know, to really have to rebuild the identity of a person from the ground up. I'm very proud to say that I'm turning 10 this year. The person that I I was before the accident was is gone. He doesn't exist anymore. And really embracing that, accepting it with absolution, I think is a very important point for many people who have these kind of traumatic events and these occurrences that really erase the identity of the person that was before. Trauma has an effect. And for me, to have that sense of purpose and identity and control challenge in ways I never anticipated really changed the way I understand suffering. And I learned that it's not about returning to who we were before this event happened, but integrating what happened and or discovering who we can become because of that event. I think owning that and integrating that trauma, integrating that that experience is vital to progressing and moving forward and to becoming whole once again.

Becoming A Therapist After TBI

Tom Faust 35:13

Um I would like to move along into uh how you became or decided to become a therapist and into your third space therapy to kind of talk about that and how that how that experience helped you and how it can help other veterans.

SPEAKER_04 35:31

Many veterans, myself included, had that that struggle of you know, what what's next? What's my mission now? You know, after leaving the service home, I need I need a mission, I need a I need a purpose, I need I need to be aimed at something. And it's easy to become so distracted like I did with you know having fun, hedonistic pleasure, you know, because that's that's a very easy thing to to obtain. Me, I really was inspired by the clinicians at the VA in Tampa, James A. Hilly Hospital. I was very fortunate to be able to be relocated there for my inpatient care. Um, they have a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous brain injury ward. And I can without a doubt attribute to a lot of my success and healing and growth to that program. For me, seeing firsthand the social workers, the clinicians, really caring and striving to heal and to and to lift the veterans in their care gave me a new mission. I I was like, I this is it. This is there's something here. What if I could be a healer? What if I can I can help pull someone out of that darkness and show them that there is a path back to recovery, back to wholeness. And this speaks to my orientation now to helping others heal, that it's not a one-dimensional process. At the impatient treatment center where I got my care, it was occupational therapy, physical therapy, recreational therapy, social work, and connecting to community events, you know, because you did have community there. I learned that healing can't happen in isolation. You know, you need to connect. And I'm so grateful that I had the ability to be connected to so many other veterans that were going through very similar things. When I was comatose, I wasn't just abandoned. I wasn't left in isolation. I had people come and talk to me almost regularly, daily. They sit by my bedside and talk to me, tell me stories, read to me. I was told that there was another man in the same ward next to me who didn't get visitators. He was left alone for the most part. He didn't wake up. I did. I'm very grateful that I wasn't left alone. And I think that's a lot of what ails the veteran population is that isolation is not a place for healing. So being so inspired by the care I received and having a new alignment, getting a new mission, feeling a renewed sense of purpose, um really invigorated me to go out and get my master's in social work, which was a frighting thing to consider with a traumatic brain injury. But I think that this feeling that you're afraid of stepping up and answering the call or welcoming the challenge of whatever may come, despite your your disability, there are ways to still achieve. I'm very grateful that you know we can apply for accommodations. I think many veterans understand that you can apply for accommodation at universities, at jobs. Um, ADA accommodations are very real and very valid, and you can apply for these. Um, I recently just took a an exam for licensure that I requested accommodations for. I got extended test time, I got a private testing room. These things are accessible to veterans. And I think that it's something that we are often too prideful to ask for. Like I don't need I don't need accommodations, I don't, I don't need to be special. You know, I can do it on hard mode, of course, of course you can. But why? You know, I have to set myself for success. That orientation was really what enabled me to reach this point in my career where I can be strong enough to accept help in a way that I never knew I could, to say that getting help is okay, the way that I wish I would have asked for help before my in my injury before my accident. You know, going back to you know, learning lessons the hard way, Chris.

Tom Faust 39:51

You know,

ART Trauma Therapy Explained

Tom Faust 39:52

when we talked previously, you talked about the uh explain art, um, accelerated resolution therapy, keep the memory, lose the pain. Do you want to share on that?

SPEAKER_04 40:03

Art therapy or accelerated resolution therapy is a very viable evidence-informed trauma therapy. You know, it helps the brain process those painful memories that we often suppress, avoid, and compartmentalize. Doesn't mean that it's it's contained. You know, often we experience these very traumatic events and we we don't we don't integrate that experience into conscious awareness. We just lock it in a closet in the back of our brain, but it'll knock. It'll knock louder than you think it would. Sometimes it breaks containment. And that's we have those those angry outbursts, that emotional dysregulation. Art therapy doesn't erase what happened because so many times we don't want to let go of that memory because it's it's meaningful. If I was deployed in service uh to my country with my brothers in arms, and I witnessed a very traumatic event. Maybe one of my brothers was blown up in an IED. You know, maybe I was shot. I witnessed horrific things. But at the same time, I am very proud of my service. I'm very proud to have been there, to have done what I did. I can't let go of this. That sense of needing to hold on to the honor of that memory. That experience, that experience is vitally important to me because it has so much meaning nested within it that I can't let go of it. This is where art therapy is very advantageous because when we when we retrieve a memory, it becomes plastic before it's you know stored again. And during that window, the emotional associations with that memory can be modified. So think about the memory as a computer file. Um, instead of deleting that file, um, art therapy just updates the emotional software attached to that file. So think about an IED blast going off and all those alarm bells going off in your head whenever that memory is triggered in your in your conscious and mind, you know. But I can go in there and we can load up that memory, modify the software attached to that file, and then restore that memory in a way that removes the pain, removes the trauma, and removes the and desensitizes you to that that that experience. The threat was real at one point, but the system needs updated information. And art is a way of helping the brain update its threat response. I think this is something that I struggle with is that suffering is not what proves your loyalty or your commitment or or or service. Suffering is not the hallmark measurement of that. It's the pain shows that something mattered, it allows you to carry the meaning without carrying the full weight of the injury every day. Because that file is still there. You can open it anytime you choose, you know, but the virus attached to that file has been removed, you know, and while the memory remains, it can't hijack your system anymore and overwhelm you every time it's activated.

Third Space Therapy Beyond The Office

Chris Faust 43:20

So one of the things that I'm uh reading here real quick is um so with kind of the way you were explaining things, why doesn't therapy have to look like an office and an hour on the couch?

SPEAKER_04 43:32

I love I love this question. I think we're so accustomed to this this whitewash kind of idea and model of therapy is I go to someone's office, we sit on how to put chairs across from each other, we talk about our feelings, especially the VA. You know, it's very the term I would use is cagey, um, in the sense that I always feel on guard when talking to my my VA clinician. Because everything I say I know is gonna be carefully annotated and updated in my files and could affect my disability rating, could affect the medication I'm receiving, you know, depending on how it's it's annotated and worded in the in the in the notes. So it's it's very easy to keep things very close to the chest. It can feel very the word I use is inauthentic, you know. It feels very performative to be in this scenario where you're sitting across from someone in a comfortable office and you're doing what you're supposed to be doing, which is talking about your feelings and and what it's supposed to mean. And the clinician you're talking to is looking in this DSM and you know, writing down disorders he's noting and seeing. And maybe she's you know, writing down that you need medication for this ailment she's just you've been describing. And I really feel like getting outside of that that space, outside of that environment is a good way to feel more authentic, to feel more in touch with what truly matters, what you're really feeling, and being letting go of that in a inhibition that that sense of you know you you have to keep things close to the chest. I like the idea of you know saying to a client, well, what does therapy look like for you? You know, what what would be your ideal version of therapy? For me, going for a walk outside a park, um, or just you know, through the town, you know, you know, a walk and talk, I think for me is is my ideal version of therapy. And sometimes it can be very different. I give you an example of when a client of mine he just wanted to help clean his room. Hey, can you just come over and and just help me clean my room and we can talk about my my my thoughts and my feelings? And holding that space and having a an activity kind of diffuse the the tension to kind of give you something to pull the folks away from that interaction between a client and therapist, I think is very useful. You know, think about you know, we can just go play basketball, we can go play a round of golf, you know, and that could be our therapy for the day, you know. And that really is what I mean by third space, you know, because you have you have work, you have home, and then this in between, you know. And as applied to therapy, you have your home, your work, and then the clinician's office. But what if it was somewhere else? What if it was somewhere where you were more comfortable? I like the idea of diffusing the power dynamic in therapy sessions because so often you you're going to the therapist's office, you're sitting across from them at behind their desk, their chairs higher than yours, you know, they have all these notes, these this bookcase full of leather-bound volumes, and you feel very intimidating at times, you know, that you know, the power rests with the clinician. And I'm I'm curious what it would feel like for the client to have more autonomy, more, more, more ownership of this process. Because therapy, I believe, should be more of a collaborative process. It is very common for people to misidentify therapy as I think a metaphor I really like is I'm not an I'm not a mechanic. Um, if your car is not running right, and you want to bring it to my shop for a tune-up, well, you don't just drop your car off and then come back and check in on it like a couple couple hours later. You know, you're gonna, I'm gonna you're gonna walk back, I'm gonna show you the car, I'm gonna point out where the car is broken, and you're gonna roll up your sleeves and I'm gonna help you fix it. And in that way, you learn that you have autonomy, you have power, you have control over yourself, and you learn how to fix your car in a way that I I don't want you to need me in the same way that as a personal trainer, as a nutrition coach, as a clinician, I I'm trying to work myself out of a job. I don't want you to need me, you know, for the for your the length of your your the time it takes you to achieve your goals. I want us to work together and collaboratively identify how to attack this problem, how to find a path towards your ideal self, towards your ideal vision of your future, you know, to help you achieve your goals, to get you back to that sense of that feeling of baseline, a feeling of of wellness, like a better word.

Tom Faust 48:33

So it's sort of like uh meeting them where they are instead of where to where are they gonna be most comfortable to receive what you have to share.

Chris Faust 48:43

Yeah, that and also being more open to if they're more comfortable with the location, then they're naturally just gonna be more willing to want to talk.

unknown 48:51

Yeah.

Chris Faust 48:52

Because they're not gonna feel like, you know, oh, this is this this is the space where I have to divulge all my feelings. It's more of a, oh my gosh, I can be comfortable talking about stuff.

SPEAKER_04 49:01

Yeah, I'll meet you on your home turf. You know, you gotta home court advantage. This is where this work matters.

Neurofatigue, Health Coaching, And Purpose

SPEAKER_04 49:09

And for me, working as a holistic, you know, kind of therapist, I discuss with you what I learned at the University of Health Performance. So while I was struggling to find meaning and purpose, um, I found this amazing organization called FitOps. FitOps is a veteran organization that takes veterans transitioning into civil world and teaches them how to become personal trainers, to give them a meaningful pursuit after service, a new mission. Having done that, I was so moved and fulfilled that I went back again, this time to the university of health and performance, which is what it became. And I became an integrative health coach. Integrative health coach. That's where I kind of realized that healing isn't about fixing one problem, it's about restoring balance across these interconnected domains that make us human. When we strengthen the whole person through performance, resilience, purpose naturally emerges. These domains of fitness, resilience, nutrition, leadership, recovery, recharge, connection. It's not about which areas of your life are supporting you, it's more about you know which areas are holding you back and how do we empower those domains. And this became especially relevant for me after TBI. I had to realize that because of my brain injury, imagine your brain as a highway. Of course, you know, you get on the highway and get to where you need to go, those thoughts travel very quickly around the brain and become thought, idea, spoken word or sorry, or action. And when a brain injury happens, it's like that highway now has been closed. You know, they have to take detours around that injured part of the brain. You know, this part's under construction, you know, so you can't use that same highway to get to where you need to go before. It has to take all these detours, and the brain has to now travel so far to get to the same destination that it leaves you so started of energy. You're running out of gas. And that gas is called neurofatigue. So neurofatigue is a very important consequence of TBI that I think a lot of people don't understand. It's like before maybe my brain was you know high-speed internet, you know, you know, has crazy mode and processing speed, but now it's dial-up. You know, I can only go so fast. And that dial-up speed means that connection is sometimes not reliable. And when that car moving my brain of thoughts and ideas, is trying to circumnavigate to get to where it needs to come out as words. Sometimes I run out of gas and I get so exhausted with that neurofatigue that I am not able to articulate the words I want to very clearly. And this is where I experience that aphasia. Aphasia is this feeling of like word salad, that I have all these words I want to say at one time, but then as I'm trying to get them out and speak them into being, they get mashed together, they get stumbled, they get jumbled up, and they don't come out right. And that can be very anxiety-producing because sometimes you're afraid to speak. Getting back to getting back to the domains of health and performance, that that fuel, that nutrition means that I have to make sure I'm fueling my body with enough energy, enough calories, to where I can overcome that neurofatigue to be able to still be on this podcast. I ate an entire large pizza before I came on here today. I'm very, I'm very caloried up. The more people I'm hanging out with, the more conversations I'm having, the more food I need to eat, the more calories I need to ingest to be able to stay able to maintain coherence. Otherwise, that neurofatigue will start to weigh on me so heavily that I'll I'll become very withdrawn, quiet, I'm very uncertain of my words. I'll start to stumble and mumble and and it's like my words are slurring a little bit. It's like, have you been drinking? Well, no, I'm just totally disabled. And this this gets me back to summarize third space in a way, it would be that my price, my practice was created from this belief that people deserve a space where struggles are not viewed as weakness or failure. It is these experiences that can be understood and integrated and transformed into meaning. And I want to help people create meaning from these moments that that change them and to offer an environment that is conducive to that healing, to that safety, that safe container that people need in therapy, to feel able to encounter these memories. And in the same way that ART uses bilateral eye simulation to activate that parasympathetic nervous system, to to put yourself at ease, to to activate a sense of safety, of of peace. The same strategy I use in my practice that puts you in an environment where you're more at comfort, more at ease, to pursue this content that is very often inhibiting your ability to progress in life and to be unstuck.

Resources For Veterans And Closing

Tom Faust 54:06

If there's one thing that uh you would want a veteran, a struggling veteran to hear about this kind of therapy, for instance, what what would that be?

SPEAKER_04 54:16

I think that if this conversation resonated with you at all as a veteran, then and you're looking for purpose healing or even your next mission, I want to invite you to explore these organizations that are out there that exist to help you identify this path to meaning, to to healing. And I talked about the University of the Performance, but there's also so many other organizations out there. I one when I went to spotlight, especially is Rice, regenerative, innovative campus ecosystem. And I also just found out about this at a veterans event. I went sailing with a veterans organization called Dog Small Adventures here in Idaho. This Rice initiative, this campus is working to bring these pieces together into an ecosystem that really allows veterans to heal, grow, and serve their communities in very meaningful ways. More than anything, I think uniform may come off, but the mission doesn't have to end. If you're searching for your next chapter, you know, you don't have to do it alone. You know, we have community here. We have all these incredible organizations that exist to help you find that that camaraderie, that purpose, that mission, that meaning. Help you discover what skills you can continue to use to make a difference in the world. Healing isn't about fixing one problem, it's about restoring the balance across these domains that make us whole. I'd encourage you to look up Rice Restorative Innovative Campus Ecosystem in Quarterlaine, Idaho. My website is third spacethhreshold.com. You can find me there. I'd encourage you to look up University of Health and Performance, an incredible organization that's helping veterans find renewed purpose and meaning. Other organizations that really assist me and really help me find meaning is Team Rubicon and Team Red, White, and Blue. I think these are very important organizations that help instill a sense of renewed mission, renewed meaning, renewed purpose. I look forward to seeing where you go on your journey. And feel free to carry with me on my website, Thursday Threshold.com.

Chris Faust 56:13

Roger, we're gonna uh do want to thank you very much for uh coming on here and uh and and talking with us, taking the time uh to explain your story and explain uh uh what you do and how you can benefit. I think it's uh a really good thing and definitely another avenue for uh for veterans. Um and that that's what we do, that's why we do this podcast. It's we want to give people the you know advice that you know there is stuff out there for them. There's not one solution. There's a whole bunch of things that might resonate more than some others. So um do want to appreciate your time uh taking with us and uh for all the people tuning in, watching the video, listening to the podcast. Uh thank you for taking the uh time out of your day to listen to us and make sure you uh like, subscribe, all the good stuff, spread the word, um, get this out there to let them know hey, there's things you can do.

Tom Faust 57:04

Again, thank you, Roger, for being with us. And uh so on that note, and we'll see you next time.