In this episode, Dr. Megan McElheran, a clinical psychologist and CEO of Before Operational Stress, Inc. discusses stoicism’s practical applications and the misinterpretations associated with it. Dr. McElheran shares her extensive work with trauma-exposed professionals, including military personnel and first responders, and highlights the importance of managing stress and trauma. Marcus and Dr. McElheran delve into the concept of post-traumatic growth, the necessity of facing adversities, and maintaining mental health resilience. The conversation also touches on Dr. McElheran’s Bataan Death March experience, underscoring the significant lessons in resilience and determination.
Episode Highlights:
02:29 The Misconceptions of Stoicism
08:04 The Impact of Trauma on First Responders
29:32 Stoic Wisdom for Overcoming Hardship
31:10 The Hero’s Journey and Personal Growth
32:22 Embracing Pain and Suffering
37:55 Curating Thoughts and Building Confidence
40:20 The Bataan Death March: A Lesson in Endurance
Dr. Megan McElheran, CEO of Wayfound Mental Health Group in Calgary, AB, is a Clinical Psychologist with 16 years of expertise in Operational Stress Injuries (OSI). Specializing in active-duty military, Veterans, and public safety personnel, she focuses on assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Driven by a passion for OSI prevention and resilience enhancement, she developed the BOS program. Exploring innovative approaches, she’s delving into psychedelic medicine for psychological injuries. A sought-after speaker and educator, Dr. McElheran shares her insights nationally. Her recent publication in the European Journal of Psychotraumatology, “Functional Disconnection and Reconnection,” sheds light on novel strategies for public safety personnel’s well-being.
You can find out more here: beforeoperationalstress.com
Episode Transcript:
00:30
Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions, not words. If you wanna know what somebody truly believes, don’t listen to the words, instead observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase. Dr. Megan.
01:00
MacElhern is a clinical psychologist and the CEO of Before Operational Stress, Incorporated. Dr. MacElhern completed graduate training at the PAU Stanford University Clinical Psychology Consortium, during which she obtained specialized training in the treatment of PTSD through the National Center for PTSD in Menlo Park, California. She continues to focus on work with first responders and her clinical practice involves work with active duty military.
01:29
veterans, member of various firefighting organizations, medical personnel, and others who are directly or vicariously impacted by trauma. She completed a TEDx speech in 2011, which I highly recommend for everyone that’s related to trauma, change, and resilience. And today we’re going to talk about applications of stoic virtues in the real pragmatic way. I can’t wait to have this conversation. Thank you for being here today, doctor, and thank you to Franklin for introducing us.
01:57
Yes, thank you, Franklin. Thank you for having me. This is such a treat. I feel really humbled to be here and really privileged to have this conversation with you. I value meeting people who, yeah, actions, not words. And, you know, you and I followed each other on LinkedIn. So I’m aware of you from there. And I’ve read your story. And it’s just a real treat to be here. So thank you. Well, thank you. And it’s always great to find people that are applying it, trying to apply it, helping others apply it. Nassim Taleb says that in academia, they think academia and the real world are the same.
02:26
And in the real world, we know that that is not true. You and I have discussed this notion of pseudo-Stoicism, a lot of these things that are sort of undermining the true virtues, the true roots of what Stoicism comes from. And it’s a little bit aggravating because now it’s almost become this, I don’t know if you remember in the 90s, Taoism became this like pop psychology type phenomenon, which I mean, I think Taoism is a tremendous philosophy, but the way that it was approached and then it became this thing that sort of swept through and then what happens is,
02:56
a lot of the true beauty and power of that is washed away with it. I think that stoicism, that the same thing is happening now. Can you tell me about that? I share, I like the word aggravation, that’s a good word. I share the aggravation in some ways in the sense that I find it, I just note, I guess. I’ve been doing this work with the Uniformed Services for well over 20 years at this point. And
03:22
the idea of talking about stoicism, which I’ve been thinking about for about a decade now, at least, you know, to see it kind of as a bumper sticker and the pop psychology flavor of the moment. And people are talking about PTSD and mental health. So I just note that we have this interest in stoicism, maybe because some really fantastic people have been doing some fantastic work, but is there gonna be the possibility that this passes like any other trend, right? And do people who are talking about stoicism, I think particularly in the social media domains and public domains,
03:52
What do they really know about it? What have they really done to try to actually think deeply about how do you live in a stoic kind of a way? And I feel that there’s a tremendous misconception about what stoicism is and what it is not, and how that it can be this generality where pretty much everything kind of fits within this sphere. And the thing that makes something powerful is the fact that it has some exclusivity to what it is and what it actually includes. Am I off base there?
04:21
No, I don’t think so. I don’t think so. And I probably hear, I don’t know how many people a day now again, whether that’s in social media sources, in my own clinical work, whatever I hear people use terms associated with stoicism or use the term stoicism all the time. And I would continue to submit and argue that I think the use of the terminology and maybe some of the thinking around what it actually stands for is still being misapplied. And I’m interested in that. It’s
04:49
it’s very germane to the work that I do because I’m really trying to work on shifting how people think about and talk about stoicism in the service of actually helping them be healthier and have more capacity to deal with the adversities that they face, so on and so forth. So yeah, I hear people say, you know, still this notion that, oh, that person is so stoic. And typically what they mean is stiff upper lip, unemotional.
05:19
unfeeling, right? And unfortunately, oftentimes that’s paired with some reinforcement. Oh, I wish I could be like them. They’re so stoic. And I think that’s a problem. I do too. And I think it’s very easy. Again, this whole idea of octa non verba. In my life, I’ve seen it, whether it be in the military, after the military, in the martial arts, in entrepreneurship, in leadership, in a business, it’s very easy to
05:45
regurgitate a quote, it’s very easy to sound intelligent, it’s very easy to point it out either in someone else or after the fact, but that doesn’t really serve us in the heat of adversity when we really need it the most. And that’s why we were discussing before I hit record this notion of this sort of Venn diagram, this almost Ikigai mentality of to have stoicism in one sphere is fine, but do I have the discipline to apply it?
06:12
towards my finances, towards my relationships, towards my physicality, towards my diet, towards my spirituality, towards my practice of all these things. And to embrace it in one but circumvent it in the other is a zero net gain. Right, and I think that possibly a little bit of the dilution that we’ve seen in how we talk about stoicism and how it’s used in common discourse is from at least what I’ve seen is like, it’s used in a way only when it’s kind of convenient or comfortable.
06:41
you know, like we’re going to applaud ourselves for, or someone else for being stoked in a certain kind of a way, but exactly, it’s not just about using these ideas or these quotes or whatever in the service of our own comfort or progression or something like that, qualitatively in terms of how we live our lives. Absolutely. And I have a friend, his name is Scott McGee. He has the Sisu Wei podcast, amazing. Met him in Los Angeles and
07:09
He’s been an officer for a long time. He’s now a lieutenant, but he was saying how that as an officer, you have to qualify with your weapon every year. You have to know how to clear this jam, how to clear this misfire, how to be able to do all these things all the time. And you’re given these skillsets and you have all this paperwork. He says, the irony is the likelihood of somebody having to do a slap and rack drill with their pistol is virtually non-existent in real time. But the very thing that they need.
07:39
that they are guaranteed to have from the first hour of their first shift is this potential of trauma, of stress, of PTSD. And yet they are not given any sort of skillset around that. Isn’t that something? Yeah, I appreciate your friend and the commentary and all. I actually didn’t know about that podcast, so I’ll check it out. I take significant issue with that too. And I would take it a step even further of saying with all that we’ve learned in the last
08:09
five, 10, 15 years, whatever, about rates of trauma exposure and how, when we don’t support people either to be prepared for it or to effectively work through it and resolve it, what that can do in an organization, in a community, in a sector, like policing, right? And so apart from there being a moral and ethical good for actually thinking about how we need to train people differently, there’s also a potential argument that we’re being negligent if we don’t, right? Because…
08:38
We know people are going to have exposure to these things. We know there’s a physical and psychological and spiritual cost. If we know that and we’re not doing something about it, there’s a call to action for sure. Absolutely agree. You have tremendous experience in this. Can you tell us about some of the maybe more nefarious manifestations or even symptomatologies that maybe people don’t connect to some sort of trauma or PTSD? So what I have seen, and I certainly think I have
09:08
science and research to back me up. But I see this all the time in my work with people. So I still sit down with people every day, you know, multiple times per week and listen to their stories. And people come into their career and that can be with the military or a first responder sector, whatever, brimming with optimism and enthusiasm and a desire to help and maybe driven by the idea of being part of a team and all of these things. And…
09:35
generally speaking actually are typically pretty well, they’re pretty healthy, they’re often pretty fit, all the things. And then we put them into these very difficult, highly adverse stressful jobs and experiences. And then typically what starts to happen within the first couple of years or few years is they look around and they’re adding some things to their backpacks and some experiences that are probably tough, but they’re looking around and nobody else necessarily is showing the wear and tear of that, so they go well.
10:04
it’s probably a me issue. And so I’m just gonna sort of keep it to myself. What that means is that they start to find ways to accommodate. And usually that’s by pushing things away, figuring out how to minimize the impact, justifying them, rationalizing them, and increasingly diminishing their contact with their thoughts and their memories and their feelings and how this is impacting how they look at the world and other people. And then what that starts to do is it disconnects them. It’s…
10:33
further and further separates them from understanding who they are and where their behaviors are coming from and what they stand for and how they want to be in relationships. And, you know, unchecked that continues and can continue and can start to be joined by some really not great friends. Like, partly how I accomplish that is by keeping everyone at a distance or I get really prickly or I drink a ton or whatever.
10:59
And it goes on and on and on and on. And then we see all the clinical symptom pathology that can come along with that in terms of nightmares and anxiety and rage and what have you. That’s how I think it starts. Is that I think we set in motion processes where people just start to get disconnected from themselves. And then people lose the sense of who am I? Why am I doing this? What’s happening to me? And then they end up being driven by fear and more and more disconnected. It just becomes a cycle that
11:29
It’s very difficult to break and it’s seamless because it’s all encompassing. They’re completely enveloped. Exactly. To that, I would also say they’re subtly reinforced for it. That’s exactly it because it’s like, look how much trauma this guy can take. Yeah, put him in there to this. And then all of a sudden, by not objecting to it, you’re volunteering for it to repeat. Yeah, that’s right. And so then the stakes get higher and higher. Well, I’m seen to be this way, or I’m like really tough or I’m the person, the go-to person or whatever, right? And.
11:58
It adds and it adds and adds and adds. And then 99% of the time when someone sits down with me for the first time, one of the very first things I hear from them is, I’m just not the same person I used to be. And I don’t know who I am anymore. And yeah, lost connections with hobbies or the things that used to make the blood race a little bit or the things that made them feel vital. And a lot of that is because they’ve had to separate themselves. They’ve had to dehumanize themselves to keep up with.
12:28
these Joneses that are about being perceived a certain way. I know friends from the military that are out or are still active that they feel that because they become this monster, they have to step away and detach from these people that they love, their family, their friends, their spouse, because they don’t want to infect them with that. And what they don’t understand is that
12:56
And we see this even in like CEOs and businesses, but what happens is they unintentionally create this resentment towards these people that do not have to fight the fight that they’re fighting every single day. And they don’t intend for that to be there, but that builds and that festers. And they just don’t understand me. And now unintentionally that becomes almost toxic. And then what does that do? That informs every decision they make their own. Absolutely. And you have.
13:25
or spouses or whomever on the other side of that going like, we don’t understand. But partly we don’t understand because you don’t tell us. We don’t know what’s going on. And so there’s typically a duality of that resentment because it’s like you’re expecting or wanting or even demanding something. And yet I have no idea because maybe it’s like you’re letting me into the story of the book when we’re at the second to last page. How am I supposed to know all of the context and all of what comes before, right? So…
13:54
I think you’re absolutely right. And it’s really tragic because there’s so many unintended consequences. People start from a place of usually, you know, if we think about people new to career, it’s like, well, I’m going to do this because I kind of think this is how I need to prove that I’m competent and capable. And then, yeah, they get this sense of like, I am so different from how I used to be the way I think about people or the things I’ve seen, and I can’t share that with my wife and so I’ll keep it to myself and
14:21
you know, this sort of nefarious changing of personality happens. And then they really do believe the only way I can be a good husband or father is to, is to not share parts of myself because they’re so ugly and so awful, thereby perpetuating this, this gap in this Gulf. And I hear it all the time from people. I’ve heard it a couple of times this week that there’s this real struggle and ambivalence that people have about, would it be better? Like, would it legitimately be better if I took myself either permanently,
14:51
or in some sort of way out of the picture from my family, from my friends, from my organization, would it actually be the more honorable thing for me to do because of how I now am? Yeah, and clearly that’s not sustainable. No, and I actually was having a conversation with a politician yesterday of all things, and she asked me, because I don’t have an academic appointment, I’m an applied researcher at best, I’m a clinician really through and through, and she asked me, she’s like, why do you do this?
15:18
It doesn’t make sense. But like, that’s a really interesting question. Nobody’s actually ever asked me that before. And, you know, for no other reason than it does feel like the moral and ethical good. When you think about people who are putting their lives on the line, literally, like your friend, right? Every day your friend goes to work, him, his family, his coworkers have to think about, I could die today. This is the thing that I have to at least on some level know and contemplate. And people have died in the service of their communities and their countries. And when I think about the fact that
15:48
There’s people who would rush to my aid or my family’s aid in any number of different kinds of circumstances. And yet we leave them in a way that these tragedies occur where, you know, apart from suicide risk and all of that, where people end up in this place of feeling like they’re monsters and they don’t deserve to have connections and love in their life. Why wouldn’t you want to do this? I couldn’t agree more. And from what I hear, most of the people that I know that really want to do this sort of work consistently.
16:17
have gone through some sort of adversity in their life that gives them that vantage point. Could you share with us maybe something that inspired you to do this work? I can say now at this point in my life that I’ve certainly, like anyone, I’ve had my own experiences with trauma and adversity in my life. And I can really look now and say, I would not go back and do away with those things because if I did, I wouldn’t be here and I wouldn’t.
16:45
be talking about this and have the understanding that I do, right? So I can see that. But I came to know that later in life, the first and most immediate thing that sort of kicked me off on this journey was so I was like a, I was a baby just out of my undergrad and wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a psychologist or not. Get a job like doing something in the mental health area and see. And I was kind of interested at that time in people who had gone through hardship and wanted to recover. So I ended up going to work.
17:15
at a community-based nonprofit that was providing supports to adolescent girls who had been involved in the sex trade in some way. And so tremendous amounts of exposure to trauma and at first childhood experiences and all of things and like really horrific things that were happening pretty regularly within our clinic that we were helping these kids in. And yet they were still coming back. Like sometimes they were coming back after having been sexually assaulted the night before and they were coming to the program the next day because they had school to finish
17:45
an exam they needed to take or they had a therapy session, whatever, and there was like, regardless of what was happening to them, there was still this motivation to keep progressing, right? And to stay connected and to keep trying to improve themselves. And I was just like, I think I was 20, maybe 21 at the time going like, what is happening here? Like, how is this a thing, right? And I don’t know what happened to lots of them. I do know that lots of them did end up graduating high school and they got jobs and they left the sex trade. So I was just, I was just
18:14
floored by that. And so I thought, well, I’m in, I’m totally captivated by this experience and I want to know more about it. This was the late nineties and I didn’t know it at the time, but like a couple of years before that and like right when I was going into grad school, there was a construct that people were starting to talk about called post-traumatic growth. And when I learned about post-traumatic growth, because that’s what I ended up focusing my graduate research on, I was like, well, this is the thing.
18:42
This is the thing that I’m interested in. It’s not, I mean, it is about trauma. It’s about understanding how people are traumatized and what happens and all the things, but it’s bigger than that. It’s about the fact that we can be transformed. We can evolve, and in fact, what we need to be able to be compelled to thrive and grow and evolve is actually the hardship. So that was it. Those experiences with those girls, I will never forget them.
19:10
and think about it all the time. And that has been just an orienting principle for my career since then is I always need to be clear, like trauma is bad, people shouldn’t sexually assault people, people shouldn’t be violent. Like I’m not endorsing that or condoning that, but I really want people to realize the capacity that they have and that we all have to grow and evolve and change and shift and then actually be able to give back in a more…
19:38
wise and compassionate and empathic way by virtue of the fact that we had to struggle through those things. It’s undeniable. I recently heard my mentor at my lead speaking and he says, the person that we are most qualified to help is the person that we used to be. And so I’ve had people say, well, are you a motivational speaker? Are you a leadership speaker? Are you these things? And it’s like, what I found was when I would speak about adversity.
20:04
it hit people wherever they were, it met them where they were. So if it’s a leader and they’re having to fire somebody, or they’re trying to make this decision and everybody’s jobs are on the line, that adversity was very real for them. But this understanding that knowing that that’s going to be the norm, knowing that there’s going to be some form of adversity, irrespective of the path, there’s always going to be something there. So can I have the courage to make that decision to walk towards this adversity that will give me the growth that I desire?
20:34
I’ve also found just like what you’re saying, I talked to Sarut. She’s an incredible psychologist in England, and she has a thing called in the trenches and she’s that very no bullshit person that’s like, listen, just because you disagree with somebody or they said something that you don’t like does not mean that you were traumatized. And as we look at people that have truly faced difficulty or if we’ve experienced it ourselves, that’s why it becomes so obvious to us when you see a person that’s just sort of playing this victim role.
21:03
cannot wait to be offended by anything around them, truly puts any sort of resilience that they could have down intentionally, and then just leaves themselves vulnerable. This is very much this, one of the most self-serving, selfish kind of ideologies out there, because they get all the attention without any of the responsibility, and look at me and how this isn’t fair, and it shows me that, again, this is a person, like if you’ve been out in the real world, or if you’ve actually done anything,
21:31
for someone outside of yourself, you’ll see how petty and selfish and short-sighted that is. Right, and like, let’s not lose sight of the fact that we are living in the most, as far as we understand it, most comfortable, convenient time in human civilization than ever, right? And yet we seemingly are the least resilient that we’ve ever been. And doesn’t that maybe tell us something? The notion in the Stoic writings about like, be aware of your death.
22:00
I don’t know that if you haven’t actually contemplated yours or someone else’s mortality, like if that hasn’t hit you in the face, you may not really get that other than that being a cool thing to say at a cocktail party. I think the way that we know and we experience and experience really being one of the best teachers, if you really looked down the barrel of that reality and can use that to inform, there is no waste of time then. There is no…
22:29
if I’m going to have a focus on things that don’t matter, like they’re just bullshit. I’m robbing myself at the end of the day. And so what are we doing? And how do we get people to shift themselves out of this perspective? Like one of the things that drives me, if somebody asks me what’s in it for me in whatever way, like, don’t ask me that. I couldn’t agree more. And we see that that’s becoming more and more prominent in society. Totally. And I think that’s, I guess, you know, I say that kind of
22:59
flippantly, but I just find that so sad, right? Because I think at the end of the day, what I see so much is people don’t realize what they’re capable of. Like they really don’t. They’re so scared of the world and other people and failure. And they’ve received these messages that the ways that they’re supposed to deal with life is by being self-preoccupied and trying to make sure that they’re never uncomfortable. And I think we’ve done that in all sorts of ways over the last 20 or 30 years, if not longer.
23:29
It’s just, it’s really tragic. If somebody has never had to really look into the darkness and figure out a way through, they’re knocked out at the knees when something comes along and they’re ill-equipped, right? The people I see all the time are so ill-equipped for things that really are about life. None of us gets to escape the things that life has to offer us. It’s not on our terms. And it never has been. And once we make peace with that, it allows us to understand because we can do one of two things.
23:58
We can either expect the world to bend over backwards and kiss our ass for everything that our preference is, whatever that preference may be, no matter how much it changes, or we can build so much resilience that it doesn’t matter what hits us. We have the thickness of skin to be able to walk off of it. And I know that again, that may sound flippant having said that, but ask yourself honestly, of those two options, which one is more realistic, which one can I control? And then which one is sustainable?
24:27
All three of those are something that I can take action on right now, as opposed to hoping that something will just fall into my lap exactly the way I would like for it to be in this moment. Exactly. And one of the things, and I mean, I think this is very stoic consistent, and I figured this out, I think, before I knew much about stoicism. You need to be intentional about finding ways to make yourself uncomfortable. You need to take yourself, like figure out what your circumference of comfort is, and then find a way to get the hell out of sight of that.
24:56
I had this experience when I was, this was actually right after I stopped working at that program. I was just like, you know what, I need to get out of here and see the world a little bit. And so I traveled by myself to Southeast Asia and I spent several months just traveling around. I’ve actually, I lived with a Thai family for a period of time because I was volunteering. And then I just traveled in Vietnam and through Thailand. It was really eyeopening for someone at my age and stage because I had this, I just had
25:26
humbling experience. Man, do I have the good. Like I’ve got these two parents in this home in North America where I’m allowed to get educated and I have health care and food and all things. And I don’t say this to say there’s some noble experience that came to me through that, but it really was an eye opening thing of like, you don’t have it that bad. And actually, maybe there’s something about being grateful for what you do have that you should use that to give back to other people. And I think a lot of nowadays, people don’t
25:54
They barely leave their own houses, let alone go to places to experience what it’s like for other people. Well, it’s too inconvenient to do that. I don’t need to go out of my way to do that. I don’t want to do that. That’s difficult. Yeah. And what I’m going to do instead and what’s going to get reinforced for me is I’m going to be mistrustful and I’m going to be suspicious and I’m going to look sideways and develop all sorts of paranoia and what have you. And the fear and the fear and the fear is going to grow.
26:22
And then that’s going to dictate how I live. And again, talk about lowering people’s resiliency. Well, if you’re constantly in a state of fear and paranoia, yeah, sure. You’re going to get more and more and more and more insular and all the problems that come with that. We need to get the hell out of our front doors. I mean, we need to turn the internet off. You guys are listening to this on a podcast, but that’s the truth. I mean, I call them micro adversities because we talk about this post-traumatic growth and talk about the adversity scale.
26:51
So in whatever sphere you’re in, think about the most difficult thing you’ve been through. And so for me, is this going to kill me? Probably not. Is it going to paralyze me? Probably not. So that’s where I’m at. I don’t say that in a way that’s tri, but I just say, so physically, is this thing really that difficult? Most of the time it’s not. But then if I look at it emotionally or financially or from a place of pragmatic empathy, can I really apply that? The answer is I always can if I am willing to do it. And we see so many people.
27:22
Again, high performers, success on paper, they’ll say things like, Marcus, how do I keep pushing? Or I don’t know if I can push anymore. And it’s like, don’t ask that question. The question should be, am I doing it for the right reason? If it is for the right reason, you’ll find that additional juice or that additional gear. And if it’s false and it’s fake, it becomes really obvious. And then you say, just like you were saying before, this is something that I’m getting good at that is just…
27:52
semantics that is just superfluous, that is not gonna serve me or anyone else once I’m finished with it. So why the hell am I making such a big deal about it now? You know, I asked myself a question, actually just at the end of last week and again into the early part of this week, because there’s just like a shift that’s happening with some work that I’ve done over the last number of years with this one group. And the question was, am I upset about this because of ego? And the answer was yes, 1000%. It’s just my, it’s my own hurt feelings report because I’m like, right? But it’s like, who gives a shit?
28:22
there’s going to be something else that will come along to replace it. And that’s the faith. And I don’t necessarily mean religious, spiritual faith. It can be whatever it is to you, but that’s the faith over fear is that we have to have a discipline about not allowing ourselves to attach more meaning to things that is actually deserving. And to your point, if you can look inside, if you can reflect and introspect and go, why is this important to me? Why am I making this choice?
28:48
And if you have a reason that is intrinsic to you, it is being driven from inside of you, then you will do it, right? If you’re doing it because someone told you to, there’s a financial reward attached to it, whatever, you’re not gonna keep it going, right? You’ll do it for as long as you can possibly tolerate it and you’ll give it up because it didn’t come from inside of you. And that’s so much of the work that I am doing and trying to do in a sort of preventative kind of a way with trauma exposed professionals certainly, is that you need to set the table.
29:17
inside of yourself and dine at it every day and really look at what’s in front of you and go does this still fit? Is this still why I’m sitting down to eat? Because if not, change it or do something different. I couldn’t agree more. You have so much stoicism that informs your work and the way that you help people. If we have a person that’s going through hardship right now, could you give us a maybe from a stoic slant something that you give to people to help them get through that adversity? I think it’s
29:46
really kind of fundamental construct and way we have to think about things that is a both end. We tend to think about things in either ors, right? We categorize them. And I really think it boils down to if something has happened to you or around you, again, my intention is never to diminish or dismiss someone’s suffering and owning and claiming that suffering is part of being human. And so that’s the both part.
30:13
we can’t emotionally or psychologically or spiritually bypass the pain. The pain is part of the ingredient. The end part is that we can still stay connected to the things that matter to us. We can still meet life on life’s terms. And Cheryl Strayed wrote this book called Plan B, right? And it’s like, okay, we can claim our suffering. We can acknowledge that we can honor it. And we can recognize that we can.
30:42
We have capacity and we will build plan B, plan C, plan D if we need to, right? But we have capacity to work our way through these painful things and continue to still build and live meaningful, remarkable lives. I think that’s the thing is for people to realize the suffering part of it, the trauma part of it, sometimes that’s actually just the beginning. Sometimes it’s the wake up call that we need to make that incredible life that you’re talking about. Yeah.
31:11
Find anyone, at least in my experience, find anyone who’s got a remarkable message to share or who you’re inspired by or who is doing something to try to better the human condition. And I don’t think you’ll find anybody who doesn’t have a story, an origin story of this thing happened. And I had to resolve it. I had to wrestle with it and I did. And here’s what I did with it. And think of any book or any move that you’ve seen that makes you feel inspired. It’s the hero’s journey time and time again.
31:39
It’s the hero’s journey. I was just going to say that. That’s right. Stephen Pressfield talks about this. He talks about this notion of the all is lost moment. And that’s when everything is ripped from you, from me being paralyzed in a bed, turning 40 years old, thinking about what my life should have been and how I thought it was going to be and how that it was completely different than what I was living and how I was in that denial, anger, bargaining, all of Kubler-Ross. And then finally got to that place of acceptance.
32:09
But there’s that no man’s lamb of depression that we have to go through to get to that place of acceptance. And I think that people are afraid that if they feel that loss, that depression, that that means that there’s something wrong with them. What would you say to that? I would say check your experience and check the experience of anyone who’s maybe who you’ve seen get to the other side of that. That’s not the story that they’re going to tell you. And yes, in the work that I have done, even to some extent in my own personal life,
32:37
I have seen and witnessed and born witnessed to people being brought to them needs in pain and agony of loss and devastation and grief and things happening that they never could have anticipated. And it’s heartbreaking. It just wrenches your heart out when it happens. And yet, I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who hasn’t been on the floor of my office sobbing and just having the full body expulsion of all of this pain and sorrow who then hasn’t said, I’m clear.
33:07
That helped, I feel better. And so, yeah, we can’t bypass the price of admission to being human, and that is that we feel things. And if we’re trying to bargain and create a scenario where we can skip around, being able to go through the difficult stuff, we’re never going to really actually be able to enjoy the richness of our lives, whatever that might look like. We can’t just have the good and the comfortable and easy if we’re not.
33:36
also prepared to have the devastating and the terrorizing and the sorrowful. It all comes as one. What are we all seeking in this world, right? As human beings, we start from the moment we’re born. We’re seeking connection. We’re seeking to be loved. We’re seeking to be attuned to and cared for and to be able to care to another person. Well, guess what? You don’t get deep love and you don’t get deep connection and to be cared for.
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if you can’t also at the same time live with the reality that that love could be taken from you. And we have to have that sort of that principle of equanimity. These two things have to exist at the same time. Yeah, I love that. Because that is it. I mean, that’s the historic principle of equanimity. The other part is, I think that people may not understand is that if you were to put somebody in a controlled environment where everything was provided for them, and there was zero adversity whatsoever, zero things that made them grow, the human
34:29
Being is silly because it will create it in other spheres, in other capacities. All of a sudden, that’s what they need to feel alive, or that’s what they need for a distraction. And then that becomes the thing that creates even more of it in the long run. So again, hoping that you’ll be able to live this guarded life, I mean, you can do it for a short amount of time, but eventually adversity is in route as we speak. So you get to decide now, would it?
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hurt me at all to do a little bit of some form of resilience training, physically, mentally, emotionally, whatever. But more importantly, if we’re thinking beyond ourselves, how important is it for me to have that resilience for my family, for my wife, for my daughter, for the people that I serve, for my community, for my company? How short-sighted is it for me to allow myself to be vulnerable in these capacities that could easily be at least addressed well before the notion before I’m getting punched in the face with them?
35:26
I say this and it’s a hell of a lot easier to say than it is to do. But I do believe I do this, which is I want the people in my life, my loved ones, you know, people on my team, whatever. I want them to see me at my worst or I want them to see me have to take a knee or get knocked down or something because that’s not the story. The story is about how do I get up? And it’s the modeling is in not having the brave face and getting through a difficult time or whatever. It’s being able to show.
35:55
I am battle-worn by this and this has knocked the window to my sails and all the things. And yet, even though it might not be pretty, I’m going to find a way to mobilize what I need and get myself and get us to a different place. And so, like, let’s stop perpetuating this myth. In whatever role and whatever capacity that you have in this world, in your profession, in your family, we have to be willing to show and accept and…
36:23
make friends with the messiness. Unless we figure out a way to redo the human design, I think we have to find a way to do that at a minimum to try to deal with this crisis of mental health that we’re seeing in North America and around the world, for sure, just for one example. I also think that it’s important not to put, as you were saying, if we see this leader or this figure in the public or whomever and we put them on a pedestal, it’s a cop-out.
36:53
It lets me off the hook of any responsibility. It’s like, well, that’s whoever that’s David Goggins or Jocko. It’s like, well, those are still human and they still feel all these emotions, they still live with them. They may not talk about it on social or put it in a book, but they absolutely go through that hardship. And just like you’re saying, showing getting knocked down, showing that this is difficult for everyone. Everyone that I see that successful, even at these highest levels, every one of them deals with the diversity. It doesn’t go away.
37:21
They just make peace with the notion that it’s going to happen today. What is it? And then once you understand that it will not get easier, it vicariously makes it easier. Yeah, I think so. I think that’s one of the funny, we are as a species, we just love to live in paradox. If you wanna get rid of anxiety, then welcome the anxiety and make friends with your fears. And then they don’t have as much power over you. But you know, I also think, and I mean, I think the Stoics have a lot to teach us in this.
37:51
I also think one of the things that is connected to resiliency, however we define it, is the ability to be a better curator. So I think people who have success in this regard, they’re better able to curate. Who do I listen to? What voices do I allow into my mind? Brene Brown talks about, I can’t remember exactly the wording she uses, but it’s like, if you never get into the ring, then don’t give me advice on what punches I should throw. And I love that. And, or the idea of like,
38:18
Don’t accept criticism from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice. I do think there’s something, and that’s something we can learn, right? We can learn to be better curators of our thoughts, what we pay attention to, where we put our energies, our ability to be better differentiators of the things we can control and can’t control. But I think a lot of what people are dealing with nowadays is they actually just don’t know how. They’re on social media, they’re looking at videos, they’re seeing these two-dimensional
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lives or experiences and they go, oh, well, I should just be able to do this. But they actually have not had instruction or listened to some of these kinds of conversations. And I think it’s important for people to realize you can learn to curate. It’s not probably just going to happen like that. It doesn’t happen like that for any of us, but we actually can develop skill. We can train ourselves to actually live in this way and, and thereby increase our confidence, increase our competence and be willing to take more risks, be willing to
39:12
fail and find a way to stand up again, right? But I think it starts with some of that curating ability. It does. And as you say, the people that we see that are making the most impact from that sort of action understand that they’ve been curating these skill sets for decades. They’ve been applying them for decades. So what you’re seeing is probably compounding interest from what they’ve been doing. So if you listen to this conversation and you start applying this idea of controlling the controllables,
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or any things that we talk about today, understand that it will take a while. And the time that you need the most is when it is the most difficult, which is when you’re going to want to not engage in it, which means take a breath, be present, be present in the adversity so you don’t miss the lesson, and then just take one step beyond that. And now you’re at this next place, this next level. Oh, I love that. I couldn’t agree more. We don’t need to create more categories of either or. I’m neither doing it or I’m not. We are this continually evolving
40:11
experiment, right? And we have the ability to just make a little change and see what happens. And before you know it, you’re not where you were. And I think it’s just really important. You and I were just chatting about Franklin and Ryan and I just completed the Baton March. And first, could you give a little bit of history of what the Baton Death March is? Because some people may not know. And I’m from 10th Mountain, so I very much know the history. But please explain that so that our listeners can get the depth of what you were working. Yeah, so…
40:38
really high level and I certainly invite you to add in any details. So right around the time that there was the attack on Pearl Harbor there was some notion that this could be where the conflict was heading in World War II and after World War II and so there was a deployment to the Philippines of soldiers and activating sort of the ability to respond. There’s arguments I think about what happened was there not enough time in any event the force that had been deployed to the Philippines into this area called the Patam Peninsula ended up essentially being abandoned and they
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had a period of time where they really engaged in a heroic battle and unfortunately had to surrender and then were under threat and under capture forced to march. They marched for 72 miles, I think, and there was a small amount of train ride in there. So there is annually now a march that happens in New Mexico, on the White Sands Missile Range, and it’s in New Mexico because a significant portion of folks who were deployed to the Patent Peninsula were from New Mexico.
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that you can do as an honorary march is a, okay, now I’m gonna get screwed up with my miles versus kilometers. You can do it a 10K, which is six miles, a half marathon, which is 13 miles ish, or you can do the marathon distance, which is 26.2. And it’s meant to be in recognition and an honor and to pay tribute to the folks who either lost their lives or who survived the 10. And there’s more to it. Anyways, that’s kind of the high level. Anything you would add, Marcus?
42:02
No, that’s absolutely correct. And the thing that I would like for people to understand is this is a great demonstration of taking a knee of failure. The reason why people know about block Hawk down is because it did not go well. The reason why people know about the Batem death march is because it did not go well. It wasn’t simple. Decisions were made. Mistakes were made. And yet men still executed to the best of their capacity. They lost their lives. And you were discussing the men that were put on this march. It was called the death march because
42:32
These are men that were already POWs. These are men that are already, they look like they’re from Auschwitz. They’re walking, they’re dehydrated. They can barely walk in general. And now they are being hit with rifle butts and baton. Like one of the classic examples is this person’s dehydrated and they say, we’ll drink there. And it’s a ditch that has stagnant, malaria-ridden water. And they are saying, drink that. Or, you know, if you don’t, then we’re just going and.
43:01
Like you say, so being in that environment, and again, this is where these principles of stoicism can serve us when we’re in the face of those sort of things. So yes, and I mean, there’s many books that have been written about it, My Hitch and Howe, if anyone knows. Absolutely. That’s an incredible book. Yeah, such a good book. And yeah, you get this understanding of like the dysentery and malaria and exhaustion and dehydration, like all of it. And so this march happens and it was a really, really interesting experience because
43:30
Franklin and Ryan and I went to some of the day before events and listened to some of the children of survivors speak and different things and you know I had had like this high level theoretical connection to it but then you really got the ability to connect with like these were real people with real families and the things they went through and then we ended up doing the the marathon distance of the 26.2 and
43:53
there is something to be said about finding that higher order purpose to connect to. Because I know that the three of us at different points in times had that sense of like, I’ve got every mile or two, they’re offering me Gatorade and slices of oranges. And, you know, if this is beautiful and isn’t it going to be cool to tell my friends and husband, I can dip, you know what I mean? And, but we all had moments where it’s just like, we do, we’re not afforded the privilege of giving up here, give me a break. Like these people actually, it was march or die.
44:20
There’s no medical tent, there’s no anything. And so I think just the connection to be, it would have felt dishonoring to have not completed that march, unless we had broken our leg or something, maybe even not then. But you know what I mean? Like having that connection to that reason why, it was just like, there’s no way in hell I’m gonna let myself give up on this, even though there’s times where I was like, what the hell am I doing here? But just the recognition of like,
44:47
working through those really shitty hard moments was actually part of the process. So the takeaway for me and this, you know, the the Octanon Berba, it’s like, do the hard things, do them, whatever hard is to you, whatever it looks like, do it. Because I think I can promise, I think I can guarantee, I don’t really like making promises or guarantees of this kind, but like, I think I can promise you, you’re going to come out on the other side of doing something that challenges you with a different sense of what you’re made up.
45:17
If nothing else, you will demonstrate to yourself that you’re not made out of porcelain and you’re not nearly as delicate as you thought you were. You’ll also start saying, where else am I under indexing? You’ll also realize how much of it you were making up in your head that wasn’t nearly as bad as you thought it would be because you lack commitment. But once you’re there and you’re in it, you’re like, I’m doing this. I will find a way or make one. And find a reason why doing the thing is important to you. And the best reason from my perspective is your investment in yourself.
45:46
best investment you can make, but find a reason why these things are important to you because that is what’s going to keep you going when it gets hard, when it gets uncomfortable. And again, it has to be an intrinsic reason. It can’t be because I’ll get social media comments or whatever. I agree. Was there a favorite stoic quote that kept coming to the surface for you as you had that 35 pound ruck on and it was hot and you’re out there in the heat and you’re trying to continue to move forward? Like, they don’t know that it was one of our famous stoics and there was a bunch of different
46:15
concepts or ideas that came to me. And one of them was your mind’s going to give up way before your body will, so don’t let your mind give up. Even if we hadn’t trained a ton, we trained a ton. And yeah, so that was a really big one. Something that kept coming to me too was, if you can do this, there’s nothing you can’t get through. Been a month or something since then. And I mean, you know, I’m at the CEO of an organization doing a whole bunch of things. Like my day-to-day is not stress-free by any chance, but I really do feel like there’s just a, there’s a confidence in that.
46:44
And I really felt this connection. I don’t know how to put it other than it felt really like we were walking in the footsteps of our ancestors. And that just felt really, really important. I couldn’t agree more. If you look at the distance that we march as soldiers, if you look at the weight that we carry, it goes all the way back to the Greeks. It goes all the way back to the Spartans. What do we do now as a military? We go out into an area, we create a box and we defend it.
47:12
They’ve been doing that literally for centuries. And there’s a reason why we understand how much a human being can be conditioned to again, a 10th mountain. That’s what we do. We would rock. You’re doing a 25 mile rock march with half your body weight. People say that’s crazy. And it’s like, actually that’s before you get to the target and fight, but you have to be in that condition before you get there, because if you’re already tired and now you have to engage, you’ve already lost, it’s too late. You have to have the physical conditioning to where it’s no factor whatsoever.
47:40
Now you can execute, now you can adapt to the VUCA environment, whatever the case may be. I love that you did that. And I could talk to you forever. Doctor, tell us about your programs. Tell us where to go. What’s the website? You do keynote speaking. You also come in to companies and do trainings for them as well. You also have online courses. So tell us about those things. Thank you. Yeah. So very fortuitously, I got the opportunity to train with active duty military members and veterans of the American military because I am Canadian.
48:09
when I was doing my graduate training, so I got absolutely hooked. I fell in love with working with the uniform services. And so I’ve been doing that for, yeah, just over 20 years now. And so I kind of a long story that I won’t bore the audience with, but I got really tired about 15 years ago of having men and women come into my office really at that point of going, I have been suppressing and disconnecting and doing everything I possibly could and I just can’t do it anymore. And…
48:38
and end of careers, end of marriages, whatever. And these were typically military members and police officers and firefighters, et cetera. And they had all drank the Kool-Aid of what it meant to be stoic. And in their eyes, it was showing any weakness, being emotional about things, not being good to go at all times. That was verboten, and they couldn’t let other people see them like that. My journey of starting to learn about stoic philosophy, all of that culminated into developing a program called Before Operational Stress.
49:08
And the idea of Before Operational Stress is an embedding of traditions and perspectives and actual practical strategies from Stoic philosophy, which then heavily influenced cognitive behavioral therapy and actually embedding this into recruits, basic early career training for folks who are going into these professions to teach them something about what they would probably need to be prepared to experience in the course of their careers. And then.
49:35
what to do about it, right? And it really is about the stuff we’ve been talking about. How do you develop a mindset to ready yourself for the kinds of things you’re going to be exposed to, the horrible things that can happen in this world? And then how do you actually learn how to disconnect from the personal parts of yourself to do your job and do it really, really well, like high performance, but then how do you actually learn how to reconnect that tends to mental, physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual functioning so that you can stay.
50:01
a vital and robust member of your family, your occupation, your community, and the civilization. So we launched that. I built that in like 2016, 2017. We launched it in 2018. We’ve been disseminating it across North America since then. And we’ve had somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 people register for the program, all in frontline professions, so trauma-exposed professions. We’ve been collecting data and evaluating its effectiveness. And in fact, have three publications that were just waiting to be published.
50:31
And the data is being replicated, that this is actually showing statistically significant improvements and how people are taking care of themselves and their jobs, their mental health outcomes, and really the sense of, I have more agency now, I have more of a sense of what I’m dealing with and really how I can help myself. So that’s Before Operational Stress. And you can go to Befo to learn about it and learn about me and all the things that we do. And I want to applaud your work. I want to applaud that you’re…
50:58
You’re leading by example with OctoNomberva. And I would say to anyone that’s listening to us right now, if this helps people that are on the front lines, people that are active, people that are veterans, people that have PTSD, if it helps them and they’ve been through tremendous trauma and stress, I want you to ask yourself, what can I not learn from that? I mean, there’s all kinds of stuff that you can learn from this. So of all the people that are out there talking about these things and having stoicism and talking about psychological, like backing.
51:29
I would absolutely recommend this program simply because this is a person who’s done it, this is a person who’s living it, this is not a person that’s on high, that’s eating bonbons, that’s out of shape, that’s talking about it and not actually living it. Don’t sing or bring it and doctor you’re doing it. Thank you. Oh my gosh, that’s, I wouldn’t mind eating a bonbon or two, but oh thank you. That I’m just, I’m very, very humbled to hear you say that and to share that and right back at you.
51:56
I love following what you’re talking about. I mean, I see your posts come up and I’m like, yes, every time I see them. So thank you for what you’re putting into the world. And it’s really exciting to sort of have this unity about some of these ideas and be having these conversations. I think at the end of the day, right, what’s good for the bee is good for the hive. And so the more we can be teaching people how to do this, the better. And you certainly are are leading by example as well. So thank you. Thank you, doctor. I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you again for being a guest. Bye bye.
52:24
Thank you for listening to this episode of Acta Non Verba.
