Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 719: The Gift of Empathy with John Henry Parker

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Episode 719: The Gift of Empathy with John Henry Parker · The Trauma Therapist

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Are Welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gaming Person.
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My mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible cells, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in
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who we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating
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authenticity, genuineness, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more
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about my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com.
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That's the Trauma Therapist project dot com. Let's get started. Five four,
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three, two and one. Our folks, welcome back to the podcast.
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Very excited to have as my guest today, John Henry Parker, John Henry,
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welcome, Thank you, wonderful to be here. John Henry is a
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former peacetime Marine whose father was a Marine Korean War veteran, and Air Force
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reconnaissance photographer in Vietnam. John Henry authored and published the book Transitioning Veterans,
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How We Get in our Own Way and What to Do about It. The
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book is based on his personal experiences with transitioning at risk veterans their families,
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and also his son, Danny Purple Heart recipient combat veteran of two deployments to
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Afghanistan with the Army tenth Mountain Division. Danny was killed in an excessive speed
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related motorcycle accident after completing his military service. His recent book, titled Be
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the Dawn in the Darkness, John Henry builds a case for how trauma informs
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and provisions us to live a better life. This is a story of personal
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transformation that unfolds from childhood, through his teenage years and military, and throughout
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his adult life. Ultimately, it's about finding joy and fulfillment in the realization
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that we deserve to live a fulfilling life and that we each deserve to be
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happy. Yes, please, um, Welcome to the podcast, sir.
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It's it's really awesome. I've been I've been following your work for a good,
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good long time, so it's it's kind of a personal thrill to just
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finally be able to sit down and talk about some things. Appreciate that.
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So, before we're going here, John Henry share with all listeners where you're
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from originally and where you are currently. I was born on an Air Force
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base Sumter, South Carolina, and I was raised in Southwest Phoenix and currently
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a resi just outside of Las Vegas. Okay, okay, all right,
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Well let's dive in here. How the heck did this start for you?
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Meaning that's a really interesting question. How did this start? Meaning? How
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is it that you and I are sitting here today talking. Wow. Well,
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it's just it's It's something I never thought I would do, because I
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started writing therapeutically years ago just to kind of exercise some of the trauma and
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get it out so I could look at it. I've been through a lot
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of experiential retreats, a lot of transformational retreats, a lot of certifications,
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all kinds of things that kept help, a lot of shadow work, a
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lot of things that were helping me call out what was unresolved. And so
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I started writing therapeutically only to discover that there was a theme. And then
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when I was really exposed more deeply to Joseph Campbell's work The Hero's Journey,
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I took the ark of the Hero's Journey in a graphic and I laid out
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my life and that turned into my table of contents, you know, And
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I started applying this therapeutic writing for a purpose now to really kind of look
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at my life, and I saved all the really bad things for last.
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But when I got it done and I wrote it under my grandfather's name because
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it was never supposed to see the light of day. And then when I
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did write it, I thought, I'm going to put it out, let
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the work speak for itself, and I put under my name, Jays Parker.
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But I didn't think I would have to do any interviews or talk about
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it. I'm like, people are gonna if they can like it, they
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like it. It helps people, It helps people, But I don't really
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don't want to talk about it. I really don't want to be out there
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in the public and here I am talking to you, like this is what
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it takes to I had to, I had to really look at you.
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I really want this to help people. If so, I've got to go
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first. I got to get uncomfortable. And this is why I'm here,
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all right. So you you leaped over a lot of stuff. But so
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what was going on for you such that, I mean obviously you were going
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through a lot. What were you going through? What was happening well unresolved
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trauma. Like when I discovered the Adverse Childhood Experiences Survey, it really blew
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me away because it's on the ten questions, I'm at ten, you know,
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and I'm and when I look back at all my writing, there was
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no there was no mystery about like how severe and how challenging it it was.
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Um But I really was just a kid running as fast as a way
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as I could from my neighborhood and from my experiences, trying to make it
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in the world, trying to emulate other people and trying to be like other
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people who were successful, you know, And nobody would ever in their wildest
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imagination see me as being successful when I was in my teenage years, in
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my young adult years. Just to give us some context, and we talked,
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and we don't have to get into details, but for just some contact.
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We're talking about a lot of stuff going on at home that I grew
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up. I grew up in a family. I grew up in an environment
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where there's a really violent, raging, alcoholic combat veteran who was being and
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terrorizing everybody all the time, NonStop. It just it was just a terrible
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environment. And then outside the home there was gangs and violence and predators who
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were waiting for me to come outside and go to the store, you know,
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And so a lot of violence a lot of getting beat up by groups
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of guys on a regular basis, you know, and then deciding I'm going
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to go in the military. I'm not I'm not going to have this,
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I'm gonna have anybody mess with me again, and then going in the Marines,
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you know, and then you know, getting some in some some scoop
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up some more trauma, right, and then coming home, got a couple
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of bad more grief and loss and of others, you know. So that
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really was the upbringing, that the first part of my life, and then
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it took an upward trajectory into personal development. Transformational development was was what really
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saved my life because I wasn't going to counseling. This wasn't going to happen.
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How did you How did you get through those younger years? How did
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you survive those younger years. I'll tell you that my great aunt Gladys,
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she didn't save my life, but she provisioned me to save my own life.
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Like I say right in the front of the book, you know,
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it only takes one healthy adult of great character to shape the life of a
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child forever, you know, and she provisioned me with some really important things
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to live my life. By that, I'll just sare a couple of them
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if you don't mind. Yes, of course, I'm like, what at
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these things? Yeah? So so one of the biggest ones she spaded to
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tell me that God is love and that I was going to find my purpose
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someday. And she after she explained to me, you know, every religion
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that she's looked at, they all have a common principle. If you lay
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out and get rid of all the extreme aspects every faith of every part of
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the world. God is love. If you understand that, you can get
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along with anybody from any faith. So I thought that was great advice.
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But then she asked me do you think God is love? And I thought
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about it. I couldn't answer it, but what I did I finally said,
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it may be true for you, but it's not true for me,
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because if God is love, why are all these bad things happening to me?
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And she said, ultimately, you're going to discover this for yourself someday
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and you're going to find your purpose. Because I told her I was too
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young to have a purpose at that time, she said, you're probably right.
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So then throughout my life, all these catastrophic things happened. But every
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time I was about to get beat up, I mean just before it impacted,
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like here it goes, I would ask myself, is if God is
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love, why is this happening to me? And I can't tell you I
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had lost count of how many times I've asked myself that question in really bad
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situations. But I didn't find joy until it's fifty three, not one ounce
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a joy in my life. But when I did, I realized in a
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lightning bowl that there re using for my suffering all these bad things, so
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I could can be given the gift of empathy. I can be given the
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gift of empathy to understand the pain of others. So for me, that
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that really made it worth everything. M h wow, Um, I really
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appreciate sharing that. That's pretty intense. I mean a lot of stuff,
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you know. To hear you say that you hadn't experienced a bit of joy
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throughout that whole time, throughout your large, long, major portion of your
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life, right, Oh my god. Um, So you're what was her
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name again, Gladys and glad the world needs more Glad. I can tell
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you that the world Glad. That's so amazing man, that you had that
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person in your life. How do you so you go through the military,
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and at what point walk us through How did this shift occur where you're like,
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Okay, I need to get on this. Something's got a shift.
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So yet another message from Glad. She said, pay attention. Pay attention
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to the messengers that you meet seemingly by chance, because they're typically here to
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teach you the most. So I kept bumping into messengers all the time because
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I was curious and I recognize something interesting was happening here. And one messenger
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just before I got out of the Marine Corps was a warrant officer and I
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had a really bad rage problem. I got in a lot of trouble,
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more than most anybody I've ever met, you know, growing up and in
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the military, because of this unresolved rage towards my dad, you know.
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But I met this warrant officer in a USO two weeks before I got out
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of the Marine Corps, and it was a five minute conversation that changes it
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just it just impacted the trajectory of my life come letely, and it still
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does, you know. He asked me if he'd give me some advice,
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and the long story short, I said, yes, and he said,
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you know, instead of sitting here and drinking beer and getting lived with my
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buddies, if I were you, I'd go to the closest bookstore. I'd
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go to the self help section, not the psychology section, to the self
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help section, and I'd find two or three books that jump off the shelf.
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And I'm not going to tell you which one is to get, but
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find something that jumps off the shelf at you and start reading about who you're
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becoming, because, like I said in the in the Marines, you just
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don't go get help. You don't ask for it. It's not a good
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idea. And even though they say it's okay, it's still not okay because
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they're your ethos right, and you don't want to have anything in your medical
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records. I could. For a lot of guys it's about or gals,
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and guys it's doing any risk of security clearance or a promotion because they went
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to see somebody, whereas the next person didn't. So I picked up off
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the shelf that that day, The Magic of Things Big by Schwartz, because
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that just sounded awesome. You know, Thinker and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
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That's awesome as well. I didn't. I just thought that was a
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great title. And then of all things psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz, where
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he was a psych he was he was a plastic surgeon who would make people
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beautiful, but they couldn't see it right. And here I am in this
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impeccable Marine Corps uniform, but I'm really broken and damaged inside. And I
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said, wow, this, I gotta get this. So that interrupted the
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trajectory of my life into an aspirational trajectory that I never look back. And
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when I say I didn't have any joy, I had a lot of satisfaction
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from growing and learning because of that five minute conversation. And I never saw
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the guy again. What do you think allowed you to take that in that
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moment? Because when you're getting out of the military, you have a big
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ego and people try to give you advice and you're like, thank you,
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very thank you, very much, sir, Yes, ma'am, okay,
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I got this. You know I've been I know what I'm doing. I'm
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going to be successful whatever I set my mind to kind of thinking. And
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everybody typically asked to run into the brick walled themselves. What was what was
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what made it possible is because I was scared to death insight and just was
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really good about not showing it, had a lot of practice about not showing
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I'm afraid. But all of us were kind of freaked out, like what
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are we going to do? Who are we I can carry big heavy packs,
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I can parachute out of helicopters at night, and I can put a
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round down range, but I'm going to be a firefighter. I'm gonna be
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a prison guard, or I'm going to be a cop. And I didn't
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want to be either of those. So it hit me because it was one
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of those messengers that Glad told me to look out for. So how do
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things unfold after that? For you? Um, it was tough, you
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know, transitioning out of the military was tough because all I knew was how
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to was just when I just galvanized this ego that I had and rafted and
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curated, you know. Um, So I was lost for about six years,
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you know, and then I got into business development, and long story
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short of book I picked up was picked up was from Tom Hopkins, who
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was a sales trainer from way back. And then so I went to work
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for Tom Hopkins for about three and a half years, and then I went
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to work for Jim Ron, who was Tony robbins first mentor, for a
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couple of years. And I went to work for Tony Robbins for a few
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years and just really I thought to myself, I don't want to learn this,
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I want to immerse myself in this work. And so that's been my
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whole thing is just emulating and immersed into personal development. And then I got
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I became a behavioral assessment analyst. I've been doing that for thirty five years.
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I got into the transformational development work with a lot of really great leaders,
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thought leaders, and immersed went to work for them with them. So
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I really my whole strategy was about immerse and just getting in into my bones
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and it really it really helped me build a life. How does one get
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to work for Jim Roan and then get to work for Tony Ron. I
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mean, come on, I'll tell you what. It started by going to
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work for the sales training organization. I called this guy, Ron Marx,
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and I'm like, I just read the book and I just went to a
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seminar. I'm like, I got to come work for you, Like everybody
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says that we're not hiring, right, And I called this guy for like
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three months, and you know, I'm not hiring, not hiring, you
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know. So finally I said, okay, so we need to meet so
15:35
that way we you are hiring, you'll know who to call. And he
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says, oh, okay, now, now when can you get into my
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schedule? Because he wanted to meet it, you know, he wanted me
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to close him. He wanted to meet it, give him a reason to
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see me. Just I want a job, and he gave me my start.
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And he's just a great guy. And so getting three and a half
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years of understanding the sales training seminar personal development field, then I went to
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my first Tony Robins seminar, and I realized how powerful that experience was for
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me. Um, you know, and I'd been listening to Jim Roane for
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years working for Tom Hopkins. You know, I was driving on the country
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and I'd be going through his cassette albums like six or seven times. So
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really he really helped me build a philosophy of life that was really impenetrable.
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I was really what I needed and never had a lot of fatherly advice,
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but he sure gives it right. And then um, I got to work
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into the being a field sales rep for Tony for a couple of years,
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you know. And and how old are you at this point? Oh,
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I'm twenty six to thirty. Twenty six to thirty, okay, okay.
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What was it like when you when you began to realize that the severity of
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what you had gone through as a kid, you know, when that began
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to wear its head in a sense and you begin became conscious of that.
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That's the funny thing about a couple of things with trauma is I never thought
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I was bullied. I was terrorized, like I was like severely terrorized.
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So I looked at bullying as uh, you know, sorry, you're getting
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picked on, you know, And so I didn't realize I was in my
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forties for like king of realization that I've been bullied really bad, you know,
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I just I don't know. That's why the subtitle of my book is
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what it is, the relentless pursuit of becoming who we are meant to be.
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So the title is be the dawn on the darkness, which is a
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term that Glad used throughout my life, like she was the dawn in my
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darkness, and I need to be the dawn and the darkness from my son.
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So it was a term, a very intentional title. But the subtitle
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is what I really developed myself, which is the relentless pursuit of becoming who
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we are meant to be. That it's a relentless pursuit. Just don't quit.
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And I mean, I just have had lots of opportunities to quit in
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my life, and I just have not not submitted And a lot easier going
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now. But it took that kind of afforded to to survive. So you
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were talking about time when you were twenty six to thirty. What point did
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you get married and have your son. Oh that's another story, man.
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I didn't even meet my son until he was eight and a half. And
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I write about this in my book. You know, I remember dropping his
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mom off ten years prior at her grandparents house. And then, you know,
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a long story short, he was adopted by his great grandparents three months
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old. And so I was in the military, and so they made my
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mother and father and I agreed not to be in touch with them ever.
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And these are the terms of the adoption. And I was going in the
18:56
military, and my mom had really ed Parkinson, so they weren't in a
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position otherwise they would have adopted him. But I also didn't want him being
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around my dad, so I was really kind of thankful that the great great
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grandparents, his great grandparents adopted him. So I had to go door to
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door in a neighborhood that I remember to find the house that he lived at,
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and that's how I met my son. So I'm not sure how old
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I was at the time, but there is an incredible experience to be able
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to get to know him and then to build a life together. And you
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feel comfortable to hearing what happened. Yeah, to whatever extent you do,
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and of course we don't have to. Yeah, Well, he like me,
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the military was the only choice. He was raised just a few miles
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from where I was, in his really bad neighborhood, and he was getting
19:52
lots of trouble, so he was able to get into the army, and
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that was he found his calling, you know. And then in July of
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two thousand and one, he called me and said, should I realist?
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And I'm like, I don't know, you know, maybe maybe not.
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He decided to and then a month a month later, it's nine to eleven,
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and then by October fifteenth he's in his Becky stand, you know.
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Hmm. So he did nine years in the military, and you know a
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lot of a lot of really bad things happened, and a long story short,
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when he got out, he had you know, he was he's going
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to school to get his master's in social work to become a counselor for veterans.
20:45
You know, he thought he could do a better job than a lot
20:47
of people that non veterans that he was you know, trying to you know,
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he was seeing it at the time, and but he needed adrenaline to
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um, he needed adrenaline to kind of deal with his symptoms of PTSD,
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and he gotta. He gotta a motorcycle accident one night, just doing like
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one hundred and twenty miles an hour down an unlit road at midnight, you
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know, outside it was near Fort Drown, New York. And that was
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it, I mean, and he wasn't suicidal. He just he would get
21:23
his adrenaline rush and he'd go home and go to sleep, and it was
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just kind of a bad habit and a lot of that get wiped out like
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that. Were you married at the time. No, I had a long
21:38
long standing girlfriend at the time. I didn't Actually, no, I wasn't
21:44
married. So I mean obviously, oh oh, I mean tragic. How
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do you move forward after that? I mean it sounds like such a question,
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but I mean it's arguably the parents person's worst nightmare. Uh Well,
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I became the wounded healer. Literally. I discovered that if I didn't move
22:18
my pain, it was going to eat me alive. And so I had
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a dark cave that I hung out with. It was wet, it was
22:23
cold, it was mine. I didn't I was fine. I was going
22:27
to be fine. But I started adopting at risk veterans. You know.
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I guess in the time, it's like I couldn't save Danny, but I
22:34
could certainly help save others, you know. So I did that for ten
22:41
years. I was really just immersed in just going out and working with at
22:47
risk combat bets and just being with them and showing up in what capacity?
22:52
Where? Where were you doing this? All over the country? You know,
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I was just I was doing a lot of things over the phone,
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you know. I was going and meeting with vats their families. I was
23:03
doing I would do a meetings at the at An American Legion every week where
23:07
families would come in and talk about transition and talk about their kids being deployed,
23:11
stuff like that. And you know, since I understood I understood how
23:17
to present, I understood how to I understood personal development really really well.
23:22
You know, I have all these tools and this arsenal, tools that I
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developed for myself over the years that I was calling upon, but I just
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went into like this odyssey. I was kind of prepared before my son died,
23:34
because in two thousand and three he called me from Afghanistan from a satellite
23:40
phone and heard from about five months and he said, I'm too epped up
23:42
to come home. I just don't want to come home. So that launched
23:48
me into this odyssey of transition and looking for resources, looking for ways to
23:55
do with trauma and you know, subsist abuse and all these things. Is
24:00
that the veterans are so caught up in. So I had good number of
24:04
years of preparations. So when he died, I had all these tools and
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I just started adopting veterans and I still know all of them to this day
24:12
and I haven't lost any of them. But they're really doing well, but
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I needed to move my pain. And even though it wasn't completely a clean
24:19
exchange, I needed something for me. It helped me mature in my grief
24:25
and my loss to where now I'm no longer than wounded healer whatsoever. Like
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I know how to be and be in someone's life and participate. And it
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comes back down to yet another another nugget from Glad and she said that,
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you know, she taught me about the law of reciprocity. You know,
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number one, show up because not very many many people do. Keep showing
24:49
up. Number two, do what you say you're going to do. If
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you don't do what you say you're gonna do with a veteran, they'll dismiss
24:56
you immediately, right, And so number three is give a shit or don't
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help them, like really really care about the person's outcomes, so just nicely
25:04
or tactfully to decide not to do it. And then number four is asked
25:10
nothing in return. So about ten years I was getting something for myself in
25:14
return, but it was worth it because I needed to do it. And
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now I'm I'm I'm mature to my grief. And it's a really interesting confliction
25:22
because I wouldn't have become the person I had become without without the impact of
25:27
the loss of Danny. The way you talk about Gladys, I mean,
25:37
first of all, she sounds incredible. She sounds like that that that wise
25:41
figure in that star where they think of Star Wars, you know, one
25:45
of those wise people and where you laid out her little gold nuggets. Sounds
25:51
like the Book of Four Agreements whatever wherever that Oh yeah, yeah, just
25:55
like that. But I mean, John Man, you are just so freaking
26:03
incredible and inspiring. What do you think? What do you know? What
26:07
do you feel it is about you that has and you know you probably said
26:17
this the past forty minutes, but if you can articulate it in a different
26:22
way, what do you feel it is about you that you're able to transfer
26:26
to these people you help and work with? Oh man, I guess i'd
26:33
say it though often as I've been humbled really hard, like that's that's probably
26:38
the most important thing is And I'm trying to teach anybody anything, and that's
26:44
that's really what I'm also really clear about. Teachers fall from the pedestals we
26:48
put them on. So I don't want to be seen as a teacher period.
26:52
I'm in this like every day. I get triggered just like everybody else.
26:55
But I've developed and learned some resources to help me self regulate that are
27:00
real and they're tangible and they help. They help, you know, and
27:06
so that's what I write about. And I write about all these thirty years
27:10
of working with at risk veterans and traumatize people and the field of personal development,
27:15
and I enjoy writing about the experiences. It's not a personal development book
27:22
that's going to teach you how to live your life. There's no seven steps
27:26
to anything. But I'm looking at is people like learning vicariously and viscerally through
27:32
story, through real experiences that then allow you to grow and learn to find
27:40
the next experience. And everybody's on a hero's journey. So I think this
27:44
is a very relatable in that way that I'm not setting it up to teach.
27:48
I don't want to do consulting, I don't want to speak in engagements.
27:52
I'm not looking for a gig. You know. I'm doing this because
27:55
this was cathartic for me, and I think encouraging people to do some therapeutic
27:59
writing my be a great outcome. For the most part, but also I'll
28:03
give you one last nugget from Glad that she was more than often is.
28:07
She helped me make an agreement when I was like six, seven years old,
28:12
eight years old, where you know, she knew how violent my dad
28:15
was, and she used to come and live with us from Canada for two
28:18
months a year, doing Thanksgiving and January so or she could get out of
28:23
the cold and she would live with us, and I'd set at her feet
28:26
for like two or three hours every morning and we talk, you know.
28:30
So she she made me make an agreement with her that I'd never broken,
28:34
Like I was interested with this agreement, which was that I would never if
28:42
my father I would live in fear of my father, and that when I
28:45
was old enough, I would be an adult a lot longer than I was
28:49
going to be a kid, and someday I would make my own choices.
28:52
And if I ever had a family, the promise was that I would never
28:56
hit my children in anger and never have them live in fear of me.
29:02
And I never broke that. And I made that with my son when I
29:07
met him for the first, you know, first couple of months after getting
29:10
getting to know him, when he was eight years old eight and a half
29:12
and we never broke it. So we probably almost a portly accomplished. One
29:18
of my life is that we broke the chain of violence from the men on
29:21
our my father's side of the family. You know, it's just like,
29:23
it's just what happened, terrible violence. So we never did that, and
29:30
so that had an impact that's incredible. As we kind of wind down here,
29:36
I want to ask you kind of a general question about the state of
29:41
the veterans making transition. I mean, to me, this story, the
29:47
situation is so tragic, it just seems to be going on and on on.
29:56
Is there any light at the end of the tunnel in terms of how
30:00
we as a society are welcoming back and helping transition back these veterans. If
30:08
I was just a just one major point briefly, it would be identity,
30:14
mission, meaning and purpose. They get we get this galvanized into us.
30:19
We have an identity, we have a daily mission, we have meaning and
30:23
purpose, and then when we get out, we have nothing. And most
30:27
every veterans unprepared for the realization that they have to reinvent themselves, and they
30:33
don't. They do not do a good job enough of transitioning people out of
30:38
the military. They do an incredible job building up this professional warfighter. But
30:42
they do. They have a transition assistance program called TAPS. But I my
30:48
wish is that they would really hit on identity, mission, meaning and purpose.
30:52
You got to reinvent yourself. Who are you? You got to give
30:55
yourself a daily mission. You got to find something greater than yourself that you
30:57
can focus on, like he becoming a counselor you know, a new identity
31:02
being a counselor you know, the new mission was get yourself in possession of
31:07
all the details from the colleges and your military benefits. Okay, so we
31:11
use these terms identity, mission, meaning, and purpose. If more families
31:15
would be able to and this is really keep plugging my book here, but
31:19
this is all in the book works book that but but but yeah, this
31:26
is a shameless but plug because there's a there's a methodology, there's a process
31:30
that families need to learn how to have They need to learn to understand how
31:33
to have a conversation with their loved ones and their veterans. And this kind
31:38
of gives you a roadmap. Uh. And the book is called Be the
31:44
Dawn in the Darkness. Where can people get that book? Well, you
31:48
can get it by going to Harvesting Wisdom dot com. Obviously, you know
31:53
on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and lots of different places. But if you
31:57
go to Amazon dot com as right there where you can pick it up from
32:00
lot to different places. And there's an audiobook too, which I really really
32:05
like. Got an incredible narrator, storyteller named Dan Warren and it's just does
32:10
a great job. I think it would be wonderful, wonderfully read. Wow.
32:15
Wow. Well, John henry Man, you are one impressive and inspiring
32:22
person I'm about to say, and I really appreciate coming on here. You
32:25
welcome. I appreciate coming on here and sharing your story. UM I know
32:30
it's not easy, but I truly believe that there are a lot of people
32:37
out there who are going to be inspired by you and the work you do.
32:40
And I'd love to have you back, love to have you back on
32:45
the show. I would really enjoy that. And thank you so much.
32:49
It's been you've made You've made this really easy. I appreciate that. UM.
32:52
So, the best way for people to get in contact with you is
32:54
at harvest Harvesting wisdom dot com. Correct, Okay, we'll have that linked
33:00
up at the show notes page at the Trauma Papers podcast dot com. Ar
33:04
sir, we'll talk, take care. Thank you,