Latest / Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment) / Being Good At Surviving Is Not The Same As Thriving | Glenn Evans

Transcript

Being Good At Surviving Is Not The Same As Thriving | Glenn Evans · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

0:23
SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Mergers to Music Podcast.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, and thank you guys so much for coming back.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: On today's episode, we are going to be speaking to an interesting person.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: This is part of the interesting persons or people episodes that I promised you in season three.
0:40
SPEAKER_00: And the purpose of these episodes is to give you somebody interesting that can contribute to your life today, that you can walk away thinking, man, what if I considered or did this different?
0:51
SPEAKER_00: How would that affect my life?
0:53
SPEAKER_00: And that is what today's episode is all about.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: You guys are going to meet a friend of mine named Glenn Evans.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Glenn Evans is a gentleman I had the pleasure of meeting several years back.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And since then I've watched a complete career change through Glenn.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: And that's what he's going to talk about on the show today.
1:08
SPEAKER_00: You see, Glenn was born into an Alaskan native family.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: At four years old, he was put into the foster system where he spent a decade being sexually abused by his foster father.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: The person that the state charged with taking care of Glenn victimized him and took away his innocence in a way that is unfathomable.
1:29
SPEAKER_00: From there, obviously, that creates problems.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: You're going to hear about Glenn's story growing up as a teenager fighting drugs and alcohol.
1:35
SPEAKER_00: But what you're going to hear, the resounding thread you're going to hear, is that he had to become a survivor and that he had to become the pillar and the stand-up person, and he had to mature much quicker than he should have to take care of his younger siblings.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: During that time, Glenn faced a bunch of trials and tribulations.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: Then he got into a career in commercial construction in Alaska.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: During that career, he found himself at the tops and the bottoms and then back at the top.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: You're going to hear about success, you're going to hear about survival, you're going to hear about all that stuff.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, Glenn decided and recognized that while he had a great Facebook persona on the outside, inside his world was crumbling.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: But it's what was he going to do with that?
2:22
SPEAKER_00: What he did is he went out, he sought help, he sought treatment, he sought a way to better his life, to dig in and take care of the demons that were inside of Glenn.
2:31
SPEAKER_00: But I think what you're going to hear is the demons inside of Glenn are really no different than some of the demons we may have inside of us.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Glenn, the career change I've watched, he has gone from working as a highly respected person in Alaska in the commercial construction world to opening Get Thriving.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: Get Thriving is a coaching one-on-one or group sessions that they teach you how to dig in, how to thrive in life.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: And it's for all walks of life, from doctors, lawyers, construction people, military, and everybody can come to this.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: And it's a way to deal with who you are, help you get through what it is you need to get through, the hurts, habits, and hangups that we have, and then how to live a better life and be a better human being.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: That is what Get Thriving is all about.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: So you're going to hear Glenn's story.
3:29
SPEAKER_00: I'll let him tell it.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: He tells it better than I do.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Glenn, thank you so much for being on the show and helping us dig into these demons we have inside of us, these problems, these issues we don't know how to resolve on our own.
3:41
SPEAKER_00: Hey, Glenn, tell me about yourself.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: Tell me your story.
3:44
SPEAKER_00: Let's dig in.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: Sure, man.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, it started out in Los Angeles.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: We my dad had left my mom was kind of my earliest memories.
3:55
SPEAKER_01: Um, we're going to a foster home.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: We were getting dropped off.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: She was struggling financially.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: And the recommendation, and also she was struggling with alcohol.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: She was an alcoholic hardcore.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: And back then, for CPS to get involved in situation, things had to be pretty damn bad in the 70s for them to be engaged.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: And so we got dropped off at this foster home, and I we were, I was just devastated.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: I was four years old.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: I had a little brother who was three and a little sister who was two.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And my grandmother from my dad's side of the family, who were Athabasca in Koycon, came down, supported my mom through this process, and then they drove away.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: And everything seemed great.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: We were dressed in our Sunday best.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: We all had lollipops and toys, and everything seemed like it was great.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: They had older kids in the house.
4:48
SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, things went way south.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: As the oldest kid, I became what I call the lightning rod of the family.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: I was the place where all of the fostered father's anger was lightning rotted.
5:02
SPEAKER_01: Whenever he came back from having a bad day at work, if I did anything out of the ordinary that he determined was bad or pissed him off, he would just strip me down to my underwear and grab me by one hand and tell me two things.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: Don't run, don't cry.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: And then he would take his belt off and just start wailing on me.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: And he would also bring my little brother, my little sister, and put them on the couch and make them watch.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: And that abuse continually got worse over the years.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: And it got more violent and more emotional abuse, more psychological abuse.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: And then also, unfortunately, that there was also molestation.
5:42
SPEAKER_01: When I was, um, I fought and fought and fought.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: You know, they wouldn't feed us all the time.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: And so one time I decided I would go to the refrigerator and get some food for us.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: And so I snuck out of the room and walked into the kitchen.
5:57
SPEAKER_01: It was one of those old refrigerators that had the big lock on it, you know, that as soon as you pull it open like an old reach in a freezer, you couldn't, the whole house heard the damn thing.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: And holy crap, man, I got my ass beat super bad.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: And so then I just started staying in my room, hiding from him from 4:30 at night in the afternoon until the next day, fighting off having to go pee, fighting off hunger, you know, chewing on my fingernails just to have something in my stomach.
6:27
SPEAKER_01: And then his wife would come at night, and I would hear her heavy footsteps coming down the hallway to get me.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: And so I would hide.
6:35
SPEAKER_01: And so I could hear her around the house.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: You better not be hiding from me.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And there was a little like utility closet that had some slats in the bottom of it.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly I saw her footsteps on the other side of it, and she swung the door open and just grabbed me by the ankle and started dragging me down the hallway to their to where their bed was.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: And she'd throw me in bed with them and she'd turn her back to me, and then her husband would just rape me.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: And it was fucking horrible.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And eventually my mom got us back, and I thought, okay, maybe the abuse is not going to happen anymore.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: But it just continued on in different forms.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: And it continued on for another 10 years.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, we eventually moved to Alaska.
7:19
SPEAKER_01: We lived in a small village, mainly hot springs.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: At that time, there were 63 people in the village.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: We had a 20 by 20 cabin, wood heat, of course, no indoor plumbing.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: We had an outhouse for a bathroom and a wood stove for our heat and a propane stove for our cooking.
7:35
SPEAKER_01: And back then, you know, winters were rough.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: When it got to be 40, 50, 60 below zero, we had to do all of our laundry inside, hang it up outside, let it freeze, dry, bring it in.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: And my mom's alcohol abuse just continued.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: And there's always people in and out of our house, people who weren't safe for us kids to be around.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: And the abuse that we dealt with just continued on.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Fast forward, I became a teenager.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: Our school only went to eighth grade.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: And so I went into Fairbanks to go to high school.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know what to do with safety.
8:10
SPEAKER_01: And I imagine a lot of your listeners would will relate to that because once I was in a safe environment, all of my stuff started coming up for me.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: I started having flashbacks, I started, memory started resurfacing, and I didn't have anyone to tell.
8:26
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know who was safe, and I started to freak out.
8:30
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't, I just didn't know what to do with the safety.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: It was so hard.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up running away from my first boarding home and living with a bunch of other runaways.
8:41
SPEAKER_01: I finally settled down a little bit and was living with my grandmother's buddy, this guy Byron.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: He's a veteran.
8:48
SPEAKER_01: He was um on the shores of Iwo Jima when the flag was raised.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: He was 17 years old at the time.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Super great guy.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: Hanging out in his house, and the flashbacks had just gotten too much for me.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: I told myself, okay, I gotta I gotta make this end.
9:04
SPEAKER_01: I can't, I can't keep doing this.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: So I made a plan.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: I was like, you know what?
9:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna take a knife and draw a hot bath, and I'm just gonna slip my wrists while Byron is taking my grandma to church because I knew every Wednesday they would go to dinner, go to the evening service.
9:19
SPEAKER_01: So I would have about three hours worth of time.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: Called home, talked to my brother and sister, and just sort of couched it in this way of like, you know, now that I'm in the air quotes big city, if anything was ever to happen to me, you know, you know, I told my brother, Mark, I'd want you to have my leather jacket, which was my prized possession, and my tape collection with my Metallica tapes and guns and roses and all those kind of things.
9:43
SPEAKER_01: And for my little sister, we would do art together.
9:46
SPEAKER_01: And so I had art supplies that she I would give her.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: And they laughed and we kind of joked about it.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: And then I hung up because it was a long distance phone call.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: It was getting expensive.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: And the next call was to my girlfriend, and she's like, Well, she knew something was up, and I started just crying, and she's like, What's going on?
10:04
SPEAKER_01: And I just told her, I gotta make it stop.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, What do you mean make it stop?
10:08
SPEAKER_01: I said, I can't, I can't handle the flashbacks anymore.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: They're they're happening on my walk to school, they're happening in school, they're happening when I was trying to go to sleep, they're happening when I'm in the bathroom, and when I was, you know, making out with my girlfriend.
10:20
SPEAKER_01: All these times, I would get these vicious flashbacks that would thrust me right back into these horrible situations that I lived through as a little boy.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: And I just couldn't, I didn't know how to make it stop, and I just couldn't handle it anymore.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: And so then she asked me straight out, she's like, Are you thinking about killing yourself?
10:38
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, 100% I am.
10:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's the next thing I'm gonna do.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: And I need to get going because, you know, I need to have time to do this.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, No, screaming and yelling, and no, no, no, no.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I I gotta do this, I gotta make this stop.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: And so we hung up and I started the bath, and within a minute, all of a sudden I hear on the door boom, boom, boom, boom, Fairbanks Police Department.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, shit, you know, what the hell?
11:05
SPEAKER_01: Who the why would they hear it?
11:06
SPEAKER_01: Never entered my mind that she called her her dad was a detective, and they called the the precinct that was nearby, the house, and for a welfare check.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, maybe they'll go away because who knows why they were here.
11:18
SPEAKER_01: It never even entered my mind.
11:20
SPEAKER_01: Boom, boom, boom, boom, Fairbanks Police Department, open the door, we're gonna knock it down.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: I was like, damn it, I can't let them knock Byron's door down.
11:26
SPEAKER_01: So I shut the bath off.
11:28
SPEAKER_01: I ran upstairs, opened up the door, and and the guy just asked me, like, are you thinking about killing yourself?
11:34
SPEAKER_01: And I just burst into tears and I fell into his arms and he hugged me.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: He's like, son, no one's gonna hurt you.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: We got you.
11:42
SPEAKER_01: And they took me to the hospital.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: I was admitted to the psych ward, and this really friendly lady came in and was so comforting and welcoming, and she was asking me what was going on.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: So I told her about all the abuse that had happened and a lot of it for my mom as well.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: And she unfortunately did some horrible things to my brother and I when we were boys, and and she's just like, oh my gosh, that's so horrible.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: And I felt so seen and heard and safe.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, someone's gonna help us.
12:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, the next thing she said, she's like, I got a friend I want you to talk to.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: And I didn't know that this friend was a state trooper, or and I didn't know that he was there to basically take my statement.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: So I shared my story again, and then she told me that, hey, he's a state trooper, and you know, we're gonna arrest your mom and we're gonna put you into the foster care system.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, fuck that.
12:41
SPEAKER_01: I was 22 years old when I realized and found out that foster care wasn't legalized child abuse.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: Every runaway that I hung out with, all of us had been in the foster care system in one way, shape, or form, all of us had been abused and molested in that same system.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: So to me, I thought it was, I literally thought it was just legalized child abuse and nobody was doing anything about it.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: That was my only concept of what child what foster care was.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: And so I knew enough of the law to know that once he announced that he was an officer and was going to take my statement and didn't do that initially when he came in the room, that everything I said could not be admitted.
13:20
SPEAKER_01: And I recanted everything and I wouldn't talk and I didn't want to say anything because there's I didn't want to go back to the foster care system.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know they were trying to help me.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: And so it must have just absolutely frustrated the hell out of them to not be able to help me, and I was the one standing in the way of it.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: But I I didn't know what else to do, and I wasn't gonna go back to the foster care system.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: And so I eventually went back home and tried to figure things out again, and that's where you know, one of the trauma responses we have.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: We can fight, we can freeze, we can flee, or we can fawn.
13:56
SPEAKER_01: And fawning is one of the ways as kids we find a path to power.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's also a way that we sell out on ourselves.
14:05
SPEAKER_01: It's another form of self-abandonment.
14:07
SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't, you know, for me in the work that I do now, the experiences that I've had, whatever trauma you've been through, whether it's big T trauma or little T trauma, one of the root symptoms you're gonna run across is patterns of self-abandonment.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: And so here I was living with my mom.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: She did her best to love us.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: She'd gotten sober a couple of times, the abuse had stopped, and I was just trying to hold it together.
14:30
SPEAKER_01: But just being in the house, you know, all of those kind of things are really, really difficult for me and were bringing up that stuff again.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: The flashbacks, they didn't stop.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: And so eventually I went back to Fairbanks, got back into high school, and just became a heavy metal kid.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: I ran away again, lived with a bunch of other runaways, um, did a lot of drugs, and and you know, we there was always predators around, especially around runaways.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: And I got into this pattern of just beating them up.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: And and again, because of all the violence I experienced as a kid, it was my way of dealing with it.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: And and I got a lot of praise for it, and it felt good at the time, but it was still violence, it was still perpetuating the thing I was trying to get away from.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, I became a father I had um at 22 years old.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: And my wife at the time, she already had two kids from a previous marriage, and then we had twins.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: So immediately I had four kids under four.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: And holy crap, that that was growing up really, really fast for me.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it was.
15:40
SPEAKER_01: It was, you know, when I was 10 years old, I was already running a chainsaw because you know, we'd have someone who would drop by eight foot logs, and you know, they were it was awesome.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: We had a great village in a lot of ways, and then I it was my job to buck them up into you know stove-sized pieces, chop them, and fill the woodshed with my little brother.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you're exactly right.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it being a dad was something I really was excited to do, and I I was really, I just want I knew I didn't want to be like my dad, and I knew I didn't want to be like my mom.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: And so I was like, man, this is my opportunity.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, one of the things that I didn't think about, which I think is really common when it comes to trauma, is we really know exactly what we don't want.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to be like my dad, but what do I want?
16:27
SPEAKER_01: How do I want to be?
16:28
SPEAKER_01: What what does dad being a dad look like for me?
16:31
SPEAKER_01: What how do I want to be as a man?
16:34
SPEAKER_01: How do I want to be as a as a husband and a partner and all of those things?
16:37
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have a damn clue.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: I never spent time thinking about that.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: And it's something that I I run across so much in the work that I do now.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: I'll ask a guy, so what does happiness look like for you, man?
16:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh it's uh, you know, I mean, and definitely not at work.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it, you know, uh uh, and invariably they're just stumped.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: And you know or what's your best day ever look like, or what's your best week ever look like?
17:07
SPEAKER_01: I people are just dumbfounded.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Just can't say, well, don't you want to be happy?
17:11
SPEAKER_01: Oh, totally, totally, totally, 100%, man.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's my goal.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm doing this thing.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And but don't you don't have an answer?
17:19
SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, if you don't know what you want, then how do you get there?
17:23
SPEAKER_01: It's like going to a coffee shop and you want to order a matcha latte with oat milk.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: But all you say to the barista is, I just don't want black coffee.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: And she's like, Okay, well, do you want a mocha?
17:35
SPEAKER_01: Nope, I just don't want black coffee.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: Do you want a uh a latte with a you know half and half in it?
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Like, how many times does she have to freaking ask you to get to your order?
17:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's a lot of times the way we approach life.
17:49
SPEAKER_00: I want I want to ask you a couple questions.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: Um but before we get too far down the road.
17:55
SPEAKER_00: So you're growing up in these environments between foster care and physical and sexual abuse, and then on the street, and then suicidal, and then finding the cop that says, I got you, I got you, and then realizing that you're being interviewed by a trooper that's gonna arrest your mom.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: That is a bumpy road.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: And then getting to 22, right?
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Where you've got the four kids.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: But what kind of characteristics did that childhood create in you?
18:27
SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: That is a really good question.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: First of all, it made me resourceful, it made me resilient.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, it helped me see the silver lining in things to make the best out of just shitty situations to to get by, um, to learn how to fit in.
18:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh I I became a chameleon.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: I learned how to wear different facades to fit into different groups and to get my needs met in ways that were safe enough to get connection, to get friendship.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, but at the same time, I also was alone a lot.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: And so I did use art as one of my outlets.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: I would read and write and do some journaling occasionally, and that gave me space to get my the stuff out of my head, and it was a way, I call it soul vomit.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: It was a way for me just to puke stuff out, and it helped me get a little breathing room between my ears.
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And then my other thing was nature.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: I spent a lot of time as a kid out in the woods by myself.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: I had a wolf hybrid named Frank, and then I had a lab named Puppers.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: And as we walked out, we're um, I would just be out in the woods.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Nobody knew where the hell I was.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: I was out around our village just bebopping around with my dogs, and they were so good at laying next to me when I was super stressed, crying, and they would co-regulate with me, especially Frank.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: He was a gigantic dog, and he would lay up against my chest and sleep with me.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: And that was his way of comforting me and co-regulating me as I was just going through it.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: Tried to be everything to everybody, but I became nothing to myself, you know, just trying to show up and be the fun guy, be the outgoing guy, be the guy who, you know, made the good time, helping out all those kind of things with hopes that eventually my needs would get met.
20:11
SPEAKER_01: Guess what?
20:12
SPEAKER_01: I never did.
20:13
SPEAKER_01: Never shared my freaking needs.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And anytime anyone did ask me what my needs were, oh no, no, dude, I'm good, I'm good, I'm fine, I'm good.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: And and then if anybody went out of their way to do something, I fucked Aaron, I felt so uncomfortable.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that got broken is I didn't know how to receive.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how to receive love.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how to receive a compliment.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how to receive support.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a common issue for a lot of us men is we it's seen as weakness.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: It's seen as something that you're less than if you're receiving support.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: You got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
20:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, we worked in the trades.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: That the trades is built on guys who know how to push through, get it done, make make it happen regardless of how you feel, regardless of how shitty your day is, regardless if things are falling apart at home, you know, the winter's coming.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: The walls have to be up, the heat has to be on.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: And that pattern of self-abandonment became a way of life.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: And it it seems like it became a I don't even cut you off, sorry.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: But what you a lot a lot of the stuff you're talking about, I mean, these characteristics, while they're good um characteristics to have, they also look like they are a um mode of survival.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: They are a coping mechanism for to survive.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: And from what I'm hearing from you, I mean, survival seems like it became a part of your identity.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: That's how you're people pleasing, you're pushing through.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: You know, we're we haven't spoken about the uh contractor world, the HVAC stuff yet, which we're about to get into.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: But you know, those survival skills became survival.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: What happens when the things that saved your life as a kid, those survival skills become a Part of what's destroying your life as an adult.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: I think something has to change there.
22:06
SPEAKER_00: And what finally saved your life as an adult and kind of pulled you from where you were to where you are today?
22:13
SPEAKER_00: And I think the trades have something to do with that.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: But walk me through that.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Again, really great question.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, you're you're 100% right.
23:18
SPEAKER_01: You when the the skills that we learn to survive, regardless of what the trauma was, they'll do one thing you keep you alive and help you survive.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: What they will never ever do is provide peace, a sense of well-being, a sense of self-respect and safety.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: And so you're constantly stuck in this loop where nothing is quite okay.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: And so you're always responding to things and over-responding to things as if it's if it's going south, as that little boy sometimes, like you're seven years old.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: You're having a level 10 reaction to a level two situation because that stuff's unresolved.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: And again, I just kept throwing stuff at it.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: I got into personal development.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: I started doing those types of things to try and help out.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And it was making a difference.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: It was giving me things to do, but it was just like another freaking recipe that was leading me somewhere I didn't want to freaking be.
24:16
SPEAKER_01: The flashbacks never ended.
24:18
SPEAKER_01: They kept on going.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm in the middle of a presentation, two contractors, and suddenly I get that image of me being drug down the hallway by the, you know, the eighth, ninth, hundredth time it happened.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: And I would grab a hold of one of the doors.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: There was two doors in the hallway.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: I'd grab a hold of one of them if I would go loose, and I would lock my knuckles around it.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: And she would just start hitting me in the head and pinching my fingers back and just telling me I'm making it worse.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: And I would fight her as much as I could, but I was only a scrawny little four-year-old.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And that would hit me like a ton of bricks.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking about near boiler piping and safety and blah, blah, blah.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: And I was trying to like just work through it.
24:59
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, I started just having breakdowns.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: I was drinking more than I ever had.
25:04
SPEAKER_01: I was over 300 pounds.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: I was living a reckless lifestyle.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: I was working 15-hour days.
25:09
SPEAKER_01: I was running things by myself for a while.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: So there's never not a reason to work, but that was one way I was trying to numb out.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife at the time was walking, I was brushing my teeth one morning.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: Things have gone south between us for a while since 2018.
25:25
SPEAKER_01: And anyway, I was brushing my teeth, and she's like, you know what?
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I can no longer meet any of your emotional needs.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: And I was just like, son of a bitch.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: Fuck.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: And just brush my teeth some more.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: And had it been like a moment earlier or a nanosecond later, I think we would have just gotten into another argument.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: But there was just a moment of clarity.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: I was like, you know what?
25:48
SPEAKER_01: Could I write a paragraph on what my emotional needs are?
25:51
SPEAKER_01: Like I know I I know I have them.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: I know I need them to be met.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: I know I want her to help meet them, but crap, I I don't think I can.
25:59
SPEAKER_01: Could I even like write a sentence about what my emotional needs are?
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And I couldn't.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: I was that just stopped me dead in my tracks.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: I was like, whoa, this is not good.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: So what were you doing at this point?
26:12
SPEAKER_00: Were you in the construction field?
26:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: So I'd been working in the construction industry for over 20 years.
26:19
SPEAKER_01: I started out as a refrigeration tech.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: That was what I got my training in.
26:23
SPEAKER_01: And I started out that way.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: But the guy I worked for was, you know, paying me in cash, and I needed to get insurance.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: I had four kids to provide for.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And so I ended up working at Ferguson for a while as a warehouse guy.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: And it was a place that I could get insurance.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, I liked the guys that I worked with.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: And the drinking, it got out of hand, and and some guys called me out on it.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: And I did everything I could to ignore.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, man, that was just a bad night.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: No, it's good.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: And no, no, I'm fine.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: It's all right.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: And um I couldn't hear it because I I needed a I needed some sort of relief.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: And nighttime was my time where the struggles were the worst.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: And so if I could get home, have some more wine, and finally just like pass out essentially, then I knew I would at least air quotes get some sleep.
27:12
SPEAKER_01: Everything started piling up, and I knew I needed a drastic change.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: And I thought the personal development was going to do it.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: And then I got invited to something from a friend of mine that changed my life forever.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Professional success.
27:27
SPEAKER_00: It seems like you're professional.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: I know your history, I know your reputation in the state of Alaska.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: Um, I would call you successful even if you wouldn't.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Was professional success another form of survival for you during that period of your life?
27:41
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you're bringing that up.
27:44
SPEAKER_01: 100%, man.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: I thought that if I could achieve and do those things and have the vacations and, you know, have the credibility and then and the respect of the field, then that would negate and that would supplant the feelings I had about myself, the insecurities I had about myself.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: It would, it would somehow heal everything that I was going through.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's one of the biggest lies in in capitalism right now, is that that's the path to having self-respect, to have to feeling good about yourself when you're by yourself.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: No freaking way, man.
28:23
SPEAKER_01: It just became another way to suck the life out of me.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: I overworked workaholism, it's its own addiction.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: That's why it has an ism at the end of it.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times it's so easy to um hide in that too.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I just I just gotta get a few more things done.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: You know, oh it's good, you know, things are going great.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: And the whole time I'm like, I gotta do this, otherwise, my mind is gonna get a hold of me again.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: What did Glenn Evans look like from the outside to the general public?
28:53
SPEAKER_00: What did you look like?
28:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
28:56
SPEAKER_01: Like I had the life by the tail.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: I was the guy who found the super fun things to do whenever we went on work trips.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd take the guys out and we'd go to really amazing, fun restaurants, have incredible experiences, have a ripar in time.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: You know, I would even include myself in those things.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, after my clients went off and did their own things, I would spend a couple more time days in the city, whether it's New York or San Francisco or, you know, Vegas or whatever, and do more fun things and exciting things.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it was great.
29:29
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I had a lot of fun experiences.
29:32
SPEAKER_01: And so everybody was just like, holy crap, you you have it dialed in.
29:35
SPEAKER_01: Like, man, what are you doing?
29:37
SPEAKER_01: And I was asked to speak to kids in the different trade programs, like um uh the you know, high schools and things like that, because a lot of people knew that I'd come from a village, I'd come from a hard background, I was used to use a lot of drugs, and you know, I was a functioning alcoholic.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: So but to everyone else, I looked like I had life by the tail.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: And it was draining, man.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And that right there is key to I think how a lot of men feel.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: We put on this Facebook persona that we have our shit together, our life is right, everything is good, we only post the happy times, but when we lay down at night and put our head on the pillow and it's just us, the darkness, and God, that is when we realize just how much our world is crumbling.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: And then we rinse and repeat and get up the next day and put on another facade.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Um you said a moment ago that you got invited to something that changed your life.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Tell me about that.
30:59
SPEAKER_01: So in my personal development group, there was a lady who had been training to um to be a medicine carrier, and what that means is somebody who is supports and holds and hosts plant medicine retreats.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: And for this particular case, it was psilocybin.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: And I'd never I'd experimented with them as a teenager, just being a knucklehead.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: Did a lot of LSD.
31:24
SPEAKER_01: That was one of my things that I I did a lot as a teenager, but I had no clue what this meant.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: But because I respected her and and I'd seen the change that it made in her life, I was like, I gotta do this.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: The beautiful part about these modalities is they always give you what you need, not necessarily what you want.
31:43
SPEAKER_01: And suddenly I just felt at peace.
31:48
SPEAKER_01: I I was just blown away.
31:50
SPEAKER_01: I I couldn't believe it.
31:51
SPEAKER_01: And the second night was even better, and and I'm so grateful that you know, all the trauma didn't show up like I thought it was going to.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't back in all those situations because I needed two things.
32:03
SPEAKER_01: I needed tools that yielded results and were actionable.
32:07
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I I didn't want to just have this fleeting moment where I felt good.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to anchor into it.
32:14
SPEAKER_01: And doing the integration work was paramount to this becoming a lasting thing.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: And and and that's what I do now is I host retreats um in different areas that we utilize the same modalities that were my own path to my own healing.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: Um I do coaching with men again around a lot of the same things, around patterns of self-abandonment, around abuse, and coming home to yourself.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the the medicine modality isn't for everybody.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: And so I want to respect that.
32:44
SPEAKER_01: And the tools that we use are the same regardless.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: The tools of anchoring into your body, the tools of utilizing breath work, the tools of getting some somatic movement, journaling, learning how to have real conversations, learning how to be seen, um, learning how to extend compassion and empathy to yourself the way you do to other people.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: And learning how to self-soothe.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: That was one of my most challenging lessons, and it probably sounds a little dumb, but I didn't know how to be encouraging in a sincere, comforting, loving way.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: You know, I thought the way to motivate myself was to chat my ass, to get on my case, to, you know, you better get your ass up, you better do this, you gotta get after it, you gotta do this, you know, all of this pressure that I put on myself when really I just needed some encouragement, some acknowledgement, some like, hey man, thanks for showing up for yourself today.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for thanks for doing everything that you have done so far to make it here.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I'm the only person alive in my family.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: I buried every s everyone else back home except my dad.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: He's buried in Rampart.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: But everyone else, um, you know, in our little village, it was literally me and the people that I grew up with that buried them.
34:01
SPEAKER_01: And I had hoped that I would be able to figure this out when my brother and sister were still alive and I was gonna be able to be a lighthouse for them so that they could find their way home so they they could see that I did it and then they'd be able to do it and they'd have the belief and and be able to follow in my footsteps, but their coping mechanisms killed both of them.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: And so I kept my promise though, you know, I I'm still here for the others, I'm still here for the other people who are dealing with uh abuse, PTSD.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Um, our container, we've hosted people from special forces to people who are in the services, healthcare, uh uh contractors, engineers, um, you name it, moms, dads, grandparents.
34:45
SPEAKER_01: We've had uh people who are in their 60s and 70s show up and say, you know, I'm still dealing with stuff, I'm still fighting a battle.
34:54
SPEAKER_01: Um, we've had parents, a set of um parents that are 72 years old see the change they saw in their own son, and their show theirs showed up to a ceremony to do their own work, to have their own healing before they check off the planet.
35:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh it has been nothing short of miraculous to see the work that people are willing to do when they know that they're safe.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we do is we provide a container that is impeccable and safe.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: And I have a team, there's six of us, we're the sacred rebels.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: And I trust, I would trust these people with myself, and so therefore, I trust them with the clients that we attract.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: At some point, you decided that you were to come out of the trades and start uh what is known as get thriving.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: It's your company, and it's motivational speaking and encouraging and coaching.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about get thriving and how people uh can participate in your program.
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely, man.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, for me, I I needed tools that worked and were actionable and yielded results.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: And so that is exactly what I propagate.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: I meet people where they're at.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: I do either group coaching, which is yields of the greatest results because when you heal in a group, it increases your collective success by about 500%.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: But I also do one-on-one because some people are having have things that they're not ready to share in a group.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: There's some things that are like, you know, it's terrible to know what other men have been through.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: It's just heartbreaking to know what little boys have been through.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: And so I do one-on-one coaching, and that's a lot of what I do with men.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: And then also we host retreats through our other side of our retreat business as well.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And so we do those in small groups of about 10 to 12 people at a time.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Both men and women attend.
36:45
SPEAKER_01: Um, this last retreat I just had was 98% men, and it was just incredible and off the charts.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: And then we also do intentional integration coaching afterwards because that's where the real work happens.
36:57
SPEAKER_01: That's where the where you bring everything that you've learned into your life, and you're gonna want to have support around that.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, whenever we're unpacking things and getting into it, it can make things more messy in your life for a little while.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: And and a lot of times when you've trained people through your coping mechanisms to treat you in a certain way, and you're no longer being codependent, not everybody jives with that.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: So you're gonna want to have support around that.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna want to have someone to coach you through that, to support you, to help you keep going.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: And so that's where I come in.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: Um, I also do motivational speaking as well as uh suicide prevention workshops with a couple of buddies of mine where we do upstream suicide prevention.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: Again, what are you looking for?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: What what do you notice in a guy that's changed?
37:42
SPEAKER_01: And how do you what do you say?
37:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, you ask directly, are you thinking about killing yourself?
37:46
SPEAKER_01: And you just listen.
37:48
SPEAKER_01: And Aaron, you're really good at that, and you understand that listening is a skill that you build, and and that's really what we need more of in the trades.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: And so people can reach out to me on get thriving.com, and that's my primary space.
38:01
SPEAKER_01: That you can reach me at Glenn at Getthriving.com uh through an email, and we can just book a clarity call to see if we're a fit for each other because I don't take every client.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: I want to make sure that I work with people who are swimming for the shores because I'm a lighthouse and not a rescue mission.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm here to to help people find their bearings, but they're the ones swimming for the shore, and it has to be that way.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: That's how you come back for yourself, that's how you show up for yourself, and that's how you build your self-respect again towards yourself.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: And um, and there's nothing short of miracles happening all the time, and I just love seeing the shifts that people have done once they finally are seen and heard and understood.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: You know, as men, it is so easy for us to be put into a survival space where we have to be the leader, we have to be the provider, we have to be the lightning rod, we have to be the strong one, the source, the place of refuge for our families, for our siblings, for our kids, for our wives.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And we do that for so long.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: All of that causes an internal struggle with ourselves to recognize who we really are.
39:09
SPEAKER_00: And at times we deteriorate on the inside, but on the outside, just like you, we have to put up that face, that brave face, to be the strong one.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: And it's not until we lay down at night that we recognize that we're truly crumbling and we're allowing what's important to crumble.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that being good at surviving is not the same as thriving.
39:29
SPEAKER_00: And that is the key takeaway that I want people to leave with today.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: If you're out there listening to this podcast, if you can recognize, if you can see yourself in Glenn, in myself, in any of these battles that we're having, recognize that being fine in air quotes is not good enough.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: You have to thrive.
39:52
SPEAKER_00: And being good at surviving is not the same as thriving.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.com, podcast, com.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: You can find me at uh to meet commands.