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The Fear We Don't Admit: Why Men Stay Silent About Trauma · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music Podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Aaron, I'm your host, and you guys are in for another great show.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: This show is going to be the one that gets down to the deep, the heart, the root of the matter.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to get personal, it's going to get vulnerable.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm hoping that I can relate to other people out there, men and women alike.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: So let's jump into it.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: On tonight's show, I want to talk a little bit about a subject that we all try to avoid, a subject that we wish wasn't there, a subject that oftentimes we don't tell anybody about.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that is fear.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: As men, we don't like to show fear.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: We don't like to admit fear.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it's like to be a woman.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I can imagine you still, even as a woman, have the fear of being judged and or the fear of not fitting in, or the fear of not being popular.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is something I want to talk about on tonight's show.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's dive into it.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to start off the show by telling you a situation that I'm involved in.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and if you know my story, coming out of law enforcement, there were lots of situations where things got airy, things got scary coming out of law enforcement with PTSD and clinical depression and facing a whole big new world.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, all of those things are experiences, traumatic events, different things that I've had to deal with in my life, but there's still some that are lurking out there underneath the underneath the covers, if you will, that nobody even knows about.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to jump into.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 13 years old.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm in Alaska, I'm in a lake, and I'm in a front of a boat, a bow of a boat with a friend of mine.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And as we're cruising out across that lake, now we're in about a 20-foot skiff or so, 15-foot skiff that had about a 30 horsepower motor on it.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know anything about boats or engines, that is a really big motor for a very small little wooden dinghy that probably wasn't seaworthy at all.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: But we got a boat.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're going to go out to this island.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sitting on the bow of it.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: And as we cruise out across that lake, and my friend was a dork, and he's already got this thing pegged, so we're up on step.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: This boat is literally like vertical going across the water, and he kicks that engine all the way to one side.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when he does, I stay where I was sitting, and the boat spins out from underneath me and I fall down in the water.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as that boat spins, it spins around on top of me.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And now I am underneath the boat, looking back up through the water.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: My friend doesn't know where I am, so he's looking around.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he's still running that engine, so I am dangerously close to the prop.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I remember that prop catching my jacket.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was wearing a long Columbia jacket, like one of those ski parkas that's got a little cinched-in waist and it droops down past that.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that prop sucked my jacket up into it, and by this time my friend has put this thing into neutral.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that prop is still spinning, but it's spinning very slow.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I can feel that prop hitting my side.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's not so much the prop hitting my side, ripping me open that I'm concerned with.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's more the fact that I'm tied to the prop underneath the boat, looking up through murky water.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can see him looking down at me, and you know, nice kid, but I think he'd be dangerous making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: So he's looking down at me.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, I'm able to get out of my jacket and swim around to the side of the boat, get a breath of air.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: After sucking in a lot of water, I was able to get myself back over the edge of the boat and back to dry land.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was my first experience in the water.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: My next experience would come in about 2015 when I am scuba diving with my son in the Puget Sound.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at the time my son was 13 years old, we were about 100 feet offshore and about 60 feet deep of water, but we were still on the surface.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: On the surface, I didn't know what was going on, but I had an equipment failure.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And my VCD, that flotation device that I was wearing, was literally filling with water and sucking me to the bottom of the ocean floor.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was in that time that I realized I was drowning.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of drowning and sucking in water was overpowering my rational thought of stripping the weight off, allowing it to go to the bottom of the ocean and ultimately floating on the surface and saving my life.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of doing that, I was drowning.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was sucking in water, I was feet away from my son.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: He was screaming for help.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: We were scared.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that I was drowning in that moment.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going down underneath that green water, looking back up, knowing that might be the last time I saw my son.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was about that time that people jumped in and rescued me.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: My next incident in the water was about a year and a half later, scuba diving in Mexico.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: You see, during the scuba diving trip, make a long story short, I got separated from the boat.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: I got separated from the other divers, and I floated out in the current to the open ocean, the dark black ocean, not the nice blue, pretty ocean that you see in Mexico.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the open sea.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was by myself and nobody knew where I was.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: It took me about 30 minutes, 40 minutes of floating out there alone till the boat finally saw the bright orange shirt I was wearing, and I couldn't even see the boat.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: It just came out of the distance off the horizon, and that boat got there and rescued me and brought me back.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a very short period of time, my life, 46, 45 years, I had three situations in water that could have killed me.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: They were traumatic events and they imprinted on my brain.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, why do I tell you that story?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: I tell you that story because I have a fear around water now.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that I fear the water, it's that I fear drowning in it because of the experience that I've had.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I this comes to play more often than not in most recent years when I go to the lake with friends or go to the river with friends, and we're out on their boats, and everybody's jumping in the water to cool off or to pee or whatever it may be, and I stay on that boat.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't talk about the reasons why I stay on the boat.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: I get begged to go in the water, I get begged to come swimming, I get begged to jump out and cool off, everybody else is doing it, yet I don't feel safe in that moment.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to put on a life vest because that screams loser, wussy, whatever word you want to put out there.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: My feeling of embarrassment is the real reason why I don't jump into that water.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I can't be the only person out there that has experienced something in life.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Something has happened to us, and we have a fear of something that everybody else sees as just the daily activity, the absolute norm.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is maybe inconsequential to jump into the ocean or jump into the lake and cool off.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, it's a real thing.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: For somebody that's maybe been in a motor vehicle accident, maybe it's that fear of getting behind the wheel, or maybe you were the passenger in a car in a motor vehicle accident, and it is that what you may see as an irrational fear of being in that passenger seat and letting somebody else drive you to your fate.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: These are all things we deal with as human beings, and things that especially men have a hard time admitting.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's been my experience, and through the therapy that I've had and all the training and tools in the toolbox, men don't like to admit fear because of social conditioning.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in our environment, in our world, we are told the man up and be tough and we can't show weakness.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're scared, then that equals weakness.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is a myth that doesn't really exist.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I understand that because I've been through it on the PTSD side and on the law enforcement side, but why does it still plague me in the jumping in the water side?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I identify myself as a protector, as a provider, as somebody who's competent.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think men in general equate competency and compatibility with worth.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: If I can't be okay in the water, what is wrong with me?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone else is fine.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't I be fine?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's the silent comparison we do when we see everybody else out having fun.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we do?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: We go into avoidance.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: We avoid those activities.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I avoid going out on the boat with my friends.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: I avoid the invitations.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: I avoid going out into the water, scuba diving or snorkeling.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: I avoid those things.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Trauma isn't just stored as a memory in our beings.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just stored as a memory in our brain.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: It actually changes the brain.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the chemistry.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm not a brainologist.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a psychologist.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a I might be psychotic, but I don't know what I am.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I know I've been through enough training and I know I've been through enough healing to understand some of these points.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: The brain stores danger as an instinct.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: When it senses danger, it is our immediate reaction.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's when somebody startles us and we throw our hands up to protect ourselves and then realize it's just our coworker working into our cubicle.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's an instinct.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's an instinctual response, not logic.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: So trauma that we experience, and in my case, I'm going to talk about the water.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: The water situation in my case is a memory that I have.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's a body memory, it's a brain memory.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: When I get around water, I'm not relaxed.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: My muscles tension up.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I start breathing fast.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I have adrenaline spikes.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm scared of being found out.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm embarrassed about my circumstances.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not that I'm scared of water, it's that I'm scared of what happened in the water.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And if I avoid it, then it gives me instant relief and I don't have to be there and face those fears.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: But all that does is it reinforces my long-term fear.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: It reinforces that belief that I'm not going to be safe.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know when I jump into water, I am buoyant enough, I am going to float.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Cognitively, I understand that.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I get that when I jump into the water, I'm not going to sink to the bottom.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: When that happened to me before, there were outside influences impacting me that sucked me to the bottom, i.e., 36 pounds of weight around my waist.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: But even understanding that doesn't give me the strength to go out and experience it.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: I have to get over that.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now my therapist is going to tell me if she listens to this, she's going to tell me that a trauma is something we need to deal with in therapy.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: If it is making me avoid activities or avoid circumstances or avoid situations, then that is something that has some roots and we need to dig into it.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sure that I'll end up digging into this.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: But there is real emotion behind it.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: There is embarrassment.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: There's fear of being judged or being seen differently.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me vulnerable.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't mind being vulnerable on this podcast.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: I have told this podcast just about everything about me, but in that moment, on a boat, when everybody else is jumping in and you're by yourself, that is a very lonely place to be when you can't truly feel like you can tell others what is going on.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm talking about a boat, and I get it.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You may say, Aaron, it's a boat, it's not that big a deal.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I understand.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is the situation in my life.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: What is it in yours?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: What has happened in your world where you have this underlying fear that you're scared of being judged about and you don't tell anybody about, right?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: So how do we talk about this without feeling weak?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing I'm doing is jumping on this podcast and telling the world my circumstances and what's going on.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's hard to talk about that.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's been easy to talk about the law enforcement and the vulnerabilities there and the ups and the downs because that is something that is out of the ordinary.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that most people don't deal with, and there's a life lesson that can be learned there at the root of that.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that is easy.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we can talk about those things.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, this is something very simple that every single person listening to this podcast has probably done at some point in their life.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: You have probably jumped into a body of water off of a dock, off of a boat, off of a diving board, whatever it may be, and you've been okay with it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it's fun.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it bothers me.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And to talk about it embarrassing, to talk about it is embarrassing.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some fear and vulnerability there.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: So what do I do about that?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Next time I'm out on that boat, or I have that opportunity to go out on the boat, what what do I do?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: How do I deal with that?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've learned that without over-dramatizing things, just simple direct phrases or simple direct statements is an easy way to convey a message to get the point across without, and this is part of that, you know, this part, what I'm talking about right now, everything here is educational, entertaining, and provides value.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping that this provides some value to somebody out there listening that experiences something similar to me.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: But for me, I learned in law enforcement that I had to make simple direct statements about my PTSD or my PTS or what I was experiencing without a total trauma dump.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And in this case, you know, I had a bad accident around water and I like to stay on the boat.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That that simply said in a group of my friends or peers would be acceptable and I would stay on the boat.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It just triggers something inside of me to be around that water.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important in the message, and words are important.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's important in the message that we have that we reframe our experiences.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a fear, it's our experience.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I'm scared of the water, it's that I had a bad accident in the water, so now I choose to stay on the boat.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It triggers something inside of me.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: It makes me feel a certain way to get into the water, and I don't like that feeling.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this all is because of an accident that I had when I was a child.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: That in itself, I think, takes the weakness and the fear out of it.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that becomes more, it becomes now more of a survival instinct in us than a I don't want to participate or I'm embarrassed.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it it for me it'd be an easier way to swallow that pill.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's a difficult pill.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm talking about this because I seem to get invited out quite a bit.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's come up recently.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: As I talk to my friends recently, I find that many of my friends all have similar circumstances.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Last week I spoke about the man who was involved in two crashes, one 90 miles an hour in a racetrack into a into a sidewall.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Another friend of mine, professional truck driver, gets into a head-on collision, experiences fear, PTS as a result of seeing oncoming cars, something that he didn't actually cause the wreck.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was a victim of somebody else's set of circumstances.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: He did nothing.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: He should not be embarrassed, he should not be scared of that.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: He should not be scared, I guess, of admitting that.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a fear of getting back in behind that wheel because the last time you were there, you got hit head on.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think if we reframe our experiences and talk about our experiences and not our fear, then that is a good way to be able to talk about it with our friends or with our peers.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the guy who's scared.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the guy who lived through a set of circumstances.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And as a result, I'm more cautious on the other side.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: I also think it's important that we work through our fears.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important for me that I get back in the water, but I got to do it slowly and I got to do it in an environment where I feel safe and comfortable.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: I know jumping in that water is fun.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know that when it's 100 degrees on the boat and you jump into that water, it feels so good.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's easier to pee in the water than it is to hold it until you get back to the shore.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get all of that.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I need to be able to expose myself slowly to that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, no matter what your fear is, I think you could do the same thing.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hold on for me, hold on to the ladder, practice floating, whatever it may be, you know, in a controlled setting, a pool, my breathing techniques, whatever it is.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I need to that exposure needs to be slow, purposeful, and in a controlled environment.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And over time I can work myself past that fear.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: That gets me over the fear of the water, but does it get me over the fear of embarrassment or being judged?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Will somebody see me as weak?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: All these other cool guys, you know, with their shirts off and their tattoos and their backwards hats and all this other crap that we think is cool.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Are they gonna judge me because I don't get in the water or because I'm quote unquote scared?
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they will, maybe they won't.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's okay to set boundaries.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's okay to set boundaries.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know anybody an explanation about what I am or am not comfortable with.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, surviving something, surviving a set of circumstances or a traumatic event or a near drowning or a car crash or a plane crash or a severe burn or whatever it may be.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just because you survive that, you push through it, you get to the other side, doesn't mean that it doesn't affect you.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that it hasn't left some kind of scar inside.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my law enforcement was death by a thousand cuts.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: And each one of those cuts I've had to reprocess and talk about in therapy.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So this is really no different.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can still go out and enjoy boating without being in the water, but there's that social pressure to jump in or to go beyond or to do what everybody else is doing.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: What they don't realize is my backpack in that environment is full.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Their backpack doesn't even have a rock in it because they've never experienced it.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: My backpack is full, and there's no way that I can jump beyond that or get out of the boat into the water because I have too much going on.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean I can't unpack the backpack.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean I can't process it.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that I can't be better on the other side of this in the healing, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: If I can get over what I've got over in law enforcement, I can definitely get over this fear of water in the boat and start enjoying myself again.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I have to decide if that's what I want to do.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to be okay with certain things.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I have to be okay with the water.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if I choose it, that's something I don't want to do and don't want to participate in, I need to be okay with that as well.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to not be okay.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to, I need to understand that and root that.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got that figured out in so many other areas of my world, except this one.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I talk about this because so many men that I've spoken to recently all have something.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I bring these things up.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a plane crash, it's the passenger seat of a car, it is a head-on collision with a truck driver, it is me in the water.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: I find that everybody I ask about this has something that they are embarrassed and are holding on to and don't want to let go or don't want to expose their vulnerability.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's what we do with that something that is going to help us survive this.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And we have to understand that we're not alone and it's okay, and we can get over that embarrassment.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've mentioned this before.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: My therapist asked me once, Aaron, tell me somebody, describe somebody to me that you think is strong.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember describing a coworker of mine, and Aaron, where do you feel in that?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I feel very weak.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not very strong.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes real strength is acknowledging our fear, not hiding it.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Being okay, being vulnerable, stepping out on a limb and exposing your soft belly so other people can learn from it and that you can heal.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: That is what real strength is.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: Men are not immune to having traumas involved in their life.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can still be masculine and vulnerable at the same time.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: I can still be the cool guy and still be vulnerable and still expose my underbelly and still deal with my trauma.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being human doesn't make me less of a man, it makes me relatable.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And your ability to acknowledge or understand your set of circumstances makes you relatable into the world.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you've got this problem, somebody else around you has experienced something similar and can help you walk through it.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's not until you expose those things and are willing to work on them that you can actually get better.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just encourage myself, first of all, I'm gonna talk to myself, but I encourage everybody out there, if if this podcast has resonated with you a little bit, then I encourage you to reach out and talk to somebody.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Take steps forward.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live captive in fear of the water or the car or the airplane or the helicopter or whatever it may be, or it's work, or your boss, or your spouse?
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live in fear of that interaction.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay to feel the way you're feeling because it's a memory and it's a brain's response to it, but there are ways to work through it to help minimize the effects that it has on you.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: What is a fear that you have carried quietly that you don't want people to know about because you don't want to be judged?
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, I know this was not a long podcast, but it's something I wanted to throw out, and I wanted to hopefully connect with somebody out there that can resonate with some of the things that I'm saying.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you guys so much for listening.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: I love you, I appreciate you.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Reach out at murders2music at gmail.com.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: Murdersthemumbertomusic at gmail.com.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Send me an email.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me something that you have carried quietly that you don't want to be judged for.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders2Music podcast.