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"Daddy Issues".... It's Not About the Nail · 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.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, and I just want to say thank you guys for coming back.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to come listen to this every week, but you choose to.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, that is such a blessing and an honor to be here for you guys.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, historically on this podcast, we have gone times of ups and downs and highs and lows and just flat line and told some stories.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Tonight, I'm going to bring it back a little bit to the roots, and I'm in the middle of something.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you this.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have this all figured out.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am still inside of this situation that I'm in.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I want to lay it out there because I can't be the only one that has dealt with this.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you'll find something that resonates with you.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, I haven't figured it out.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I also I'm going to talk about my father during this episode.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you guys this right now.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a father blaming or a parent-blaming episode.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: I am not blaming things on my father.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is simply about naming what was missing in my experience.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And the more I talk to men around me, I find that this was missing in their world as well.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to solve your problems.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not here to be your therapist or your pastor or your preacher, or you know, I'm just here to tell you how this is affecting me.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to come out of it, but there will be resolve in the end.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: This topic has surprised me.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I'm dealing with this has surprised me.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in a moment, I will share how this came to how this came to light.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: But if you grew up fast and if you learned early not to need anyone, only to rely on yourself, then this episode is for you.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Society, we as humans, me as a human, my belief is I would celebrate the strong self-made men in my world.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I would look up to them.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I would look up to the guys, my brothers, my dad, my brother-in-law, who were pillars in the community.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: They were known, named, and recognized figures in their field.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But growing up, I never asked any of them what they had to lose to get there.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I never asked them at what sacrifice did they make to get to where they were.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some of the sacrifices that I experienced with my dad is um they're going to be readily apparent here in a few minutes.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think as fathers, we are often reduced to providers.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so often that we're not these emotional anchors in our family's world or in our kids' world, in our wives' world, in our friends' world.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're not an emotional anchor.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: We are simply a provider for the family.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're the breadwinner.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I fell victim to that for so many years.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And because we're not emotional anchors, there is a quiet damage of emotional absence that is done when we are absent, vacant, and there's a hole left there.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes these relationships end in divorce, which my parents did.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that it changed the trajectory of my life.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's some of the things that I want to talk about.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I can't be the only one that had my dad at home.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: He was in my house, but he was not there in the room emotionally or connected.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, recently I started working through some stuff in therapy, and there's an exercise out there called the big six.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the big six talks about the relationship that you have, and you can Google it, but it talks about the relationship that you have with your mom and with your dad, and how were they there for you?
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And when my therapist asked me, Erin, how was your relationship with your parents?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said, it was normal.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was fine.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do this exercise, and we're not looking to place blame, but just see how you answer these questions.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: For example, one of the questions was asking, How often was your dad there for you emotionally?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like a continuum of one through six.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I'm like, one, he was never there for me emotionally.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't connect with me emotionally.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how often would your dad come and apologize to you when he had done wrong to the family?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that didn't happen in my world.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: So as you go through this, you start to see these fundamental things that are stepping stones of healthy relationships with your parents.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I started to experience.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to realize that there was a lot of stuff in my world with my mom and dad, specifically with my dad, where he was disconnected.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have to ask that question why is he disconnected?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: He's disconnected because he's off working and being the provider, and he's not emotionally anchored in my home.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I do this exercise, and about this time, it is time to go get our Christmas tree.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the story.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we're going to get this Christmas tree.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And as I was growing up, my dad wasn't really connected to me.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We did a couple of things together.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: We would go hunting and fishing together when he had his work trips, and I would get to tag along.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Then every year we would go get a Christmas tree together.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those trees, and we lived in Alaska, so it's not like we went to the local Walmart and picked one up out of the lot.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: We would go out in the woods and we would drive.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we would ski out into the woods to find the perfect Christmas tree.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my living room was big.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: My living room was probably 15, 17 feet tall.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we would always get a 14-foot tree to put in this thing.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember my dad measuring it.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then he would put up these big tarps and he would reverse the engine on the vacuum cleaner and he would blow this god-awful white flock all over the tree.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like white snow.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was heavy.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that rattle can stuff that we get today.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Then he'd take down these big curtains because if not, the overspray would get everywhere.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there was this light that he'd mount up on the ceiling and it would just turn slow colors.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So the tree would be green and red and blue and yellow.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then we'd decorate it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we had these little bubbly lights that would bubble oil up inside of them, and they were like little candles, but they would bubble oil.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: This was a thing.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: During my formative years, this was something I remember from a very young age, and it was always the happiest time of year in our house.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was always something that I celebrated doing with my dad.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't me on a hunting trip with him and his friends and his co-workers.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was me and my dad hunting Christmas trees.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that time came and went.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: My parents got divorced when I was 13.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that last Christmas very well.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: That last Christmas was probably the nicest tree that we ever had, and that's because my dad stole it out of somebody's yard.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And we got a really ugly tree, and he didn't like the ugly tree.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we went out at night and he stole a tree out of the neighbor's yard, and it was a beautiful blue spruce.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And he never told us, but I recognized the tree, and then there was a stump in their yard.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: So even at a young age, I could put this together.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a gorgeous tree.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was our last Christmas as a family.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: My parents got divorced that year.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Our family split up, and Christmas has never been the same.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: With that, my brothers and sisters go their own direction.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: My mom and dad go their direction.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: I end up choosing to be with my mom.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not really connected to my dad.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: A few short years later, I moved off to Arizona at 17 and started a life of my own.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Coming back, current day, I've never really had any family around during the holidays.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing that we've always done is pick our Christmas tree together.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So my son Keegan, it is very important to him when we go pick our Christmas tree, because we'll go to the local lot and we will wander around until we find the exact perfect tree.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: We'll measure it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: We'll measure the width, we'll measure the height, we know the space, we have about an 11-foot ceiling.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: I like about a 10-foot tree.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: All this stuff sounds reminiscent of what we did as a child.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Then every year the family gathers around that tree and we all take a picture, a selfie, and Keegan is underneath the tree, cutting it down.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: So all we see is his butt sticking out from under the tree, and everybody laughs and smiles, and we have a great time.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Usually we wander the tree lot for an hour or two trying to find the perfect tree.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: This year, I had done the big six exercise, which had really stirred up a lot of these feelings about things in my childhood that were missing.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And those fundamental blocks that were missing aren't just, well, you weren't hugged enough as a kid, but they form the way you are and the way that I am as a parent.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm speaking about this like you are because I'm learning this.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: So forgive me for that.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: But it formed the way I am as a human being.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where are my shortcomings?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where am I strong?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Where am I weak?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Where am I strong in supporting my family?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Where does history repeat itself?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: All this stuff I'm learning.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we picked this tree.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, before we picked the tree, my wife and I were talking and we were looking at this 11-foot space, and I'm like, okay, I want a nine to ten-foot tree.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: I want it to be this wide so it fills the window, and I but I want it to be taller.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we go out to the tree lot and we pick the tree, and when we measure it, it's about nine foot four inches tall.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, well, it's not quite as tall as I want, but my wife picked it.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: It was the first tree we looked at.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Keegan and I felt cheated because we didn't get to walk around for two hours, but the tree was nice, so we cut it.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: Get the tree home, put the tree into the window, and the tree is eight foot four inches tall.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: They cut one foot off of the tree at the tree lot.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I lost my mind.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely lost it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Unlike me, uncharacteristic of me in current day to lose it the way that I did.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm angry, I'm yelling.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: The kids are like, Dad, we can take the tree back, we can put it on the back deck, we'll go get a new one.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's only$60, it's not that big a deal.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm angry and mad, and I'm throwing a fit, and I'm pissed, and the tree is too short, and it's barely taller than the window, and it doesn't fit the wall.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: And oh my God.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we go, this goes on for hours.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm throwing a fit.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: It got to the point where I'm like, I don't even know why I'm throwing a fit.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm angry, but this there's got to be more than this tree here, but I'm still not seeing it.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So we go to the store, Stacy and I go to the store, and in route, we're talking about this, and it hits me this is not about the tree.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the nail.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you've ever seen that little video clip, it's not about the nail sticking out of her forehead.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: She keeps snagging her sweaters on.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is not about the nail.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about the tree.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's about what the tree represents.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And in my mind, the tree represented good times in my family.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It represented times that my family was together.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: My dad wasn't at work.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't asleep on the couch.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was an emotional anchor and provider during that time.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's the time that my dad and I got to spend together doing a father-son activity.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the only one out of the year.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: My dad never threw a ball for me, barely came to any of my games, wasn't involved in my life.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was there.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was a good man.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: He loved me.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he wasn't there emotionally because I don't know if it's what was modeled for him or he was just too busy working.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he's not around for me to ask anymore.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: But what I do know is those emotional ties and connection weren't there until we were at Christmas.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And with the recent big six exercise being fresh on my mind, and now the Christmas tree go into, you know, crap, so I thought, I was missing that emotional connection.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: The holidays are hard for me anyway because I don't have that family around.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: We used to have a big table, it was 15, 20 foot long, and there was 40 people sitting at it, and kids and grandkids, and children, and my siblings, and their wives, and their husbands.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And we'd always do these holidays together.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when my dad got divorced, mom and dad got divorced, that went away.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even see, I don't think I've been with my family one time at Christmas since I was probably 13 years old.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm always missing that family connection anyway.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: I miss and long for those good times.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what started that good time was our Christmas tree hunt.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: These are good memories.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So now that I've identified, it's not about the tree, it's about the circumstances and the missing and the lack thereof.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: That is why I start digging into this.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's something under the surface that I've been dealing with for a long time that I need to get to the bottom of.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: The hunting trips, the fishing trips, those are memories.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Those are memories.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Finding the Christmas tree every year, that was an emotional connection.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: That was the version of me that I felt seen and valued and capable and chosen by my dad because we would go out and do those things.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: There was a real connection in that moment until there wasn't.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And when there wasn't, it was hard and abrupt.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was at that age of 13, uh 10 to 13 when my parents really started arguing.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: What are the moments?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: You listening right now, what are the moments that you had with your dad that still stand out, good or bad?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just think about those.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: These were mine.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: It really started to open up at about 13 years old when my parents were preparing for a divorce.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: They got along great until I was about 11 years old, and I started arguing because my dad had a one plan.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to go some get rich quick scheme.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: My mom didn't want any part of it.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately he chose money over my mom and me.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember during those years when my mom and dad would sit downstairs and argue.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would sit up in my room and just cry and think, who do I have to?
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: When this is coming to a divorce, it's obvious.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Who am I going to choose?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And how do I choose my mom over my dad or my dad over my mom?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Not because it's affecting me, but how is it going to affect them?
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: At that age, I had already started considering other people's feelings in front of my own.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: At that age, 10, 11, 12, 13, I had started growing up and considering things and taking responsibility and growing up too fast and considering adults' feelings through a child's point of view.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: How would I, if I chose my mom, that would kill my dad.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: If I chose my dad, that would kill my mom.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But during those arguments, it became pretty easy for me to decide to go with my mom because at times I contemplated killing my dad.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: I can't because he was so yelling and verbally abusive to my mom.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: And it was such a heated argument.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, if I just shoot my dad, I'll protect my mom because I don't know what's going on in the other room, but I know it's not good.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I sit up in the room and I contemplate this.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that contemplation turned to a disdain for my dad at times.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that culminated at 13 when my mom and dad were going through the divorce process, and in the kitchen of our house, my dad told my mom, I'm going to do this with or without you.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't like it, you can take Aaron and leave.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the rub really started at 13.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: Between 13 and you know, adulthood, I didn't have a lot to do with my dad.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very strained relationship.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would see him occasionally.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: He would call and my mom and complain.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: I moved to Phoenix when I was 17 out of Alaska.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: He would call and complain about how I was not making the bills on my own.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: I needed financial help and I wasn't a real man and all of this stuff.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yet all I wanted was to be noticed by my dad.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is where the gap opened up.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And at that 11, 12, 13 is when I realized that I was growing up too fast.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think back to my childhood.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was involved in my life when he needed to be reactive and a disciplinarian.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: When my grades were bad, he would yell and scream.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He would take me to the teacher and he would, by God, you're going to do better, son.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the rest of the year, he wasn't involved.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't get involved in my day-to-day.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't teach me how to ride a bike.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't take me swimming.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't do anything.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was there when he needed to be the disciplinarian, when he needed to spank my butt, or when he to yell at me about grades.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Having that kind of foundation growing up and then slipping into that 11, 12, 13, it was pretty easy for me, even at that young age.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember feeling like I wasn't loved by my dad or he didn't care because all he could do was bitch and complain about my grades, but he was never there to help me or support me.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Other guys were, other men were, some friends of us, some friends were, my brothers were, but not my dad.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the one I wanted the relationship with.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember thinking at 13 years old, I can't believe I'm trying to take care of my mom.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: I traded my childhood from for responsibility.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was hard.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't think this affected me.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, you know what?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the way life is.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am a strong, supportive type A personality, and I just work, work, work, and I'm I'm there.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think that it bothered me until I started dissecting some of the parts of that big six.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Christmas tree incident really drove it home that it was not about the nail, and there were some parts and pieces there.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Growing up, I started taking on those adult responsibilities.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: The hatred and frustration towards my dad grew, not because I was angry with him, but because I felt distant and emotionally disconnected from him.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: I remember trying to protect my mom in those years when there was financial things or he would come after my mom for something.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: That just grew that hatred and that frustration towards my dad.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: I felt abandoned at 13 in the kitchen.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: That was the silent conclusion, if you will, that we're on our own.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And dad is not part of this anymore.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: Through the next few years, from ninety nine to when my dad died and about five, six years ago, something like that, um, we weren't real connected.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: We argued.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: He would come by and visit from time to time.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: You'd visit the grandkids, but it was always something with him, and there was always this distance in there.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it continued even as an adult.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for me, in my adulthood life, I've been very independent.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I have had difficulty accessing sadness or grief.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I would emotionally shut down and go numb during certain situations, or when the pain got too much, or when things got too intense, I would emotionally shut down or run and find some other way to feel happy or peace.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Police work just reinforced all of this.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: It reinforced the survival wiring that I started at 13 years old, going numb.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've spoken about another podcast when I stepped out on that first dead body call at 13 years old and remember that numb feeling.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is just compounded by what I've got going on at home.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm going to say again, I don't have this figured out, but I want to talk through this because I can't be the only person feeling this way.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I am in a crisis and I'm still learning how to be present in this place and find peace.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: You see, a couple weeks ago, I had no problem talking about this.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the during the Christmas tree time, and I'm thinking about, I'm talking about with my therapist, and I'm in therapy one day, and it gets really raw and real, and I start crying.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, every time I get like on the edge of this painful conversation, I shut myself down.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: I numb myself.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I push those feelings away and I deflect, or I make a joke and I turn the conversation in another direction.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because feeling the pain and feeling those feelings hurts and it sucks.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's easier to deflect.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that therapy session was after a week of the Christmas tree incident.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there was a couple more incidents where I blew up and lost it, and like there was a lot of feeling and turmoil right under the surface that I just couldn't handle.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I was exploding and blowing up and being uncharacteristic of Aaron today.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I went to that therapy session, it really drove it to a climax.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then leaving that therapy session almost immediately, like I couldn't even think about or remember what we spoke about in therapy.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't access the feelings, I couldn't access the pain.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk about the Christmas tree, even as I talk to you now.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not getting the emotional piece that I got two weeks ago.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's because, in fact, I know it's not because I've healed.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's because my go-to, my brain's go-to is when things get hard and things get tough, it disassociates, disconnects, and buries that box deeper and deeper inside of my soul.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's going on right now.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: So then I say to myself, self, because that's what I call myself self, unpack the box, deal with it, process it, and let's move on.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: But the more pressure I put on myself to perform and process it, the deeper that box gets buried.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I have to find that peace somewhere.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: I can't be the only one that's ever felt this way.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: The father gap that I'm talking about, that emotional gap, it's not just absence.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of a missed development at a young age.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are things that many men have not received.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Emotional validation, safe and loving correction, corrective behavior, discipline.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: As a police officer, I would see the parents that didn't discipline their kids, and we would have to raise them on the street.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: Never had permission to fail.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: If I failed in school, I got my ass handed to me and I got lectured for two weeks, and that was all the interaction I had.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was with my dad, and then I didn't talk to him again until the next quarter.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I never had permission to fail, and I never had anybody to help build me back up.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: I never had anybody model emotional regulation with me.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: When things get rough, when things get bad, this is how you recover from them.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you balance yourself out, and this is how you repair and heal the relationships that you've heard along the way.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: I never had any of that.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: And this isn't about hating my dad or you hating your dad.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's about understanding who I am and why I am the way that I am.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: Missing these fundamental pieces at such a young age impacts me in a way that I don't even know.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: The blind spot.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I don't know, and there's a blind spot.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what the outcome of this is going to look like.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: I need to deal with it in therapy, and I'm going to learn a lot more about myself, and as a result, be a better human, a better father, a better husband.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't hate my dad.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: My dad was good.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: I, and I presume some of you listening, did not get what you needed from your dad.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: I presume I'm not the only one, because if so, I don't want to it sound like I have daddy issues.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that I have daddy issues.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: I just I guess I have daddy issues.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, you know, as I talk about this, I'm still working through this.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm working on forgiveness for my dad.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: My dad died during COVID, and I did not go see him in the hospital when he died.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: He was in Louisiana.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: And saying that, I kind of feel like an asshole.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because I could have gone to see him.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could have fought my way in.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: There was nobody that could keep me out of the hospital.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I could fight my way through them and get in and be there when he died.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: But instead, I chose to maintain distance.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: I chose to maintain hatred and frustration.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was easier for me to not go see him, to bury those feelings, than to face him, confront him, and possibly find resolve.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: I am currently trying to learn how to feel without shutting down, without numbing.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a conscious decision.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's just what I know best.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's what I've done in practice for so long, reinforced as a youth, as a small kid through the divorce, and then for 20-something years as a police officer.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Shutting down when things get painful and numbing yourself as a way to protect yourself.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then you just go to the bullet points of taking care of business, and that's where I'm at right now.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Even as I talk about this, like a part of me wants to feel emotional and wants to be in this moment, and it feels very matter-of-fact.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels cold.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk about my dad dying and me not being there.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: That should stir some kind of emotion, and it doesn't.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it's frustrating because this feeling that I'm having, I feel like I should be able to process this and I should be able to get into this.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not going to look for things that aren't present.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I just want peace and I want grace for myself to open up the bandwidth to access so I can sit with these feelings.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you guys listening.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: What role did you guys take on too early in your life, if any?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: What baggage are you or I still carrying that's not even ours?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: The divorce was not my baggage, yet it's still affecting me.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: I and I suggest you don't rush to forgiveness because that is an easy way to camouflage, cope, and suppress this stuff.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe this doesn't affect you at all, but maybe it affects somebody you know, or maybe it's you look at this and you think, man, I'm parenting.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: When I consider this, I consider what a parent I've been to my kids, and I've been that emotionally disconnected, non-anchoring father for many years as a police officer.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: When I thought I was doing the right thing, when my dad thought he was doing the right thing, when you think you're doing the right thing, when your husband thinks he's doing the right thing.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it all falls apart because we don't know our blind spot.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Therapy is hard work.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Therapy?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Man, it's hard.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a this isn't like a call for me to fix myself or you to fix yourself.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a therapy session.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is not some motivational speech.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is shit that I'm going through right now that I think somebody else can relate to, and that is painful and numb all at the same time.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to be honest and vulnerable and just share with my people who have been with me on this year and a half journey, 120-something episodes.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the little downsides, this is one of the valleys.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: My go-to is to go to avoidance.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I need to avoid that, avoid avoidance.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I need to not do that, but also need to not pressure myself because if I do, again, performance anxiety comes in and nothing happens.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever shut down during coping mechanisms?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever shut down, disconnected, disassociated, found something else to do to occupy your time?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: Allowed yourself to be numb?
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: The things that resonate with me right now is I feel broken.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not broken.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know I'm not alone in this.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a weakness.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't somebody going to dig for things and looking for things that don't really matter.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: These are impactful things that occurred and they're affecting me, and they affect the way that I live, and I'm trying to get to the bottom of them.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have made a method of survival over the years of suppressing emotions and feelings and not getting to the bottom and just thinking, well, who cares?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just move on.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really matter anyway, and I'm fine.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: How many times do we say I'm fine and we're not?
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, something I have to do is I have to talk to my kids.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: That day that I was upset and angry and yelling about the Christmas tree, I was a complete butt to my family.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: And my kids know that I'm going through stuff, but they don't know what.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I need to talk to them.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: But talking to them is going to be painful for me.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: That is somewhere where it's going to strike emotion and pain.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I've avoided it.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping that by the time this airs, I've had this conversation.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's a hard conversation because I was completely out of line.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that I took what was supposed to be an awesome family memory, just like the ones I had, and I turned it into a nightmare.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am happy to share with each and every one of you the way this comes out, the way this resolves.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: When I have a breakthrough and there's an epiphany.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: And those of you still listening to this that think, man, I can totally relate.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you what worked for me.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is yet, because I'm in the middle of it.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be there to walk beside you guys in your stories, whatever it is.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to walk by me.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: We are having a conversation.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: We are in this together.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I need to give myself grace and love, and I need to work on the frustration, unresolved anger, and the hatred towards my dad.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, there's gonna be a part two.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know when it's gonna come, but it will.