Veterans Day Recap

Summary

In this episode of the Ginger Chocolate Podcast, hosts Mike and Lindsay discuss personal insights, Veterans Day experiences, and the significance of the Purple Heart. Mike shares his journey of receiving the Purple Heart after being wounded in combat, reflecting on the emotional and mental health challenges that accompany such experiences. The conversation delves into the tendency to minimize trauma, the importance of acknowledging one's experiences, and the impact of reconnecting with military friends. The episode emphasizes the need for self-care and processing trauma in a healthy way. In this conversation, Lindsay and Mike discuss the complexities of mental health, the stigma surrounding therapy, and the importance of finding the right support. They explore personal experiences with addiction, the transformative power of physical movement, and the role of fear in personal growth. The dialogue emphasizes the necessity of self-advocacy in mental health journeys and the potential for growth through confronting challenges.

Here are the video clips we talked about on the show (be aware, they are graphic in nature and not suitable for young children):

-PBS on 20 Year Anniversiary of Battle of Fallujah
-War Horse Special on Battle of Fallujah

Takeaways

• The importance of sharing personal stories to connect with others.
• Minimizing one's trauma can hinder emotional healing.
• Emotional and mental health challenges are common among veterans.
• Reconnecting with military friends can provide support and understanding.
• Trauma can manifest in unexpected ways, affecting daily life.
• Self-care is crucial, especially during anniversaries of traumatic events.
• Cognitive understanding of trauma differs from emotional processing.
• It's important to validate one's own experiences, regardless of comparison to others.
• Therapy can help in processing long-held trauma and experiences. It took time for me to express my thoughts.
• Many people avoid therapy due to stigma.
• Therapy is not a sign of weakness.
• Finding the right therapist is crucial.
• You can change therapists if needed.
• Support systems are essential for recovery.
• Physical movement can aid mental health.
• Confronting fears can lead to personal growth.
• Self-advocacy is important in therapy.
• Embracing challenges can reveal new strengths.

Titles

• Honoring Veterans: A Personal Journey
• The Weight of the Purple Heart
• Navigating Trauma: A Veteran's Perspective
• From Combat to Community: Mike's Story

Thanks for listening to the Ginger and Chocolate Podcast. Check out our website at gingerandchocolate.com to get in touch with us. Follow us on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram @ginger_and_chocolate_podcast; and please subscribe to the show and select automatic downloads on your podcast app.

Transcript

Mike (00:00.869)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Ginger Chocolate Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike, and along with me is my co-host, Lindsay. Lindsay, how are you?

Lindsay Hiken (00:01.025)
No way.

Lindsay Hiken (00:09.486)
Hello, I am doing pretty good. I have not had my full can of Diet Coke yet. So a little sleepy. Other than that, I'm good. How about yourself?

Mike (00:16.634)
Yeah.

Mike (00:21.012)
I'm a little espresso. I'm used to having a lot more and I'm drinking a Red Bull right now. I'm really trying to ramp this up. So I have a feeling that our episode is going to kind of ramp up as we go.

Lindsay Hiken (00:33.63)
People just so you understand, we record at 6 a.m. So Mike and I have been up at least since five, maybe probably Mike a little bit earlier. But OK. You know, we've been doing this thing at the beginning of the show saying something about ourselves that no one else or not no one else, but, know, that our listeners probably don't know. Do you have anything like that you want to share?

Mike (00:41.955)
Yeah.

Mike (00:59.573)
I think for me today, the episode is going to be most, mostly things people might not know about me. So I'm thinking, yeah, I think I'll let the episode take care of that. But what about you, Lindsay? What's something today that we might not know about you?

Lindsay Hiken (01:11.544)
That's true.

Lindsay Hiken (01:20.962)
Hmm. I mean, I'm pretty much an open book, but let's see. I like to play board games. I don't know if that's something people don't know. Well, Josh and I just started playing backgammon, which I haven't done in a long time. And I whooped on his ass last night. So it made me very happy.

Mike (01:31.143)
what kind?

Mike (01:40.164)
Yeah.

Mike (01:43.525)
Does it ever get to the point where someone flips the game over?

Lindsay Hiken (01:46.967)
No, although it could be a little bit of cussing and yelling.

Mike (01:48.933)
That's good.

Mike (01:53.093)
Yeah, yeah. That's how Monopoly seems to go, no matter who you're playing with.

Lindsay Hiken (02:00.431)
I don't I haven't played Monopoly since I became an adult and had to actually make real money and pay for things.

Mike (02:06.937)
Well, I had a friend, my friend Chris, I was over at his house as we were growing up. think middle school, we're playing Monopoly. His sister comes in and comes in. What are you guys playing Monopoly? I came stupid. All you do is go around the board, paint each other. I'm like, huh? She's not wrong and kind of ruined the game for me.

Lindsay Hiken (02:27.808)
And then you became an adult and you realize that that's really all that we do. Yeah, so.

Mike (02:33.051)
Fuck. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (02:39.416)
trying we're gonna do cribbage next these are all games we've before in our life but there was a big break of like a couple decades and so we had to YouTube how to play backgammon even though I used to play all the time when I was a kid

Mike (02:43.899)
Hmm.

Mike (02:47.578)
Yeah.

Mike (02:54.245)
Yeah, I'd have to do that too. I played it only a couple of times.

Lindsay Hiken (02:59.586)
kind of nerdy, but it's Super fun. Okay, well, so as you all know, last week, on Monday was Veterans Day. We dropped an archived episode on Thursday.

Mike (03:03.212)
Yeah.

Mike (03:20.411)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (03:20.442)
and instead of recording. Mike had a lot going on because he's a veteran and et cetera. And so we want to talk about Veterans Day today and have Mike share a little bit of his story and talk about some cool things that happened. So, okay, let's just start, Mike, with what did you do? Like, what did you actually do on Veterans Day?

Mike (03:46.305)
on Veterans Day this year is pretty special. So in the morning, we went to my city's parade and Sarah and I and the kids actually rode in a car and waved at people. Never done that before. My kids was cool. We'll put and we'll put a link in the show notes with a picture of them wearing the Marine Corps shirts and us getting ready to get in the car. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (04:12.832)
that's so you're in it like a convertible or you're like a beauty queen kind of. That's awesome.

Mike (04:17.465)
Yeah. huh. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My kids are loving it. They're jumping on the top, waving at people. There's a Ford Bronco convertible. Never seen one before.

Lindsay Hiken (04:31.687)
one of the new Ford Broncos. Yeah, I saw I saw one of those driving around down here, the convertible type. Pretty cool.

Mike (04:34.305)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (04:39.909)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we did that. And the whole reason I was doing it as, the city and, my, some of my Marines, especially my former platoon commander who's still in the Marine Corps, was there to present me with a purple heart that, I guess earned is the right way by getting wounded and,

big Bible in Iraq 20 years ago. She was 20 years ago. Exactly on Monday, November 18th. So yesterday for us.

Lindsay Hiken (05:18.318)
Wow, okay. Well, first of all, congrats. mean, it's cool to get the Purple Heart. So I'm congratulating you on the acknowledgement that that symbolizes not on you got injured and therefore, you know, we're giving you a prize.

Mike (05:31.525)
Yeah, thank you.

Mike (05:38.617)
Yeah, there's not a section in like Hallmark for you got wounded Coragrats

Lindsay Hiken (05:44.963)
Congrats. But how does it feel to at least be acknowledged that you were serving and that something happened that you had to go through something for that?

Mike (05:57.589)
It feels feels really good and at the same time

Mike (06:05.839)
Like even now I'm kind of deflecting attention, even though we're doing this episode on this, on this, because, maybe just, I think getting acknowledged for our award was, was really nice and I really appreciate it. and I avoided it for 20, 20 years, because there was just so much going on at the time and people I knew were getting hurt worse. And so thus began my career of minimizing,

Lindsay Hiken (06:10.638)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (06:35.171)
and deflecting because you know, started to think like, okay, I friends who actually died and they got a Purple Heart and friends who, you know, had limbs missing, got severely wounded and they got Purple Heart. So perhaps what I went through, even though technically matches the description getting wounded, it shouldn't be acknowledged. And yeah, I mean, it was a significant thing.

I think I was lucky because when I got wounded for was having a grenade being thrown at me and I did my best to get my team out of the way out of this, out of the area of the grenade being thrown inside a house. And as I turned back to make sure everyone was out, I got hit with it and most of it went in my body armor, but a little piece went right into the middle of my neck and had a gun.

Lindsay Hiken (07:12.27)
Hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (07:31.768)
That seems like a...

Mike (07:34.693)
Couple inches the other way. Okay, hit it. What's that?

Lindsay Hiken (07:36.408)
You had a gun? You said something about a gun? yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mike (07:41.211)
No, no, if he had a gun a inches either way, it would have hit a carotid artery and it could have been pretty serious and deadly. but don't worry. Yes. There were plenty of guns involved in that exchange.

Lindsay Hiken (07:55.834)
I was like, I was like, you had a shrapnel or whatever they call it and again. OK, so a couple of things here. As a civilian. It doesn't sound like. You are less qualified for a Purple Heart, just the idea of having a grenade thrown at you and and.

taking time to, and I realize it's your job, but getting people out of the way of the grenade is a very brave thing to do, whether it's your job or not your job. And getting hit in the throat with something is not exactly nothing, you know?

Mike (08:44.857)
Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (08:47.31)
So that's one thing. And then the other thing I want to touch on that is not necessarily Veterans Day related or Fallujah related is the idea of minimizing what you've been through, through comparing to, you know, other people and saying it's all relative. Because I do the same thing, obviously over something, things that are not this, you know, I didn't go in the Marine Corps, but I do.

Mike (09:05.445)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (09:14.976)
Concepts the same no matter what.

Lindsay Hiken (09:16.192)
Yeah. I do the same thing over some childhood trauma, which we don't need to talk about now, but a therapist only told me maybe a year ago, it doesn't matter, you know, whatever someone else does or doesn't do or has or doesn't have or experienced or didn't experience has no bearing on whether or not you get to have trauma.

Mike (09:24.059)
Mmm.

Lindsay Hiken (09:43.982)
because I just kept saying, well, I wasn't physically beat up as a kid, and I wasn't this, and I wasn't that. My mom didn't do crazy locking me in a closet, or I didn't have all of that. And so I would just say to you that that's true, too. Like your.

Mike (09:44.741)
yeah.

Mike (09:53.648)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (10:05.934)
I don't know friends or I don't know what's the right word people that were in the military with you. Platoon. Those those guys deserve a Purple Heart and you deserve one as opposed to or you know.

Mike (10:11.363)
Yeah, friends, buddies, guys in my platoon, fellow marines.

Mike (10:24.639)
Right. That makes sense. That makes sense. It's interesting. When I started explaining it and seeing people's eyebrows raised, like, maybe this is a significant thing. I mean, to me, I just cut and written it off in my head. And then I explained, I'm like, yeah, getting a fragmentation grenade and have it explode. And then part of that going into my neck.

That is quite the ordeal, you know, so it's not an average day experience, guess. Thankfully.

Lindsay Hiken (11:03.533)
No, and if someone who was not in the military had that experience somehow, it would be a huge ordeal that they would talk about and have to go to therapy for, and it would be something immensely traumatic for them. So.

Mike (11:20.835)
Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I mean, and the stuff surrounding it was, was, stuff I've discussed in my own personal therapy journey, you know, cause that was part of the story. That was part of the story. Just where I got wounded. There's, mean, the other things happen involving a lot of shooting and death, that I don't think we have to go into here.

Lindsay Hiken (11:23.907)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (11:50.075)
I don't have to, but it that the point being that stuff kind of stuck in my mind more is what I focused on and, you know, sought help for professionally, avoided had dreams of et cetera, et cetera.

Lindsay Hiken (11:58.126)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (12:07.512)
So more of the...

Lindsay Hiken (12:13.118)
mental and emotional injuries that you sustained based on.

Mike (12:18.563)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, because in that exchange where the grenade was thrown, there's a lot of other close calls that happened. That was so, while being a significant part of my life, was also a minimal part of this exchange that I had with some insurgents shooting back at me in the house.

So I guess that's how also it got minimized by the comparison of the other parts of it that stuck with me, that that bothered me, that were difficult to get through and were harder to survive. It's like, and I got a grenade thrown at me and it stuck in my neck. So

Lindsay Hiken (12:59.754)
Is there so I understand if you get injured and there's a certain way of qualifying, I guess, for the Purple Heart, you know, if X, Y, Z. Is there are the does that qualification include mental and emotional damage or not? Does that not it's more physical?

Mike (13:08.88)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (13:23.621)
physical. Yeah. I would change during the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars was that before it had to be through grenade or some kind of explosion or bullet hitting you. And this changed it or I guess getting stabbed by an enemy. But this changed it to where this during these Wars, it could also be being knocked out.

being concussed by an explosion from an enemy. So that was also part of my experience, but you know, I didn't really want to seek out getting two purple hearts for this. just, you know, one, one's enough. So I also had an experience where I was shot at with a rocket and was knocked out from the concussion of the blast.

Lindsay Hiken (13:52.8)
okay.

Lindsay Hiken (14:06.136)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (14:15.352)
Wow, you went through some shit, Mike. I mean.

Mike (14:16.995)
So yeah.

Mike (14:20.825)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (14:26.762)
I said that in a lighthearted way, I guess, but you really did go through some shit, you know, that a normal regular person, any one of those things would be like, you know, here's an example. I know people that have been in really bad car accidents and got hurt probably physically around the same level as you, you know, and the trauma around that.

Mike (14:29.271)
No, it's true.

Yeah.

Mike (14:43.771)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (14:50.32)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (14:54.282)
has been very has been huge for them and life changing in the sense that they have to deal with a lot of stuff mentally and emotionally that stems just from those injuries from that experience. So you know, you had that and just because you had additional worse mental and emotional trauma doesn't make it any less. So.

Mike (15:04.239)
Yeah.

Mike (15:14.107)
Yeah, sandwiched in there.

Lindsay Hiken (15:22.762)
Okay, so you got kind of a week of things, emotional things. You get a purple heart, which probably does that, did it dredge up emotions or?

Mike (15:37.751)
Not at the time. Well, I will say this, you know, my former platoon commander who's now Lieutenant Colonel still in, he read the, speech, you know, basically how it came to be that I was wounded in battle and the exchange of gunfire between me and some other individuals in my team and

Lindsay Hiken (15:58.286)
Hmm.

Mike (16:07.629)
At that point I was like, you know what? I've never told this story to my kids. They just know kind of dad got hurt a little bit at war. So I asked him afterwards. I asked, I haven't asked my son yet, but he's, he's eight. I asked my 11 year old daughter, how, who was that hearing about dad getting hurt? Is that, is that okay? You know, I'm just trying to like, yeah, it sounded scary that wouldn't happen, but I know you're okay now.

Lindsay Hiken (16:12.421)
Mike (16:36.251)
was the gist of it. you know, I kind of thought it was it was a both good that my kids and, you know, people in the community that I know, and friends could hear about it. And also, you know, I was worried, like, is this gonna like, upset them? Because, you know, it's not something that's brought up in polite conversation, I guess.

Lindsay Hiken (16:36.366)
you

Lindsay Hiken (17:02.124)
Yeah, yeah. Just for the listener, just so you know, we are going to post a piece from PBS on our site and on our Facebook page. And you can hear a lot more about this and about Mike's story and kind of what was actually taking place during this type of, well, not type, but this

particular incident, guess is the word I'll use. And I'm going to put a warning on it because it is fairly intense. So you might not, if you're super sensitive, you might not want to watch it. But I do think it's important. And I think those of us who don't participate in the military have no real idea about any of this. So if you can, I think it's a good thing to watch and it'll give you more information about.

what Mike's actually talking about, what he actually went through. I think that'll be that'll be good for the listeners.

Mike (18:04.805)
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy to tell the story. I'm also one who's never jumped up and said, hey, guess what happened to me?

Mike (18:14.715)
Yeah. And you know, there's some other good moments. I, know, bunch of, and a handful of guys came out from across the country to, be there with me, who I served with who were there. And we went hunting one day for geese. The next day we went fishing for crabs and just kind of hung out. got to meet family members of theirs. I got to just,

Lindsay Hiken (18:26.476)
Nice.

Mike (18:42.777)
hear a little bit more about what they're doing and some of the here and now.

Lindsay Hiken (18:49.602)
Are these guys in the military still or are they all?

Mike (18:49.669)
Mike (18:53.591)
Most of them are out. Only one, my Lieutenant Colonel friend. He's in. It's a trip because I mean this guy is an officer who I would salute and say yes or no sir. Right away sir. And now he's like, you know, he wants me to call him by his first name. I'm okay, try him. Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (19:17.102)
Awkward.

Lindsay Hiken (19:21.446)
it does feel a little awkward. like when you become an adult and someone that you've called, you know, Mr. XYZ says, no, I'm Bob. It's like,

Mike (19:27.577)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So it's a changing in the level of formality. I guess so overall good though. We're all really good. I'll say that it has dredged up a lot of old kind of feelings and I guess there was a price to pay. I've been exhausted this last week. Just absolutely exhausted. Like we like you alluded to early. We tried to record this episode last week and I just been

Lindsay Hiken (19:38.104)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (20:02.389)
sleeping a lot and just takes a toll yeah

Lindsay Hiken (20:06.412)
Well, hey, if you need it, you need it. Yeah. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time taking care of myself sometimes, especially in moments like that, where I think, I should just muscle through it because I know what it is. Like, you know, I know that it's an anniversary of something that's happened or whatever, and I'm just going to muscle through. But you can want to do that. But your body and your mind have a different, you know, plan for that.

Mike (20:14.213)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (20:17.903)
Yeah.

Mike (20:24.283)
Hmm.

Mike (20:33.935)
Yeah, yeah, it's one thing to know something cognitively, right? And it's quite another for your body to react in the way it does. So, I mean, that's one way of summarizing what trauma is.

Lindsay Hiken (20:48.748)
I kind of figured it was.

Right, right. And I kind of figure that that's what was happening because you're not one to sleep all that much. doesn't seem like we've talked about this before. And when you were like, I'm exhausted. And I thought, OK, that's if he needs sleep, he needs sleep because there's really no other way to recover than taking care of yourself and actually listening to the signals and clues you're getting about it. I would think.

Mike (20:59.791)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (21:21.24)
Yeah. mean, it was a monumental experience I went through 20 years ago. It was the biggest battle urban combat wise that we've had since, and since, the battle of way city in Vietnam, the Vietnam war. and it's something that's in Marine Corps bootcamp. Now that battle is specifically taught in the curriculum when people go to bootcamp. So

Lindsay Hiken (21:48.172)
Wow.

Mike (21:49.517)
Yeah, it was a huge deal. Really huge deal. I think the minimizing two is twofold. Like two purposes for me. One was not to be a boastful or someone who brags when I know there's, you know, other people and I know people who have done a lot more. And then the other part is

Lindsay Hiken (21:51.34)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (22:12.549)
think just kind of a, what you call it, survival strategy. If you minimize something, then you don't admit to yourself, it was that bad and you just don't have to fully face it in the moment.

Lindsay Hiken (22:25.298)
yes, I'm familiar with that part for sure. Yeah, definitely familiar with that part. But I had not thought about it as a survival strategy. That's a really good way of that's a good way of putting it because that's what it is. But I hadn't thought about it that way.

Mike (22:26.895)
You know that part.

Mike (22:42.555)
Yeah, I mean, there's, it feels like there's a certain amount of, I don't know, it's deflection or saying, you know, it wasn't that bad or whatever we do to minimize deflect that helps you get through and not get stuck. And then there's a certain amount of it where we are putting off the work and the processing we need to do.

Lindsay Hiken (23:11.192)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (23:11.963)
So maybe it's a great strategy to like, you know, I got my, I got to take care of a couple of sick kids and got to do this for work. Let's just minimize my own, you know, trauma anniversary for a little boat. Wasn't that bad. And then I put it off to maybe the next day to where I have some space to deal with it. Maybe I think that's a productive way of dealing with it, but just saying like, Nope, never problem. Everything's okay. doesn't really work.

Lindsay Hiken (23:36.556)
Yeah.

Mm hmm. No, you're right. And I think depending on who you are and what the situation is, can take a long time to realize that it's not actually going to go away by minimizing it. So for me, I mentioned like last year, I spoke with a therapist about something that came up from my childhood and.

I'm 54. at 53 years old, I was talking about something with a therapist for the very first time that I'd ever talked about it. And the whole rest of my life leading up to that moment, I did a kind of like, it wasn't really that bad compared to other people who went through something similar.

And also maybe it's not really real, like maybe I made it up or something in my head. And then, you the therapist was like, yeah, dubious that you made it up, you know, because I when I actually started describing what happened, it's like that's not something a child just make up. And and so.

Mike (24:53.135)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (24:57.871)
Part of me when I started talking about thought, my God, why would I say this stuff? Why would I even say this? Because then it's out there. But the truth is that it just took what it took time-wise because I could no longer contain it, if that makes sense. I was having negative consequences from that. after a while, you just hit a wall with.

Mike (25:05.883)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (25:14.415)
Yeah. Yes.

Lindsay Hiken (25:25.922)
least that's what I did.

Mike (25:28.153)
Yeah, yeah. For me, you know, alcoholism, using drugs, you know, you'll see in this PBS segment, right? My motorcycle while intoxicated, just doing things that were negative to avoid processing trauma. And you know, it's like, I don't blame people who do that because

Not everybody knows, I could talk to a therapist and perhaps feel better. It just, it just like, how it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. So we, we search other ways.

Lindsay Hiken (26:10.296)
Some people are told that it makes you weak or it makes you whatever, you know, that it's that therapy is they're actually told, you know, it's it's bad. I'm not going to go to a quack. Someone who's near and dear to me said to me once that they weren't going to go to therapy because, quote, I'm not opening that can of worms. And it was like, so your mental and emotional state is a can of worms that you're not going to open. Like that says a lot about.

Mike (26:14.575)
Yeah, yeah.

Mike (26:30.203)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (26:40.248)
the whole, you know, your state and how much help you could, how much help you do need and how much a therapy could help, but they're just not.

Mike (26:41.988)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (26:46.884)
Right, right.

Yeah. I mean, people have different, ideas of what therapy looks like. And, you know, for some people, what I believed was it was just sitting around complaining and having someone validate, pity or, or impede you, right. Which can happen. It has gone on, but you work with a good therapist and they're like, yes, they'll validate. was a terrible thing that you went through. I'm sorry you had to go through that and say now.

Lindsay Hiken (27:04.524)
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Mike (27:20.121)
What do we do so that you no longer are reliving that like it's happening again, but you can, you can learn to admit or not admit, but recognize it and move forward with your life in a way that honors that experience, but doesn't let it control you.

Lindsay Hiken (27:40.91)
Yeah. And if you do have a therapist, you know, that you feel like isn't really helping you in the way that you need to be helped, just try a new therapist. I mean, that's the thing I think people don't necessarily understand is you get to decide what therapist works with you and who works for you. And so you can just change. And I've done that before. I've had, okay.

Mike (27:51.525)
Mm-hmm.

Lindsay Hiken (28:09.048)
Kaiser sent me to a dude who was, I don't know if he was at the end of his career. I don't know what his deal is, but nah. I spent 50 minutes listening predominantly to him about his journey with COVID and everything. I was like, huh, it was so bad.

Mike (28:16.507)
Didn't give a fuck.

Mike (28:23.564)
boy.

Mike (28:28.292)
likes.

Lindsay Hiken (28:36.05)
that it was comical. And I thought, there's no way this guy's like a licensed individual. So I emailed the Kaiser psych department and I said, I don't think this guy's licensed because he doesn't have any idea what he's doing. And I had to listen to him about his COVID journey when really I actually need help at this point. And so could I have someone licensed? And they came back and they were like, really sorry about that.

He has a license, not sure what happened. And then they sent me somewhere else. And then I had this great journey that I kind of just talked about last year, but.

It's one of those things where therapy can be scary, especially if it's the first time. And if you go have a bad experience, don't just go, this is all therapists. All therapists are just going to share about their COVID journey. That's not the case. They say that same thing in 12-step programs. If you go to a meeting and you're like, these people, I don't relate to them at all. Just go to another meeting because.

Mike (29:26.819)
Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (29:43.374)
There's definitely somewhere there is a meeting for you if you need help, if you're an alcoholic. personally, I went to a meeting one time and between not me excluded, but between the rest of the entire room, all combined, there had to be, I don't know, four teeth. You know what mean? And it was a real rough crowd that had been through some shit. And I was like,

Mike (29:58.629)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (30:06.084)
wow, that's... yeah.

Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (30:13.486)
huh I like to Chardonnay I don't know what these people were you know it was a lot of a lot of drugs and alcohol combined which is totally fine I mean whatever I could go to that room now and I could I could pick out the the similarities and listen for those but as someone who was like trying to understand do I need help or not need help it was a little rough

Mike (30:22.053)
Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (30:41.73)
There was one woman though, who came up to me afterwards and said, sweetie, I'm going to send you over to Palo Alto for a meeting. That's my suggestion. And, I went to Palo Alto and this is a dumb way of looking at it, but this is, you know, the brain of someone who's not mentally healthy at the moment. I went to Palo Alto meeting and there are all these like Stanford professors and VCs and

Mike (30:50.843)
Hahaha

Mike (30:55.643)
That's funny.

Lindsay Hiken (31:12.174)
CEOs and stuff. And I thought, well, these people are better than me. like Goldilocks and the three bears, is that what it is? like, these people are trash. These people are better than me. But, you know, it ended up working out. But it's it's that idea of just continuing to advocate for yourself.

Mike (31:18.686)
Where's my mid-level regular alcoholics?

Mike (31:25.819)
That's funny.

Mike (31:30.245)
Yeah.

Mike (31:39.099)
Yeah. Yeah. I believe that I believe it because, I think sometimes we're the last to know that we're the ones who need help. That people will mention it, you know, because our context of reality is our own experience. And so it's easier for other people to say like, that sounds a little off or you're doing this a little more, or you're doing things compulsively. They don't seem healthy. What what's going on? So

Lindsay Hiken (31:49.338)
for sure.

Lindsay Hiken (32:08.108)
Yeah, that's

Mike (32:09.007)
Yeah, I've had a...

Lindsay Hiken (32:11.72)
to have other people to check in with because especially people who understand mental and emotional distress, trauma, addiction, whatever mental illness in general that you can relate to. I think it's good to have a couple of those in your back pocket to check in with because they can in a gentle way call you on your shit.

Mike (32:14.671)
Yeah.

Mike (32:22.789)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (32:35.695)
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's helpful.

Lindsay Hiken (32:41.731)
I met him. Okay. So my first sponsor is a woman named Helen. She was amazing. She was from Ireland, had a very thick Irish accent, just quintessential. Her parents owned a pub. They lived above the pub, you know, that kind of thing. And her family was like, why are you getting help for drinking? You know, you're not an alcoholic. America has made you soft. mean, that's what they kept telling her like America's made you into this weakling.

Mike (32:51.429)
nice.

Mike (32:56.431)
Yeah.

Mike (33:06.564)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (33:10.078)
Because she was saying in Irish culture, you got to be living under a bridge and then, you know, maybe, you know, and but I would call her and I would be like, I don't know what is happening. So dramatic, too, at the beginning. mean, just I was so dramatic. What is this? I can't know. And she would say, those are feelings.

Mike (33:14.457)
Right, exactly. Yeah.

Mike (33:32.867)
I don't like them.

Lindsay Hiken (33:37.006)
Uh-huh. She's like, you're just not used to feeling them because you would blot those out. And, it was good to have her do that because I felt like I'm going to die and I don't want to, I wouldn't even know what was a feeling, but it's like, I don't want to be like this, you know, let me, let me go blackout. mean, I could black out on some Chardonnay, which is, you people don't think of.

Mike (33:43.055)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (34:04.674)
drinking wine as being the thing that's going to destroy your life. But it's possible, folks. It is possible. And just having that person to call and say, what is this? in a way, she would sort of talk smack to me because that worked for me. You're just silly, or you're being dramatic, and these are a feeling. And the feeling will change.

Mike (34:11.791)
possible.

Mike (34:26.349)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mike (34:33.475)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a, that kind of guidance can sting, right? If it's, not done properly. And I think that's a, another thing that makes this idea of going to therapy kind of not appealing. But if you're with someone and you're seeking out truly what's going on with you in order to be better, in order to live a life according to your values and

Lindsay Hiken (34:38.734)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (35:04.158)
Be the person you want to be and move through something. Definitely worth it.

Lindsay Hiken (35:10.414)
Not to switch gears, but I know one of the tools that you have used, I think this is kind of how you got into triathlon is using physical movement as a tool, as a therapy tool. Can you just talk a little bit about that? Because I know we talked about that early on in our show, but it's been 150 something episodes.

Mike (35:21.374)
Yes. Yes.

Mike (35:34.351)
Yeah, yeah. What's really helped me is that, especially, well, with pretty severe depression and then pretty severe anxiety from post-traumatic stress. these were things that I would just watch in my body take place.

and usually use a chemical like cannabis or alcohol to neutralize or transform. and when I no longer had that, it was like, well, what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and watch this happen over and over. And so what really worked for me was discovering that at first it was running and doing CrossFit, moving my body because

If we want to oversimplify it, you have a lot of energy that's stuck in your body, anxiety or depression. And it just kind of gets stagnant. If you're not moving, once you start moving, you can work through these things. especially I liked that analogy that somebody taught me about depression. Depression is a lot of it can be looked at as a stuck energy, things that keep you

doing anything you're just kind of in the mud but if you can move maybe you of course you won't change the situation if it's something that you are depressed about that happened in the past you can't change that or you can't change the fact that you're depressed but you can you can move forward and not only does it send you know great things like endorphins throughout your body to help you feel better but it

demonstrates that even when you are feeling out of sorts either way that you have some power and some agency to be able to change those things and movement was just so key.

Lindsay Hiken (37:47.758)
So when you were doing CrossFit and running, how did you decide triathlon?

Mike (37:58.915)
and it happened, happened, gradually. So CrossFit was something I was doing even back in my drinking days. And then running was something I was doing. had a good friend, Chris, who got me a registration for a half marathon when I was newly sober. and turned out to be the best present ever.

And then I had a, an older Vietnam vet convinced me to do open water swimming with veterans. And then that just really set the table for a vacation I took to, the big Island and just coincided with the week that Kona was happening. And that really fucked with my head because I watched these people running and cycling around and there's just so much positive energy.

but they were doing something that looks so impossible. It made me mad. And then I realized I was at a point in my journey where I was like, why am I mad about people working out? Because, because I'm afraid. Why am I afraid? Well, because that's something I think I want to do. I don't know why. And so then I was like, I think my wife looked at me and she's like, you're

Lindsay Hiken (39:07.255)
right

Mike (39:22.329)
I can see in your eyes some shit you're going to start doing. Yeah, exactly. This is you're doing the thing.

Lindsay Hiken (39:23.458)
know that look. my gosh. I think doing things for me that scare me a little bit is good for me in some way. I grew up in a really fear based family. You know, my grandmother and my mom and I think I think my grandmother's was a force to be reckoned with and she passed her fear down to

Mike (39:37.155)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (39:52.344)
her own kids, you know, in one way or another and to her grandkids. So everything was viewed through this lens of like, what bad thing is going to happen if you do this. And so try to stay small, you know, so that nothing bad happens. that has not benefited me as an adult, didn't benefit me as a child either, to be honest, but I carried it with me. And so my journey into triathlon.

Mike (39:53.435)
Mm.

Mike (40:02.171)
Mmm.

Mike (40:06.458)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mike (40:17.872)
Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (40:22.402)
had a similar component of fear. And I don't really know what the fear was about. mean, individually, can look at it and open water swimming can be scary. Or I suppose riding a bike or running could be scary, although I wasn't afraid of those. Just there was something about it that was a little bit, I was nervous about. But in a way, doing it anyway, it's like a really

Mike (40:25.669)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (40:49.946)
Yes.

Lindsay Hiken (40:54.38)
It's really beneficial to me to do things anyway. And I'm trying to in my life now figure out what are other things because triathlon doesn't scare me anymore. know, although it's still nerve, you know, a little I can be nervous about it. mean, I am registered for a race later in late in twenty twenty five. I just pushed it out from twenty four.

Mike (41:05.679)
Yeah, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (41:19.982)
And I regularly think like, I'm not going to be able to do it because I'm not going to be able to train. I'm not going to be able to do all this stuff. And I have kind of started acknowledging to myself, it's a little bit of fear there too.

Mike (41:30.959)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I like the idea of having, I mean, there's the fear of, my God, someone's about to hurt me or I might die or my integrity might be compromised by another individual. You know, that's the fear of death, right? And then there's the fear of doing things that we desire to do, but we're afraid to, that we might fail at it.

afraid of how hard the journey could be to do the things that really called to us and that fear is a nice little beacon so I like like how you put it Lindsey once you once you walk through that fear and walk towards those things and like I felt fear and I did it it feels great it feels great

Lindsay Hiken (42:22.902)
I was saying like, I want to figure out what the thing is that would be would do that for me. But I have a little bit of a list, you know, like skydiving is something that I wanted to do when I was younger, before I had a sense of mortality. And now I'm just that's that fear of. Death, and I'm not afraid of being dead, I'm afraid of the process of dying. Like, how long is that going to take? How scary is that going to be?

Mike (42:31.568)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (42:36.762)
Yeah.

Heh.

Lindsay Hiken (42:55.744)
if you realize that things were going wrong, that can be a couple of minutes of a really bad ride, you know? So there's things like that and bungee jumping, things where I want to, guess I'm afraid of throwing myself off of something, I guess, now that I think about it.

Mike (43:03.896)
huh.

Mike (43:13.721)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (43:19.478)
swimming in the ocean is something I used to do and I've become incredibly afraid of it.

Mike (43:22.319)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (43:30.07)
to make a list. Maybe we could do some of these things together. That might be something that we could...

Mike (43:33.339)
Okay. Yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (43:40.561)
Because I think, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (43:46.776)
things helps me realize like I can do them and I can and I can live through them and I'm stronger for them and that was a feeling I had crossing the finish line and Iron Man was like I can do this there's a whole world of things that I can do that I thought I couldn't do because of how I grew up

Mike (44:04.965)
Yeah, exactly, I think we might be at our limit for our show today. Is our audio is reminding us?

Lindsay Hiken (44:12.526)
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, it's exactly 44 minutes. So this is a good time to wind down. Folks, thank you so much for listening. And Mike, I appreciate you sharing your story.

Mike (44:19.204)
Yeah.

Mike (44:26.853)
Yeah, yeah, I was, I was vague about some of it. And if you want to hear more of the story, what, what went on in the aftermath and all of that, we're to have two different links in the show notes. One is a PBS news hour clip that is about nine minutes long. And then another is a 40 minute clip. My friend Thomas, the war horse produced

We'll put that on too that features me and some other people in my platoon and what we experienced and talks about the battle in a larger scope of what was going on too.

Lindsay Hiken (45:05.718)
Cool. Alrighty folks, we will see you next week.

Mike (45:06.96)
Nah.

Mike (45:12.283)
Alright everyone, take care.

Lindsay Hiken (45:13.752)
Bye.

Lindsay Hiken (45:22.99)
I'm gonna let me stop recording.

Mike (45:26.287)
Don't hit leave, but the other button down there, right by leave should be a red stop sign.

Lindsay Hiken (45:35.086)
It's not fair.

Mike (45:42.939)
Let's see, I don't think there's anything I can do on my end. But you see where the buttons are, right? I see Mark Clip, Mic, Cam, Speaker, Share, Leave. It's not down there?

Mike (45:54.861)
Maybe neither one of us are the host, but you started it somehow.

Lindsay Hiken (45:58.242)
did start it so it's stuck on what says starting

Mike (46:07.769)
Lindsay Hiken (46:10.05)
But it has, it's recording. It shows that it's recording.

Mike (46:10.331)
Well, shows. Yeah. Yeah. It says 99 % uploaded right now. 1653 out of 1659 uploaded. So we could probably leave just unless you hit that and it stops it. When it says starting, we could just leave and it would

Lindsay Hiken (46:29.516)
It won't,

Mike (46:30.682)
have it up.

Lindsay Hiken (46:32.952)
Yeah, it won't let me leave. That is so bizarre. I can see that it's recording. I can see that. And I don't know why it's scratchy either. I'll mark this clip so you can.

Mike (46:45.503)
Yeah, it seemed to happen 42 minutes in.

Lindsay Hiken (46:49.91)
Yeah, and I'm not plugged into my little work.

cell phone off because they were saying that it could be a cell phone issue.

Mike (46:59.547)
Yeah, yeah. Maybe your microphone just decides that 40 minutes just taps out and it's like this is what I got. Not OK, yeah.

Lindsay Hiken (47:08.175)
That's not okay. That's... nah. Alright, well guess we're just gonna...

Mike (47:14.592)
Leave and I'll sort it out. I'll check it out. Text me immediately to let you know if it's in there or not.

Lindsay Hiken (47:20.425)
my gosh, I hope it's there.

Mike (47:22.457)
It'll be there. If not, we'll do it tomorrow or the next day.

Lindsay Hiken (47:26.294)
OK. Thanks, Mike. It was good listening to you. Leave studio. So I end session for all or leave studio? What do you think? OK. Bye. send me those links so I can put them on our Facebook page. OK. All righty.

Mike (47:30.554)
Yeah.

Mike (47:35.177)
In session for all.

Alright, see ya, Lindsay. Yeah. Yes. Okay, I'll sign up you immediately. Alright, bye.