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From Hypervigilance to Mindfulness: A Navy SEAL's Path to Inner Peace (feat. Jon Macaskill)
184 Plays11 months ago
Welcome back to The Therapy4Dads Podcast! In today's episode, we have a very special guest joining us, Jon Macaskill (pronounced Muh-KAS-kill) is a retired Navy SEAL Commander turned mindfulness teacher and leadership coach. During his 24-year Navy career, he served in multiple highly dynamic leadership positions, from the battlefield to the operations center and the board room. Jon's unconventional yet highly effective style of teaching leadership is fueled by his passion for helping people and organizations become the best versions of themselves. He takes what helped him excel in his professional life and heal in his personal life and now shares this through mindfulness coaching, grit and resilience training, and keynote speaking, all in the pursuit of helping others achieve their full potential.
Here are 3 key takeaways from this eye-opening conversation:
1️⃣ Processing Trauma: Jon emphasizes the significance of addressing trauma early on, rather than bottling it up. Trauma is not a disorder; it's a natural human response. Seeking professional help and utilizing tools like mindfulness and meditation can play a vital role in processing trauma and promoting mental well-being.
2️⃣ Hypervigilance & Stress: Jon sheds light on the impacts of hypermasculinity, the fear of losing identity, and the constant need to maintain a tough exterior. Hypervigilance can keep us in a perpetual fight-or-flight state, leading to burnout and difficulty in connecting emotionally. Mindfulness practices can help break through these barriers and offer tools to better handle stress, anxiety, and sadness.
3️⃣ Mindfulness and Parenting: Jon shares his journey as a father, highlighting how mindfulness has transformed his parenting approach. By being fully present and mindful, he prioritizes family time, strengthens bonds, and cherishes the limited moments he has with his children. Mindfulness enables him to better navigate the challenges of hypervigilance and create a healthy balance between protection and giving his children the space to learn and grow.
Remember, taking care of our mental fitness is just as important as physical fitness. Let's break the stigma around vulnerability and build a stronger, more resilient community.
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Transcript
Coping with Loss and Moving On
00:00:00
Speaker
You know, dealing with the sadness that we felt when we lost a brother or brothers on the battlefield, that was, hey, we can be sad for a moment, but now we have to move on, right? There's a mission at hand. And I still understand that. I think it's still a good thing. But we're also human beings, right? We're, yes, we're men, but we're human beings first.
Podcast Introduction
00:00:23
Speaker
This is a Therapy for Dads podcast. I am your host. My name is Travis. I'm a therapist, a dad, a husband. Here at Therapy for Dads, we provide content around the integration of holistic mental health, well-researched evidence-based education, and parenthood. Welcome.
Guest Introduction: John McCaskill
00:00:42
Speaker
Welcome, everybody, to this week's episode of the Therapy for Dads podcast. I'm excited to have this guest on today. I'm very excited for our conversation today. And I think it's going to be very informative, insightful. It's going to be, I think, also very tangible and relatable and might be even challenging a bit, depending on where you fall and your thoughts on this particular subject.
00:01:05
Speaker
or your experience with this particular subject. But before we go into the topic, I first want to introduce John and welcome John to the show. How you doing? I'm doing great, Travis. Thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here.
00:01:18
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'm so excited that you said yes, I wanted to be on the show and share, you know, something that's very personal to you and something you're passionate about and something you're doing. And I think it's going to be such a good, rich conversation today. So before we again, we jump into that. Can you tell us a bit about who John is just to give us kind of like an idea of what we're getting into?
Navy Career and Mindfulness Journey
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I guess you and your audience need to know a little bit about me so that they want to listen, right? So yeah, John McCaskill, I am a 24 year Navy veteran. And of that 24 years, I spent 17 years in the SEAL teams or connected to special operations in some capacity.
00:01:57
Speaker
And, uh, let's see backing up even prior to that, grew up in a small town of Ruston, Louisiana, and part of a big family, five kids born in South Africa, moved to the States when we were, or when I was seven years old back in 1984. So definitely dating myself here and grew up in that, that small town Ruston and then went from Ruston directly into the enlisted ranks of the Navy.
00:02:22
Speaker
from the enlisted ranks got picked up and went into the Naval Academy. And then from graduating from the Naval Academy went into SEAL training and the Navy SEALs afterwards. But what I do now is completely different than most people would imagine as a retired Navy SEAL.
Military Struggles and Mindfulness Discovery
00:02:38
Speaker
I teach and coach mindfulness and leadership and how those two go together or mindfulness and leadership alone, either one alone.
00:02:46
Speaker
And that all started with some tragedy, actually. I was connected to an operation that went sideways overseas and lost a lot of friends. And that caused me a lot of survivor's guilt and anxiety and depression. And I initially self-medicated with alcohol and then went into
00:03:09
Speaker
abusing prescription medication. And that got me to a very dark spot in my life and finally sought some professional counseling and the counselor recommended mindfulness and meditation to me. And I'll get a little bit more into that story here shortly, but that mindfulness and meditation
00:03:28
Speaker
changed my life for the better and ultimately I believe saved my life and that's why I feel it's a duty and an obligation now to pay it forward and share these life-changing and life-saving practices with anyone and everyone who will listen.
00:03:43
Speaker
I mean I'm captivated already by the story and you've gone through a lot it sounds like and your story and narrative of who you were as a child and then coming to the states and getting going through your kind of journeying so to speak and then hitting tragedy and finding ways to cope I think it's very common finding ways it sounds like numbing and not feel and just deal with the pain not feel this pain anymore than finding mindfulness
00:04:04
Speaker
I'm sure there's more nuance to this, discovering and engaging in it, and at first maybe rejecting it, I'm sure, but can you speak a bit more about the journey of you had a significant loss, and I'm wondering, kind of growing up, maybe a little bit of a glimpse of
00:04:20
Speaker
You know john as a child teen you know young adult you know was there much conversation around mental health or conversation around like emotional intelligence or conversation around even mind this idea of mindfulness or was that something that was even anywhere near your radar growing up.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah. If it was, if it was near my radar, you know what, now that you asked that question, that's the first time I've ever been asked that question in that way. It wasn't called mindfulness. I went, my mother was a yoga practitioner, not heavy, but she did it a little bit as I was growing up. And I remember now, I mean, I hadn't even thought about it until you asked that question. I haven't thought about it in years.
00:05:04
Speaker
I remember going to one of her yoga sessions and kind of sitting in the back and seeing these people quote unquote stretching and just kind of wondering what it was all about, not really having any clue. And at the very end, the the instructor invited me to join for a meditation. Now this is again when I'm I don't know, I must have been like 11 or 12 years old. And I sat there and
Early Encounters with Mindfulness
00:05:27
Speaker
went through what he guided. And, you know, as an 11 or 12 year old, my first introduction to meditation, I was like, okay, my mind is on everything else. Didn't really, didn't really stick, didn't really resonate with me. So that was, that was there, but that was, that one instance didn't really stick with me. So I didn't directly learn about mindfulness and meditation until years later, which I'll get into here in a second.
00:05:54
Speaker
But going back to my childhood, my parents taught some level of emotional intelligence though it wasn't, I don't believe it was active. It was more of a kind of by example passive. They modeled it as much as they could and they were amazing parents and they still are. My parents are still around and they're still amazing examples to me of strength and grit and resilience and emotional intelligence for the most part.
00:06:23
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I learned it, but it was mostly passive, the emotional intelligence piece, the mindfulness meditation. Um, you know, my parents talked about, Hey, try to pay, you know, you know, the proverbial stop and smell the flowers, right? They didn't say it in those terms, but they're like, Hey, let's, let's focus on here. Now let's not, not think about X, Y, or Z in the future, X, Y, and Z in the past, but they didn't call it mindfulness.
00:06:48
Speaker
And that mindfulness and meditation didn't really come into play until many years later when I was having those struggles. I did go to some health and wellness retreats and I remember in one of them there was meditation taught and the example was to just kind of picture a giant stop sign.
00:07:11
Speaker
in this meditation and that just didn't work for me and at that point I was convinced that meditation was for people of slower moving lives, slower paced lives and not for people with quote unquote my life, my busy life, you know my busy mind and I convinced myself that I was not a person who could meditate.
00:07:35
Speaker
And then fast forward to this counselor who recommended mindfulness and meditation. Because I'd had that experience before, I kind of laughed in his face. And I was like, well, mindfulness and meditation is for hippies and monks and weirdos. It's not for me.
00:07:52
Speaker
Not for Navy SEAL. Not for this Navy SEAL, right? And so he was like, well, what if I could give you a pill that would improve your performance personally and professionally, physically and mentally? And when he said it that way, I was like, yeah, doc, whatever pill that is, I'll take it because as a Navy SEAL or a type A personality, you're always looking for an edge, you know, whether that's an edge over the enemy on the battlefield or your buddy right next to you, you're always looking for an edge.
00:08:20
Speaker
And he said, well, it's not a pill. It's mindfulness and meditation. So he sold this thing, this mindfulness and meditation, these two practices or ways of living based on performance. And I started practicing. I initially, I initially had challenges. I sat down for an hour long meditation on day one and it didn't go very well.
00:08:38
Speaker
But after some guidance from that same counselor about how to start, I got into much shorter meditations and then eventually worked my way into longer and more in-depth meditations. And the performance side was initially, again, what sold me on it. And I did see the performance enhancement, but I also saw that I handled stress better, that I handled anxiety better, that I handled depression better.
00:09:07
Speaker
very intentionally saying it that way. Because a lot of people, I'm sure you've heard of mindfulness-based stress reduction, right? MBSR. And I fully believe that mindfulness-based stress reduction, but I don't believe it reduces stress. What I believe it does is it gives you tools to better handle stress.
00:09:29
Speaker
So I wish it was called mindfulness based stress handling or stress processing because I don't believe it reduces it. And that's a fallacy like stress is going to be in our lives. That's part of the human situation that we're in stress is there. But we handle it differently based on
00:09:47
Speaker
where we are in our lives based on how much sleep we had, based on how much we're eating, based on how much coffee or caffeine we've had. And I think mindfulness helps to process
Mindfulness Benefits and Appeal
00:09:58
Speaker
it. Now, so coming back to my story, I started it for the performance enhancing sides and the quote unquote side effects where that I was better able to handle all these other things. Now I am an avid practitioner.
00:10:13
Speaker
and proponent of it, and that is because of the side effects. Those side effects have now become my primary reason to practice, and the now side effects are the performance that's helped improve my performance. But my primary goal is so that I can better handle
00:10:32
Speaker
the stress, the anxiety, the sadness that comes into our lives inevitably, and so that I can feel like I'm more present in my own life with my family, with my colleagues, with personally and professionally, I feel happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. And then the side effect is that I feel that I perform better.
00:10:52
Speaker
Yeah. And I love how he pitched it and sold you on a, you know, would you take this pill if it gave you X, Y, and Z? And it was like the buy-in or the Trojan horse of who I want. That's a great way of putting it. Yeah. You got me. You know, and he did. And you're like, oh, yeah, I do want that because that's time I need to perform. I need to have an edge. I need to, you know, be more efficient and have these things.
00:11:16
Speaker
And what a way to sell. I mean, it's smart. It wasn't a lie, but it was a way to make sense in your mind of what you needed to hear. And then here you go. And I definitely want to talk more about some of the benefits you're noticing and some of the things you're doing now. But back then, when you had this big tragic incident, and I'm wondering too, another piece I'm thinking about before the tragic incident of the loss, the horrible event that you experienced,
00:11:39
Speaker
Going a little bit again about what you were modeled as a kid, I'm wondering, was there any frame or did the idea of what it means to be a man, being masculine, how did that also shape you when maybe this tragic incident occurred?
Masculine Stereotypes and Emotional Expression in Military
00:11:55
Speaker
What were you thinking in your head or to respond to this incident? Did that play a part at all?
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, so growing up, my father was an outstanding example to me of honesty, integrity, being a man of your word, but he wasn't the typical stereotype of masculinity.
00:12:18
Speaker
He was and is still a cyclist who was very caring. Yes, he was the protector and provider for the family, but he wasn't harsh. He wasn't stoic. He wasn't a conqueror that so many of us imagine when we hear the term masculinity. But he cherished, my mom still does, was a gentleman.
00:12:47
Speaker
I believe that he, he modeled what a gentleman, but not the, not the typical false bravado image that we get when we picture masculinity, that image to me of, of what we all.
00:13:03
Speaker
have in the past imagined as masculine, big, tough, full of muscles, can conquer the world, provide and protect all simultaneously. I think came from, I had a track and cross country coach that was very tough. Even though he was a track and cross country runner and somewhat small physically in stature, in my mind, he was huge.
00:13:29
Speaker
as far as the way that he carried himself and our team our cross-country team this is back in you know the early and mid 90s it was a bunch of guys and we all promoted the typical masculine
00:13:45
Speaker
movies, the typical masculine books, you know, like Die Hard, Rambo, all those, all those kind of ultra violent movies that are, I mean, they're still fun to watch, but I think they're a little ridiculous and they promote an image of manhood that is not typical. But we start to believe that that's what masculinity is.
00:14:07
Speaker
Fast forward that image that I had taken from the movies, from my coach, from the cross country team into the Navy and into the Naval Academy, that image is further kind of ingrained, right? You have to be tough, tough, tough to be a military member.
00:14:26
Speaker
And then take that and further refine it even more in the SEAL teams. The SEAL teams are a hyper-masculine energy, and they kind of have to be. We're very competitive. We are the protectors and the conquerors in that field. And because of that,
00:14:46
Speaker
emotional intelligence is not something that, at least at the time, was at the forefront of our minds. You know, dealing with the sadness that we felt when we lost a brother or brothers on the battlefield, that was
00:15:02
Speaker
hey we can be sad for a moment but now we have to move on right there's a mission at hand and i still understand that i think it's still a good thing but we're also human beings right we're yes we're men but we're human beings first and with that comes sadness from loss.
00:15:21
Speaker
It comes times when you're going to feel inadequate and maybe you need to talk to somebody and it's tough to do that in an uber masculine group, at least initially. It's tough to be vulnerable. Vulnerability was not something that we celebrated.
00:15:38
Speaker
I mean, as we've come to realize in the past years, I mean, Brene Brown is out there laying the groundwork on how vulnerability is a strength, and I fully believe that. But in her Netflix special that she has, she talks about, she sits down next to a guy on the airplane, and he says, well, what do you do? And he says, and she says, well, I speak about courage and vulnerability. And he says, oh, you're talking about two different sides of the spectrum.
00:16:06
Speaker
Well, no, that's not the case at all. Vulnerability and courage and strength are all on the same sides of the spectrum. And in my mind, back in the SEAL teams, and I'm sure in many other guys' minds back in the SEAL teams, and still today, vulnerability is
00:16:22
Speaker
kind of looked at as a weakness. It's looked at as a chink in your armor, right? That is something we don't want anybody to know about, so we're going to hide it. And that metaphor carries forward. That armor is something that we put on every single day in the SEAL teams as men.
Processing Trauma with Mindfulness
00:16:40
Speaker
in society writ large. I think people writ large, we put on these masks and these armors that prevent us from showing who we truly are and having true connections with people.
00:16:56
Speaker
Now, that all said, mindfulness and meditation, I believe, has really allowed me to do some deep introspective work and find out who I am underneath that armor, because there were times when that armor hid who I was from myself. Like, I didn't even know who I was, right? And when I was able to do that, those med, some meditations, some things bubbled up to the surface of who I was, some things that
00:17:25
Speaker
Had happened in my past that I didn't process properly that I've kind of boxed up I mean that that one incident where we lost a lot of guys was one of them I was like, you know what? I've got to focus on the next mission and Again, there's there's value in that but at the same time as the human being that's tough Eventually, you have to process that stuff as I'm sure you've read Bessel van der Kolk's book the body keeps the score it does and it bubbles bubbles to the surface and
00:17:50
Speaker
And when it does, you've got to be ready to handle that. So these things bubble to the surface about who I truly was, who I truly am, and things that had been trauma through childhood or through the military, those things bubble to the surface. And I was able to process that with a professional clinician.
00:18:12
Speaker
And I think that's where the value of mindfulness and meditation and having some type of professional mental health support in place all simultaneously, those things go together and they can help to really address post-traumatic
00:18:29
Speaker
experiences and the stress response that you have from those. I hate the term PTSD because I don't think stress, traumatic stress and your natural human response to that traumatic stress is a disorder.
00:18:48
Speaker
I think it is a natural human response. I agree with you. Really the ones who are exposed to traumatic stress and are not changed by it, those are the people that I'm actually more concerned about.
00:19:02
Speaker
And I agree, it's not a disorder. I think we need to, I think language is powerful and it makes a difference. I think we do need to shift the language from disorder to something else, like more just a response, you know, just, you know, post-traumatic stress response, you know, or like an anxiety response or depressive response, something that's more, you know, that's a nervous system. But again, that was a quick thing. We could talk about that, you know, student reporters, they call it giggle theory, Bess O'Vanna Cork, like all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's all true. And now for a short break.
00:19:30
Speaker
So if you're looking for ways to support the show and my YouTube channel, head on over to buy me a copy.com forward slash therapy for dads. There you can make a one time donation or join the monthly subscription service to support all that I'm doing at the intersection of fatherhood and mental health.
00:19:47
Speaker
And all the proceeds go right back into all the work that I'm doing into production and to continue to grow the show to bring on new guests. So again, head on over to buy me a coffee.com forward slash therapy for dads. Thanks. And let's get back to the show.
00:20:02
Speaker
Two things I want to look at real quick with the vulnerability piece, and I think it's so key, because you kind of, you hinted at it, you kind of said it, but I want to kind of break down. One, what are the positives and pros of wearing a mask and moving on? Because there's an adaptive response, and now you've read all this stuff, obviously, so you know that there's an adaptive response to masking, to even numbing, to moving on. It's not negative, necessarily. It's not bad.
00:20:30
Speaker
So I wonder if we could speak to like, what are the positives of masking and moving on to the next mission as well as, well, what are some of the, maybe the detrimental effects if we continue to mask and just continue to move on and continue to, you know, wear our armor, so to speak. Cause I think, I think it's important that we look at both because sometimes at least a lot doing my practice, often I'm validating why we do this. It's looking at, this makes sense why you're doing this. It's, there's a reason why it serves an adaptive positive purpose, but often in the short term. So can we.
00:21:00
Speaker
Can you speak maybe from your own personal experience of what you've seen on both of those? The positives? Yeah, no, 100%. So this particular event that I was involved with was in 2005. I escorted the bodies of two of my friends back to the States, flew them back into Dover and
00:21:17
Speaker
you know, turn them over to the
Compartmentalization and Human Needs
00:21:19
Speaker
people who processed them from there and then rented a car, drove from Dover down to Virginia Beach, prepared for their funerals and memorial services and everything else. And then after those,
00:21:33
Speaker
moved on to the next deployment training cycle and pressed on. So this was 2005. So there wasn't, again, a whole lot of focus on mental health, mental fitness, processing trauma, processing the death of your friends on the battlefield.
00:21:49
Speaker
Fast forward to 2013 was my last combat deployment. And I came back from that with the team. We all formally did what was at the time, I'm not sure what it's called anymore, but at the time it was called TLD for third location decompression. Meeting first location is your home point.
00:22:12
Speaker
Home port, second location is your deployment port. Third location is some kind of neutral location between those two where you can come back and that decompression looked like you would go into a hotel room, probably go and have a few drinks with your buddies, rehash the deployment for a day or two. But you also had like formal things that you had to go to like counseling, how to reintegrate into your family after being gone for six months.
00:22:41
Speaker
And then finally, the reason I'm telling this kind of long drawn out story will come into play here in a second. Finally, a piece of it that was supposed to be for mental health is called the checkup from the neck up. And you go in while you're there in the hotel and they have another hotel room specifically set where they have a clinician.
00:22:59
Speaker
and you go in and this clinician asks you a set of questions and it's supposed to be, hey, how did you deal with the stress of the deployment? Did you see dead bodies? Did you lose any friends? Did you feel anxious or depressed? And I understand the intent behind it, but coming back to that armor that we were all wearing, like the last thing that we want to do when we get back from a deployment
00:23:24
Speaker
is sit in some third location away from our families, like we're ready to get back to our families, right? And the last thing that we want to do is tele-clinician, oh man, I'm really struggling with something and now be potentially delayed even more from going to see our family. So I understand the positive intent there and I appreciate the desire, but it was not fully thought through about who you're working with and their desire to get back to their families.
00:23:52
Speaker
So, of course, you're gonna be like, no, man, I'm good, I'm good. So, this checkup from the neck up didn't really work out. So, now I tell you all that to say, in 2005, I boxed this stuff up from what I had seen, what I had done, what I had not done, because that can sometimes be just as detrimental to somebody's mental health as what they have done.
00:24:17
Speaker
box that stuff up, moved on to the next deployment training cycle. And then in 2013 came back different way of going through it, but mentally still did the same thing. I'm like, Oh man, I'm good boxing it up. Let's move on. There's value in that because we are the special operators in the, in the world, the military members in the world as a whole.
00:24:39
Speaker
We are an asset. We are an asset to the country and we are here to protect and defend. The downside to that is that as much as we are an asset, we're again, like I mentioned at the beginning, we are human beings. And yes, we need to be able to move on to the next target, the next mission at hand, the next ridgeline that we call it in the military. Focus on that next ridgeline. Well, that's all well and good if you're a robot.
00:25:06
Speaker
but we're not. And, you know, boxing it up, as we discussed before, the body knows it's it happened. And one of my buddies is like, Hey, man, when you box that stuff up, and you take these boxes, and you kind of put it in the basement, quote unquote, it goes down into the basement. And this is a great kind of image for it, it goes out down into the basement, it gets out of that box, but it may and it stays in that basement. But that basement is kind of like prison, where there's a whole lot of weights around.
00:25:34
Speaker
And these things kind of work out get stronger and then when you finally do open up that that basement all these things come out and they're that much stronger so the only way to really get past these things is to process them.
00:25:49
Speaker
Now, do they have to be processed right away? No, but I do believe they need to be processed soon. So I think a way to do that is to do something similar to the checkup from the neck up, but don't do it in between leaving the deployment location and being home with your family.
00:26:11
Speaker
At some point, you have to have some type of formal checkups. And I think they're doing that now. I think the mental health focus is much better. And it's not just mental health. It's mental fitness, like attaining and maintaining some level of mental fitness. And that includes processing trauma. It includes improving your memory and your focus and your ability to process things on the battlefield. So we have these things called the mind gym.
00:26:40
Speaker
which are great for us, but it's also dealing with the trauma, the anxiety, the stress, the depression that we may face in and after the military. I think what I heard, and I think the theme that we keep coming back to in this episode is that we are at the core, not that it's rocket science to figure this out, but I think you're repeating it for a reason, because it's something that we can lose is that we're human.
00:27:07
Speaker
You know that at the core we're not robots and we need to treat the human in front of us and do it in a humane way in a way that makes sense and maybe the way in which we had it done and set up was well-intended and this kind of this TLD this way of connecting but in our minds we we were done ready to go home and didn't want to because I'm wondering was there fear around if I did say something what it would delay would was there any fear of any other repercussions to outside of delay of like if I
00:27:36
Speaker
gosh I say something and sure I can't see my family and was there other possible things that was like
00:27:42
Speaker
Yeah, there's a fear of losing your security clearance. All Navy SEALs have at least a secret clearance. Most of us have top secret or top secret SCI, which is secret compartmentalized information. And those clearances take a lot of time to get. And if you lose it, it takes a lot of time to get back.
Mental Health Support Misconceptions
00:28:06
Speaker
And if you lose it,
00:28:07
Speaker
you can potentially be taken out of the SEAL community as a whole at worst or at best you can be potentially delayed in your training or something. So there is definitely
00:28:22
Speaker
a reticence to admitting that you're struggling mentally or that you at least have a challenge mentally. Now, that perception is actually not true. I mean, there are certain things mentally that if you display, they're definitely going to take away your clearance.
00:28:39
Speaker
But if you say, hey, look, I'm struggling with the loss of a friend on the battlefield, they're not going to take away your clearance. If you, if you say, I'm struggling with some anxiety because of hypervigilance, they're not going to take away your clearance. They're going to process, they're going to help you to process that. They're going to get you to the counselors that, that you may need to, to see. So there's just a, there's definitely a misconception in the military about, or at least there was now got to understand I'm, I'm
00:29:08
Speaker
three years removed from the military. And even prior to that, the last two years, I was somewhat on the exit ramp.
00:29:16
Speaker
And what I mean by that is I was, I was starting to get ready to get out. So my, my stuff is dated. My information is dated and they, I believe they're doing much better at that. And I believe that they're also doing much better at kind of squashing those, those rumors or misperceptions. Yeah. Right. Cause maybe at one point in time, it was true. That was my guess. Very well of truth. Somebody, somebody may have said, Hey, uh, I'm, I'm considering taking my life or somebody else's.
00:29:46
Speaker
Well, at that point, you may not want them around weapons or, I don't know again, at what level these security clearances do go away, but they can be temporarily revoked and then reinstated. So anyway.
00:30:04
Speaker
And so what I hear in that too is whether it was perceived real that it was a threat to the nervous system, right? Well gosh, if I say this, there's a threat that I, in a way, if you think of it like a safety and threat nervous system, and you'll track me with this because you've read these books, but the nervous system's like, well, it's a threat that I have to be delayed for my family, I wanna get home. It'd be a threat that if I lost my security clearance to show what's really going on for me, it's a threat, then what? Okay, then I'm not a SEAL anymore, I can't do my job, then I can't.
00:30:34
Speaker
That's a huge threat of your whole life, who you are, identity, livelihood, what you do. Because it is a threat to your identity. So many guys, because they've put so much into becoming a SEAL and staying a SEAL, it becomes part of who they are. Sometimes it becomes all of who they are. And when the threat is there of having that part of their identity or all of their identity taken away,
00:31:02
Speaker
There's a big question that hangs of, who am I if I am not a SEAL? And a lot of the time people feel that if they are not a SEAL, they're nobody. And that can be very tough psychologically. Sure. Well, because then who am I? I mean, that's like a soul like, that's everything, you know, that's like the biggest threat. It's an existential crisis.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, and so I'm not going to go anywhere near that, so I gotta look to the next ridge, I gotta keep moving, and so it's about survival, that I gotta keep survival, Steve is surviving, and in fact I did survive, and I can't stop to really think and smell the flowers and really look at this because there's all these
00:31:40
Speaker
perceived and or real threats that if I do do something it might change who I am and especially if my whole identity is in this it's like I'm not gonna go anywhere near that and then maybe some of the culture too of hyper masculinity of no vulnerability keep your armor on which again serves a purpose I don't want to knock that I think there's in some cases in some things you do need to have like compartmentalize and push on so you can do your job especially as a first responder or you know you know a SEAL these kind of certain jobs that require some level of that for a time
00:32:09
Speaker
And then, so it's adaptive, right? It's about survival. So I got to keep going. But eventually we got to like, I think the image you gave about the stuff getting stronger and working out in our downstairs basement is so true because you're right, that stuff just grows. And the negatives of that is we got to then become more creative on keeping that door shut.
00:32:29
Speaker
and maybe that's why often men will turn to drinking or other things because it becomes harder to keep that door shut it becomes more difficult because it starts to kind of ooze out it's almost like i always give the image of like a boat that has holes and if you have one hole you know i think of that cartoon right you could you could plug it with a finger right and then yeah
00:32:49
Speaker
another hole and plug that one and then eventually you know you're plugging it but eventually you just you don't have enough fingers and toes and then you're doing this game of trying to plug it but it's it's filling and you're desperately trying to keep that thing from from sinking sure but it's a losing battle it's almost like the game to whack a mole if you ever played that game
00:33:06
Speaker
As a matter of fact, funny, you should use that term. I was, we just interviewed Dr. Janelle McCauley, who's a friend of mine and she's also a combat veteran and PhD and big mindfulness practitioner. And she said that's kind of, she used that exact same term, the whack-a-mole is that.
00:33:25
Speaker
We are putting out these different fires, reacting to these different stressors throughout our day, throughout our lives, and eventually you're going to miss one of these things and it's going to get away and it's going to cause some type of anxiety or some type of stress response.
00:33:43
Speaker
And it's not, you don't get tickets at the end of this game, right? You get, you know, other negative possible, possibly other significant negative detriment. So what are some other negative detriments that you either that you experienced or that you've seen happen to guys and that gets stuck in that kind of survival response of just keeping the armor on of just moving forward. What are some of the top things that you've experienced or seen happen?
00:34:10
Speaker
For myself, it was difficulty to relate to others. I'm on my second marriage and I don't harbor any ill will towards my ex-wife, but I struggled to relate to her and understand
00:34:28
Speaker
the challenges that she was having in her own life and connecting with her on a personal level, on a romantic level, it was next to impossible because all I kind of thought about was, hey, I've been exposed to trauma and I need to squash this trauma. It took time and energy
00:34:51
Speaker
away from me to where I wasn't able to devote that time and energy to having any type of emotional intelligence. At least not at home. The professional side of me, I still felt that I needed to be that professional and I devoted time and energy to being that good leader in the workspace.
00:35:12
Speaker
But then when I went home and I was able to drop that armor, it was tough for me to be the human being and the husband that I needed to be. And I know as men, that's something we often do is we portray a different image professionally than we do personally. And even that personal image that we display to our family and our friends.
00:35:38
Speaker
can be very different than the private image that we truly are. So that was one.
Hypervigilance in Daily Life and Parenting
00:35:45
Speaker
Hypervigilance is definitely one that I struggled with and many guys struggle with, not wanting to go to an area where there's a lot of people. If you do go to an area of a lot of people constantly looking for the exits,
00:36:01
Speaker
being aware of ways to get out, potentially, I mean, carrying a weapon, I have a knife on me right now, I carry a knife on me all the time. And, you know, sitting down at a restaurant and having to face the door so that you can see who's coming in, or have, again, an eye on the exit, being suspicious of new people coming into your life, who are these people? And what's their motivation? Why do they want to know me?
00:36:28
Speaker
There's certainly a level of vigilance that I think we all need to have because there are times when we know from watching the news, from being friends with people who've lost significant others.
00:36:44
Speaker
There, there are, there is evil out there and I'm not going to get into a, or onto a big soapbox about that, but there's a level of vigilance that we all have to have, right? The sympathetic nervous system serves a purpose and it is there to keep us alive. And it is there to help to propagate the species. That said, when that nervous system, when we are living in the sympathetic state all the time, kind of living in the red as kind of a race car analogy.
00:37:13
Speaker
If a race car is constantly in the red, when it needs to accelerate, it's not able to because it's constantly in the red. And by living in the red all the time, that race car's engine is eventually going to burn out.
00:37:28
Speaker
Well, that's how we are where because we're hyper vigilant, we're living in that red, we're not able to ramp up if we need to. And over and above that we burn out. And so that hypervigilance is definitely something that is not where we want to be. We want to be able to get down into that sympathetic state or sorry, the parasympathetic state and live in the kind of green or maybe the yellow. And then if we need to, we can ramp up and then we don't burn out.
00:37:56
Speaker
I love that it's a good image of the car. You're right, because that hypervigilance is you're kind of stuck there. And that leads to a bunch of things, you know, breakdown of your body, you know, fatigue. People have bowel issues, hair loss. I mean, a whole bunch of issues can come from living that way. And it's kind of a, you're stuck in sympathetic and you're stuck in a fight flight state.
00:38:17
Speaker
you can't really relax and you also can't really engage with people either, right? You can't because that part of your brain is it's like in a way kind of disconnected because you're in your survival brain so you're constantly on edge. You can't really just engage. You can to some degree, it's not like you can't but it's different than kind of that ventral parasympathetic, you know, I could relax and drop my shoulders and I don't need to be on guard because there's
00:38:41
Speaker
Because in a sympathetic state, it's more cues of threat than safety. So it's more threat. And so you have to kind of stay alert. And I think a lot of guys too that I've seen that are stuck in sympathetic to get out of it. It won't be through mindfulness, which helps you get down to parasympathetic.
00:38:57
Speaker
they'll go drink, which actually gets into the dorsal kind of shut down, numbing, which is a different way of, you know, you know, that's like the, it's a different way of the engine getting out of the red. It's like shutting it down completely. Like, but not in a good way. It's like you hit red and the car just stopped. It's like, Oh, okay. What happened? You know, I ran out of fuel or something. So it works in the sense that it stops that sympathetic energy, but it not an effective way long-term because it just kind of, you just numb out and disconnect and disassociate, which is often from
00:39:25
Speaker
post-traumatic stress response and some other things as we go to that numbing disconnected state as survival again trying to stop the body to forcing it to slow down but that could also too have some detrimental effects so I think it was a great example of being hypervigilant because that's a very clinical term which you get because you've done it but
00:39:40
Speaker
I appreciate the nuance, and I think those listening kind of got a sense of, oh yeah. You can also, I think, I've seen it as constantly anxious just in general. You may not know why you're anxious or overly worried about just things and things happening, and your brain can't stop. You just kind of have this energy that is just there. You might wake up on anxious or worried or go to bed and can't sleep. Your mind's racing, things like that.
00:40:04
Speaker
Right. And you know, I mean, since this, this show is therapy for dads, I want to kind of bring in what that could look like as a father. Please do. Now, I do believe I'm, I'm starting to manage my hypervigilance, but I have three young children and you know, the hugs comes into play in trying to protect them from being hurt.
00:40:25
Speaker
in any way, it comes into play in being very cautious of who they play with as far as other children and what their parents have taught them as far as being risk averse or not. And again, there's a level of vigilance that is healthy, awareness rather, maybe not vigilance, a level of awareness that is healthy. But when
00:40:53
Speaker
When my kids go to a playground and there's other adults around, I am very alert of who these adults are. Are they there with other kids or are they there by themselves as an adult walking around the playground?
00:41:08
Speaker
And again, I think there's a level of that that's that is healthy and important to have. But when it starts getting to the point where like, I don't want I don't want my kids around any adults, aside from me and my wife, then maybe then maybe there's a level of vigilance that has gotten from vigilance or awareness into hyper vigilance.
00:41:28
Speaker
but yeah like my kids you know and again this is being the protector right as the dad is as the masculine energy provider protector conqueror if if my kid is doing something that's going to get them hurt there's a desire to keep them from being hurt but at the same time
00:41:46
Speaker
Kids have got to learn, right? We all learned growing up, we got hurt and inevitably they're going to get hurt. There's no way that you can protect them from everything. And sometimes getting hurt or, and that's physically or emotionally, sometimes that's an important lesson for them. And you cannot wrap them up in bubble wrap and keep them from being hurt from everything.
00:42:07
Speaker
So that hypervigilance comes into play as a father or as a parent as well. And sometimes that drives my beautiful bride crazy. She's like, hey, look, they're going to ride their bike. You can't keep them from riding a bike.
00:42:24
Speaker
And one more quick thing about being a dad, I'm wondering, since you brought it in, I'm so glad you did, I'm wondering how John, pre-mindfulness versus John now, having this practice, this routine, when you think of even engaging your kids or parenting when kids are having a hard time emotionally, if you're coming home, is there a different version of you now, of how you are when you're with your kids and maybe they're having a hard time pre-mindfulness practice to now?
00:42:53
Speaker
Yeah, I will preface this with saying I'm certainly not perfect in this. I'm not either, by the way. I said all the time on the show, I'm a trained clinician and I don't get it right all the time and I'm constantly having to reassess. And that's why it's called a practice, right? It's a practice. We're not experts.
00:43:12
Speaker
The one anecdote that always kind of pops into my mind when we talk about this is when my oldest daughter now was like three weeks old or, you know, prior to that. As a brand new baby would do, she would cry in the middle of the night because she was hungry. And there were nights that it was my turn to go and feed her. And as embarrassing as this is to admit, this three-week-old crying because she was hungry would annoy me.
00:43:38
Speaker
in the middle of the night, I'm like, Oh my gosh, how dare this three week old annoy me and wake me up, right? So embarrassing to admit. So I would go out, get this bottle, warm it up, take it back to her. I'm feeding this beautiful little miracle. I'm holding her in my arms. And what am I thinking about? Work. I'm thinking about work the next day. I'm thinking about what I screwed up the week before. My mind is on everything except this beautiful little baby girl that's in my arms. And now
00:44:05
Speaker
I've got my mind racing. I take her and I put her in a crib and I go back to bed. And because my mind is racing, I cannot fall asleep. Now fast forward. This is around the time when I'm becoming an avid practitioner. Fast forward two, three months. Still, she's getting up in the middle of the night. I'm still having to feed her. But the way that I think about it is, oh, this is awesome. This is my time to spend alone with her.
00:44:29
Speaker
Go warm up the bottle, get her, have her in my arms, and what am I paying attention to? I'm paying attention to her, and the little coos and noises that this three-month-old is making, and I'm paying attention to her reaching up and grabbing my fingers, and I'm in the here and now, which that is in and of itself mindfulness. And then when I'm done, I put her in a crib, I go back, and I lay in my bed,
00:44:53
Speaker
and i'm able to fall asleep because i haven't ramped my mind up that's that to me granted this is years ago now that to me is an anecdote that's like the before and after john with kids now the how this comes into play now is i come home from work
00:45:10
Speaker
And it's very easy to get wrapped up in this thing, my phone, and be like, I'm going to continue work even though I'm at home. But the mindful John will be like, Hey, John, put your phone aside. You're at home. Let's enjoy this time of again, being a human being instead of a human doing the human beings spending some time with my, my beautiful bride.
00:45:33
Speaker
my beautiful children because that time is limited. We spend, we spend more waking hours at work than we do waking hours with our family, unfortunately.
Being Present with Family
00:45:43
Speaker
And before we know it, those children who are still very young are going to be grown adults and they're going to be going out and doing their own thing and they're not going to need me. And at that point, then I'm going to be like,
00:45:53
Speaker
Man, I wish I had put the phone down. I wish I had worked less and spent more time with my family. So the mindful John, again, is still not perfect, but the times that I am not being mindful are, I'm more aware of them and I can halt those faster than before I was mindful.
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah. And again, this human thing keeps coming up and human being versus human doing. And I forgot who said that, but John Kabat-Zinn or someone like that. But I remember like, Oh yeah, that's, that's a, it's true because we're such a doing we do, do, do, do, do, do, do. And there's, I think a time and place for doing, we need to be able to do just like you said, there's a time and place for the mask or the armor needed, or to be able to move on and compartmentalize and say, right now I need to focus on this. Right.
00:46:42
Speaker
And right now that's okay, temporary, but I need to go and kind of unpack that. What's this really about and process, you know, whatever I need to do. And even as a dad, you know, going from this place of you, you know, being stuck in a sympathetic, activated mobilization state of anxiety, you know, she woke me up with the heck. So you're already kind of actually activated, which is your nervous system. It's kind of a threat, right? She's, it's threatening your nervous system of sleep. I'm up and now my mind's racing. And so versus now the mindful John of practice. And I know no one's, I'm not perfect.
00:47:11
Speaker
We always say that, and I'm glad that you do too, because the reality is, it's a constant practice. The amount until the day I think we leave this earth, whenever that might be, is that it's a constant daily awareness of where am I? Am I stuck in doing? Am I stuck in sympathetic or hypervigilance? Am I present? And then now this genre of practice could connect with your daughter and actually be an eventual parasympathetic state, a calm, connected state. So you're able to engage back then her coups and
00:47:38
Speaker
you know, be just slowed down and then fall asleep. And even now, you know, as you could come home and put the phone down and I can be present. My mind isn't stuck on work and that's not ruling my life. Now, a thought might come in, right, or a feeling, but part of the mindfulness practice is, okay, just a thought. I could give attention to it or I could just let it, you know, acknowledge it, not suppress it, not stop it, because you can't do that. It's like trying to stop waves coming in the ocean.
00:48:07
Speaker
Right. No matter how hard you try, that way is coming. But it's more about redirecting the energy and saying, oh, I see you. Here it is, and let me move on. And now you can be more present, John, and aware of, like you said, aware, awake, being, and knowing when you need to be in that doing mode, knowing when you need to be, kind of have that vigilant awareness. Like you said, there's a degree to which we do need to have awareness and not have blinders on. Sure.
00:48:30
Speaker
And it's this kind of space, right? It's this spectrum of not being totally stuck in hypervigilance and not totally like checking out like, well, you know, living, especially from someone who also was a seal because to some degree you need to be vigilant. Like you have to be vigilant, right? Going out in the battlefield, you can't just be, you know, I'm just going to walk around and
00:48:48
Speaker
You know, just kind of lolly get it. Yeah, you can't do that. Like you have to be vigilant and aware and tuned and in sympathetic. Sympathetic enables you to survive. So these aren't bad states, but we need to know when we're in these states and the purpose they serve. And do we need to be in that state right now? Is this state actually effective for me in this context when I'm with my kids or my wife or my friends?
00:49:14
Speaker
Do I need to be activated or do I need to, oh, I need to like check in and slow down. And so as we start to come up to a close, I want to ask this question and I'm curious if you could talk to John now back then, you know, when John was coming, you know, he just had this experience.
Authenticity and Self-Worth
00:49:28
Speaker
What is something you could say or be with him now that might help along his journey, something he might needed to know or have an experience with?
00:49:38
Speaker
that just might have spoken to him more specifically or might have been penetrated so to speak in an effective way that maybe taking a piece of the armor off and delivered something to him that he can maybe receive. Yeah, I think if I was able to go back and talk to you know the John of
00:49:54
Speaker
20 years ago or 10 years ago or even, I don't know, six years ago. I think I would tell him that you are enough and that the real you is enough. Not the you that you portray yourself to be, not the you that is seen by everybody else underneath the mask or underneath the armor.
00:50:19
Speaker
but you without the mask and without the armor are enough. Sure, it's still like we've covered already in the conversation. There's times when the mask and the armor are appropriate, but I think there's a misconception that you are not enough unless you're wearing that armor.
00:50:42
Speaker
And that's not true. So I think that's what I would tell him. Yeah. Well, I thank you and for talking John and why I keep talking, but you know, gotta close up here, but I would love that. I could probably talk for another hour about this stuff with you and I'm
Engagement and Podcast Promotion
00:50:55
Speaker
working. We find you like if people want to connect with what you're doing and see the work that you're doing and kind of teaching. And by the way, you have your own podcast called men talking mindfulness. By the way, that's, I want to make sure we pitched that because this is all about
00:51:06
Speaker
mindfulness and teaching it and talking about it and having conversation and Education and giving it away. But where can we find you? Where's all that stuff located?
00:51:14
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for that opportunity, Travis. Well, first off the podcast is called men talking mindfulness. And for your listeners, we're actually having you on our show next week. And that's going to be live on Wednesday. What is that? 23rd or something Wednesday, August 23rd. So I think people will actually hear that before they hear this.
00:51:37
Speaker
They will actually, so back in time. Yeah, go back in time. But yeah, if you have a chance, check that out. We have that on video and in podcasts. We're on YouTube, different social medias, men talking mindfulness. And I host that show with a good friend of mine who was a yoga instructor in New York City and kind of the plug.
00:51:56
Speaker
Or the, the tagline of the show is what happens when a Navy SEAL and a yoga instructor get together to talk about mindfulness. We just don't know. We never know. And that's, that's the fun that we have on the show. So there's that episode, or sorry, there's the podcast and then I'm, I'm fairly prolific on social media, specifically LinkedIn. That's actually how Travis and I met was on LinkedIn.
00:52:15
Speaker
So if you just look me up on there, John, J-O-N, McCaskill, M-A-C-A-S-K-I-L-L, or you can go to johnmccaskill.com forward slash links, and that will take you to all my different social media, the different podcasts that I'm involved with, the different business ventures that I'm involved with, and my email and everything else. So that's probably the easiest one, johnmccaskill.com forward slash links.
00:52:39
Speaker
Okay, and that's all me and the show, guys. All the links for John, hyperlinks, click on them. They'll be clickable. They'll just make it easier, but you can definitely type those in. Or click on description. They're right there to click on to make it even easier for you. If I can make it easier, I will. You can also type it manually.
00:52:55
Speaker
And John, thank you so much. I definitely have to have you on again because there's tons of other questions I want to ask about what would John do. Like one question came in mind that we don't have time to answer is like, what would John do now? If he could help the military better teach mental fitness, what would he do differently versus this kind of meeting in the hotel room? I'm sure you have a whole thing on that.
00:53:13
Speaker
You know, I think maybe they're doing it now, like you said, but there's so many other questions I want to ask, but it's been so honored to talk to you and thank you for sharing personal stuff and about who you are and blessings to you and your family today. And I can't wait to be on your show next week. Thank you, brother. Thanks for having me and thanks for what you're doing. It's much needed. So I appreciate it. Thanks for joining and listening today. Please leave a comment and review the show. Dads are tough, but not tough enough to do this fatherhood thing alone.