Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Sleepwalking for 55 Years: How One Man Woke Up
The invisible wounds of childhood often shape our adult lives in ways we never recognize. In this revealing conversation, trauma coach Jim Bernardo shares his journey from successful technology executive to men's group facilitator and trauma recovery specialist, uncovering how our earliest messages create the neural pathways that determine our responses decades later.
Drawing from his graduate studies in behavioral psychology and his personal healing journey, Bernardo explains why most men initially claim they experienced no childhood trauma. Research demonstrates how differently we treat children based solely on perceived gender – expecting emotional stoicism from boys while encouraging emotional expression in girls. These seemingly small but repeated experiences literally wire circuits in the brain that persist into adulthood, creating automatic responses we often don't understand.
Perhaps most fascinating is Bernardo's perspective on language as the key to healing. "We don't describe our experiences with language. We create them with the language we give to them," he explains, illustrating how trauma recovery involves consciously reshaping our internal narratives about past events. While techniques like EMDR can help access buried emotions, the fundamental healing comes through giving different language to experiences that have controlled us from the shadows.
For men specifically, trauma often manifests as "covert depression" – presenting as irritability, physical symptoms, risk-taking behaviors, or disproportionate rage rather than recognizable sadness. Through his book "Echoes of Broken Skies" and his trauma coaching work, Bernardo helps men recognize these patterns and develop the awareness to pause between trigger and response – creating space for healing and preventing relationship damage caused by reactive behaviors.
Whether you're struggling with unexplained anger, feeling disconnected from yourself and others, or simply curious about the profound impact of language on our experience of reality, this conversation offers valuable insights into reclaiming your authentic self through conscious awareness and the deliberate reshaping of your personal narrative.
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Merges to Music podcast. My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for another awesome show. Today. I've got a guest on the show. His name is Jim Bernardo and I've actually never met Jim, but in this crazy world of technology and Facebook and podcast groups, Jim and I connected there and we have a very similar story.
Speaker 1:Completely different walks of life, but you know, no matter where you go, and I think people listen to this. Not everybody listened to this was law enforcement or first responders so I think this is going to give a great perspective how somebody from a completely different walk has yet a very similar story and a very different way that they came out of that complex PTSD trauma state and just identified the things they needed to do to make their world better. I'm going to let Jim tell his own story, but Jim is a C PTSD survivor. He's a trauma coach, he's a men's group facilitator, just an all around great guy, wrote a book. We're going to hear all about that in a minute, so without any further ado, Jim, thank you so much for being here today.
Speaker 2:Aaron, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be joining you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. So you and I got to talk just a couple of minutes ago and we kind of spoke a little bit about your story and I asked for the 30,000 foot view just because I didn't want to get so into the trenches that I was leading this conversation. I really just want to open this up and have you tell me your story. How did you get here and how did you end up where you are today? Tell me a little bit about your background and what you do and how you got here.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure Happy to do that. So I am mostly retired at this point, aaron. I'm a couple of months away from my 65th birthday. But I spent my career. I spent, you know, 40 plus years in the technology industry, in the software business mostly on the sales and marketing side of that business.
Speaker 2:But my educational background is I have an undergraduate degree in biology, which I've done absolutely nothing with, but I also have a graduate degree in behavioral psychology and the focus of my graduate study was on language and specifically what the psychologist BF Skinner called verbal behavior. And I tell you that because you know it's interesting how all roads lead to Rome. So you know, I finished my graduate degree and I hopped back into the technology industry. About 10 years ago I was introduced to some men who were part of an organization called the Mankind Project.
Speaker 2:And, in brief, the Mankind Project is totally non-sectarian, it's not religious or anything like that, but it's an organization that was begun about 40 years ago by three guys, one of whom is a therapist, and in the early 1980s he was going to a lot of women's empowerment conferences and things of that nature and was struck by the idea that there was nothing like that for men, and so he and his two co-founders put together what became the Mankind Project. It's an international organization, over 100,000 men at this point who have been through sort of the seminal event or the foundational event that happens in the project, which is a weekend experience that is structured around the psychologist Carl Jung's archetypes, and specifically the king, the lover, the warrior and the magician, and then around Joseph Campbell's cultural mythology of the hero's journey, so sort of the classic story that repeats itself across cultures and across history of separation from community, dissent and ordeal and initiation and return to community.
Speaker 1:And real quick. Is that the process that the book outlines, to kind of find yourself, or what is that process that you just described? Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, the book is not about the Mankind Project, do you know? Reference it a little bit in there. Um, the idea behind the mankind project is to help men discover the thing. You're good, go ahead, okay. The. The goal of mankind project is to help men discover the things that hold them back from being the men that they want to be and showing them a path to living a life of accountability and integrity and mission and service to others.
Speaker 2:You know, the short version for me is I went through my weekend and came away on Sunday afternoon feeling as though I had been sleepwalking through the first 55 years of my life, and that was a very eye-opening experience for me.
Speaker 2:Right, I got very involved with Mankind. I went back multiple times and staffed weekends for other new men. I got involved in men's groups that are sponsored by the Mankind Project and training men and facilitating men through work and so on and so forth. And one of the things that we would teach men is, when they were facilitating a man through a piece of work in group, that they should be very careful not to traumatize or re-traumatize a man. Because we are not trained trauma experts, and so at some point I decided, well then I'll become one. So I sat through a certification program to be a trauma recovery coach and, pardon me, as you can well imagine, part of that experience is surfacing your own traumas and healing from them, and the experience was pretty profound for me because I realized that there were some things from my childhood that I had buried so deeply that I had forgotten.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's pretty common with all men, you know, and Jim, one of the things that I, I, I think is, as men, we think, man, we don't have any problems, we don't have any childhood trauma. Nothing ever happened to us. It's always, you know, somebody had it worse, um, and we forget about those things. You know, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, yeah, a couple of of things about that. Um, you mentioned my book. The book is called echoes of broken skies and it's actually on Amazon. Um, one of the things that I talk about in that book. There's a psychologist and therapist out of the Boston area by the name of Terry real, and Terry wrote in the early mid 1990s the first ever book that was explicitly about male depression, and the title of the book, which I absolutely love, was I don't want to talk about it and you know, yeah, right, and among the things he talks about in the book is that we and you know, one of the things I love about Terry's writing is he does a lot of reference to scientific research.
Speaker 2:He says, look, we treat boys and girls differently from birth, and uh, well, he says many, many things about that. But, for example, he he talked about a group of researchers that um got several babies together that were 24 hours old and they tried to, you know, match those babies up to be similar in size and build and so on, and then they brought a bunch of adults through to look at these babies. Now, these babies are 24 hours old, they're not six months or two years or 10 years, they're just born, right. And they told half of the adults that these babies were all girls. And they told the other half of the adults that these babies were all boys. And so the adults who believed that they were looking at girls described them as being, you know, more fragile, build, more delicate, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the ones who thought they were looking at boys described them as being strong, well-built, you know, et cetera. They had nothing to go on other than what they had been told.
Speaker 2:Right, and another piece of research the researchers filmed I think it was a six-month or a nine-month-old baby playing with some toys. And while the baby is playing, a buzzer goes off and the baby starts to cry. Similar kind of deal. They showed the video to a bunch of adults. They told half of them that they were looking at a girl. They told the other half they were looking at a boy.
Speaker 2:And the ones who believed that they were looking at a girl said things like oh, poor thing, she's so upset. Somebody should pick her up and comfort her. Ones who thought they were looking at a boy said things like boys, don't cry, he needs to toughen up. What's the matter with him. Why is he so angry? Wow, right, so you know. Terry talks about the fact that you know well a couple of things. One we assume femininity in girls, but we confer masculinity on boys and so we can take it away, right, so you know, aaron is a guy's guy, he's the guy in high school that every other guy wants to be like, until that day in gym class when you know you have to shimmy up the rope in the middle of the gym and Aaron can't do it, and then he's a weakling and he's a pussy and you know all the other derogatory things that they would say. So you know we can withdraw masculinity.
Speaker 1:Were you in my high school gym class? Were you there with me? I don't know, I don't know. Anyway, another topic, another day, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, another topic another day, but anyway. So you know what he says is that these repetitive things that we tell boys and teach boys and say to boys and do to boys you know, boys don't cry, you got to tough it out you don't show emotion, you don't demonstrate weakness, you're not allowed to ask for emotional support. He said the idea that those things are traumas is something that hasn't been really studied a lot in the fields of psychology and, and you know, psychotherapy. And he said but to think about those things as traumas is like asking a fish to be able to see the water that it swims in. Right, wow.
Speaker 2:So you know, when we were talking a little bit before this, you know, one of the things that I think I said to you is that almost 100% of the time, the men that I work with, when I first start working with them, will either tell me that they didn't have any traumas in their childhood or that the things that happened to them in their childhood were not traumatic. And you know, the fact of the matter is, as you said, we come from different backgrounds but we have a lot of similarities. We've all had that. We men have all had that, and I'm not saying that women don't or anything like that, but my focus is on men because I am one right and I can't understand a woman the way a woman understands a woman, right? Yeah, totally. But for you know, for better or for worse, my work is with men and you know, 100% of the time, after working with these guys over a couple of sessions, they begin to realize that there were things that were small t traumatic, that happened to them in childhood, things that were small T traumatic that happened to them in childhood. Now you know why that matters, aaron is, you know, we know.
Speaker 2:You know, up until 20, 30 years ago, scientists believe that the brain was mostly unchanged, right, and that if it damaged, got damaged in some way, it couldn't be, you know, it couldn't regenerate or anything like that. What we understand now is that the brain is actually much more flexible than that and one of the things that they understand now is those kinds of repetitive traumas in childhood actually wire circuits in the brain and I mean that's not like a philosophical woo-woo discussion. They literally neurophysiologically wire circuits in the brain and I mean that's not like a philosophical woo-woo discussion. They literally neurophysiologically wire circuits in the brain. And so trauma recovery, particularly recovery from that kind of childhood trauma, is very much about rewiring those circuits and how that happens. I told you that I did my graduate work on language.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, how that happens is by giving different language to the experience and you know, that's a whole other topic that we could spend a whole other session on, but one of the things that we know about trauma survivors based on some research that was done at Harvard Medical School in the mid-1990s. They interviewed a bunch of trauma survivors and came up with a list of questions they wanted to ask them and things they wanted to say to them, and then they put them into a functional MRI machine and when they were able to trigger flashbacks they saw some things that didn't surprise them at all and one thing that surprised the hell out of them. So you know, when they triggered a flashback, the whole right side of the brain, the limbic system, the amygdala, the home of the fight or flight response- lit up like fireworks on the 4th of July.
Speaker 2:But what did surprise them was that the left side of the brain pretty much shut off, and on the left side of the brain is an area called Broca's area which is involved in the production of speech. And so what they found was that these trauma survivors could recall traumatic incidents from their childhoods like they were looking at a photograph, but they could not tell you how they felt when that thing happened. And you know, I give an example in the book of Mother's Day 1970. I was, you know, barely a month shy of my 10th birthday. My dad and I were washing the car in the driveway, an old Chrysler Town and Country station wagon, I mean, I can see it clear as day. And there was something that triggered my dad and he got angry with me. And I don't remember what he got angry with me about. I don't remember what he said, except that he said remember this day, mother's Day 1970.
Speaker 2:So it is now damn close to 55 years later and I can still see that again, like I'm looking at a picture, which side of the car I was standing on, which side dad was on, it was morning, where the sunlight was coming from, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I remember mother's day in 1970, but I cannot tell you why he got angry with me and I cannot tell you how I felt when it happened, other than that thing stuck in my head, right, yeah, yeah. So, uh, you know, in the work that I do with with men on trauma recovery, it really is as simple and as complicated as giving different language to those experiences.
Speaker 1:So I want to dive into that a little bit. Yeah, sure, if we could. And here's why so we spoke before. I've done a lot of EMDR and EMDR If have you ever done EMDR.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 1:So EMDR for the listeners who haven't it is a way to activate the left and the right side of the brain at the same time. While you're having a close eyed conversation with your therapist, they ask a series of questions to get you back into that trauma state and that could take you back to that driveway in 1970. Now, when you get back into that state, the brain everything that you ever see, smell, taste, touch, feel, hear is stored away in some box in your brain. Emdr is a way to open up that box and unpack those feelings, unpack those different emotions and such that you might have had during that set of circumstances. Now, when you get there and you're unpacking that, you're going to feel it's a trauma for a reason. A trauma is based on the relationship that you have with a set of circumstances or an experience that happened to you. So when your parents get divorced when you're 13 years old and you blame yourself for that, that is something that you carry with you for life and you're carrying that blame with you. Now let's go back into that trauma and unpack it.
Speaker 1:At 13 years old, did you have anything to do with your parents getting divorced? Did you do anything? The answer is no. What were your parents' problems? It was financial. They were arguing over money all the time and my dad had an affair. Okay, did that have anything to do with you as a 13-year-old? No, it didn't, holy crap, it had nothing to do with me. But I've been carrying this guilt for 40 years Now. You've changed that relationship. You've changed that language, your word language, my word relationship with that set of circumstances. And now, when you come out of it, all of a sudden, you're looking at it from a different lens and a different perspective. That has been my experience with EMDR, and I think I hear you saying something similar. Am I on the right track or what are you saying, jim?
Speaker 2:No, you're absolutely on the right track, aaron, and you know I would go a level deeper with this and I'm going to say something that I'll explain. We don't describe our experiences with language. We create them with the language we give to them. No-transcript. Where is that vase you just described? You would most likely point to the thing on the table. And that's not where what you just described is what you just described is in your head.
Speaker 2:It is your observation, your creation of the experience of that vase of flowers on the table. Now, that's not saying that that thing doesn't exist, right, it exists. But your experience of it is what you've crafted, with the description that you've given to it. And mine might be very different because I'm sitting on the other side of the table, maybe the light is hitting it differently, maybe I notice, you know, something in the. Whatever my experience, that vase that I describe is in my head, right? So, relating that back to trauma, yes, absolutely, the traumatic experience I have is I've created with, if you will, the story I've told about it to myself. So you know, in your example, parents get divorced at the age of 13. I would tell you that there's something even earlier in your life that led you to react in such a way that, somehow or other, you were guilty for their divorce.
Speaker 2:Right, I totally agree about just the experience of the divorce. It was about, you know, I don't know, maybe when you were five years old, um, hearing your mother and father arguing about you, know how dad yelled at you because of something you did or didn't do, and you know so you felt like you were the one responsible for dad yelling at your mom, or something like that, so that that guilt, that feeling of guilt, is rooted in a much earlier childhood experience.
Speaker 2:That mom and dad got divorced at 13. Totally agree. At 13, you're reasonably well developed as a young man, so you know rationally, you can look at that and go well, of course I didn't have anything to do with that. But where did that come from? It came from some earlier experience that you had in your childhood that taught you that when things don't go well somehow or other, you're responsible for it. You're a bad kid, or you didn't live up to the expectations of your parents, or you know whatever it might have been.
Speaker 2:So I totally agree with what you said and I'm saying I think it's even a little bit more deeply seated than than what you've described. Yeah, you know, jim, I know your point about AMDR ties in with with. What I'm saying is that recovering from, healing from those traumatic experiences is 100% about recrafting the experience by talking to yourself about it in a different way. So you know even what you described. Were you the one that was responsible? No, mom and dad argued over finances. You're creating a different experience of what happened there with the language you're giving it as a 43 year old man, as opposed to the language you gave to that experience as a 13 year old boy Does that make sense.
Speaker 1:It makes absolutely perfect sense. So you said something there that I think is super important for our listeners to hear. If you guys have been around this podcast for more than a minute, I've been pretty open, transparent and vulnerable over the last year that I've been doing this podcast and one of the conversations is the relationship that I have with my church and the music people there and my involvement, right, and there was an episode Unveiling your Pride that I did a few weeks back, a couple months ago, or something you guys can go back and listen to that. But I think I want to stress on the narrative that we give circumstances in our lives Something very as small as describing that vase of flowers or we. You know, I used to teach an interview class when I was a police officer and we would talk about nonverbal language and body language and you know I would talk about. You walk into Starbucks and the hot girl in front of you, you know, smiles at you and kind of gives you the eye and you're like holy shit. You know I'm, I'm a broad shit, she's into me. Well, no, she was just, you know, non-verbally thanking you for holding the door for her. But in your mind. You've made this entire narrative to make it out what it is.
Speaker 1:I'm teaching a class one day and the class is into it, except for one person in the back of the room. And that one person in the back of the room has got a scowl on her face all day long. And no matter what I do, I can't connect with this person and she's upset and frustrated and that's obvious and in my mind she hates it, she hates me, she hates the class, she hates being here. And after class I had to go ask her. I'm like look, I said you know, I tried. I've noticed that you're upset. What's going on? She's like the window has been open. I've been freezing my ass off all day long and I can't close the window. It had not. She said I loved your class, it was just the window was freezing me, you know. So we add these narratives and stories to these events in our lives and all of a sudden that becomes our truth and our reality, when it's not really the case. So well, this is.
Speaker 2:You know, this is it's interesting that you give that example, aaron. Well, this is, you know, this is it's interesting that you give that example, aaron, because this is one of the other things that I work with the men I work with on is communication and specifically, things like yes, absolutely, I can make up a story in my head about what I see happening, and that story may or may not have anything to do with the reality of the situation. And you know, this is I'm talking about sort of a different circumstance here. But you know, for example, in relationship with, you know, a significant other, you know you say something and you see a scowl on her face, and so you make up this story that somehow or other, you've pissed her off or you've said something offensive to her. God, she must really hate me right now, you know yada yada, yada, yada yada.
Speaker 2:It can be as simple as, first of all, owning your judgments and your projections right. We all have judgments. We're human beings, right? It's what do we do with those that makes the difference. So you know, I said this thing and what I saw was what I interpreted. In fact, a good friend of mine, who's a mankind brother, has a great way of saying this. He says the story I make up is I saw the scowl on your face and the story I made up is that, somehow or other, something I said offended you, and I'm feeling a little frustrated and a little bit concerned that I've done something wrong here. Am I on track? Is this the right interpretation? Is there something different going on that I'm missing? So it's expressing curiosity about what is happening for that other person, and so that other person comes back and says no, I loved your class, I was just freezing my ass off because the window was open. Okay, so that whole story I made up in my head was exactly that. It was a story I made up in my head.
Speaker 1:It was wasted energy.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Sure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and you framed it up a different way. You know, you framed up the set of circumstances and something that is completely, you know, not accurate, completely inaccurate, and it's such a way that we, especially as men, we worry about things and that little thing can start to fester. You know, you make a business phone call and you don't get a return call. And last time you spoke to this person you had a great conversation, and now you make a couple of calls, they go unanswered and you start that on that mind train of what did I do wrong? Did we offend them? Did I say something? Let me look back through the messages. What a wasted energy. You know, everybody does it, but let's talk about men, cause that's where we're talking today. Everybody does it, and what a waste of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah so.
Speaker 1:I want to serve.
Speaker 2:And I'll point out to you, not in a nasty way, what a waste of time is a judgment Aaron.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know Thank you very much. And I appreciate you. And that's the end of the show. No, I get it. So let's go back to the Mankind Project. What does that weekend experience look like? If somebody wanted to get involved in this to uncover their hidden traumas or to work on themselves? What does that weekend look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, um, you know I don't want to give too much away because every man has his own experience, but I mean, basically, you show up at the weekend, you're lined up with a bunch of other guys and they pick you off one by one and send you inside. And you know, when I did my weekend it was held in a uh, like an old basketball arena at a Kiwanis club, right. So we're all lined up, you walk in. First thing they do is they take a picture of you and then you move into the first table and they ask you your name and they put a number on a name tag and hand it to you. And you know, they ask you what's this number? I was number nine. Okay, for the rest of this weekend you will be known as number nine. Seems a little bit bizarre, but essentially what they're doing is they're taking away your name, right, they're taking away your identity as Jim Bernardo. You're just a number this weekend.
Speaker 2:And then there are a whole bunch of different you know stations. If you will that you go through. You know there's interesting with you being a police officer. There's, you've been told beforehand what you can bring and what you can't, and so they check through your bags and they frisk you to see whether you're carrying any what we call contraband. And you know they make a point of training the guys who do that, that you know there may be a guy that you're going to do a search on who has had encounters with the police in the past and has been frisked, you know. So be very careful, very sensitive. Now I'm going to reach up under your arms, okay, I'm going to move my hands down around your belt so that the man knows what's coming.
Speaker 2:And then the weekend essentially begins, and one of the first things that we talk to the men about is accountability. Talk to the men about is accountability and the way we do that is, the men were all told to bring some food to share with some number of men, and the leader of the weekend will know who brought food and who didn't, because again, behind the scenes, all this stuff is being watched and tracked and you know we'll go. Hey, number eight, stand up. You were told to bring food to feed six men. Did you do that? No, what did you make more important than bringing food for six men? Well, I didn't think it was, you know, all that important. I want six men to stand up. So I want you to look at these six men. These six men may not get to eat this weekend because you didn't keep your word about bringing food Right.
Speaker 2:So we begin to teach men about accountability, right and integrity. And you know, one of the examples I love to use about accountability and integrity is those are two very closely related and yet different things. So you know, if you and I decide we're going to get together this afternoon at five o'clock to go have a beer, and you know we're going to meet at a certain place at five o'clock, whatever five o'clock comes and goes, I'm not there. I haven't called you and told you I'm not. You know, either I'm not coming or I'm going to you and told you I'm not. You know, either I'm not coming or I'm going to be late, or you know. So you're left sitting there wondering. You know what's up with this asshole that he didn't show up the way he was supposed to.
Speaker 2:I all of a sudden show up at you know 20 after five and I go. Hey, aaron, sorry I'm late and sorry I wasn't able to call you. Am I in account with the agreement that I made with you? No, I'm not Because the agreement I made with you was to be there at five o'clock and, by the way, when I make an agreement, I can renegotiate that agreement if things change. But I didn't call you or anything. And then I tell you that the reason that I'm late is that on my way over here I came across an accident that had just happened, and so I stopped to render aid until police and ambulances could show up. Now I'm totally in integrity with the man that I say that I am because you know what, if it happened again, I would stop again and render aid, and calling you to let you know I was going to be late was not the most important thing. The most important thing was helping these people who had been wounded, right, so you know, there is that difference, anyway.
Speaker 2:So you know, the weekend goes on with a whole bunch of different, if you will, kind of workshop things on topics like accountability, integrity, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And then there are some ordeals that are set up over the course of the weekend that are designed to not force men but to make men have to collaborate with one another to complete the ordeal, and there's minimal instruction, there's minimal, you know, guidelines, whatever, whatever, and there are a whole bunch of other things that happen and then on. So it starts on Friday afternoon. On Saturday night there's actually an initiation ceremony. You know, initiation ceremonies for boys into manhood are something that you know go back to time immemorial. But you know, if I say initiation today, one of the first things that probably pops up into most people's minds is gangs, and you know, the idea of sort of a healthy cultural initiation is something that still goes on in, you know, indigenous tribes and so on and so forth. But in the mainstream we don't really do that anymore. So there's initiation ceremony and then there's what we call a renaming ceremony. So you know, I get to reclaim my name of Jim Bernardo and I'm no longer number nine. I'm now Jim Bernardo and it's a meaningful process because of everything that's gone on over the course of the weekend.
Speaker 2:And then Sunday afternoon, before you leave, they take another picture of you and it still makes me laugh and it makes me a little bit emotional. When I got home from my weekend, my partner at the time, who had done a lot of women's personal work and was the one who introduced me to some guys in the project, asked me how my weekend went and you know, I had a folder with the two pictures and some papers and stuff like that, and so I opened the folder and I covered my, I put my hand over the Sunday afternoon picture and I said this is me on Friday night. This is me this afternoon. That's how my weekend was and I'll tell you more about it afterwards. Right, you know, but as I said to you, it was a. It was a life-changing experience for me because it woke me up to things that I had just sort of been on autopilot about during the course of my life and gave me the opportunity to really examine how I was living my life and how I wanted to do that differently, going forward.
Speaker 1:You know, and, jim, I think thank you so much for explaining that weekend. You know, um, if somebody listened, I'm trying to think through this from the outside perspective, somebody that doesn't know or hasn't been involved in something like this before and I have not in your project, but in another. Uh, have you ever heard of landmark?
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I've been through landmark, uh, and then through the police Academy, and that is my first experience with what I hear you saying. You show up at the police Academy, you're, you know, full of piss and vinegar. You show up, they strip you down, they take away everything you've ever known. You are lower than dirt and they spend 18 weeks building you back up and all of a sudden, the fact that you can bounce a quarter off of your bed sheets is important to you, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, and the integrity and the you know all of the stuff the integrity, the honesty, accountability being where you're going to say you're going to be at the time you're going to say be there, you know all that stuff makes sense. So it sounds like they're totally different, but from somebody listening into this, it might be like man, this is kind of weird. This is the way these programs are run and there's a method and a madness to why these things occur. I never cared about bouncing a quarter off my bed sheets or having a three by five card and not touch the walls around the perimeter of my bed in my bunk room. But it's just teaching life lessons. Um, you know, and way to be better human beings. So I totally get it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's you know, Aaron, I would say it's not, yes, it's chief teaching life lessons, but, more importantly, what it's teaching is presence and awareness. Correct, Right? You know that experience that I had, that I had been sleepwalking through the first 55 years of my life. There were so many things I just did on autopilot. I went to college because of course, that's what you do, and then I got a job and a career, and then I got married and had a house and kids, because that's just what a guy does, Right. And you know, when my first marriage ended, what I realized and I think I talk about this briefly in the book was that I had created a world for everyone that I loved. That did not include me.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen Right.
Speaker 2:Totally. I never. And again, part of this goes back to, you know, my childhood experience, where my father would tell me all the time that I was selfish and didn't give a damn about anybody. I never asked for what I wanted or needed in that marriage, because to do so in my programming would have been to be selfish, and being selfish is bad.
Speaker 1:Which I'm guessing is part of your historical trauma. It is part of my historical trauma.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you so much for walking us through that. Um, let's talk about your book. Tell me about your book. Tell me the gist of it, what it's about. And, uh, you mentioned already mentioned on Amazon. Can they get it anywhere else? Where can people find information about you and your book?
Speaker 2:the book itself is on Amazon only as a Kindle book. It's not a long book and the reason it's only available as a Kindle book was that it wasn't long enough to be a paperback by the Amazon standards. Right, it's called Echoes of Broken Skies. In that book I talk about many of these things that we're talking about. I talk about my personal background, my experience growing up with my father and a little bit of the family background. To give it, excuse me, to give it context. I do talk about getting introduced to the Mankind Project and you know the experience that I've been describing about feeling like I had been sleepwalking and then I.
Speaker 2:The bulk of the book, aaron, is about recognizing, uncovering, healing from childhood trauma, and so you know all of the stories that I've told you so far today about how we treat boys and girls differently and all that kind of stuff. I cover all of that in the book as a means of providing the context for how we get to be the guys that we are, who feel lonely, isolated, you know, detached from friends and family, have this nebulous feeling of something is missing from my life, and you know, again, differences between us and women. You know, because girls are taught that it's okay to cry, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to need an emotional support. You know, et cetera, et cetera. Women are far more likely to recognize that they are depressed, or at least that they're feeling low, and seek treatment for that, whereas we guys are far more likely to show up in our doctor's office and go hey, doc, you know there are these times where I just have a hard time breathing and my heart feels like it's pounding out of my chest. There must be something wrong with me.
Speaker 2:And you know, the doctor does all the stuff that the doctor does and goes Aaron, you're fine. You're probably just a little bit stressed out. You know, try and find some avenues for relaxation in your life. And, um, a lot of men and this is, you know, this is not true a hundred percent of the time, but a lot of the men who are like avid adrenaline junkies. You know the guys that like to ride their mountain bike on a narrow mountain trail at night. They do that as a means of shutting out that other stuff. Whether they recognize that or not, I can't be thinking about how distant I feel from my wife and how my career is not going as well as I wish it was, but yada, yada yada, yada, yada, when I've got to be paying attention so that I don't go off the side of a mountain and kill myself, right, yep.
Speaker 2:But what those activities are doing for me is providing an outlet for those feelings of, you know, isolation, loneliness, whatever. But it's temporary, because when I'm done riding my bike tonight I'm going right back to that life that is causing me those feelings, right? So, you know, men will show up to their primary care physician complaining of physical symptoms that are really psychological symptoms. And you know, I mentioned Terry Real in his book. I Don't Want to Talk About it. He talks about those things. He describes them as what he calls covert depression. So that's, you know, stuff that is shoved into my unconscious mind because it's not something I'm able or willing to deal with. And Terry says that the only way out of covert depression is overt depression, which is what happens when my unconscious mind can no longer contain it all and explodes into consciousness. And then, you know, god only knows what happens.
Speaker 2:I mean, in my case, aaron, it manifested as fits of rage that were always way out of proportion to whatever triggered them, and always not about my kids, it wasn't about my wife, you know, it was something. It was about something that happened a long goddamn time ago. You know, something that my wife said to me that triggered a memory of my dad and just I flew into a rage about it and you know when that would subside. I would feel incredibly regretful and remorseful and at that point the damage was already done. Right, I can apologize, but I can't take away what happened and in my work, going through the trauma recovery course myself, and in doing my own journey of healing from my childhood traumas, I got to a place. I have gotten to a place where I can take a breath and take a step back from whatever it is that's triggering me and realize, like when you were talking about the EMDR, realize, listen, I'm not in danger here. Exactly, this is not that thing that happened before. It is important.
Speaker 2:By the way, you know, there's a term called an amygdala hijack and it's not a term of art. The amygdala is a very evolutionarily ancient part of the brain right that, you know, triggers the fight or flight response when you're in danger of having your ass chewed off by a saber-toothed tiger on the Serengeti right. The thing about an amygdala hijack is when it happens. As I told you before with those MRI studies, the rational side of the brain basically shuts off and the amygdala, the hippocampus, begin to pump stress hormones into your body. Right.
Speaker 2:Hippocampus, begin to pump stress hormones into your body right. Your blood vessels get a little bit wider so that more blood can get more efficiently to your muscles, your lungs expand a little bit so you can get more oxygen, and on and on and on. That is a completely automatic and and non-conscious response and there is nothing that I can do to stop an amygdala hijack once it starts to happen. The only thing that I can do and it takes a lot of practice is get to that place where I can begin to recognize the signs in my body that I'm getting triggered and can take a step back and take a deep breath and go okay, what's really going on in this situation? How do I want to respond to this, as opposed to reacting automatically in a way that I'm going to, you know, regret later?
Speaker 1:or say something that, yeah, yeah, you know, I think you're totally right. So back, uh, june 15th, my episode number four. I talk about being triggered in safety and I I talk about this entire have this conversation. You know the reptilian part of the brain. It goes off, you react because you don't want to get eaten by that saber-toothed tiger and before you know it, you know you've chewed the ass off of the person in front of you because you didn't take time to slow down and think we have two separate brains that are running simultaneously. But that reptilian brain, that amygdala hijack, is going to supersede the slow functioning part of the brain, because that's what we need to stay alive. And I talk about all of that in episode number four.
Speaker 1:So anybody who's interested in that, go back and check out that episode. It's pretty cool stuff and you know. Thank you for bringing that up here. Well, jim, I just want to say thank you so much for coming on and again, the book is found on Amazon called echoes of broken skies. Jim is out there If you guys have any questions. You want to get anything to him. The email address is murders2music at gmailcom. Murders, the number two music at gmailcom. Happy to pass anything along. We love you guys, you know, and I just want to say we love having guests on the show that can help give a different perspective. That is the way this whole world goes around, and two complete strangers see each other for the first time, have similar stories, and our goal is to help everybody else out there with our pain. Our pain is for a purpose, ladies and gentlemen, that is the Murders to Music Podcast. Bye.
