You're Not Broken, You're Changed: Combat Vet on Shame, PTSD, Growth

Speaker labels and mis-heard names are corrected by hand; the words are as spoken, filler and all.

Preview clips

Ben: We don't want to feel like a piece of crap, right? Uh but righteous anger is the anger that I think is justified for some reason, but I take it to the extreme. I come from a military family, right? And pretty much every male in my family has served during during one of the major wars that's happened going all the way back to the Revolutionary War. So I said to myself, well, it's time to do something.

PJ: 9/11 was a big switch for you.

Ben: It was absolutely.

PJ: So what did that what did that do for you?

Ben: The Twin Tower, one of them was smoking that second twin had. Yeah. And um then when the second plane hit and they started realizing, you know, America was under attack. Shame, that's the one that keeps us quiet. That's the one that doesn't allow us to disclose what we're going through.

PJ: Our most basic need is gone overnight and we throw an identity crisis in the mix. You know, I mean, there's no it's no secret as to why now all of a sudden we're seeing, you know, three times more likelihood of suicides and etc. upon getting out.

Ben: We become grand masters to look for the negative things. And what are we doing if we're not seeing the negative things? We're rescanning for negative things.

PJ: Sure.

Ben: And if we aren't finding the negative thing,

what do we start doing then? We start hunting.

Conversation

PJ: Hello friends. Welcome to episode two of season two of the mastering transition series, the pride podcast Prize Podcast. We have with us today um Dr. Ben Iobst. We had him on before and I was like, you know what,

I can do a better job. So, thank you coming back. I really appreciate your time.

Uh Dr. Ben here was in the Army from 2003 to 2008 infantry.

Ben: That's right.

PJ: Did several contact combat deployments uh in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Did 16 years as an officer, a police officer, excuse me, in Allentown and you're still a police officer for Fountain Hill. Is that correct?

Ben: That's correct. Yep. I do part-time work.

PJ: Awesome. Um and then you work um you do some uh teaching over at Northampton Community College.

Ben: I do.

PJ: And then you're also a founder at BTI um consulting service.

Ben: That's right.

PJ: Which is pretty sweet. You've had an incredible journey, my friend. Um and your degree is psychology based.

Ben: That's correct. Correct.

PJ: So um very incredible story. I really enjoyed talking to you last time and and hearing, you know, the ups, the downs, and everything in between. And what's awesome is because we've done this before, I get to now pull out all those little nuggets and make this packaged properly for all of you. So thank you. Thank you. And uh let's jump in.

Ben: Yeah,

let's do it.

PJ: All right, my friend. Um you know, I would love to hear from you like if if there's someone who's watching this who is just like a badass, a hard ass, tough as nails,

but inside they're like secretly just burning up.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Right. What do they need to hear first?

Ben: So, two things really come to mind for me. Um the first thing is everything. Everything that we do and did in the military and in the first responder world, when it gets bad, when the bad things happen, what do we do? We shut down and drink. Well, what do we do operationally? We call for more people,

right? And then that's what we're trained to do. That's our nature. And as as a military, as a first responder, uh, community, we are able to kick chaos's butt. Yeah.

By doing that.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: But then within our personal lives, we let shame take over, right? And we try to handle these things solely by ourselves. So the worst situations that you're ever going to deal with professionally, you call for more units, you bring all the experts in, you pile on, and you kick its ass, right?

But then in our personal lives, what do we do? Right.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: We do the opposite of everything we're trained to do. And then we wonder why that mission fails.

PJ: Interesting. So how do you make that operational?

Ben: So uh the biggest thing is the willingness to communicate with one another, right? And getting involved with communities of healthy healthy first responders and veterans. We have a lot of good guides out there, right? A lot of good people out there that are willing to guide us in the right direction, right? But the biggest thing is we have to get out of our own way.

And shame is a dangerous dangerous thing for us, right? fear generally isn't going to be um that much of a motivator for us because most of us in the military world, the first responder world, at some point we made the decision honestly that we may not survive today. Right.

Right. So fear doesn't really do it. Shame, that's the one that keeps us quiet. That's the one that doesn't allow us to disclose what we're going through. But in the vast majority of situations, the stuff that's going on up here, the thing that you're thinking about, that feeling of uselessness, that feeling of loss of purpose, right? That embarrassment that I'm feeling this way. Most of us have also felt that,

right?

And by saying, "Hey, I'm feeling this way," it throws a star cluster up to everybody else so they can say, "Yeah, bro. Me too. Hop on board. We got you." Um, so that is an extremely extremely uh, you know, important part and really that hits like both sides of what I wanted to hit, which is try to get the willingness, right, to work through that shame and realize you're not alone and

get the experts involved, right? Let's not do this stuff by ourselves.

PJ: I I I love this. Uh, I want to I want to ask a quick one, you know, one quick followup here and then and we can dive into some of this other stuff. But I my hallucination is that some people may have the thought of what do I even say?

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: What's a quick nine line to speak our terms here like that someone could throw out um to a friend or to a community in order to just even start the conversation?

Ben: So, uh, I what I would generally suggest is you ask them how they're doing legitimately, how are you doing? And if you get back, I'm fine or you get that robotic response, ask them again, how are you really doing?

Right? And usually that second time, that's when they're realizing you're serious about asking them how they're doing because how often do we I mean, it's it's a standard saying we all, hey, how you doing? Good. Right. How are you really doing?

Right. right now. I just asked you to take the mask off for me. Right. Um so that that is honestly one of the most important things. And then gratitude

getting the person's mind to start functioning in a way that they can be actually grateful for something. Because what ends up happening with our training experience is

through years and years of hammering looking for threats. What are threats? Threats are negative things. Sure. Right.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: So we become conditioned to look for the negative. Right?

We become grand masters to look for the negative things. And what are we doing? If we're not seeing the negative thing,

we're rescanning for negative things. And if we aren't finding the negative thing,

what do we start doing then? We start hunting and maybe that negative thing

and imagining, right?

PJ: Oh, dude.

Ben: Yeah. So that grat full, glass half empty.

PJ: No, I mean, you're totally right. All right. Thank you.

Ben: You're welcome.

PJ: Um,

so let's let's back up a little bit. I would love for you to set the stage a little bit here so people can can relate to you. Um,

you know, you were you were in the army, you've seen combat, you know, you went out and and did the things that we all joined the service to do,

you know, what and and if I remember correctly, 9/11 was a big switch for you.

Ben: It was absolutely.

PJ: So, what did that what did that do for you? Like what what happened? What did you say to yourself? How did you get into

Ben: Yeah. So, thinking back on it, um, you know, in hindsight bias, I feel like naive, you know, in some ways um because 9/11 happened. I was in study hall um and the TV was rolled in. You remember the old TVs that were on the carts?

PJ: Yep.

Ben: Um and they turned it on and the twin tower, one of them is smoking at the point. Second plane had

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: And um then when the second plane hit and they started realizing, you know, America was under attack. Um I remember saying to myself, I come from a military family, right? And every, you know, pretty much every male in my family has served during during one of the major wars that's happened going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

PJ: Wow.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Oh, that's cool.

Ben: Yeah.

So, I said to myself, well, it's time to do something now. You know, uh there wasn't a war before that. So, I had no intention to join the military. I was actually go to school for either criminal just I'm sorry, not criminal justice, um computer science or meteorology of all things. And this happened. I said, "We're going to have a war." and we were attacked. So, I have to join the military and serve. Um, you know, looking back on it, I realized it's not as simple as that. It's not as simple as we got attacked. Let's go beat up the bad guys.

PJ: Right. Right. Right.

Ben: Um, so end up graduating high school and uh I think it was three days later I'm in uh One Station Unit Training. I was joined the infantry army infantry in Fort Benning, Georgia. And then uh by the time most people were starting their first year of college, I was during I was in my first combat tour in Iraq.

PJ: Wow.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: And if I remember correctly from our last conversation, your dad did not want you to join infantry.

Ben: Correct.

PJ: So So how did that go down?

Ben: So yeah, my dad's a Vietnam vet. Um and again, like I said, I come from generational military. Um and being a Vietnam vet, he saw um what happened to the infantry there. Yeah. Um, so he said, you know, I support you want to join the military, but don't join the infantry and of all things, don't get into anything specialized. Um, and I did exactly the opposite. Um, and it was because at the time I believed that was the the way to fight the war. Get up on the front lines.

— Um, and Braum meets Braun.

Ben: So, uh, yeah, I went through school, did uh, my first combat tour. Um and uh it was during the initial part of the Iraq war. Um so I saw the um you know the disarming of the original Iraqi army,

right?

We thought it was all over. Uh and um then

the insurgency kicked off

and it changed from like a conventional war to a peacekeeping operation to now we're in a guerilla war overnight. Um and uh end up redeploying. I was stationed in Germany um in between my deployments um which was cool you know it was neat neat to uh experience a different culture in that capacity but we didn't really

spend a lot of time in Germany like how tourists would uh most of our time was in like

you know the field in Germany so I got to see a lot of like uh the woods in Germany you know and that was great

PJ: I bet it was pretty

Ben: yeah it was nice um

PJ: okay so I'm curious you know like before going and and this is coming from I did I did not do I was never in combat, right? I mean I was a pilot too, so like I was in the air, right? It was completely different for me than than what your experience was. So I'm curious to know like what did you think combat would be like verse what was it actually like?

Ben: Well, I experienced a couple different forms of combat, too. Um, you know, there was that conventional combat, I guess you could call it, uh, early in my first tour. And, um, you know, that was a lot of air force, um, air air assets, taking out targets, um, indirect fire, stuff like that. Um, so there was that and that was shocking to the conscience in some way because you're you're seeing you're seeing all the stuff that you learned about, you know, over the years actually doing its job, right? Mhm. So

PJ: yeah, coordinated fire.

Ben: Yeah. And um you know, there were still,

you know, there was a lot of a lot of u blown up Iraqi tanks from the original um not not the first Gulf War, but the original push as we were pushing in and they're just kind of off on the side of road with uh

with guys dead in them, you know. Um and then we just kept pushing and then

uh it switches over to the insurgency which was an entirely different type of war. So,

PJ: sure.

Ben: Yeah. We went from looking for guys in uniforms um and armored vehicles to now we don't know where they're coming from. Um and they're fighting from the population. Um you know, the roads are now a threat. You know, the side of the road there. They started with small IEDs and they got bigger and bigger and bigger.

Um

you know, to the point where my final tour,

they had some pretty smart IEDs. They had IEDs that um could really cause some damage. Sure. They they set one IED off and then when a crew would come in to assist, they'd hit the other crew with a daisy chain of other IEDs and you'd have multiple vehicles, many many c many casualties all at the same time.

PJ: Um what does that do to your psyche?

Ben: You become very numb. You become very very numb at first. Absolute shock. Yeah. Um, you know, and I experienced that, um, you know, during my first tour. Um, lost a good buddy of mine on my first tour due to an IED. I was in the rear Humvey. I was a Humvey gunner and he was in, I believe, the second vehicle. Um, and it was a IED placed above on a pedestrian crosswalk and it hit his vehicle and killed him. And um, you know, I remember the shock of that

um, just now it's real, right? you know, this this is no longer like

uh

not to say it wasn't real before,

right? You recognize what the consequence is. You know, your 20-year-old friend is

dead on the side of the road um and there's Iraqis out cheering and the vehicle's on fire and then people start shooting at you. just got real.

Yeah. Yeah. So,

that definitely changed things. And then um I ended up getting involved in um so a team my my platoon was transformed into a small kill team unit which was like a kind of like a counter IED counterinsurgency unit to do some some unconventional stuff. Um, we ended up getting attached to a variety of different units um to do some work. And that was a different form of war for me because now we went from driving around waiting for the enemy to hit us to now we're ambushing their ambushes. We're taking the fight to them. We're fighting um unconventionally.

Sure. And I I will say in in in the young man mind, um I felt more I felt that was more rewarding, right? Cuz now we went from being the not the hunted, but we we went from driving around waiting to get hit.

PJ: They're offensive

Ben: to Yeah. Now we're bringing it to them. Um and a lot of times they didn't even know it was coming.

So we were doing the same thing to them that they had been doing to us. So before they'd hit you hit hit our guys while they're driving around and now we're setting up sniper ambushes on their historic IED sites. So we're hitting them. So there was a level of uh now we're winning that came out of that mentality. Um but um you know then it then it started to change. We took a lot of casualties. Um I was in the Battle of Ramadi um doing that type of work and we took a lot of casualties from my platoon just guys wounded and then um real good buddy of mine got killed and then uh come 2007 um the I remember the election campaigning was starting right and everybody starts both sides were saying we're going to end the war in Iraq right I literally had just finished my worst deployment ever right and we are still slugging it out And now we've got the two potential future leaders of our country

saying we're just going to turn it off like a light switch, right? And it really made me kind of go, what are we doing?

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: You know, if you could turn this off like a light switch, but we're fighting this hard. Um,

PJ: why do we turn it on?

Ben: Yeah. Why do we turn it on in the first place? And how how important is it to them if they just turn it off like a light switch?

PJ: Yeah, I understand. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. So, I made the determination to get off active duty at that point, finish up my active duty uh contract and um returned home and uh

PJ: so that was the impetus.

Ben: That was the impetus. Yeah.

PJ: Interesting.

Ben: Yeah, it was a combination of a couple things.

PJ: So, all right. I mean, you Wow, I did not get that last time. Thank you for sharing that piece. It's very interesting and and it's wild to think that

how impactful the words of the leaders that we have can really be. I mean, I guess you know that, but when Wow. Anyway, thank you.

Um, so you you came back, you get into the policing world, um, and the wheels start to fall off.

Ben: That's right.

PJ: When did you realize that something was just not right?

Ben: I think I was the last to figure it out, you know, realistically. Uh, I know I came home and um, originally I actually had told my dad I wanted to take a year off and he said, "Absolutely not." He said, "No way you're taking a year off." He told me his story that he had took what he thought was going to be a year off when he got home from Vietnam and it turned into I think it was eight years heavy drinking. Um

so he said, "You need to get right to work and figure something out. Figure something out." Um and he actually had made contact with uh um some administration at the Allentown Police Department and said, "My son's coming home from the war. You know, let's get him taken care of." Um and um they uh you know it wasn't like a shoein type of situation by any means but I you know it introduced me to the process of becoming a police officer. So a month after I returned home from my uh my uh active duty time I was in the police academy and um I enjoyed it.

Police academy was was not not physically hard um compared to what I've been doing in the military. Now now would it be physically hard? Absolutely. I'm 41 and out of shape, but back then I was still in really good shape. But academically, it was a lot more difficult.

PJ: Okay.

Ben: Um you really had to learn a lot with with laws and things like that and procedures. Um

PJ: was there a mental shift that had to happen as as that?

Ben: Oh yeah.

Um you go the the the um speed which you function at when things happen. It has to be careful, methodical and take into consideration collateral damage as a police officer. Right? our job is to take care of the entirety of the community, right?

As an infantryman,

my job was to destroy the enemy,

right? And you know, while we we tried to avoid collateral damage, um it wasn't super high on a priority list. Um whereas in the policing world,

you can't there's none of that exists. You if you every every round you fire, you own. So if if bad guy starts shooting it out with you and you shoot, you miss, you hit a house, you just shot at an innocent person's house. Um whereas that was not really taken into consideration in more. Um

PJ: yeah. Oh yeah, I could I could see that.

Ben: Um so get through the police academy. Again, I I I enjoyed the police academy. I got through FTO pretty well. Um and then got into patrol work. Um and the city of Allentown uh at the time was um and it still is in some capacities, but they've they've done a really good job um making it safer now. But at the time it was pretty heavy. It was a violent city. I mean, nothing like the war. interesting. But there was a lot of gang stuff going on. I think they were averaging

I want to say like 16 to 20 homicides a year at that time.

PJ: Wow.

Ben: Yeah. And uh a lot of shootings. So it was normal for me. I was used to it. I remember one of the first u shooting scenes I was on. It was a gang member that had been shot in the leg and he was hopping around and this is how disconnected I was. He was shot in the leg. I think it was through the calf or something like that. Um, and I walked up to him and I told him, "Can I curse on here?"

PJ: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: So, I told him, "Stop being a bitch."

PJ: Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: Uh cuz I, you know, I had seen so many people shot and um and that's how that's how screwed up I was, right?

And um you know, put a pressure dressing on it and started asking questions about who shot him. But I remembered rather than, "Hey sir, you know, as the years went by, I got much better with my uh my community service, right?" But you know, I was probably six months on the job, so we're talking eight months out of combat at this point.

And uh

you know, I I was I was very disconnected. So here I am. I got a shooting victim.

Um and I'm rather than being, "Hey, sir, are you all right? Let me take care of that for you." I told him he was a and needed to sit down and stop crying.

PJ: Wow.

Ben: um you know so I was very very

PJ: you know it's it's funny you say that um and and obviously I didn't go through combat like I said but one of the things that I found to be the most difficult thing for me personally well one of them uh of getting out was like just figuring out how to talk to civilians

because we don't realize like the the language that we use in the service is so different

Ben: Oh yeah

PJ: than in the civilian world regardless of what you get into and I remember the first time being on the job and saying something that I thought was pretty normal and them looking at me and being like,

"You you can't talk like that, bro."

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: And even even within each specific industry, you know, there's there's

buzzwords, there's ways you speak. Um but the military

and and the policing world, um

Ben: I'm sure

PJ: you know there's a level of

we're used to the extremes, so even the way we communicate is very extreme.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that just becomes what you gravitate towards because you're exposed to it so much.

And you know, so going back to to my story, um, I come from generational uh alcoholism also. So I had uh started drinking in the military and um,

PJ: you didn't. Yeah. Right. And then it uh, not that it's necessarily right, but sorry. Go ahead.

Ben: That's all right.

Um, and slowly it slowly crept up on me. Um, you know, that's the thing about substance use that disorder that a lot of people don't realize. It's not like at some point you made the choice, right? Slowly took over, right? And you didn't even notice.

PJ: You normalized it.

Ben: Yeah. So, it started with,

you know, drinking with the guys I worked with, uh, you know, on our days off to going out after shift to I need to drink to go to sleep to now it's taken over and it's completely taken over. Now I'm getting anxiety and I don't understand why. Right? And what a lot of people now, you know, going to my education side, what a lot of people don't realize is when you're self-medicating with alcohol, you are ingesting way beyond a therapeutic dosage of a depressant.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ben: And then you're trying to function after that and then you wonder why am I having severe anxiety, right? It's completely interrelated, but we don't want to stare at the elephant in the room, right? Because that shame starts to take over.

PJ: Sure.

Ben: So you start saying there's no way I can handle all this stuff. I'm a police officer. I did all these combat tours. How can I not handle something as simple as drinking, right? But the reality of it is I couldn't. I couldn't. Um so couple years go by of this um and you know a life where I was trying to be a good police officer. Um emotionally with the people in my life totally disconnected. Totally disconnected. I didn't want to get close to anybody. Yeah. Um, I was probably a nightmare to be friends with, a nightmare to date. Um, you know, because I pushed everybody away as soon as they started getting close.

PJ: Sure.

Ben: And I I really do believe that came out of losing my friends in the military. And then also

PJ: Oh, man. I could see that.

Ben: Then also the way we do things in the military where you spend all this time, you get emotionally attached to people, then what do we do? We scatter you all of the wind to never see each other ever again. So emotionally, I was very disconnected. And then you add the drinking on top of that. Now you're disconnected with bad behavior.

Um,

so

PJ: fast connecting with others versus disconnecting with yourself.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. You know,

right. Yep. So, fast forward a couple years of doing that, uh, the walls had really closed in. Um, you know, my job at the time, it wasn't as bad as like some of the guys I know that that were police officers in the 80s and 90s where it was like, tough it out, you know, and, you know, you need to get over this. Um, but it just was still quiet. It was still not talked about, right? Um, and I was very fortunate to have um some good leaders that pulled me aside and said, "You got to do something different." Um we didn't really have the answer back then on what different looked like, right? But

they knew something was up. Yeah. Right. Um and they encouraged me to get some help. And I'm, you know, to this day thankful for those guys.

Um and my family, like I said, my dad uh being recovery, my mom having been on that journey. Um and then at the time, I had uh actually started uh dating a lady um who amazingly put up with my crap to an extreme level. Um, but she had had enough at that point too and she gave me an ultimatum. Um, and I had a young daughter and that was the catalyst right there. And I remember my dad saying to me, I had two choices, right? Choice number one was continue what I'm doing and I was likely going to either end up dead or lose my job uh and be a debate father. Right? And the other option was stop drinking. Get that out of my life and I'm capable of doing anything I want to do.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ben: And I didn't I didn't see that at the time. I didn't realize it was that simple. Just get the substances out of my life.

PJ: That's right.

Um simple, not easy though.

Ben: Not easy. And then there was a lot of work that had to get done after that. But I did, you know, I did stop drinking with some help.

Um and uh a lot of therapy, a lot of traditional, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy. Again, there weren't really any first responder veteran programs available back then. Um, so did a lot of work in that and then life actually took off. I thought like all the cool stuff was behind me, right? And now it's just heal. But I was just like now I'm just going to turn into some old dude, right? And I have to heal and get over this crap,

right?

And I didn't recognize that those were just the first chapters. Yeah.

Right. The book was still coming. Um, so in the process of it now, I get healthy. Um, you know, and it's not it's not a it's not like this, right? It's not like

PJ: what was it though that was like the point where all of a sudden you were like, "Oh, damn." Like what what was it? What was that trigger point for you realizing I was going to be um not able to be a good dad? You know,

was it because your dad said that?

Ben: No, it was a combination of recognizing it. my wife uh uh I think we were still did dating at that point or I don't remember if we were married but she ended up taking our daughter and saying I'm not going to expose her to you.

You know, you're insane. Um drunk all the time.

So the walls closed in.

PJ: Got it. That's what you mean by the Got it. Got it.

Ben: Yeah. And working had enough of me, too. You know, the the

PJ: She's like the rock bottom.

Ben: Yeah. Everything had closed in

and I had to make a choice. And um but then my dad gave me what those choices are because it seems so complicated. I'm like, why does everything seem out of control?

And he just laid the two choices in front of me.

PJ: What would you say to someone who is maybe going through a very similar thing and doesn't necessarily see the simplicity of of the choices ahead of them, even if it's not easy, because I think we tend to confuse simple with easy.

Ben: Yes. Yes. do your absolute best to be willing to listen to somebody who's doing it in a healthy way.

You know, chronic uniqueness is the most dangerous thing in the mental health world for and and especially for us. So, shame is dangerous and chronic uniqueness is

PJ: what do you mean by what's chronic uniqueness?

Ben: So chronic uniqueness is basically there there's a system there's a a process of of of mental health. It is complicated and simple at the same time. Sure. Right. And if you see somebody that has many of the same traits and history as you and their programs working for them and many many like them which includes probably you give it a shot. Right? rather than telling them on the front end, you know, no, I'm a little bit different, so I'm not going to do that. And a good example I could use of that is, you know, say we have a veterans trauma group, right?

PJ: Right.

Ben: And um but I start saying, I don't want to go because I'm a veteran, but then I also became a police officer. Right.

So what's working for these guys apparently is not going to work for me because I have just that much bit of difference, right? and I'm tricking myself into staying in my hole, right?

PJ: What's actually behind that?

Ben: Uh, it's the shame side of things.

PJ: The shame. Okay.

Ben: It really is the shame side of things.

Um, and it also is within that shame. It's it's actually saying for once,

I can't handle this.

PJ: Right.

Ben: But again, we don't feel shameful if we have to call for an air strike.

PJ: Absolutely. Well, it's the meaning we put behind it,

Ben: right? So, that's what I ask guys to do is recognize you're not saying I'm weak.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: You're saying, "I need some backup." Yeah. I need you to I need I need to call in an air strike on on my problems, right? So, guys, help me out.

PJ: I like that.

Ben: And

we're going to help. We're going to help. Um so, in the process of this, I end up shortening this up.

Uh in law enforcement, end up getting into hostage negotiation. Um I end up getting involved in um crisis intervention response which is helping people with mental health issues um you know get stabilized uh a lot of you know negotiating with people that have severe mental issu mental health issues suicidal things like that um and getting them help either through you know social services or sometimes sometimes you got to arrest them right they got to help them with their own bottom um and then the court ordered mental health therapies in place.

Fast forward, we start realizing, okay, we're doing all this stuff for the public, right? But our guys are still not healthy. They're not doing well. The average life expectancy for a first responders, 16 to 21 years less today than the regular,

PJ: right? Yeah.

Ben: Right. Which is actually short. We have a shorter life expectancy than a combat veteran,

which is just wild. Um, yeah, it's sad. So, I started really getting interested in the peer wellness side of things. We started locally within our department and then we branched out and created a larger peer organization and then just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and now we cover five different counties. We vet resources. We have wellness groups. We do classes for first responders. Um and we're heavily involved in the area. It's and it's called the Lehigh Valley Law Enforcement Emergency Services Officers Wellness Group.

Extremely long name because we ended up taking on more professions. Started with law enforcement and then we took on EMS and fire. So we had to make the the name longer. So the trick name is LVLO.

PJ: Okay.

Ben: Um and in the process of that um I never stopped going to school after I got healthy. Right. When I got healthy, I kind of got interested in you know what I want to learn something.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: So I got my bachelors. I then got my u my master's degree in um criminal behavior. And then when I start seeing guys really need we need somebody out here from our own not to say that that the the mental health professionals out there don't get it. They try very very well.

PJ: Sure.

Ben: But to get a veteran first responder to listen a lot of times you have to be an insider.

PJ: Yeah, I hear that.

Ben: Right. So I screw said screw it. I'm going to go back to school and get my doctorate in psychology. Um and I looked at different types and I ended up deciding on organizational psychology which is systems fixing, right? It's the macro level of installing wellness and healthy programs into all the different systems. So into the the different police departments, uh working with the military and the veterans groups to try to make sure that we have the best psychological approaches for people. Um yeah, and then since then, uh we have boy cover, like I said, we're covering five counties. We have one, two, three, four, five, six different support groups available for vets and first responders. And it's all post-traumatic growth based.

Right. Yeah. And what that basically means is we all know what PTSD is, right? And it's such a common term, but also people think it's a lifelong sentence.

PJ: Yeah. Absolutely.

Ben: And it's not.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: Um just like you can have cancer, the other side of cancer, remission.

Just like substance use, you have recovery. There is another side of post-traumatic stress disorder, and that's post-traumatic growth. When you really do do the work on that stuff, those experiences can turn into the recognition of new possibilities in your life, deeper relationships in your life. And

that's what all of our our support groups are based off of.

PJ: I want to get a little myopic um because I want to make this actionable for someone who may be in this situation.

Ben: Absolutely.

PJ: What are what are three things that they could maybe do to examine let's put it this way. What are three behaviors

that maybe they can pick up on or maybe look at themselves and be like am I doing these things?

Ben: Yep.

PJ: And then what are maybe three things just

very small actionable steps that they can make to just get moved in that direction.

Ben: Absolutely. So, three three behaviors, three practices that we can do that begin to change our outlook to begin.

PJ: So, no no uh sorry, let me let me clarify. What are three things that maybe they can notice about themselves that that may trigger I need help?

Ben: Okay. Um hypers sensitivity to hyposensitivity. So, what do I mean by that? I'm I'm on or I'm off,

right?

I love you or I hate you.

Nowhere in between,

right? Yeah. Yeah. I I'm in. I'm going to bust my butt at work. But the first time that they are um they give me a negative review in the slightest way, quit.

Right? That real strong on and off switch, right? And then in relationships, we do that too, right?

Um it's the honeymoon phase or the fighting phase, right?

So those very extremes, the strong on andoff switch, if you're noticing that in yourself,

that's one sign, right?

Big sign. Self-medication.

Yeah. Yeah, it can be in multiple different areas too, right? It could be your typical, it could be your alcohol, right? Could be prescription medication, it could be non-prescription medication, right? One thing that we see a lot out there, this may not be the most popular statement, but um you know, with medical marijuana cards, people are saying, "Oh, well, it's okay now. It's legal." Right? People who've been abusing prescription oxy for years, right? Just because you prescribed it doesn't mean you're not abusing it.

Um Yes. So that's something to look at if it's becoming just a coping mechanism. Like can it be helpful for anxiety? Can it be helpful for things? Yes, if used as prescribed. Right. But a lot of people aren't using it as prescribed. They're actually self-medicating with it. They're doing the same thing people did with Oxy.

Um but within that, are we are we self-medicating with substances? Are we self is our addiction in other areas? Are we a workaholic? Do we have a sex addiction? Do we have a spending addiction? Right?

Are we gambling? Those that's another huge huge sign.

And that third territory is quick to righteous anger, right?

PJ: Ah that's that that righteous anger.

Ben: Yeah. It's the the most dangerous type of anger for people like us.

So we don't want to feel like a piece of crap, right? Uh but righteous anger is the anger that I think is justified for some reason, but I take it to the extreme, right? driving down the street and I get cut off, right? Boom. I go off. Um, another big one, you know, infidelity. Wife screws around, so I'm just gonna fly off the handle and go beat up the other guy, right? We go to those extremes very, very quickly.

Again, or the hardcore isolation. I will deal with no one. I am I am running from society now.

I'm going to completely check out, right? and I'm going to convince myself in some way, shape, and form that I'm so much different than society that I can't be around them. Right.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: And that's that chronic uniqueness again. That's that dangerous chronic uniqueness that's stuck in our sickness.

PJ: Yeah.

Oh, it's justification. It's avoidance.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah. Really is.

PJ: And what Okay. So, what are three things small steps like they can do immediately to just break the cycle and go get the help they need?

Ben: So, uh, first thing that I would say is, uh, if you're local here in the Lehigh Valley or anywhere in kind of Eastern PA, get to one of our support groups. Just give it a shot. If you don't like it, you don't have to come back, but we don't have many people that don't come back. They come back because they see it. It's a brotherhood leading you in the right direction and sisterhood. Um, to get to that, bticonsultingservice.com, right? um and our flyers on there and then what again that's a post-traumatic growth meeting.

Now what that does is it facilitates the first recommendation which is get around three to five healthy people. We become the average of the people we spend our most time with.

PJ: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Ben: So getting around three to five healthy people on a frequent basis that are going to try to guide you in the right direction.

Again, if you're local, we already have them for you, right? just come to the meetings. Second recommendation I have is wellness practices of gratitude. Starting to break that cycle of negative thinking, right? So, we're looking for threats all the time. And I'm not saying that we need to walk around aloof out there, right? We're still going to want to be safe and scared for threats. But in the process of it, we also have to begin to practice

what do we like? What's the positive stuff? Right? We became so out of practice to it. If you ask a 5-year-old kid of all the things they think are pretty and cool in the room, they're going to find them all.

PJ: Yep.

Ben: Where do we lose that?

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: Right. So, we have to start practicing that again.

Yeah. And it's very simple. It's every day and you practice this with your three to five people. Right.

Every day share with them one thing you're articulately grateful for in your life. Right? And now you start to practice that again. If you're so negative and so stuck in it that every situation you're walking into, you're hating life, you're angry, practice it everywhere you go. So you walk into a room, you scan for your threats, right? You figure out where you want to sit. Find one thing then in that room that you like,

right? And now you're practicing a little bit of gratitude, right?

And the third thing

is being patient with yourself, being forgiving of yourself. Yeah. Don't hold yourself to a standard that

is unrealistic.

Right. We have a tendency to do that in this in our community. We want to help all of our brothers and sisters, right? But then we hold ourselves to a standard that is completely unattainable.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ben: And it it self it's the self-destructive process. So giving yourself some grace so that you're not constantly up against that razor's edge.

PJ: Well, I think that also helps us grow, right? Because if we are so hard on ourselves, one of the things that that I think I've come across is we become maybe secretly but fearful of our own reaction to ourselves. So we play smaller.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Yeah. That's that's Thank you. That's fascinating. Um

so you you talked about last time

grit versus resilience and I thought this was such a fascinating topic because in the military we are taught, you know, grit. We're taught to go out there and just grind ourselves to a pulp. Kind of like what you were just talking about. Like we go out, we bust our asses and we have this huge expectation for ourselves and and and we are willing to literally burn ourselves out over it. That's

Ben: right.

PJ: What is the distinction between grit and resilience?

Ben: Um first responder in that community, military is is in the policemies are great at teaching grit, right? which is toughing things out

and a lot of times for a prolonged period of time, right?

But they don't teach the difference between grit and resilience, right? Grit is toughing something out for a period of time, but if you do that forever, you're going to get crushed, right? Resilience is knowing when to take a knee

so that you can rest a little bit to get back up and recharge that grit. Right? So that is a very very important distinction that it is not weak to take a knee to recharge your grit. That's what teaches you resilience, right? To gain that wisdom. And how do you develop that? Right? First, communicating with other people, disclosing to other people how you are doing, right? Think about in the military. Every time that you're in a firefight, what are you doing? You're given a report. Am I hit? How's my equipment? How much ammo do I have left? Right. And we even get into, do I have water? Right. Right.

So, we're constantly checking on each other, right? To stay operational,

right?

Do the same thing.

PJ: Interesting.

Ben: How are you doing? Right. And then if you're not doing well, hey brother, it's recharge time, right? We'll get you back in this fight later.

PJ: So, taking inventory.

Ben: Yeah. Yeah.

PJ: So I mean like most things in life you know there most values most need structures most identities most actions serve you in some way even if they're hurting you.

Ben: Yeah

right.

Yeah.

PJ: In which case is grit a valuable thing to leverage versus maybe harmful.

Ben: So uh on the physical fitness side grit extremely useful extremely useful especially when we're younger right and our bodies can take it. Um, now think about the gym. If you have a high level of grit at our age, right, you can hurt yourself real quick,

right?

PJ: And Chris was talking about that last time,

Ben: you definitely hurt yourself on a very, very, very quick basis. So, you know, that's also true in

relationships, right?

Um, both in the healthy relationship and the unhealthy relationship. So, the healthy relationship, right?

Grit is you now expect your family to have this level of grit, right? Right.

PJ: So, I've been guilty of that.

Ben: Yeah. So, I'm going to work long hours and sweetie, you're going to tough that out, right? And you should work long hours, too. So, you're putting that extreme grit on them. Sure. Right. Or the opposite of it, right? You're in an unhealthy relationship, but you're so used to life being tough.

That you tell yourself it's perfectly acceptable to be in that unhealthy relationship and you tough it out way past where it was safe for you.

Does that make sense?

PJ: Yeah. Absolutely. So, what what is what does resilience look like in those situations?

Ben: So in those situations it's like maybe as a parent well taking that opportunity to listen right taking that opportunity to learn that's the most important piece right we don't know everything even though a lot of times we think we do

learn about it and put it into practice right do the healthy things and take guidance from the healthy ones that have come before that can role model it for us you know they're out there they are out there this this idea is not a new concept the idea of taking care of veterans and taking care of first responders. It was just something that was done very quietly, right? But we're in a period in society now where um I think it's time to talk about it, right? Because we have we have generations of outstanding leaders just waiting there.

PJ: Yeah. Absolutely.

Ben: And nobody's saying, "Hey guys, you know, we can all get healthy together, too."

PJ: Right.

Ben: And

and think about what that does to your like ability to lead.

PJ: Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I think that we in the military put a lot of emphasis on on the person who can just like barrel through things as as the strong leader. And don't get me wrong, I think that that's a useful skill.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: In certain capacities.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: I think that again to leverage Chris here, I think he he put a in a very uh beautiful redefinition of toughness in that it's it's being open and raw at a given time.

Yeah. That's a level of toughness that we often don't come to learn while we're in the military.

Ben: Disclosure is super important because it it allows that commonality for the person to then share back in return.

PJ: That's right. Yeah. It's so important. How about that for leadership?

Ben: Yeah, that's absolutely. I mean, think about it. If if you want someone to follow you, you need to tell them where you've been, you know, otherwise what are they following, right? So, disclosure is absolutely important. Um, you know, it it's that that vulnerability is key. I mean, just like we talked about on here, guarantee all the stuff I'm saying now, nobody'd be listening to it if we didn't talk about the beginning piece that

I had the journey, you know. Yeah. So, it's not I didn't I didn't study this in the book, you know, I mean, I did study in the book, too, but

um,

you know, but the journey was there beforehand, so it was kind of,

you know, it was both sides.

PJ: Yeah.

You're the real deal,

Dr. Um,

so you have you have a framework called the warrior wellness triangle.

Ben: Well, yeah. It's not mine.

PJ: It's not yours. Okay. No. Can you walk me through that then?

Ben: So, it's the it's the wellness triangle for post-traumatic growth. Um, it's I didn't I didn't coin it, didn't come up with it. Um, but we use it because it works really really well, right?

So, we have a tendency as the warrior community to view wellness in all these little silos, right? So we think I got to keep my body in shape. Right.

PJ: Right.

Ben: Got to keep my mind in shape, but I have no idea how to do that. And then we don't even know the other things that we need to keep in shape. Right.

PJ: Right.

Ben: So the wellness triangle for post-traumatic growth and that is tied to the warrior community is the mind,

the body,

the social and financial side, right? And why is finances in there? Because finances is one of the number one causes of suicide in the warrior community because it's such a strong cause of shame.

PJ: M interesting.

Ben: And we don't talk about it with each other. Like they think about this. This is the one thing to really think about.

PJ: That's very interesting.

Ben: So if it's one of the number one causes of suicide within our community, why have we never gotten a finance class in any of our lines of work? Right.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: And then the other side to think about here too is you and I will communicate very openly about our mental health.

Would you feel uncomfortable talking about your finances with me?

PJ: I wouldn't, but that's me.

Ben: But our community, that's like the taboo.

PJ: It it is. It is. I think I think that's pretty common for just our society.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: You know, like you always hear people like, "Oh, don't talk about finances."

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: You know, but I agree with you. I think that like

I don't know. I'm I'm probably an overshare or I think my wife would probably definitely say that. But like I I think there's beauty to that too, though. If if you can really be open and honest about kind of everything, you're helping, like you said, you're helping other people also feel like it's okay, which in in a case like finance, especially if it's leading to negative outcomes, right? That there's ways to overcome it. There's absolutely right.

Ben: Absolutely.

PJ: It's not a finite problem

and there's people to help you. You know, that's the other side of our community. like we're a very giving group, you know.

Ben: Yes, we are. We'll we'll we'll pull people out of holes all day long, right? And then teach you how to not fall back in it.

Um but so there's then that social financial side and then the center is your spirit if you're spiritual or your purpose. Sure.

If you're agnostic because something gets you up every day.

PJ: That's right.

Ben: And the key here is to not think about these things as the extremes of them. Right. So we we don't have I'm healthy mentally or I'm not. Yes. Right.

PJ: Absolutely. It's not black and white.

Ben: It's are we taking steps in that direction? Are we doing some post-traumatic growth meetings? Right? And that actually works on two territories there, right? Our post-traumatic growth meeting works on our mind and our social, right? It's giving us the positive people to be around and working on our mind, right? And then there's the body. And we have to make sure the body is wellrounded, right? So, we can't just I'm going to go to the gym every day, beat the crap out of my body, and end up with uh busted knees and a bad shoulder, right? we have to stay healthy.

So, get to the doctor, get checked out, right? Get your cholesterol checked out. If you've been having nagging issues, get them checked out. It's the whole the whole realm of of healthy. And stay somewhat open-minded. Um there's lots of forms of recovery and health out there that um you know, I would have been closed off to at one point. And as long as they're within reason, you know, check with the community, right? Um, you know, so you know, good examples of this is there's a lot of different types of therapy out there.

Um, give give a group a shot. Give it a go. What can it hurt? If you're struggling, right, it's probably not going to make it worse. So, give it a shot, right? Um, you know, so yeah, it's basically what I have in that too.

PJ: Well, you know, this is interesting. Um because one of the things that that I've been covering a lot recently is is how so how the interplay of like identity, purpose and and structure like work together, right? And when we're in the military, we are in probably law enforcement too, but we are in like the pinnacle of structure. Yes.

Right. And and structure worded another way is security. Yeah.

It's certainty.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Which by the way is our basic need as humans.

Ben: Absolutely.

Safety, right? It is the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy.

PJ: Yeah.

You know, but when we get out, that's all stripped away.

So, our most basic need is gone overnight and we throw an identity crisis in the mix.

You know, I mean, there's no it's no secret as to why now all of a sudden we're seeing, you know, three times more likelihood of suicides and etc. upon getting out.

Ben: Absolutely.

PJ: One of the things that I'm finding is it's kind of fascinating is as you're talking about you know these things mindbody social financial you can build habits around each one of these

and those habits start to beget a purpose

Ben: absolutely

PJ: which is now in the middle y

right uh and I think that that's really fascinating one of the one of the I guess unlocks for me though the extra layer on top though

is the identity piece but not identity from your title Right.

Right. It's not identity because you are a marine or because you are a soldier or because you are even a parent.

All of those are fragile.

Any at any time those things can end like that.

Ben: Yep. Yep.

PJ: You know, and when that happens, who are you?

Ben: Exactly.

PJ: You know, but if on the other hand, now you're building an identity based on your values or the standards that you care about in life

and then you build the structure to support those things, the daily habits. Yep.

Which now builds the triangle, the purpose then follows. It's the positive purpose-driven existence. Yeah.

Ben: I mean, it's truly it's the backbone of post-traumatic growth.

PJ: Beautiful.

Ben: Um, and the key there is, you know, the deeper level work that gets done at these meetings, um, and some of the programs that are out there is we're not just going to try to help you heal from your trauma.

We're going to try to help you find the silver lining, the value in your trauma.

PJ: Oh, I love that. You know,

it didn't happen to you, it happened for you.

Ben: Right. Right. And that's what gives you your purpose- driven existence. Yeah.

Um, and the vast majority of us, like I have my journey and my purpose became sharing it.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: With the next guy. And that's spread out where I've got so many buddies um that are doing that same thing. And it's cool, man. We're out there as a team sharing healthiness with other veterans and first responders. It's contagious.

PJ: Yeah. It's awesome.

Ben: And we're helping the the helping the culture stay healthy, you know, and it doesn't make us crappy at our jobs.

PJ: Oh my god. No. It's a force multiplier.

Ben: Absolutely. Many of our guys are still active either in law enforcement as first responders. Some are still in the military and it has made them outstanding at what they're doing.

PJ: I love that.

So, so tell me, let's make this actionable. What is like one small one habit for each like corner of this triangle that somebody can take on?

Ben: Okay, so we already talked about the gratitude, right? Gratitude is so important. So important for the mind,

right? your body structure and routine, what works for you. I'm not going to give like a tip like get to the gym and do right sets of 10 push-ups. No. Yeah.

I'm saying what works for you. Do a little research and then make it a structured habit. Absolutely. 21 days

will build a habit. And when you repeat that three times, you've built a behavior.

Right. So that's what you can do for your body. But also there's another side of that. Get to the doctor, right? get to the doctor because

and don't hold things back. Tell them everything,

right? If you get in shape, but you have a a disease that you haven't been handling, it's going to counteract that, right?

The social side, cover more of the social side, and we'll add in that to the finance. Social side, get active. Find three to five people. Get active with positive people.

Just do it. If you're nervous, just walk in and do it. You're not going to you're not going to regret it. It's going to be like walking into a room of old friends, even though you don't know these guys, right? It's going to it's going to be comfortable there.

Financial side that was the hardest thing for me honestly start right

and simply ask yourself do I need this versus do I want this? It's not hard.

PJ: Do I need this versus do I want this?

— Yeah, I like that advice we give our kids, right? But

— it's so practical though.

Ben: We can do it for ourselves. And then that center, right? that that purpose. Find and ask yourself, and you may need to go back in time to figure this out. At some point, right now, we're talking to the first responder and veteran community. At some point, every single one of us believed in something enough to swear an oath.

PJ: Absolutely right.

Ben: What part of that is what got us to swear that oath?

And chances are your purpose is is still in there somewhere.

PJ: Oh, I totally agree. It comes from in here. I think a lot of the times we look outward for purpose, but no, it does. that comes from within here.

Ben: But getting around each other, suddenly you start to feel it again and the purpose becomes let's help each other get out.

PJ: Absolutely. And you tease it out. Well, I mean, hey, service member, it's in the name.

Ben: Yeah, pretty much. Right.

PJ: Yeah, pretty much.

Um, you know, so all right, here's a challenge.

What would that take? What you just named, what would that take? Like 30, 45 minutes a day?

Ben: Not even.

Not even. you know, think about uh your your wellness side, right? So, making sure that I scheduled a doctor's appointment, right? If I needed to go to the doctor, I haven't been there in two years, probably go to the doctor, right? So, I get that knocked out of the way, right? If you do it online, what does that take you? Five minutes. If you have an app, right? Right. Finding something you're grateful for in a room, 30 seconds if you've been practicing it on a regular basis. Sending three text messages to the positive people in your life. What does that take?

PJ: Five minutes.

Ben: Yeah. You know, and reminding yourself what's getting me up every day, right? And I want to help the guy next to me. And that purpose is filled with those other things, right? Absolutely. So, your purpose, if your purpose becomes, I want to help people around me be healthy.

I do that by sending those three to five messages, right? And I accomplish that by staying healthy myself,

by going to the doctor. And at the top, I can't share healthy stuff with people if I'm not thinking.

PJ: Yeah. Well, you role model.

Ben: Yeah. And that's the key is role modeling for each other, right?

PJ: Yeah. Well, you have to lead yourself before you can lead anyone else.

Ben: That's right.

PJ: Yeah.

Okay. So, you you hear this folks. There's a simple challenge that literally 21 days, 30 minutes a day and and and it becomes a habit and you can build on that, right? You can build on this to to be like maybe an hour if you want to go to the gym or something like this a part of that. But I mean, that seems pretty do. I I hope that each of us can find 30 minutes a day work. work your angles on the triangle.

Ben: And yeah, what that does is that keeps us

healthy and wellrounded. Right. Right. So that one area fails, we got backups.

PJ: Okay. So, so building community. So, so thank you for the segue here.

Um

I think we talked about compassionate accountability.

Like how does that play into you know this this triangle that you mentioned and then also like the community?

Ben: Yeah. So compassionate accountability is is really the idea that we aren't going to enable each other's bad behaviors, but at the same time, we're not going to do to us what we hated being done to us, right? Which is

we have a tendency to shame. We we we treat our dead like heroes, right? But our wounded and sick, how do we treat them in the first shame them away, right? So what compassion accountability is is not doing that. We wouldn't do that to our family. If my daughter does something, gets in trouble, I'm not kicking her out, locking the door behind her, right? If she gets injured, right? I'm not saying, "Well, that's it. You know, you're out of the family because you got hurt and you're no longer useful, right? We don't do that to our own family."

And we say regularly that the military and the first responder world is a family. So, let's start treating each other like a family, right? And again, I'm not saying we enable each other's behaviors. We don't say, "Hey, man, you know, uh, you're out drinking and driving every day, but I love you. I'm still going to take care of you." It's, "Bro, we need to get right here." Like, treat them like you would your brother, right? We're going to fix you. We're going to help you get fixed,

right?

But within that, not shaming people for the needs that they have, right? Being understanding to the fact that people struggle, being understanding to the fact that they may not be healthy and we got to help them get healthy. That's the key. So that's that compassionate accountability. It's compassion within bumpers.

PJ: So this is more of a personal curiosity. Um because I think that as as at least I've gone through my own journey here, I I can recognize pretty early now when someone is in a a mindset

that's not serving them.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: In in ways that could actually could be hurting them.

Um and sometimes I'll struggle with finding the right way to not like I'm not going to let you do that. Y um but I also still want to feel compassionate. I still want to help them. How do you walk that line?

Ben: So that's where we want to use again we talked about those extremes, right? And that's that happens to us through our trauma and training, right? We get those extremes. I'm helping or I'm not helping, right? And helping is I'm fully successful in helping or I'm not helping. Sometimes you got to wait people out, right? And it's called planting seeds. So if I'm helping but I'm helping with the dimmer switch, right? which I means I'm making it okay for myself to understand and recognize that all I'm all you're allowing me to do is help you at 5%. Right? And that may be planning a little bit of an idea in your head that tomorrow you might want to think about getting a little healthier, right?

And then guess what? If I'm taking care of myself and I'm healthy and our whole crew is here role modeling healthy behavior for you, as time goes on and you keep seeing this and that seed keeps growing and we're getting that 5% of healthiness into you a day, eventually you may start to listen. So, it's not to force it down their throat.

It's to make it attractive to actually take care of yourself.

PJ: Right. Okay. So if someone is going down a rabbit hole,

do you just let them keep going?

Ben: No. Boundaries.

PJ: Yeah. Okay.

Ben: Boundaries. Yeah. There are there are

there mind we're talking about the first responder veteran community. At least we have a lot of other ways

to put boundaries in place to make sure that guys don't go too far in that direction. Got it. Right.

Let's get them help. Let's get them to rehabs. Let's get them taken care of. And

I even talked about that within the CIT model. Right. I have friends of mine that that have said what changed their life was the fact that the police officer cared enough to arrest them and then get them courted.

PJ: Right.

Ben: And that may be what they need. Right. So that's that compassionate accountability. We're not saying we're going to let you completely self-destruct. Yeah. Right.

Um there will be boundaries there. Right. But at the same time, we're not going to lock you out of the house because of that.

PJ: Yeah.

Right. So, I love you. However, I'm not gonna I can't let you do this to yourself.

Ben: Yeah, that's right.

PJ: What does a bad tribe look like?

Ben: Well, I think we've all probably been a member of them at some point, you know. Um, it's it's what it looks like when we're all extremely unhealthy and we're enabling each other's unhealthy behaviors. Um, you know, I can tell you, um, when I first came home, I spent a lot of time in bars with other vets.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: Uh, and first responders

who weren't doing well either. and we're all giving each other terrible advice while intoxicated. Um, you know,

PJ: that's never happened,

Ben: right? So, it's, you know, I wouldn't call them a bad tribe. I would call them an unhealthy tribe.

PJ: Thank you.

Ben: They are not they're not guiding each other to thriving, right? Um, and chances are the direction they're heading uh is is not going to work out too well for them. So, they've got to change direction, right? And how do we attract them out of that bar? How do we attract them out of that bad behavior? Role model it. Yeah.

Say, "Hey, man. Come on over here. It's way better over here."

PJ: So, is can you can you give me like a quick story of of someone that you witnessed their change while in while in the community?

Ben: Yeah, I I mean I can give you a bunch.

PJ: I'm sure. But what? Give me an impactful one.

Ben: So, um this guy probably would be really cool with it. And this is not within the psychology world. This is from my policing experience. Um, we had a vet who uh I actually ended up at his house many, many times for hostage negotiations. Yeah. I mean, he would like really go off. Um,

and what we ended up doing was we we just didn't quit, right? We just kept offering the help. Kept offering the help. And, um, one of my buddies, Justin Wright, awesome dude, his community intervention specialist, he made it his mission to keep offering that help on a regular basis. And um it ended up because we're all working together uh he did need to get arrested, right? And then he was ordered, you've got to go along with the plan. Um and now the guy's got several years sober. He's working for the VA. This is a guy

who multiple hostage negotiations. I mean, we're talking like we're all I mean, we knew him by name,

you know, by like if we're in 100 a city of 140,000 people and I know you by name, you have a

probably not a good thing. Yeah.

PJ: Right.

Ben: And you know, and now he's doing great, right? Now he's taking care of other veterans and that's a combination of that growth, right? Helping him, not giving up on him, right? But also not enabling him at the same time.

PJ: Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: Right. Now that's an extreme example. I agree. Right. I'm not suggesting that we go out and just start arresting all of our friends. Right. Well, you're not doing well. Let's arrest you.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: But still offering that help for every element thereof. Hey, brother. I got you. If you don't want to keep struggling this way, I got you.

PJ: Yeah.

So, with that mindset, I'm curious if you were to sit down with um how old when you got out?

Ben: When I got out of the military.

Yeah. Uh 22.

PJ: So, if you could sit down with 22-year-old Ben Iobst and and give him a piece of advice while he's transitioning out of the military, what would it be?

Ben: That's an interesting question for me because I I'm a true believer that the journey I had I had to have. Sure.

In order to feel experience the growth. Um, now if I'm talking to a 22-y old that I want to help facil see him grow faster than than I than I did.

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: Um, you know, not have to maybe run into as many walls. I would say get involved with the healthy veteran first responder community. That is the best possible way to do it. Best example I could give you. Um, I actually used this yesterday. Driving an 18-wheeler is not easy, right? I've never done it and it's pro probably be a terrible idea for me to just go out, hop in an 18 yard and try to do it. I should probably go find either formally or informally someone who's done it before.

PJ: Sure.

Ben: To guide me,

PJ: maybe go to school for a CDL.

Ben: Yeah, something like that. Um, and there's a lot of people out there that could teach you drive truck, right? So, why not use that? And it's become that easy to find healthy first responders and veterans at least within our community. Just show up. We're there.

PJ: Abs. Oh, absolutely. And there's so many venues for that.

What do you think the biggest mistake that most veterans make within probably the first six months of transition?

Ben: Isolation.

You know, I wouldn't call it a mistake. I call it what they run to. You know, they start to get shameful.

PJ: Okay.

Ben: But isolation so dangerous. And then they convince themselves that they need to be isolated. Again, that righteous anger. I've earned the right to be isolated. Right. Well, yes, you have, but it's not healthy.

PJ: What? Okay. Um, you you mentioned that, you know, you could go outside and throw a rock and and hit a veterans group.

Like, how let's make that a little more actionable. Like, what and assume they're not in Pennsylvania. What can somebody do to find a community a healthy community of of veterans to or or someone that can relate to them

for across the entire country?

Yeah. Let's just what are some resources?

Ben: That's a great question. So, that is something we've been working on. Um a national database. It's needed for first responders and veterans. So, you no matter where you are in the country, you can find healthy first responders and veterans. Um I would love to say and in some capacities the VA is a good option. And I'd love to say in some capacities our unions have good wellness programs. They do, right? Um but they are um not the full-blown culture change piece which is those meetings right that that that's what provides you with a social circle of of good healthy friends that is so important um so until we see that everywhere my suggestion would be VA you know FOP um they have good wellness programs right so getting involved in that and then when you're involved in that if your region does not have a tribe of healthy people that are doing it organically build it.

PJ: Yeah. Okay. No, that's a good call out.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Um, so one of the things I covered on on one of the uh my my recent posts was was about how and I took this for granted. That's where this was actually coming from was was that I thought I was the only one transitioning, but in fact my wife was also 100% going through the military transition and I did not give her that credit. I did not give her the

um the attention or anything that she needed for it.

Yeah. Um, I I'm curious from your perspective, what what would you tell like a wife or partner so that they can better understand their transition, but also maybe so that they can help the individual understand that they're also transitioning.

Ben: So, the communication piece is so important, but when we're really when we're extremely unhealthy on either side, right now we have two unhealthy people that start to clash. Um, so in that situation, if it's that level where it's extremely unhealthy and it's starting to cause dysfunction within the relationship, getting help is really, really important. Whether formal,

you know, therapy, couples counseling, um, you know, if you go to church, they've got great programs in churches, uh, different religious organizations.

Um, to the informal, find the healthy couple and communicate with them, right?

Um, borrowing strength from other people. Yeah. is so so important. But yet that's another territory that we don't want anyone to know our problems. Right.

How many people out there have marriage issues? Oh my god. Some way, shape, or form?

PJ: Probably married couple. Right.

Ben: But what do people do?

I don't want to talk about that.

PJ: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben: Right.

Well, that might be why our divorce rate so high in this country because we're not sharing advice and sharing the wins, right? We don't share the wins. Hey, uh, my wife and I had a disagreement and we actually came up with an awesome compromise. What do you actually hear? What do we hear? Because it's it's it goes back to that negative. What do people mostly communicate about when things go to crap?

PJ: Absolutely. Oh my god. Yeah.

Ben: Yeah. So, you go on social media, you're not seeing

tons of husbands and wives sharing about how they got through an argument or how they compromised.

You're only reading about the person that's going through the horrific divorce, right? So seeking out more of that positive is extremely important because it's there. It really is.

It is there. The good is always there. The bad is always there. It's always what you magnify.

PJ: Absolutely. And it's really hard to do with media and everything these days.

Ben: It is. Well, it's cuz it's cuz what people want to see is is dramatic.

PJ: That's right.

That's right. Yeah. I was just joking about like that, you know, remember what was it two weeks ago when they were like, "Oh my god, we're going to get more snowfall than we've ever seen." And it was like we got a foot.

Ben: Yeah. Snowageddon.

Yeah. Catastrophizing. Uh it gets people's attention. Um

PJ: it does. It sells.

Ben: But at the same time, it throws people off balance.

PJ: It does.

Ben: Right.

So my mission, it seems like your mission is the same is to uh I want to help people be balanced.

Yeah. You know, I don't want to get them off balance because if we have more people that are balanced,

we're going to have a healthier not only veteran first responder community,

but just a healthy country as a whole.

PJ: Oh my god.

Ben: I could become more balanced and

more

well more well-rounded, right? We'd be less reactive.

PJ: Three dimensional.

Ben: That's right.

PJ: So, if if we had to take this whole thing and boil it down to like one point that you want no one to forget when they walk away from this one, what would it be?

Ben: Well, I would say two different angles on that. So, one is locally. Locally, get to our meetings.

PJ: Okay.

Ben: Get to our meetings. Give it a shot. you know, um, uh, then universal start thinking from a positive angle, right? You're not broken. You're not broken, right? You just, you've had a lot of experiences and you're changed, right?

— That's okay.

Ben: Yeah,

that's okay, right? We can help you be cool with being changed.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: What's your favorite book?

Ben: Uh, it depends on the the territory that we'd be we'd be looking at. um for like growth. Um I'm a really big fan of Struggle Well,

um by Josh Goldberg and Ken Falke. Um really really good book. It gets heavy into the post-traumatic growth work. Um so I would suggest, you know, veteran first responder world. Check that out. Uh it's it's a a real good kind of start point.

PJ: Okay. Do you have a favorite podcast?

Ben: Uh I really don't to be honest with you. Um,

PJ: the Prize Podcast.

Ben: It's the pri podcast. Yes. 100% the Prize Podcast. Yes. Best podcast.

PJ: Yeah. Right. Right.

Ben: But I I kind of listen to whatever I'm in the mood for time. I'm like um a topic seeker less less than uh

um you know just like an individual podcast. Yeah. Like I'm I'm a researcher by heart. I mean that's

Yeah. I got a PhD. you know, that's that's part of the process. I I

want to learn something and I and I consume information, right? Um rather than little here, little there, which

in some ways still is that on andoff switch, right?

PJ: Yeah.

Ben: You know, if I'm going to learn something, I'm going to become a grandmaster at it, right? A little bit unrealistic in that capacity. So, I have to keep myself under control, too.

PJ: How about that?

Ben: Yeah.

PJ: Do you have a daily non-negotiable that you uh use every day?

Ben: Uh so, a couple different things. Um, one, and I keep going back to the gratitude, got to do it. Yeah,

I have got you to do it.

Um, and then I tell myself I have to also commit to a self-care every day, right? And it's got to be something off the wellness triangle.

And if I've been overloading in one area, right, so if I'm doing five days a week at the gym, right, and I haven't touched mine or the other areas, then I really need to add something.

PJ: Absolutely.

Ben: And I need to make sure I commit to that.

PJ: Yeah. Have you ever heard I'm sure you have, um, the spheres of influence.

Ben: Oh yeah.

PJ: Right.

Like we we especially in the military have a very very big usually like um

work bubble,

grit bubble, if you will.

We we tend to have a a me bubble about this big and then the relationship bubbles. It's just in the corner. You can't really see it.

Ben: Uh I'm with you. I'm with you. You got to make the bubbles a little bit uh little

balance them out. Balance them out.

PJ: Um how can people get a hold of you?

Ben: So a couple different ways. Um one, get to one of those meetings. I'm always there. So, if you want to meet me, get to the meetings. Um, and again, uh, getting to those, uh, it's bticonsultingservice.com to ow. And our meeting guides on there, our, um, our flyers on there for where all the meetings are in the Lehigh Valley. Uh, and all my contacts information is on there, too, so people can get a hold of me. They can email me, they can call me. Um, yeah.

PJ: Sweet. As per the drill, we'll throw all of that stuff in the show notes. Um, it's been a pleasure, my friend. I do appreciate you. Um, I love that you've been sharing your wisdom and uh that you were flexible enough to come on again and and I think this please let us know in the comments. I think this was a was a pretty good episode. So, so thank you for for everything you have to share.

Ben: It's no problem.

PJ: As always, my friends, if you have any sort of feedback, comments, whatever it may be, questions, people you want to see on the show, drop it below. Um, we would love it if you would subscribe and share this. Um, it's only here to help and our goal is to continue making it better and deliver more value. So until next time, we'll see you.