"I have pressure to be strong because I'm ______"

How these myths are essentially ruining your chance of recovering at all.

Hey everyone, Kayleen here and welcome to PTSD TV. Today is a continuation of our myth marathon. Today is the last episode in our myth marathon, myth number 8, and this episode of PTSD TV is sponsored by Broken to Unbreakable, which is my PTSD and CPTSD recovery program. So for those of you who don't know me, my name is Kayleen. I'm a PTSD and CPTSD recovery coach. I recovered from my own CPTSD after suffering for more than 15 years, and now I help people all over the world make that same transformation. And this lovely man to my left here is Brad Schipke.

I am, uh, Kailyn's significant other, and I'm very excited about today's episode because it's something that I personally struggled with for quite a long time. So I hope it helps you guys out too.

This is a great episode. I hear this a lot in the PTSD community, all these myths that we're talking about. are things that we just hear so often and we couldn't just pick one. We were going to pick the top myth, we were going to pick the top 3 myths and it ended up being 8 because there are so many different themes that we hear again and again and again in the PTSD community in regards to healing. So today's myth is, I have pressure to be strong because I'm blank. So fill in the blank there. I have pressure to be strong because I'm a man, because I'm military, because I'm from a certain culture or I'm a certain gender or I'm a certain profession. So healing is different or not possible for me, right? So I have pressure to be strong because I'm blank. So healing is not possible or it looks different for me.

Yeah. And, and it's not necessarily like, I don't believe that I can recover. It's like you don't even open the door at all to recovery. You don't even look at it. It's kind of like, I'm not even gonna look at all this pain. I'm just gonna push it down and push it down and push it down and push it down. You don't even, you don't even, um, One, you don't even admit— actually, you first of all don't even admit that you have a problem, right? And therefore you don't even get to the point where you can't believe that you recover because you don't think there's anything wrong with you in the first place because you don't want to admit that there's anything wrong with you.

And I hear this a lot in people, and I hear this specifically a lot, at least in my experience, in men and in military. And what I hear a lot is, I have pressure to be, to be strong and act strong because people look up to me, because people rely on me, because people need me and come to me for help with their own problems. So I have to be strong. Like, I can't be, be weak. And weak is kind of the, the word that I hear probably most protruding and most often in those conversations is, well, if I basically— if I admit that I'm hurt, I'm weak. If I show my emotions, I'm weak. If I face this, like, I'm weak. If I say that I'm scared, if I say that I'm hurting, you know, all of those things, then Then I feel weak and those around me will think that I'm weak if I ask for help, if I, if I take space, if I express emotions, whatever it is. And it is such a dangerous myth and such a dangerous belief to hold because it can really stop you from getting the help that you need. And there was a statistic floating around for a while. I don't know how exact it is or how true it is. I think it's for American military, but I think it was an average of 22 veterans a day who were taking their own lives. And you have to think that, you know, that is a mental health problem.

Absolutely.

So there's a lot of problems that go along with being a veteran and coming home and different things like that. And that's just in our country. And I just happen to know the statistic because there was one of those challenges— we're really big on challenges— a few years ago where it was like 22 push-ups a day or something. And it was, it was a really cool cause. But, you know, you hear a number like that and that's just in our country alone. And you're thinking about that every single day. And so that goes for, I mean, a lot of different people now. You, you take that statistic and you widen it out to not just U.S. military but global military, and not just military but, but all people. And like, that number is just, it's just outstanding, right? So, so the pressure to be strong, and, and the, the word I think I want to really hone in on is strong and weak. And, you know, what, what do you want to share a little bit about your experience in regards to strong versus weak?

Um, yeah, yeah. I do want to say one thing about the 22. 100% of that is preventable. And largely it becomes, um, it's a segue into what I'm— your question. Largely it's because of this myth here, because like I said before, you can't even admit that there's something wrong. So you don't even open the door to, to healing or the possibilities because you think that, um, you know, maybe healing or admitting that, you know, you're feeling anything at all means that there's something wrong with you or that you're weak or whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but that's just not the case. And, you know, a lot of people think expressing emotion is like, you know, you just, you know, crumble at everything, you know, like in public or like around your friends. Or like if you're— I don't know, I've never been in the military, but like it doesn't mean that you like, you go like in your troop or whatever and you like break down in the middle of everything. Or like you— It just means that you take the time out of Your life to do the necessary things so you can bring your best self forward in whatever you do in life, you know whether that's in the military or anything else. But my first struggle was with admitting, admitting that I had a problem or something was wrong, and I had to hit rock bottom for myself before I even admitted. Actually, no, I don't think it was my rock bottom, but it was pretty close. If at the time, I guess it felt like my rock bottom, but I had a little bit. A little bit more to go, but I had to face or feel quite a bit of pain before, you know, Kayleen obviously pushed me to get help in that area. And it was really, really hard, and it was really helpful to have, you know, you kind of open the door. And that's kind of what we're trying to do here, to like, hey, you're not weak for doing this. You know, like, it's not about like Breaking down or crumbling or being this super emotional person 100% of the time. It's just about you got to deal with this area of your life so you can get back to your life as normal. And you're in a lot of pain and all you have to do is deal with that. And you know what happens when you don't deal with that. And that 22, that number is a testament to that. If nothing is done, then you're just going to be driven down deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into that dark hole. And some people don't make it out. And it all starts with admitting that there is something that needs to be dealt with and that it's not a weakness, it's a strength to face something that's that hard. And something that really helped me make that decision and admit it to myself was that hard things, easy things, Like any, like I'll say a weak person, just, just say easy things like any person can do, a weak person can do, but hard things takes a really, really strong person to do. And there's a very big stigma around, you know, getting help or working on your emotions or feeling emotions. So that's a really, really hard thing to face. And it takes a really, really strong person to go against the consensus of kind of maybe not the rest of the world, but what feels like the rest of the world or your world, at least, it takes a really strong person to go against that. So in my mind, I was like, okay, even if other people perceive me as weak, or even if the culture or society or people around me or people who I have in my life perceive me as weak or would perceive me as weak, which actually isn't the case anyways, but If I think that other people would perceive me as weak, it's actually strength to then go against what everybody else believes to overcome this very challenging thing. I mean, that's one challenging thing, just facing the, I guess, stigma as it is, but then actually facing the darkness inside of you and being like, I'm going to beat this too. And that takes a tremendous amount of strength. And then to go on, even the next step is to go on and then help more people overcome That, and that takes an even higher level of strength to get to there because then you're facing a lot more adversity from there as well. But changing the whole perspective on that allowed me to admit to myself that, hey, going to see someone or going to just work on myself or just think about what I was going through. You know, sometimes it's just about thinking and like. introspecting and like figuring out what you need to do. Or sometimes it's just like listening to a podcast or doing a simple search on the internet to find out what you can do to make your life better. But that first comes to admit that there's something that needs to be better, and that is the biggest hurdle. But changing your perspective and your belief about strength and weakness, um, is essential to that. And the way that I was able to do that was through you know, seeing, facing this perception of weakness as a very difficult thing to do. And difficult things takes a really strong person to, to, to face.

That's really well said.

Thank you.

And I like that, the, like, the stigma just being the initial kind of barrier and the initial thing that you, you face. And whether it's societal or it's gender or it's cultural, whatever it is, professional stigma that, that you face. Going up just against the stigma is a strength in and of itself. And then to go on and, and do the facing that needs to happen on the healing journey is important. And I think also on this same topic is something that you'll— if you've listened to us for a while, you know that we don't do this, but there's a reason why we don't share stories and things like that. And so I think another thing that comes into play here is— I, and I know for me, I didn't specifically struggle with the fear of expressing emotions or coming off weak or anything like that, but I did kind of struggle with the fact of like, well, yeah, but I didn't really kind of go through anything like other people went through. And so what happens a lot is you compare yourselves to others. And I think—

Yeah.

Specifically in certain professions, specifically in the military profession, what I hear a lot is people say Well, like, I don't even really deserve to heal because I only went through, you know, X and this other person went through X, Y, and Z and they're fine, right?

Right, right.

And so you kind of get all muddled and confused with how you're supposed to act and how you're supposed to feel. And, you know, the reality is nobody's fine, actually, is the reality. But the reality is, you know, it doesn't matter what you have been through. It doesn't matter if it was something seemingly small or something huge and giant. The way that it affects you is the way that it affects you. The way that you feel about it is the way that you feel about it. It's not wrong, it's not right, it just is. And it's really, really important when you're on your healing journey to just focus on yourself. And you really want to think about, you know, how do I feel and what do I need? What do I need to feel better? And, and ultimate strength is facing and growing and becoming the best version of yourself. And so this is something Brad and I are always seeking to do. We're always seeking the next level. We're always trying to become the best version of ourselves. And, you know, when we were at rock bottom, that was healing PTSD. But now it's— now it's far beyond that, right? Now it's how can we optimize? And eventually it'll be how can we be the best parents? And like all these different things. And so you always want to be optimizing for the best version of yourself. And the strongest thing that you can do as an individual, as just as a solo person is to be the best version of yourself.

Mm-hmm.

Because then and only then can you help others. And if you have people relying on you, if you have people looking up to you, if you have people that you give advice to in any facet, it's especially important that you heal yourself and that you are able to, you know, kind of work with that vulnerability understand that that's a strength and show everyone that that's a strength because people are looking up to you and people are comparing themselves to others and people will always be comparing themselves to you. And it's really, really important that, you know, we as a society, we as a global society, show people that first of all, it's okay to have things going on in your brain, right? It's— I mean, it's—

Yeah.

Mental health is the most important thing, I think.

It is. It's all you have.

It's the foundation of everything. And, you know, beyond that, you can't give, you can't serve at any level in your life without first serving yourself. So like, I like— forget the PTSD thing for a second, you know. I can't make or give to my kids at the highest level if I don't first give to myself at the highest level. If I don't make myself— or I'm not always seeking the best version of myself, I'm not going to be able to give that to my kids. You know, if I'm not seeking the next level, if I'm not trying to push through pain and grow and get to the other side of things, they're going to get less than they deserve. And so if you think about that in, in a hierarchy kind of thing, you know, if you're at the top of that hierarchy, if you're not giving to yourself and growing and becoming the best version of yourself, you're not giving the people below you or next to you or the people that stand by you the the life that they deserve and, and the references and, uh, anything that, that they truly deserve. Because you always want to be serving at the highest level, and it's, it's a really— it's a skill to develop. And, and specifically in the mental health field, because of all the stigma, it's extra challenging. It's easy to say, oh, I'll be the best version of myself by going to the gym. And, you know, last year I could only lift 100 pounds, this year I can lift 150 pounds. It's easy to see the growth, right? And it's, and it's an easy thing to face. When it comes to mental health, the same thing needs to be done, especially when it comes to PTSD and especially when it comes to just just the healing journey in general and facing your past and healing your past so you can be the best version of yourself.

Yeah, at the end of the day, who the hell cares what anybody else is feeling? Right? Like why would you care what somebody else is feeling when you're in pain? It's like if you're at rock bottom or if you're you're in pain and you're hurting and. Like, who cares what the other guy went through? Who cares what anybody else went through? You're in pain. And by the way, like Kayleen said, everybody's in pain. And for every person who you see who you think is not in pain, I am sure there is many, many, many layers of pain, especially for the people in the military, the people who are being strong for each other. You know, what if you were the person, or in any group, what if you were the person who healed, faced their past, and then helped the other people who were not, are silently suffering and hurting and killing themselves, you know, the 22 people a day. What if you're that person who overcame that, who was strong enough to face that, go against the stigma, go against the adversity, and then go on to help all those other people who are too scared to face that, you know? Um, I don't know how. I don't know how.

Yeah, have someone to look up to that, that is doing that. And I think that right now, I think we're in a really cool time period in, in mental health history, we'll call it. because people are starting to do that, right?

Right, right.

Starting to face the stigma and starting to kind of speak up about it and all these different things. And, you know, we want to just like really keep that ball rolling and, and understand that no matter who you are, right? So today's prompt is, you know, I have pressure to be strong because I'm blank. No matter who you are, what gender you are, what adversity you faced in the past, where you grew up, what your circumstances are, what your profession is, no matter what that blank space is for you, It's important to serve yourself. It's important to heal. It's important to face the past. And it's the strongest thing that you can possibly do for yourself and for others.

Yeah. So do you ever feel like you're being weak for expressing emotions or feel weak because you're feeling emotions and you just keep pushing them down? And if you do that, I can tell you exactly what will happen. You will get worse and worse and worse because that's what I did. That's what Kayleen did, right? For 17-odd years. And for me, a few years, and things got worse and worse and worse. And we just got deeper and deeper and deeper. So you have to realize that it takes a tremendous amount of strength, you know, to move forward. It takes a really strong person to move forward and it's not, it's not a weakness at all.

And I think one other really important piece to understand is that At the end of the day, you know, all the pressure that's being applied is in your brain, right? So you as an individual, you know, society gives us references and, you know, you see TV shows as a kid and maybe if you're a guy, you know, no, boys don't cry, Billy, boys don't cry, you know, when this little kid like falls and scrapes his knee and, you know, boys are strong and tough and they, you know, they don't, they don't cry and they don't express emotion, whatever, whatever you've seen on TV, whatever you've seen in your past, they all lead to these things that you have in your mind, which is men don't express emotion, or I have to be strong because I'm in the military, or whatever it is. Um, but that all comes down to what's in between your ears, right? That's all happening in your head. And so the one who's really applying the pressure, the one who really is saying it's weak to do this, it's strong to do this, is you. And you are the one with all the power. And that's, I think, a really important thing to understand Is you have the power to take that pressure off. I can't take that pressure off. I can help you. Brad and I can help you try to open that door and kind of share our experiences saying, you know, that it was— that was a really hard place to be, to be putting that pressure on ourselves. And I saw, you know, Brad go through what he went through, and it was a really challenging thing for him to face and overcome. And it took a lot of strength for him to do that. And I saw that as an individual. That's the other thing. People, people know strength. They see strength. They understand mental strength. Um, but at the end of the day, you are the only person that matters. You are the only person you're guaranteed to be with at the end of each and every day. And you are the one that's applying pressure or not applying pressure. You are the one that's giving yourself the stigma or not giving yourself the stigma. It's, it's you at the very end of every day. And it's really important to understand that you have the power in your hands to change that. You are the only person that can change that for yourself and say, you know what? You know what, Kayleen? You're right, and I do have the power, and I'm gonna face this, and I'm gonna heal, and I'm gonna work on myself, and I'm gonna grow, and I'm gonna take one step at a time. And it also doesn't mean you have to have this like expressive, very loud healing journey. You know, you can still do this in private. It's still a very intimate thing to do. It doesn't mean you have to, you know, write blogs about it and truly, truly like wear it on your sleeve. It doesn't mean any of that. You know, it just means healing yourself so you can serve others at the highest level. And it doesn't mean totally opening up and kind of living in a glass house, so to speak, to let everyone see what's going on in your mind. It's not that.

That's a great point. Yeah, because that's what I mean. I think that's probably the perception, right, is that you need to kind of like share your story. You need to go to these support groups with like dozens of people and like you need to tell everybody about it. You need to tell your parents, your, your kids, your wife, your ev— like everybody about exactly what you went through. Bring them through the whole thing, relive the whole thing, and then have everybody see see you as this kind of like hurt person, right? And like, that's what I kind of thought too. And like, I, I pretty much the only person who knows is, is this one, this girl right here, you know? And like, and even then, the majority of my healing was done on my own, you know, with the, with like specific tools and stuff on my own, in my own time, locked in my bedroom, just going through and doing that deep work and that deep healing. And no one else was there, you know.

But the strength comes out the other side, you know, because you're more confident and you're more social and you're more productive in society and your family and your, your friendships. And everything gets strengthened on the other side, even if people don't understand what changed or what was different.

You can do it on your terms. You don't have to do anything— like, you can do it on your terms. Yeah, you know, you can do it on your own. You can do it, you know, You can tell it like your significant other if you want, and that can be like the only person. You know, like you can do it on your terms. It's your life. You can do whatever the heck you want to do. And like Kayleen said, imagine, imagine like you become, you become this really strong person. Imagine what that feels like. Like you know what it feels like right now to be, you know, in so much pain and like, you know, all this tension and everything, and your mind is just constantly, you know, overwhelmed and going and anxious and Jumping at things, and you know, imagine if that was all gone. You know, would you be? Would you be a stronger person? Would you be a more confident person? What would your life look like? What would your career look like?

Your relationships.

Like holy cow! Yeah, and it's it's a it's it's actually um that's something that Kayleen had to remind me over and over and over again was that like um was that I needed to constantly go back and work on myself. Again and again and again, and that was the highest priority in my life because there's so many other things that you want to do before healing, right? Like you want to go, you know, build an amazing business, or you want to go to the gym and work on your body, or you want to like, I don't even just do something fun, or like you you have all these other priorities and you for some reason you always put your mental health at the very bottom of the list. Like you'd rather watch TV. Or you'd rather like do any like mundane thing than work on yourself and your your healing, even though that's the number one thing that will have the greatest impact on every other area of your life. So you really have to make this a priority every single day, and that's a lesson that I learned that you can't just do it. You can't just do it once. You can't just do it every once in a while. You know, you'll you'll get like you'll you'll make like leaps and then stop, and that's why some people you know they. Quote unquote plateau. They don't actually plateau; they only do a certain amount of work, and then they they stop. They think they're healed, and then you know something else happens. But it just means that they didn't you know fully heal in the first place. So you have to do it consistently over time.

Yeah, definitely.

I realized I stopped that, and like it sounded like in the middle of the sentence. I don't know why I did that.

You sounded like you were right in the middle of the story, and then all of a sudden it was over.

Yeah.

So ask yourself if this has come into play in your own life, and how it's come into play, and if it's stopped you from doing the things that you need to do because it is the ultimate priority to heal yourself so you can serve yourself, so you can serve the people in your life and your community and your profession at the highest level possible because you deserve it and everyone else deserves it too. Everyone deserves the best version of you starting with you.

Yeah. And it doesn't have to take a long time each day. It can be as little as, you know, 15 or 20 minutes. And then you can grow that over time. But you have to, have to, have to, have to, have to make this a priority. Don't just listen to us. If this has been something you've been struggling with, like the strength kind of issue, the myth, like I'm weak if I express my emotions and stuff, don't put this off. Take 15 minutes, 20 minutes a day and work on it. Yeah.

So you can start doing that if you want. By going to my free training. So I talk about recovery as more, I guess, as like a blueprint. And so I'm talking about the pillars of recovery in this training. It's a great training. And I talk about what it means to master your mindset and what it means to build unbreakable routines. And then what it means to actually process your past and how your brain actually works. And this is, I think, especially important for You know, people who feel like this myth has come into play, because in the training I explain something called the belief cycle. And all of these myths, honestly, in this entire myth marathon boil down to belief. So you replace the word myth with belief. And I explain something called the belief cycle, and it's a really important thing to understand because if you believe that it's weak to express emotions, you're going to see how and why that cycles you down to rock bottom and sometimes further. why it's so important to work on changing that belief and to work on healing yourself. And, and beyond that, how to create the routines and what kind of habits that you want to start to create, right? Because if you can just do a certain amount of work— a lot of people leave their mental health as a maybe at the end of the day, right?

Right.

Maybe I'll do it. And you usually don't, right? Because you're tired and you want to watch TV and whatever. And so it's really important to build it into your routine. And I talk about routines, and then I talks specifically about how your brain processes trauma and why it fails to do so in the first place. And it's actually in an attempt to protect you. And sometimes I talk about it as a glitch. I don't think you really like—

Oh.

I use that term. It's, it's just basically a glitch that happens, and your brain, in an effort to protect you because it had a lot of information all at one time, it skips a certain step. And all that needs to happen, and of course this is an oversimplification, but all that needs to happen is you need to go back a step, right? So your brain went from step 1 to step 3 and it skipped step 2, but you really, really need step 2. So what you need to do is actually just take a step back and go to step 2, and then you'll be okay again. And again, that's a— it's an oversimplification, but it's a cool training. So if you want to check out the training, go to overcomingptsd.info/training. Go, overcomingptsd.info/go. The link will be in the description of this. And, and it's a, it's a really great place to start, to start to understand, you know, Brad's saying, you know, work on this 15 minutes a day, but to figure out, you know, what you need to work on. You know, we do podcasts a lot. We always try to give an action at the end, you know, think about how this affects your life, or, or sometimes we'll give resources and tools and different things like that. Um, but ultimately it's something you need to be working on Every single day until you're healed, and then still maintaining. Like, like I was talking about before, Brad and I are always seeking the next level of life, and that includes mentally, right? We want to be mentally acute and we want to expand our beliefs, right? We all have limiting beliefs, whether they're about trauma and stop us from healing, or they're about, you know, finances and they stop us from growing an empire. Whatever it is, we all have beliefs. We all have limiting beliefs. And so this information serves you far beyond just the recovery journey. So you always want to be growing and seeking that next level, which is why those routines are really important. So you want to be consistent for the healing journey, get fully healed. You're going to feel amazing after that. And, and then you want to always be growing and always be becoming the best version of yourself, which is always being revealed to you. So go and check that out.

Yeah, absolutely. And like Kayleen said, these are all, all these myths that we've been talking about, all these I think what, this is the 8th one?

Mm-hmm.

All 8 of these myths are just false beliefs. So, if you go back and scroll back through the other beliefs and you're like, okay, this is something, this is a belief that really affect my life, definitely check out that training and pay close attention to that belief cycle section, which is I think the first thing that you talk about, because that will really break down in a very nice visual form of how to actually break this and how these myths like are essentially like ruining your chance of recovering at all. So definitely check that out. There will be a link in the description or whatever is below. I don't know. And, uh, whatever that thing is called below. So check that out. And, uh, that's all I have for today.

That's all I have for you. Thank you so much for being here with us. If you know someone struggling with PTSD or CPTSD, or you think they might be, And also we have a hunch that everyone is. No, but if you, if you think they might be and you feel like they would benefit from some of the podcasts or this podcast specifically, maybe feel free to send it their way and share it in any Facebook groups or anything like that. Thank you so much for joining us, being here with us. We love having you. We love doing these podcasts for you and ultimately we love helping you help yourself heal and so that's what I have for you today.

Yeah, one thing that we were talking about before is like we want to make ourselves obsolete.

Yeah, we're always seeking to make ourselves irrelevant in your life. Yes, we want you to stop listening to us because we want you to heal, right? So, and I was talking about— we were talking about this on a walk the other day. We've been doing a lot of walking because we're like stuck, uh, and we were talking about on a walk, you know, something that I'm— I try to do as a coach is literally make myself obsolete. And I, I used to— my, my dad was a firefighter, and, uh, anytime we had like a barbecue or something, there would be jokes about, you know, job security, and basically a joke about you know, putting something on fire that wasn't supposed to be on fire. And, uh, we do the opposite of that, right? And so what I'm always seeking to do is be irrelevant. I don't want my job to exist because I want to do it so well that you don't need me, right? That you have the power in your hands, that you're fully healed, and that eventually the world is fully healed and we integrate it in a way where we're obsolete.

Yeah. I think we should do an episode on that. I think our next episode should be on that.

Maybe we'll do that.

Yeah, yeah, next time, because I could go off for another half hour.

But that's what we have for you all today. Uh, we love you, we believe in you, we're here for you, and we will see you in the next episode. See ya, bye-bye.