Suicide Prevention Saturday - Veterans

5 days, I'll lose access to Facebook. All right. Hi. I have little things saying that in 5 days I'm losing access to Facebook. In 5 days, a great start. Don't worry, we've got you covered. So anyway, hi everyone. I'm glad you're all chatting over there. I'm not sure which side that all goes on. Hopefully, I am hoping that DJ may have told you all I was running late. Well, just barely on time, depending on how this all goes. I didn't even have time to change my name. So hey everyone, thanks for popping in. I am on Facebook and YouTube. Amy, uh, most y'all chatty people are on YouTube. So what time is it? It's Saturday. What day is it? That would be what day it is. It's Saturday and it is Suicide Prevention Saturday. And why do we do Suicide Prevention Saturday? Because as gun owners, it is our job to let people understand that 2 out of every 3 gun deaths that are out there are suicides. And if we want to save lives, we can save lots of lives by actually talking about suicide prevention. So, wow, I look especially spectacular. Sorry, it's just one of the things. We've been outside all day. I taught a pistol class this morning, and that was 9 to 5-ish, and then I had neighbors over from 6 to 9, which is why I'm just showing up now. All right, so now that I gave you all my update, how are y'all doing tonight? Are you enjoying the Saturday night? I keep having to remember what day it actually is. Oh, DJ, I said I was going to send you the invite. I will do that right now so you can come and try to keep me on to, um, some form of semblance of organization, maybe. So one moment if you all hold, uh, so I can send that to him. Oh yeah, so remember last week when we were talking to Jake and I said I'm having mouse problems? I am still having mouse problems. So simple things like cutting and pasting is actually not as easy as one might think. All right. Oh, see, DJ is already keeping me on track by posting stuff like this. Because I can go to my banner, which I think I've forgotten a lot lately. So you have the suicide prevention under there as well. Ta-da. I suppose I should update that because it says locally call 211, which still works, but I think we also want to really talk about the— what is it called? 988, because, you know, we had 911, now I've got 988, and oh yeah, And yes, that is the scroller, but you're like my own personal scroller. All right, let me see. Oh, DJ, you should have the email. I'm going back to the top. So what has DJ shared with us? We have American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. If you're having a hard time, if you need to talk to someone, go ahead and check it out. AFSP.org. There are more resources. Last week we had Yes, WTTA. Um, Jake from Walk the Talk America, right? Yes. Okay. Um, walkthetalkamerica.org, like we talked about last week, tons of resources just on this one page. Whether you're curious about anxiety, depression, all sorts of other things, they have free screenings there that are truly, um, anonymous, which I know we don't really believe anything on the internet is anonymous, but for real, Gwebs, thanks for checking in every week and giving me thumbs up every week. And GT3, how you doing, bud? I have not looked on your channel lately and I apologize, because if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be chatting with Mario Mosen, which was earlier this spring. But we'll get him back on again, because on my radio show on Monday, the plan is to talk about veteran suicide prevention. Not that all suicide prevention isn't important, But I do feel as though, um, veterans need more attention because it's just— they serve our country, they are put into this brotherhood, and then they're kicked out. I mean, I know they leave, but it's just like, it just doesn't make sense. I was talking to Mario Mosin yesterday, was it maybe Thursday? Thursday, on my way to EMT class. And we're just sort of talking about that a little bit, how you go to— hey, it's DJ, just like that! And he's muted himself and then he disappears because that's what he does, right? DJ, say something. You unmuted yourself.

Good evening, Brooke. Glad to be here.

There you are, that beautiful, um, whatever that's called, that DJ voice. There we go. All right, where am I? So G23, apparently you had awesome chat, so I will have to go back and check that out. All right, Crabby Turtle. Yes, we should all be sorry that we missed G23 show. It's true. All right, what else? Who else I got? Tara Smith, because she checks in. Are you driving, Tara? Is that a silly question to be asking on a Saturday night? I really don't know. Last time I talked to you, you had like 3 runs you were running. So I don't know if you're just listening or what. Oh boy. It's like she knew I was gonna ask that question or something, cuz there's my answer on a computer in a hotel in Michigan. So, all right, what do we got now that I've continued going blah, blah, blah for the last 5 minutes? So suicide prevention, what can we do? Trauma. Oh, son of a biscuit. I forgot my notes. All right, so I did a training earlier this week on Wednesday, and I took 5 million notes on trauma. And it was listening to someone like Jake, who is an actual therapist and psychologist, talking about trauma. Often we hear about trauma, but we don't necessarily know how to define it. And in this training, they talked about trauma is basically like you have a bone bruise that no one can see, but it hurts all the time. And I thought that was kind of a, a good way to explain it, because when we're in distress, when we've experienced trauma, it's generally something that no one can see, but we feel it regardless. And we were talking to Mario, um, I was talking to other vets at the fair last weekend, and When trauma happens, it's in that moment. Unfortunately, what happens is most of us carry that along with us for however long we carry it along for. Sometimes we realize it's what's affecting us, and other times we do not know. And this is why I'm really kind of bummed I forgot my notes. So let's see what I can remember. When you are when you experience a trauma, the thing they were actually talking about is split personalities, which is no longer called split personalities. It's now called dissociative identity something. So people actually create a different persona so they can survive in a traumatic experience. So, you know, unfortunately, sexual abuse is the one that most people talk about the most. As far as your little tiny kid, uh, adult is physically abusing you, whether it's sexual or just regular physical abuse or emotional abuse, because people who have not dealt with emotional abuse think, oh well, you know, this one broke my arm and my fingers and my leg and this and that, and it's different than someone just telling you you're a horrible person. But anyway, there's lots of different trauma, physical and mental, and what happens is your brain, your emotions basically split two pieces apart so that there's one part that can survive while the other part will take the trauma. Now the dissociative identity stuff is where like you don't know that those two things exist. Many of us who deal with trauma of our childhoods, we know what happened and that trauma is still with us and we still have to work through that. With dissociative identity, those people don't even know that they have trauma because it's a different part of them. Anyway, the reason this was so interesting is because while we're talking about trauma, they're saying how important it is to realize this is something that happened in the past. This does not define who you are. It is a thing that happened back then. And who you are right at this moment is impacted by whatever the trauma was. I gave my example of when I was bullied, um, I think that helped me learn compassion for other people because I didn't want to become a bully, and being bullied kind of sucked a lot. However— oh look, DJ's trying to make us all smart and stuff. So if you'd like to check out the Dissociative Identity Disorder and learn more about that, a little bit thick, I mean heady in my mind, how it all works. So, or he's just trying to school me on what it's actually called, which is Dissociative Identity Disorder. Either way, thanks, DJ. So trauma isn't traumatic experience, you're like, oh, that's horrible. And it's like, the answer is maybe. And I think I've told you guys the Tony Robbins story before, of— or the man, the farmer's story, where if— so there's a farmer, he has a kid, the kid finds a horse, the neighbor's like, oh yay for you! And farmer says, maybe. And the horse runs away, and the neighbors all go, "Oh, I'm really sorry." And the farmer says, "Maybe." The horse comes back bringing a whole bunch of mares with it. "Oh, good for you!" The farmer says, "Maybe." And so on and so forth. What happens is the son gets on the horse to tame the horse. The son gets thrown off. Breaks his leg. Oh, too bad. Then farmer says, maybe. And then the army comes to get all the well— healthy males of the thing, and everyone's like, oh, you're so lucky. The whole idea is that maybe. So trauma is generally something that's difficult, hard, challenging, and distressing. Is it good or bad? And One of the Zen things is it just is, because if I didn't have trauma of being bullied, I may or may not have learned compassion for other people, which in theory makes me a nicer person because I experienced the trauma. So it's what do you do with it when something bad happens to you. So while we're talking about the trauma stuff, it is What does it— what happened? When did it happen? And then what are you going to do about it? Because you can't undo whatever the trauma was. It's always going to be something in your past. It's always going to be something you remember, whether you want to or not. And I'm pretty sure I don't remember all of it, um, because I don't think any of us remember everything. So how do we deal with it? What do we do with it? Um, I told Mario I was going to talk about him tonight, so if he watches the replay or he shows up like in the next 15 minutes, which he normally does to say hi before he goes off to his Mighty Oaks retreat, um, when we were talking about it, it's just like what happens versus where you're at and how do you deal with it. Most people are suicidal because they have a trauma in their life that they cannot deal with, or they do not know how to deal with it. Women, I find most of us are pretty good, um, at when we talk about something, it helps us get rid of it and process it. Guys, on the other hand, I don't know if it works that way for them or not. I know that Mario was talking about last week about going to the retreat that he's going to, the Mighty Oaks. I hope it's Mighty Oaks. I think that's right, because he's going to get to go hang out with a whole bunch of other battle buddies who've been through the same thing he has been with. And this is why I started this Suicide Friends and Saturdays, because I realized how important it was for people to understand you are not alone, right? That is why, ha ha ha, I'm gonna use all of my things, or maybe not. Yeah, there it is. Remember, you're not alone, reach out. On Mario's chat on Thursday, reaching out, right? This is the hard part for lots of people. If you are in distress, if you don't know what you're doing, you don't wanna reach out. You're overwhelmed with what's going on. You're not sure how to deal with the anxiety, the depression, the stress in your life, the idea of reaching out feels like one more thing you have to do. And when you're already in overwhelm, it's, it's, it's more than you really want to have to deal with in any way, shape, or form. Um, and yeah, actually, Gwebs, uh, we were talking about this as well. You don't need to have a broken arm to know what it's like to have a broken arm. People who've had a broken arm can help others by talking about the break. How it happened and how it is dealing with it. Yeah. I mean, injuries of all types, right? I blew my knee out last year. Did I talk to other people that had the similar surgery and stuff? Yeah. Because we learned from other people's trauma, because breaking my knee did kind of really suck because it's physical trauma to the body, right? The more you know, or you, the more you realize you're not alone, I think it does help. Something about reaching out, knowing there's other people, whether it's as simple as calling a crisis line, which is hard sometimes, or texting The Talk to 741741, or calling 211. Like I said, 211 is awesome. I really love it because I can call 211 and I can say, hey, I have a friend who's in crisis. 'Where can I send them?' And they may say, 'Oh, well, you can put them on the phone or have them call or whatever.' But at least if you're looking to take care of someone who's dealing with trauma, it's a resource for you as well. Because I know from doing this since 2018 that people will call me and say, 'Brooke, I've got a friend who I'm worried they're going to kill themselves.' And I'm like, 'Well, I'm not a counselor, But you have resources like 211 or, um, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. And there's lots of ways to reach out. Again, Mario and I were talking about, there's actually a ton of veteran suicide prevention programs out there, but when a vet is in that dark place and they don't know what to do, it's getting that connection from one place to the other. If it's not the VA, because most vets understand that the VA is out there to help them. If it's not the VA, how do you connect them to the thing that they need? So anywho, I hope my whole conversation has not been overly circular today. Like I said, I had notes and of course I left them behind. Next week, hopefully— ooh, next week, next week I am in New Hampshire, and I'm working on a match. So maybe, maybe I will do this a little bit earlier. I know it's always a horrible thing to you guys to change times, but I don't know, we'll see what happens. I'll be in New Hampshire in a lovely hotel room once again, and I don't know what I'll talk about next week, but Whatever it will be, it will have something to do with suicide prevention one way or another. As always, if you have anything in particular you'd like me to talk about, please leave it in the comments. And, uh, I guess that's kind of it. Wait, what's it say? Uh, few care about broken arm, but knowing you can help others having or understanding mental health issues is a reason to stay involved in communicating with others who might value your point of view. It is true because you don't know what you don't know. There's lots of times in the— that I've been told where you can say something and really help someone just because, again, to understand they're not alone. We were talking about, oh, my students today, one of the ladies was a marriage counselor, just like Jake., and she— we were talking about this whole challenge of if I'm dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, any of those things, society as a whole does not want to see me go to counseling. They are like, oh, just suck it up. You can deal with it, right? This is a lot of cultural stuff. Now we take just that across the board in society, and then you stack on top of that that you have a firearm and you don't want to lose your Second Amendment rights. Now we've got a whole nother pile of stuff of why we don't want to go find counseling. So with all of that, this is where reaching out, letting people know there's resources, you can stay anonymous, you can make a phone call, you can text, all of those things. So with all that, I bid you all a fair good night and goodbye, because I have to put this room together for 6 people tomorrow, uh, because I have another class. Yay! We like it when I make money. And I'm about to lose my voice, apparently. DJ, got any ideas or parting words since you're here with me, since I finally got you the, uh, link?

Well, uh, reflective of the seasonal change that we're experiencing right now, and there was a suggestion of stoicism in what the farmer anecdote was having to say, at least to me. And I live in an agricultural part of the country. And so that agrarian perspective about the rhythms of nature are truly reflective of life. And so just to grab a line from one of my favorite romance era poets, Percy Shelley, he's having a conversation with the west wind and there's some hope in the last line, which is, wind, If winter comes, can spring be far behind? And I like that kind of hope. We're getting into fall, my favorite season, winters to follow, but spring and the sun always return.

Absolutely. Very cool. And that is absolutely one of the other things too that's super important is the ebb and flow of life, in that it may suck really bad right now, but it's only a moment in time. It is not permanent. And that's why, like, a lot of people who talk about suicide are like, that's people choosing a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And so when you're in it, remember that as well. All right, y'all, thank you for popping in. Good night, DJ. Good night, G-Webs. Good night, Tara. Oh my goodness, G23. Uh, who did I forget? Crabby. I'm pretty sure Crabby was out there. Yeah. Okay. I think that's everybody. All right. Good night all, and I will see you on next week. Good night everybody. Good night. Oh, I gotta hit the thing twice.