Adam Peters: Healing Through Trauma

I mean, if I'm being completely honest, I compartmentalized all of that stuff, you know, from the time I was, I was young to, you know, even through my military career and, and really until last year. And I mean, it's kind of a cop-out answer, but honestly, it was after the ayahuasca experience. I just knew how to sit with them. I just knew how to— I understood that this is what I have to do if I want to move past them. So it was just kind of through the integration that they did for us on the program that I went on for 4 weeks before, all of the things that you learn at the retreat, because it's not just go to the retreat, take ayahuasca, see you later.

This is The Chris Project, where we discuss mental wellness, self-awareness, and mindset with entrepreneurs and experts. Set your perceived ideas and biases aside, and let's go on our journey for yourself, for your family, for the world.

Welcome to another edition of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Adam Peters.

Adam, welcome, brother. Thank you so much for having me here. It's a pleasure.

I'm very excited to hear your story. So give us the short version of your story and then we'll dive into the interesting parts.

Yeah, man. Short version. Grew up in small town, Middle America, southern Indiana, farm towns, bullied, broken home. Joined the Army at 17 to see the world, get out of small-town America. Did 4 deployments, was medically retired at 12.5 years. God, when that happened, because I was a career guy, I fell into what I call the transition hole and battled that for about 8.5 years. Ended up getting hooked up with a really cool veterans charity that sent me to Peru to do an ayahuasca journey retreat for a week. Completely changed my life. Started building my personal brand and everything I have going on after that. So, that's about as short as I can make it.

That is very brief. That's impressive.

But we can dive into any part of that that you want.

Yeah. So, well, let's go back to the origin story. I find that entrepreneurs as a whole tend to have trauma in their childhood. Now, I use that term broadly, I'm not talking about necessarily physical or sexual abuse, but a lot of times their response is starting a business. It's like taking control of their life, but they don't ever really address the trauma. So tell me a little bit more about your upbringing. What happened in your upbringing that caused you to be the person that you are today?

Yeah, I'm so glad you asked this because I'm not asked this often and this is a really good point. All of my problems stemmed from my childhood, really, and that's what the ayahuasca showed me. So, you know, I had grown up really attached to my paternal grandfather who served in World War II, but he died somewhere, I think, around age 5 or 6 for me. And then shortly after that, my mother and father would get divorced. And it was not pretty because it was one of those situations where my dad would leave and be gone for a little bit and then come back. They would try to work it out, and then finally the time would come that he would leave, you know, permanently. After that happened, my mom turned into— I just call her a Nazi. I know that's really bad to refer to your own parent like that, but she was the strictest mother with the strictest rules. Things that would happen, uh, one of the biggest things that still impacts me to this day, and I'm fixing to go do something about it, is food trauma. She used to make me sit at the dinner table and eat all of the foods till they were gone that I completely hated. Most memorable is green beans. I don't think there's any way, shape, or form for the rest of my entire life, no matter how much work I do on myself, that I will ever like green beans. And when I say she used to make me sit at that table and eat everything on the plate, it was, I mean, till midnight sometimes. So much so that your milk in your glass is spoiled because it sat so long. I just Some other things that she, she, she did was she used me, my brother, and my sister against my dad. And so I think a lot of my trauma comes from not seeing what a stable relationship is, which would lead me to some trouble in relationships later in life, um, particularly, you know, intimate relationships, and not understanding, you know, what real love looks like and how you're actually supposed to treat people. You add into that the fact that I was bullied as a child for wearing glasses. I'm a child of the '80s and early '90s. So, you know, it's cool to go wear glasses now even if you don't need them, which really infuriates me to this day because I was ridiculed and beat up on. And, you know, I can remember having my glasses stolen and broken just because it wasn't cool to be four eyes. Or I have a lazy eye, my left eye is lazy, so when I was a kid they had to patch it. So you can imagine all the crap that I took for that. Then you add to that, while I was growing up, my mom kind of keeping us away from our dad to punish him or whatever that was for them. I don't know. But not having a real kind of male role model in my life— that's kind of inaccurate because I, I do love my dad very much. I'm a daddy's boy and my dad is my hero because I watched him put up with all the stuff that my mom would put him through and still work 2 or 3 jobs to pay his end of the bargain to raise us. But Trying to latch on to male role models in the form of coaches. I wrestled from the time I was, I don't know, probably could walk until I was a senior in high school. But, those coaches would end up letting me down and I would be going through some things in my life and instead of them kind of asking probing questions to try and be a mentor or that figure that I needed, they would just pull me to the side and say, "You're doing this. You're not going to make shit out of yourself in life." And so, all of that affected me and I think those are all the things that I had to learn to overcome after the ayahuasca experience is belief in myself, loving and respecting myself, understanding that I'm capable of so much more than anyone or even myself has ever given me credit for. So, those are all the issues that I ended up having to work out.

Ben: One of the things I realized as difficult as those situations are, they can be helpful and they can be productive. It's like, what are you going to do with it, right? You know, it's not being a victim mentality. It's okay, these things happen to me. Uh, how am I going to respond? And I think entrepreneurs have a tendency to, like, if they're successful they don't have to deal with their shit, right? So like, if you are having success, and this is what I see a lot of times, they'll have success in the business, but then their personal life is in shambles. You know, they're either addicted to drugs or alcohol, or, you know, their marriage is crap, their relationship with their kids are crap. But because the business is successful, they don't have to address it. So how have you basically taken the bad and turned it into a positive?

Yeah, man, another really good question. I guess for me, it's really just being mindful of all of those things that, you know, I'm prone to experience, learning how to sit with those thoughts and feelings and understanding where they come from and not only where they come from, but how to actually move past them, whether or not they serve me, if you will. And I think the most powerful thing for me is when I learned how to sit with those thoughts, feelings, emotions, beliefs, whatever is going on at the time and being super present in that, tracing them all the way back to an event from childhood or whatever, being able to see where that comes from and understand that that's not necessarily who I am, be able to let go of them because they don't serve me, which frees up so much more energy to focus on the things that do matter, be it my relationship with my wife or what's going on in the business or just structuring time in a way that I can have the best of both worlds. I can focus on building the business, but I can also give my wife the time and attention that she needs and deserves. So, I think for me, that's really what it is, is just sitting with those things, doing the uncomfortable thing that we all tend to run away from and really letting go of those things that don't serve me.

So, my trauma, and again, I stipulate to the listeners, trauma is relative, right? So, it's not about, you know, comparing how bad our situations have been. But my trauma, for context, was my parents divorced when I was 2, and at 3, I was taken away from my mother. I went and lived with my dad. And I've had a lot of abandonment issues over, over the years because of that. And because it happened before I was verbal, a lot of those things I can't really even put into words, right? But what it led me to, uh, over the years is exactly what you're talking about— not being able to sit with those negative emotions. And so there's a million and one ways you can distract yourself from experiencing those feelings, but until you sit with them, as you call it, they're not going to go away. And it's not that they go away after you sit with them necessarily. They, they can come back up, but you, to your point, you, they, they no longer have the power over you that they did.

I think by, by learning how to sit with them, they're going to continue to come up. You're just aware of it and aware of the road that you're headed down if you give them the power that they are demanding of you. You know, you said something earlier that kind of, kind of hit me. You said, you know, realizing that these things happen to me. That's another thing that I do is these things happened for me. They didn't happen to me. They happened for me. And when you can shift your mindset into recognizing that everything that has happened to you in your life has happened for you to put you right where you're at right now, and you just need to sit again, sit with that and really try to understand you know, okay, why did this happen for me? Why did this happen for me?

Tell me a little bit about, like, okay, you had these feelings, and, and I'm assuming it sounded from what you said that, like, there was a period of time where you didn't address them. And what was the conversion experience, I guess? What caused you to eventually deal with it?

I mean, if I'm being completely honest, I compartmentalized all of that stuff, you know, from the time I was, I was young to, you know, even through my military career and really until last year. And I mean, it's kind of a cop-out answer, but honestly, it was after the ayahuasca experience, I just knew how to sit with them. I just knew how to— I understood that this is what I have to do if I want to move past them. So, it was just kind of through the integration that they did for us on the program that I went on for 4 weeks before, all of the things that you learn at the retreat because it's not just go to the retreat, take ayahuasca, see you later. It's It's a lot of work, education on how to do these things, how to breathe, how to sit down and return yourself to baseline. And, I think a combination of the integration before the ayahuasca experience and retreat itself and then the integration for 4 or 6 weeks afterwards, and then me pursuing some other extracurricular tools through the Being True to You certification course to be a psychedelic integration and addiction recovery coach, you know, I think just through all of those experiences, I was just able to subconsciously start doing that.

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So what led you to the ayahuasca? Experience?

What— yeah, this is— I love this question. It's a really simple answer. I was in a really bad place. I was trying to do some things with my life and ended up had to put that on hold for like 9 months. Uh, got a really easy job, probably one of the best jobs I ever had, in the sod farms out here, just cutting grass for 8 hours a day, making $1,000 a week. And, uh, I had complete autonomy. I didn't have any responsibility. I didn't have somebody looking over my shoulder. It was just show up to the job, do your job, go home. So I would listen to audiobooks and podcasts, and I came across the Sean Ryan Show, and I listened to his episode where he interviewed a guest who had gone and done an ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT experience, and then he went and did it. And then he did an episode where his wife interviewed him and started talking about all the changes. And so for me, you know, my experience was watching all of my buddies go to the VA, get on countless number of pills, become zombies and not really living life, and still attempt to kill themselves. So for me, I just looked at it like, I have nothing to lose. This is an alternative that I know that I don't want to be on the pills. So I just started looking around to see what organizations out there would sponsor combat veterans to, to do these retreats, because they're inherently expensive because they're out of the country. And I found Heroic Hearts Project, blessed to get picked up, and made a promise to myself when I went there that I was going to I was going to participate in everything at the retreat and I was going to maintain an open mind. And, that was it. That was the only two things that I did. So, that's really how I came about it is through the experience of others and others talking about their experience, being vulnerable enough to open up and say, "This is what plagued me. This is where I went to go, you know, do something about it. These are the results of that experience and how I'm getting better." And, I was sold on it after that.

Well, you bring up an interesting point. Do you think that a person can do this work by themselves?

You mean like go read a book and start putting these things into practice?

Well, doing the work in general. I mean, like, well, I'll just let you answer the question.

I guess for me, I don't think anybody can do anything alone. I mean, honestly, I think that no matter what it is that you're trying to accomplish, we all need coaches and mentors, somebody who's been there and experienced it, who has insights that you're not going to get on your own, that you can only get from others who are further ahead in their journeys. So no, I don't think that you can do it on your own. Do I think that you need to go do psychedelics to arrive at the same conclusion? Absolutely not. Do I think that psychedelics can make the world a better place and can be for everyone? Absolutely, I sure do. I think it matters how set your intentions. I think that's the number one is intentions over expectations. And I think having an open mind is also what it takes. But when you get out of your own way and actually ask somebody for help, you'd be amazed at what happens in your life.

Yeah. And I guess that was the same conclusion I've come to is that you have to do the work. There's nobody else that can do it for you. But my experience and what I've seen in so many of my colleagues is that that, man, we're really good at what I call self-deception. I mean, you rationalize excuses for your behavior, or you just ignore them entirely. But like, eventually, if you're living with other humans, you know, that behavior is going to cause damage. And if you love them, and if they love you, then you're going to have to address that.

Correct. Yeah, absolutely.

So let's talk a minute about psychedelics. What has been your experience?

Just the ayahuasca. Well, and if— I mean, if you really want to look at it, cannabis is a psychotropic as well, and I use cannabis every night. It's just before the retreat, I was using cannabis to escape, and now I use cannabis to explore and do more work on myself, really, really deep work on myself. And there are times where I just do it to just kind of numb my mind and turn it off. But every time I do it, I set an intention and I follow through with that intention. And I think that's kind of the difference now. So, that's my experience with psychedelics. I do want to go have more experiences with psychedelics, but I also have a lot of respect for it. And for me, it's like this very sacred ceremony. Hormonal thing. So I really do believe in what they told me and, and what I've latched on to. The medicine starts working on you before you've even taken it, so it like chooses you in a way. And then you kind of, you can kind of go back, and I can kind of go back in, in my life and see kind of the moment when the medicine chose me, if you will, and how it worked on me now that I've had the experience. But after the experience, you know, they kind of tell you you'll know when it's time to come back or to do this again because the medicine will call to you. And so, it's a little over 15 months since I went and did that. There are things that I can explicitly see in my life with the medicine calling back to me and I know that it's time to go and sit with ayahuasca again and learn some more lessons that it has to teach me. So, that's kind of how I view it.

So, in layman's terms, how do you think that psychedelic medicine, whatever it is, facilitates that personal growth?

Well, I mean, if you really look at the research that's going on with it now, um, you'll see that it's undeniable that it, it takes long disconnected neural pathways that are dormant and reconnects them. It's also immediate reforming of neural pathways in your brain. So I think Essentially what it's doing is just unlocking a portion of you that through your ego or compartmentalization or whatever trauma you've been through, you know, your brain turns that stuff off. I think really what it's doing is turning those areas back on and allowing you access to them again to do that kind of work and be better.

Do you think that— and I know that there have been studies with veterans on the use of alternative treatment methods, you know, MDMA, psilocybin, Do you think that there's going to be a broader acceptance of these tools?

Yeah, I think it's inevitable, man. I think that the, the research is undeniable. It's funny that you bring this, this question up because here just last month, um, you know, the government, they put the kibosh on MDMA as a PTSD treatment for veterans, even though the data says that all of the veterans who have, who have used MDMA, all of the veterans that they have polled, 78% of them report no more symptoms of PTSD. PTSD after treatment with MDMA. So I think it's only a matter of time before enough people get loud enough about it that government, Big Pharma really, let's be honest, that's what it is, before Big Pharma doesn't have a choice, you know, before they, they don't have the power over controlling these systems that don't allow us to do this anymore. I think it's only a matter of time. I mean, just let's just, let's just look at like, you've got Colorado now where mushrooms are 100% legal. You have Washington State, particularly Thurston County, which is Olympia, which I spent a decade of my life. They just went against everything, federal and state government, and legalized psilocybin as, as, you know, a recreational drug in that county. I know— I think Utah is doing something similar with psilocybin. Oregon is one of the first states to allow psilocybin retreats for veterans legally. So I think it's really only a matter— it's going to be similar to the cannabis stuff, right? I think we've got 32 or 33 states where it's completely recreationally legal now. There's only a handful of states, South Carolina being one of them, where it's still criminal to use marijuana. I think it's only a matter of time before all the dominoes fall on the psychedelics as well.

Yeah. And, to that point, it's frustrating because there's so— like cannabis specifically, there's so little known about the endocrine system and how the canna—

cannabinoids.

Cannabinoids. Thank you. You know, really affect our body and not just THC, but, you know, because it's illegal, they couldn't study it. And I'm kind of of the opinion, and this is not an opinion that I have had all my life, but I have now at 54, that if, if God created it, you should be able to use it.

I think to add to that, the simple fact that we have in our DNA coded into us cannabinoid receptors, like, so biologically we're meant to ingest that in some way, shape, or form, right?

Our bodies create them, right?

So I'm, I'm with you on that, man. And I also have not always been of that opinion either, but I've also went at great lengths to educate myself. I also, you know, know the benefits that I've received from psychedelics and everything else. I know the benefits that I get from using cannabis every night. You know, I've got a lot of chronic pain. It's my reprieve. It's my break from living with that, you know.

So tell us about your business.

Yeah, so it's really not anything super special. What happened is I started building The Strategic Veteran and the podcast became this marketing tool to really kind of just coach veterans into, you know, through their transition and really help them. So started the podcast with the idea that the path back to purpose for veterans is entrepreneurship. And through the podcast, quickly kind of got a call from the audience to really start a community where people can come and really learn about, you know, all the stuff that we're talking about here today, how to switch your mindset from fixed to growth, and then how to take all your high-leverage skills that you've acquired over your military career from day one and apply those to the business world based on your passions, your values, your beliefs. And so, I created The Stronghold, which is— it's just a paid community for veterans who want to be entrepreneurs or even intrapreneurs. And, there's really nothing special in it, man. It's a member-driven community. So, I won't build anything that I think that they want or need. I will I will build and put on events that they ask me to, to do because then it's straight from them. And it's just been great, man. And, and I really created it because, you know, I did a couple of things when I got out of the Army. I went to flight school because I thought it was my dream. And I remember being in instruments, and instruments is in my opinion the hardest thing to learn about flying. And I would go to Facebook groups and I would ask questions in these, these pilot groups. I would get ripped to shreds. For asking these questions. And it's like, I know I have a textbook, but I'm trying to get industry knowledge because I understand from my career in the Army that what the book says and what you actually do in real life are two different things, very, very different things, right? The book is really just kind of a framework and a template. And then when shit hits the fan, that's when you develop your own SOPs and procedures. And so quickly I started seeing, you know, all the veteran groups on Facebook are the same way. People, I just saw one last night,. It's like a guy talking about, "I don't feel like anything fulfills me anymore. The whiskey doesn't numb anymore. The cannabis doesn't take it away from me anymore. I'm just kind of at my wits' end." And then, you look underneath of it and it's like, "Well, join the club," or "Stop throwing a pity party for yourself." And, it's like no one's actually trying to help anybody, they're just perpetuating the situation. So, that's another reason I created the community. I want people veterans in particular who have transitioned or are transitioning. They don't need to be interested in entrepreneurship. I just think this is where all this stuff will lead. I want them to be able to come to my community, tell me what they're going through, and know that they're surrounded by dozens of people who have been where they've been, who have felt what they've felt, and can relate to them, and then give them actionable advice and support without ripping them to shreds and causing more problems.

Yeah, that's interesting. I think you talked about having a, a male figure, uh, role model. And I think men, including myself and a lot of people, are— a lot of other men have this false idea that being a man means just suffering. If you have bad feelings or you don't like your situation, you know, it's just suck it up and move on. You know, that Stoic mindset is not bad. I'm not saying it's, it's bad in and of itself, because at the end of the day, your emotions are not actions, right? And I think that you can get bogged down in emotions, but the reality is that your emotions drive your actions. And until you deal with that and understand why you feel the way you feel, why you act the way you act, you can't really be your best, best self. I hate that term, but you know, I mean, you can't be what you, you were created to be.

Yeah, it's absolutely true. I agree with you 100%. I think what you're saying, you know, I experienced this not only growing up, right? We don't cry. What I now know about crying is that's purging negative energy inside of your body. So, if you feel the urge to cry, let it out, just cry. But for me, what I now understand is all those people who told me, "You're a weak man if you talk about your feelings or if you go see somebody to get some help for whatever is going on inside your head that you can't make sense of." What I now know is that's the strongest thing you can do as a man is admit that you need help and then go seek that help and watch how much better everything in your life gets.

Yes. I did an interview on my other podcast with author Todd Henry, and, uh, his most recent book is called The Brave Habit. And he makes this distinction between bravery and bravado. And I think that a lot of us have this misconception of bravery, which is really bravado. And I'm gonna butcher his definition, Todd's definition, but I would encourage you to read the book, is bravery is about doing the hard thing even though you're afraid. And the reality is all the men that are out there projecting this bravado and stoicism have those fears, right? And it's like, but have they addressed it? Are they, are they holding themselves back because of that fear? We don't willingly put ourselves into fearful situations, although as pilots, yes, we do, but not normal people. But I guess fear happens and it's a useful tool. Fear is telling you danger, but you have to process it, not ignore it.

Correct. Yeah.

What do you think about the bravery-bravado distinction? What does that look like for you?

I think those people that are going out there and preaching that bravado as you just explained it, I think what they're actually doing is projecting their own insecurities out into the world because they are afraid to open up and be vulnerable. It's not easy to— I mean, it's getting easier, but I mean, let's use this show as an example. I come on here to tell you the details of the trauma that I went through as a child knowing there's a chance that my family can hear this. And I think like if you start to look at it from that aspect, like I'm secure enough in who I am, I know who I am now, I know what has caused me to be this way. It doesn't mean that my mom and I have a terrible relationship that I told you those things, but it's not necessarily something that everybody wants to put out there. But I just know, I guess for me, doing the brave thing by talking about these and being vulnerable enough to do that is going to help save, in my case, veteran lives. And that's what matters to me. So those guys are out there preaching, suck it up, that's weak. You know, I think really what, what it is is they're afraid to face their own things and they're projecting that outwards, trying to, to recruit people, if you will, to be that way so that they don't feel so alone.

In that. 100%. 100%. So how, Adam, do we connect with your work? How do we get in touch with you?

Yeah, everything you want to know about me can be found at my website, thestrategicveteran.com. If you don't want to go to my website, I am doing everything primarily on LinkedIn, so you can find me under Adam Peters. It's really easy to find me. There's two little salute emojis on either either side of my name. And that's where you're going to find everything that I'm doing, everything that I talk about. Um, in fact, today I have a new series coming out, uh, second episode of a new series coming out on LinkedIn Live called Transition Talks, where we try to get a veteran to come on and, and at their will. I will only do this if I get a veteran who volunteers to do it, but a veteran particularly in their transition to spread the message of of what they're facing in their transition and what they're dealing with as an example to those others that are going to come after them or maybe in the same spot as them. And, and, uh, that's, that's where I do everything, man, is LinkedIn. It's such a good platform for stuff like this.

I love it. Adam, thank you. I'm going to give you much, much thanks. Thank you for coming on and sharing your experience and your story. Thank you for your service. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. Listeners, if you like what you're hearing, please share the Chris Project with someone else. Follow the show, rate the show. If you don't like what you're hearing, shoot us a message and tell us what you'd like to hear about. But don't forget that you are not alone and don't give up. Until later. Tata for now.

Thank you for listening to The Chris Project. You are important. Your work is important. Do not give up.