A former Navy SEAL describes how the teams teach absolute dependence on a buddy during training, yet the culture discourages asking for help with depression and pain. True strength, he argues, means admitting you need people around you.
Navy SEALs probably epitomize the generation of men that are just supposed to suck it up. We're not good for asking for help. We don't want to show weakness by saying, hey, I need help with this. It could be anything, but there's only so many things we can figure out on our own. The SEAL Teams, we have like this buddy check. You're always with your buddy from day one at BUD/S. You never go 6 feet outside of your buddy from the day you start to the day you graduate, including underwater when you're diving. You actually have a lanyard. If you and I were dive buddies, I would have the clipped-on lanyard and you'd have it clipped on. We would never be 6 feet apart underwater. You have this buddy. Now all of a sudden you're not supposed rely on that buddy when you're dealing with the darkness, the pain, the depression, the suffering. And I think we just have to get out of that mindset because who can really do things just by yourself on your own? You've built the Ultimate Human. Have you done this solely by yourself? Would you have an amazing team that's behind you and that's doing this and doing that? We just want to hang on and we're really good at pain. And if you don't fix us, everything else doesn't get fixed.
