When You've Gone Over the Edge (And How to Come Back): Former Navy Vet / Police Off. Kevin Barnhill

And once a guy balls up his fist or gives you that, that look, you're like, ah, here we go. And so you got to act. You can't just wait for it. You literally have to just be ready for it all the time, even if it's just a neighbor dispute, because then they're not getting what they need. And so they— the only way they know how to respond is aggressively. This show is powered by Others Over Self. Hit that subscribe button to keep training your brain.

From others over self, it's Hardcore and at Ease, a show about people who are keeping their edge without going over the edge. I'm host Shelly Rood. People who used to text have stopped. Your kids go quiet when when you walk in? Your spouse looks at you like someone they don't even recognize, and you can feel it happening. You're cutting people off mid-sentence, getting short, getting harsh, but you just can't seem to stop. You're in a spiral of your own making. I've been there. I know that feeling. So today's episode answers the question: where do I go from here?

This is Hardcore and At Ease.

You can feel it happening. The people who used to ask you how you're doing, they've stopped communicating with you. Your kids go quiet when you walk into the room, and your spouse, they look at you like they're trying to remember who you were before you came together. And the most brutal part of this phase of life is knowing exactly what you're doing. It's almost an out-of-body experience. You can see yourself cutting people off mid-sentence. You can feel yourself getting short or harsh. But still, we just can't seem to stop that momentum. We're in a spiral of our own making, and watching ourselves do it doesn't seem to change anything. We know we shouldn't, and yet we do. Kevin Barnhill was there. 28 years in law enforcement, and somewhere around the 8-year mark, he woke up to the wreckage behind him. His family was suffering, his friends had disappeared, he wasn't the pastor that he used to be, and he wasn't even the man that his wife had married. But he did eventually come back to himself. And that gives hope to the rest of us.

That's one of those things that pretty much every single cop has the same kind of story. They've wanted to be a police officer ever since they were young, you know? And I can say that too, even though at 11 though, I told my mom I wanted to be a child psychologist and I was only 11. And then she says, "No, you'll probably be a pastor." I'm like, "Oh, okay, we'll see." And then, but I always loved the police work, right? Watching Adam-12 back in the day, And I graduated from high school early, did not like high school, you know, and, um, like, ah, I just got to get out of here. So I did the requirements, what they wanted me to do, and I graduated early, saved up some money, went to college. And in college, I was studying to be a pastor, right? So I was going to go in the ministry. And so I was right there, and I had to leave college for a semester or two for emergency medical situation. And then I joined the military to help me pay for another college, the GI Bill and all the funding. So I did that, went down to Springfield, Missouri. My first college was in Rhode Island, and then my second college was in Missouri, Springfield, Missouri. Graduated there early cuz I missed, took a whole year off. So I just jammed when I came back to that school for my bachelor's. I just jammed, worked all 18 hours during the summer credit hours and and graduated in 3 years instead of 4. Went into the ministry and worked in Missouri for a while as a pastor. Came back to Michigan, started to hang out with a lot of inner city ministries and stuff like that. That started to get me my field work as far as working with police officers. And so that drive started to come back in there, like, I've always wanted to be a cop too. So as I was working the inner cities Started mingling with the, like I said, the higher-ups in police, Detroit Police Department. They got me into the— I applied, but I could tell they, they helped me get into the academy, put some good words in and stuff like that. Got into the academy.

I'm so interested in, before we get into all of that, Kevin, if you did not like high school, why were the next few years followed with higher education?

Because I loved learning. I love learning. And just because I didn't like high school doesn't mean I didn't like education. I just didn't like the environment of high school. I had a lot of jackrabbits around, all the fooling around, like, let's take this stuff serious. That's why I could graduate early, right? I took the ACT exam early, and I did all these requirements. Funny as it was, in 9th grade, going into 10th grade, middle school going into high school, they gave us a reading test, an English test to go into high school. And I was my 9th grade because in 7th and 8th grade I went to a Christian school. Then in 9th grade I went to public school and just totally just lost my mind. It's blah. And so they gave us an English exam from middle school going into high school to see where they're going to place us in high school. I finished that in probably about 7 minutes because I just filled in the bubbles wherever. This is why I don't believe in evolution, because if evolution existed, me just filling in the bubbles all over the place just randomly without reading any questions, I should have came out in the highest level of English. You know, I should just pick out all the best words.

Is that not what happened?

No, no, no. I was put into the lowest level of— in high school. So now, like, That was my 9th grade year, kind of like a crazy year. Summertime, I kind of like, oh, let's get serious. We're going into high school. And I start high school and they're like, hey, you get to go into a reading lab class. So they tested me at a 5th grade level in 10th grade reading level. And funniest story, because I'm like, what? Wait a minute. Like my mindset changed over the summer. I'm like, wait, why? Well, because you scored so low. 'on the test you took back in May when you were in 9th grade.' I'm like, 'Oh, oh, I forgot about that.' Like, 'You need to go into this. You have a 5th grade reading level.' And I went, 'Oh, oh, I can read better than that.' They're like, 'Well, you're gonna have to show us.' I'm like, 'Okay.' So literally we had just workbooks, just elementary level workbooks. They didn't give me crayons because they knew I'd just eat them. So that was good. But they put me there. I'm like, 'Oh my goodness.' this. And I'm looking around the classmates, I'm like, hmm, probably shouldn't be here with everybody else that's around me, right? I just knew, but I'm like, that was a mistake. So I went down to the counselor's office, and they're like, no, you got to be here for the full semester, show us that you can do better. And I did, right? Everybody's on workbooks, and I'm just like flying through the workbooks. And I think I was on 7 or 8 when everybody else was on 3 and 4. And after that semester, I'm like, Do you see that I'm not a 5th grade reading level? They're like, okay, we'll put you up in the next level. So I'm like, oh my goodness. And that actually really solidified something in me. Anything you do, you can't just, you know, flippantly do it. That's why in the master's I got my 3.97. I'm like, this is— and I was also a detective and working cases doing that. I think that was my only A- in my master's program was when I was a detective and jumped onto a homicide case and I just couldn't keep up with all the papers. And so I got an A-.

You slipped down to an A-? That's awful, Kevin.

Hey, when you're put into a 5th grade reading level in 10th grade, it kind of shakes you a little bit, right?

So— I could imagine.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

I had a similar experience where I did— not pay attention in one of my classes, and so my parents made me take a remedial summer school type thing. Listen, being in the room with those summer school kids, I had that same moment of looking around going, I do not belong here, I don't want to belong here. He's gonna do better, I promise, right?

Football players are still wearing the helmet in the class. I'm like, no, I shouldn't be with these guys.

All right, so which branch did you end up joining when you did go to the military route?

United States Navy Reserves. So I was in the Naval Reserves. So I purposely went into the Navy, not the Marines. I really wanted to go in the Marines, but I like the Navy program as far as the Navy Seabees. So I went into the Seabees as a construction builder, just in case God calls me overseas to, you know, work with people. Then I'm like, I need some construction knowledge to build this and this and this. And even that had an objective and a reason why I went in there. So, mm-hmm.

Where did this passion for wanting to be a preacher come from at the age of 11?

Well, age 11, I wanted to be a child psychologist, but also my mom was tinkering with, you really gonna be probably a pastor, a preacher, right? So, but then I solidified my faith when I was 15, November 14th, 1981. That's my true birthday. That's what I call it, my birthday, right? That's when I was born again and had a renewal of my heart, my mind. And again, that's how that kind of shifted from 9th grade to 10th grade to get serious about my future. And that kind of took a place, and I started working with the church, getting involved in the youth group, leading the youth group, doing some youth group activities as a leader underneath the youth leader. And that kind of solidified my path. I really want to do this.

Did you have any friends or uncles or anybody that served as clergy leadership that played a sort of a mentorship role? That's interesting for me to think of a young kid that's like, I want to be a preacher, or even for the mom to kind of want that for her child.

Yeah. No, I had none of that. Even in the police field, I had no mentors, like in prior to police, except a commander in DPD when I was doing inner city pastoring in Detroit, I was becoming friends with the commander out there at one of the precincts. Then he was kind of a really, really good mentor person, but really had no lineage in pastoral stuff, no lineage in, in police or actually therapy now either. I'm blazing.

For how many years in the Navy Reserves?

8 years in college. And then after I became a pastor and was doing that, I was still doing the weekends and stuff like that.

So, so closed, closed that chapter 8 years out. And then is that when you jumped with both feet into police work?

Um, yeah, cuz shortly after I got out, then I went into police work. But I was only going to do police work for like maybe 5 years. You know, I told the wife, I said, let me try this for 5 years. I'll jump out of the poda ministry if we don't like it. If I don't like it, then I'll go back into the ministry.

So yeah, where'd you stay?

It was, for me, it was kind of like my niche. I felt I was too strong, like too, I don't know, strong in the ministry. And, and in the, in the police field, it just felt like my niche, right? I could— I love the car chases, I love the, the wrestling, I love the arrest, I love when it went well. You know, when people listen to you, and I didn't mind when they didn't listen to you. I love that kind of adrenaline. I think that's why. And then you get— it's a— it's— the ministry is very— the payment-wise, it's nothing's really, you know, it can change. Retirement wasn't there, the healthcare was kind of difficult, that kind of stuff. I liked every 2 weeks I got a paycheck, a really good paycheck. I liked that I had great healthcare. I liked that I had a— working on a great pension for retirement. I liked the work. I really did like to work. I liked promoting. You're the season of Kevin the Pastor when somebody is like struggling with redemption and he like tackles them to the ground to say, "Christ is your Savior." I got to the point, like if my kids were in the front row and I'm speaking and they were acting up, I'd call them out and like, hey, 'Hey guys,' and they're always like, 'Dad.' Now they're like in their 30s and they still kind of remember that, right?

It is. It's a— it's being military, being a first responder, it's a whole personality thing. My son had a soccer coach last year who's a firefighter, and you knew it. You knew it as soon as you saw how he handled the team out on the field. And I heard some of the moms in the stands whispering like, 'Oh, he's— I heard he's very militaristic because he's a firefighter.' And I'm like cracking up on the inside of like, they don't know the half of it.

Yeah. Not at all.

So how long were you in the police work field?

The police community? 28+ years.

Yeah. And you mentioned detective at one point. What kind of jobs do you have as a police officer?

So for me, the road patrol, you do a lot of the, what everybody thinks of a police officer is, right? You answer the Dispatch run, you go to the domestics, you go to the accidents, you go to the neighbor disturbance calls, you go to— that's a uniform patrol thing. And then they start elevating themselves. In our department, we tested and interviewed. It was very— one one-hundredth of a point could— it's all position. So, it was very tough to go up the ranks. You had to study a lot. You had to interview really well. And so, all the police work uniform stuff, I did motorcycle officer. So, I was driving around, riding around with the Harley and giving the tickets and all all that stuff, you know, cruising down the roads trying to get to chases or whatever, and you're flying down with your Harley. I was a D.A.R.E. officer for 5th graders. I think that was my— that and the motorcycles was my best time, was working with the 5th graders. And when you first show up and they're scared of you, they're very fearful, and they're like, my parents told me never to talk to you, you know, don't talk to me. And then you just go in there and just have fun, and you're very animated and energetic, and you got this program. And by the end the D.A.R.E. semester, the kids are like, oh, we love you. Years later, I would eat— I arrested somebody and they're like, I was in your D.A.R.E. class. I'm like, you didn't listen to me. He goes, I know, I should have, I was 10. And yeah, it was kind of funny, right? You should have listened to what I was saying. I know, I was only 10 years old. I didn't know what I didn't know. So those jobs are just like a lot of the The road patrol, then you go up to your test, you get up to detective, and then you just get cases after cases, like 4 cases a day right now have to be closed out. So I could be 50 cases behind, you know, and they're like, close them out quickly, close them out. Some cases are find my snowman decoration that was on my porch that was stolen overnight and there's no lead.

Oh my gosh, you almost made me spit my water out. I can't believe that would be a real case.

Well, thank you for not doing that, but be prepared for when I'm talking, don't drink while I talk because you never know what's going to happen. Which snowman? Decoration, right? While you're working on another case of somebody being in custody for domestic violence, and now you have to follow that all the way through because you don't want that to slip through the cracks and let someone out and to go do worse things. But yeah, they're coming all the time. They're just like— it's like a wave of the sea doing that. And then you— I just continue to go up to sergeant right before I retired, got into internal affairs. And then went right back to the road as a sergeant for a little bit, right before they miraculously said, you can retire if you want.

I'm like— Hometown or in the same precinct district?

So this is in my hometown where I grew up, where I graduated high school, where I vowed to God— didn't vow to him, I just asked him, you know, I said, God, Please, I'm leaving here to go to Rhode Island for Bible college. Please, I don't ever want to come back here.

He didn't listen.

I think he chuckled, but I wasn't sure what that was. I thought that was just thunder in the skies or something, but I think he was chuckling because I'm like, I will go. I'm preparing myself. I'll go to Africa. I'll go to there because I've already done some mission trips as a high schooler to Colombia and stuff like that, right? And I loved other countries. Didn't like where I grew up. So I'm like, please, I will go anywhere in the world for you, but please don't send me back here. So he gave me that for a little bit. I went to Rhode Island, I went to California, went to Missouri, right? Shelly Rood came back to Michigan. My mom and dad were dying, different periods, but I came back to be with them, to take care of them. And then got the job with Warren PD. And that just kind of— it was so good. It was fun. Active, busy. It paid really well, insurance really well. It just— now you're locked in. Now you're locked in because now you're like thinking, my end goal is— I begin my police work to get out of police work. I don't know if you ever heard of that before. About that, you get into police work to get out of police work, right? And some people never get out. They're always stuck because that's their identity. But it should be your way to another place, right? It's good. It should be good retirement. You know, in 25 years you're leaving, so you should properly prepare financially and all that stuff and go that direction. So you get into police work to get out of police work. Some just don't always get out of it, or they get out a lot more damaged than what they think they would. I think in the first year it changes you. I could tell I lost a lot I, when I was in the ministry, I did puppets, I did youth. I could do 4 or 5 different voices, personalities, which is not according to dissociation or personality disorder. It was just— maybe it came up later. Yeah, right. I had an old man puppet that, and I would train other, I would train youth and we'd go to other churches and do puppet shows and funny stuff and all that stuff. So, but over the 25 years, I think I lost a lot of that, that humor and just how to be lighthearted, right? Maybe it's age. Maybe, I don't know what it is, but it's definitely the job.

I was just talking to a special agent a while ago and she said the exact same thing. She used that word, that term lightheartedness as well, of that was something that the job took from her and she could feel it happening and other people could witness it happening as well. Just that inability to freely play.

Yes. Yeah, still trying to figure that out. And it might be because of the intensity of the job, but most times the job isn't tense. 80-85% of the time, it's just cruising around, you're giving some tickets. But you have to be ready for that. Like, you got to go to 0 to 10, like, right now. Can't wait, you can't say, ah, maybe, maybe I will, you know, once a guy balls up his fist or gives you that That look, you're like, ah, here we go. And so you gotta act. You can't just wait for it. You literally have to just be ready for it all the time, even if it's just a neighbor dispute, because then they're not getting what they need. And so they, the only way they know how to respond is aggressively. So you're like, ah, so de-escalation skills are vital. I've learned, I do that, a 6-hour training for de-escalation and a powerful class. Right. But yeah, I think I lost a lot of that. Just being lighthearted. I'm trying to find it back.

Well, you mentioned that it's not necessarily the job itself for most of the time. There is a lot of that hypervigilance that has to happen. I wonder if it's the culture also where it's like the teammates and the people around you don't necessarily want to embrace that lightheartedness. And so it's just kind of smushed out of the culture.

Some of it, some guys are really, we had some really amazingly funny guys, just literally the humor. Or was just great, but they pretty much stayed that way their whole career. But with those, I noticed didn't always make it up the ranks. They stayed in their position. And that made me think too, like, huh, funny guy, but not getting promoted. Everybody's laughing at his jokes, but now no one's taking him serious to do the jobs that you need to do. Right? So there's that balance. And I think a lot of people that— if you talk to people at my, my former department compared to people that saw me outside, it was totally different. I go to work, I'm stoic, down to business. Just tell me what I need to do, I do it. I think one supervisor said, you're, you're just aloof. He goes, yeah, you do all these, these things, right? You're a black belt, you got your master's in counseling after that time, because you got this and that and you get all this stuff, but you're just aloof. But that was me being guarded all the time, right? Because things being behind you guys, always talking about stuff, right? So I think it was just being guarded.

So working in the police department and trying to climb the ladder and make sure that you're there for a long-term career, but then outside of that career, you have gone into mental wellness and being a clinical counselor. Can you talk to me just a little bit about that transition and how you see the work that you do now impacting the personality that you once were, or people that you served with that had that personality.

So when I was a pastor in my 20s, I've always wanted to become a professional counselor. I actually got accepted at Wayne State University when I was 29, before I went into the police field. So I knew I wanted to be a counselor anyways. But just when I got into police field, I said, what's the purpose of being a counselor? What do they need counseling for? What do we need counseling for? Which was really twisted cuz it took me about 5 or 7 years, maybe even 8 years. Cuz you know, during those first years I'm really working, having fun, doing all the chases and whatever. And so I just kind of got lost in that. About 8 years in, I'm like, whoa, I lost friendships, I lost relationships, I've destroyed people on the outside, like just being irritable, just all the stuff that goes around PTSD and hypervigilance. And so I'm like, this is exactly the reason why I should become a counselor because of this stuff. And I'm seeing it like literally just a wreckage behind me that I've tried to amend since then and caused me a marriage, you know, cause me a short period of distance from my kids while they're a certain age over the last 10 years. They're like, Dad, why couldn't you have done this years ago? You know, and they see the growth. And when your inner family, inner circle sees a change in you, that's when you know it really took hold and took heart. And so me seeing how mental health really needs to be implemented in my life. It was really a survival lifeline for me that I needed to do it for me, if not for nobody else.

It was just the discovering of the importance of mental wellness. Because like you said, when you're on a motorcycle flying through these chases, right, it's just high adrenaline and get out of my way. And that, that head-down forward movement personality is extremely common.

Yes. So the motor— I wasn't in chases on the motorcycle. Well, don't— we won't get that twisted. I was just responding.

You had me so excited about this picture that I had of you.

I was responding to things at a high rate of speed, but always car chases, 130 miles an hour or whatever, right? But just for the record, I never got in a pursuit in my motorcycle. All right. It's against policy. Oh, I didn't know that. So I was never in a chase, and even to this day. But yeah, just knowing that I needed that because the wreckage behind me and I'm like, who am I? The guy that wanted— I even had the chief ask me, brought me in his office. He's like, what are you doing? Why are you mean to people? Why are you never like physically excessive force, but just condescending, short with people? And people hate to be cut off. You know that. Like you're talking to someone, cut you off. So I was like that. Why are you mean to people? I'm like, he goes, you were a pastor at one time. And me being me, I said, hence the reason why I'm no longer a pastor. So it was probably not the best thing to say that to your chief, but that's the place I was at, right?

And that was the truth for you.

Absolutely. But those are also flags, right? Those are also flags for someone that— that's why I'm so passionate. So just hardcore, if we want to go that route, is to educate our police officers, but our command. And I'm working with a great organization now. I'm on their advisory team to do like master classes for leadership and all that stuff to help them understand what their officers are going through. So if he would have noticed that, oh, listen, he used to be a pastor, but now he's condescending. Now he's mean. Now he's short with people. I wonder if this job has affected him, infected him to the point of not being himself. What can we do? Because there wasn't— but that was in the early 2000s. There wasn't all the buzzwords. Now you got hundreds of groups out there in the United States that are all doing the same thing.

I want to pause here because you just said something absolutely insightful. That version of you when you were like, I just cut you off, cutting people off and short temper. He said— He said that you're not being yourself. You're not being true to yourself.

I don't know if he said that. He just, well, he said you were what you kind of, yeah, he said that, right? Because he said you were once a pastor. Why are you like this?

Now in that moment, did you recognize that you were drifting away from what we call your tactical center of, you know, that authenticity of who Kevin is? Did you recognize that you were drifting away from that or did you feel just that you were doing what you felt like you wanted to be doing?

No, that was the beginning of my path change, right? What is going on? The road is getting to me. And by this time, wreckage and carnage is already behind me on certain things. But now I'm like, this is too much, right? I'm not getting in trouble for other stuff, stealing, being unethical. Excessive force. It was just, why can't you be more compassionate, more empathetic?

Yeah. I mean, some say like, well, I'm just an a-hole because that's how I am. Right. But I love this other perspective of, no, if you're being an a-hole, maybe it's time for you to start taking a look at the path that you're on.

And that's what I looked at, right? I really did. I started to feel that this is not my core. This is not my core. This is not who I am. Yet it's a— I'm short with people. You go all down the lines of anxiety, depression, PTSD, PTSD, and there's symptoms. And I fit those symptoms. And I'm like, there's a path that I'm on that I wasn't on before. Right? I'm no longer completely happy myself. Yet I put on this facade of It's all good, right? You got the nice house, you got the nice cars, you got all the stuff that says you're successful, you're okay. Everybody looks at you like you're doing okay. But my core was truly being disrupted and I started to think I have to change this. So it took several years cuz there's, there's other plans that was taking place in the workforce and all that stuff for me to get to the point of saying I need to, I think I went into counseling. Not for other people, but for me. Right. And I always tell people that I should have charged the insurance companies to pay for my education because it was the best therapy I've ever had. Right. I never submitted those claims and those, those receipts, but paid for it myself. And I thought that should have been covered because that was the greatest therapeutic thing ever. I had mentors, I had professors, PhDs that I would just talk to on the phone for an hour. An hour and a half about different things. And they would, they helped me. They were so kind. They're Christians at Christian University. And they took me from one place to another place. Evidence is my kids saying, evidence is my ex saying, why couldn't you have done this years ago when we were together? That's powerful, right? Why couldn't you change yourself? And okay, but here we are.

It is powerful. I wanted to work this into our conversation today, Kevin, because this is exactly the work that you do. So last week, one of our team members, her sister— she was asked to do a welfare check on her sister and unfortunately discovered that her sister had chose death by suicide with a gunshot. And so not only is our teammate experiencing the loss of the sibling, but also the trauma that comes from that type of discovery. Now, she is the special agent that I had referenced earlier in this episode, so she has the professional experience of handling those types of situations, right? But there's so many layers of complication when it comes to it being a loved one. So we're kind of walking through that as a team right now. And I know that you have a lot of background in this as well. And I bring it into our conversation today because I know that you can help our team as we are fleshing out and working through just the healing process with her over however long it's gonna take her to move through the grieving process. Specifically yesterday, I was invited to participate in what I call a chaplain call, uh, where you're just present. And so I had the opportunity to sit with her and her other sister and their two nieces and literally just be present to represent the spirit while they're able to help process some of those emotions. And when you just mentioned to me those conversations that you were able to have with some of your clergy leadership and your professors, That kind of feels to me almost like they were in some ways perhaps doing a chaplain call for you as well, just allowing you to process your own feelings and emotions and experiences in a very safe place.

I think that's definitely what is needed. And I think the biggest part of that is being present, like you said, sometimes just sitting with people. Jesus, Jesus did that when he sat at the well with the woman. He just sat, talked to her, but he sat at the well. And that's powerful for me to know that sometimes they don't need to know what I know, right? They don't need to know what I've been trained in. They just need just to sit. And that's so awkward for most of us, just to be present to sit, to hear without everything we know. For one reason is because I think what they're going through is very emotional, and we can't solve that emotional situation with a cognitive response. It's like hitting it like this. So to connect with them where they're at is sometimes just sitting at the well with them without education and then being present when they say, "What can I do?" Then the next phase comes in there and you move into the cognitive healing or the cognitive restoration part of it. And I love that example that just sitting at the well, I could be silent and just listen. And sometimes that's more powerful. We would have a judge I would have a judge ride along with us, or he would ride along with me. He would choose other officers, but he liked riding with me back in the day when I was on midnights. He goes, I like what you do because you just sit with the people, the victims, or the people calling. Not all the time, but when it was safe and controlled and you're just doing a report. He goes, you would sit down at their table or their living room couch and you would just talk to them. He goes, I don't see too many officers just sitting down. And it has to be tactically safe. I'm not, negating any of that, right? I don't just go into a house and sit down with the drunk guy or the domestic violence guy. I don't just sit down on their couch. I don't do that. But at the appropriate time, getting down at their level, right? Just like a chaplain or a pastor, when they go into a hospital visit, they shouldn't stand over the bed. They should be taught to sit down next to the person, to bring it into a personal part. So when you're talking about doing a chaplain call, you just sat, you just listened, you just were present.

Why is it so hard for us to keep our mouths shut when we're in that opportunity of that moment? Is it— I get the sense of feeling that we want to fix it.

Yeah. I think we have to train ourselves to be quiet. I think we have to train ourselves. I think it's a constant thing. I do that all the time. I'll talk a lot sometimes in sessions and I'm like, oh, let me do this. I have a red flag next to my chair that if, you know, if a client says some negative self-talk or this or that, I'll like this, they're like, don't you dare grab the red flag. And I'm like, all right, change your self-talk then, cuz we're not gonna handle the negative stuff. But sometimes I'll flag myself and I'm like, I'm talking too much. If I'm on virtual, I'll do like the flag like this. And, uh, they're like, no, don't bring out the red flag. But just sitting, just being quiet, just being okay with being quiet is probably learned behavior. I'm like, you literally gotta train yourself.

I know even television and social media is brainwashing us all so much. I'm a former executive marketing executive in broadcast television, so I'm intimately familiar with the way that commercial breaks are designed all the way down to the second, the millisecond. And you could only hold the human attention for so long. Used to be 2 and a half minutes. That's why commercial periods are 2 and a half minutes long. And if you've noticed over the years, commercial blocks are now shorter and shorter because the human attention span can't even keep it that long. Gone from YouTube videos to YouTube Shorts, right? And so what does that mean for the face-to-face conversations?

People love to talk. And so when the helper, whatever position that is, chaplain, whatever it is, counselor, when we learn not to talk and let them talk, I think truly that's where the healing starts to come in because they need to get rid of all of that, that stuff. They need to feel safe to get rid of it. So I think most people can talk more than 30 seconds, but they can't listen more than 30 seconds.

So that's a fair observation. You gave a small lesson to us when we were at Selfridge Air National Guard Base. We were there for a family day together. I think that's the first time that we met.

Yeah, what a pleasure.

You gave us a brief lesson on anxiety. I have a lot of, of our listeners right now that are feeling a lot of anxiety, particularly with the war in Iran that's happening. And they're starting to— I had— we had a veteran just call the other day and wanted to know if he should pack his go bag. Because of a certain strike that just came up. And so there's just this heightened level of awareness happening. Can you, um, maybe share some professional-level wisdom for us to help us mitigate these higher-level fears that we're experiencing?

Yes, I can. And I'm gonna bring it not just to these guys going overseas, but also to the guys that are staying here The Border Patrol, they're going through a lot too. ICE agents, Homeland Security, I'm seeing some of them and they're going through a ton of anxiety and PTSD because it's not normal for us to be treated poorly all the time. All the time we're being treated poorly. So it does affect— it affects our military, but it affects our National Guard that are staying here. It affects our Border Patrol or police officers. All of this is taking place all at one time, right? It's not just the war overseas, it's actually— we now, we need to be hypervigilant and extra aware of what's taking place in our land. The protests, the possible attacks on our country, you know, the cells rising up. So it is important for us to stay vigilant to stay vigilant, to stay aware, to stay tactical, to stay prepared, but try to exit out of the hypervigilant where it takes you to the next level because then your cortisol levels and all that stuff goes up higher. So what I shared at the base was there's a small area, and I pretty much share this with every single client that comes in, they just have to go through this training or this education, but there's a small little room in our brain, the hippocampus, And I say, picture the brain being the tri-county area, right? And then our office, say it's 12 by 8 or 12 by 12 or whatever size. That is the little room that is in your brain that holds anxiety, gratitude. That's it. Amongst the huge brain that wants to do a ton of stuff. In this little room comes— holds anxiety and gratitude, but they can't be in the same room at the same time. So if you have anxiety, I can guarantee you don't have gratitude in your life. And people say, I'm grateful, but it's not residing in this spot right now because only one thing can occupy that space at one time. I went through something in December where I started to feel anxious, and I'm trained. I've been training myself literally just like I trained myself being a firearms instructor, an EVO instructor, emergency vehicle operation. Instructor, I was doing the same thing with me personally. How do I relax me? How do I keep me calm? So on a Sunday morning, I start to feel anxious. I have a lot of stuff going on that week— clients, a conference, speaking, da da da, all this different stuff. And I started to feel anxious. And I said, start doing your tactical breathing. Nope, I don't want to. I started getting into this rebellious mood, right? The same guy showed up in 9th grade to take that test. He came out, he visited, and I, I, then I do this 5-7-8, 5 seconds in my nose. I hold it for 7 seconds and I let it out of my mouth for 8 seconds. That's 20 seconds of breathing. 20 times 3 is 1 minute. You're taking 3 breaths in 1 minute and that starts to lower everything. Snipers will do it. Navy SEALs will do it. Like guys that get into things, they have to slow everything down so they can do the task. Right? Any high-task job. So I said, nope, I don't want to do that either. Well, you know, if you're grateful, you'll get rid of anxiety. Nope, I don't have anything to be grateful for. And I'm looking out of my patio door over at the water, and I'm like, it's beautiful in December, the snow's over the water, it's gorgeous. So nope, nope, don't have anything to be grateful for. Hey, just getting stubborn, right? So I said, why don't you be grateful for the anxiety that you're experiencing right now? I said, never done that before. All right, God, I thank you for being anxious right now. I thank you for these anxious feelings. I thank you for just— this is helping me to prepare for this week. Me being anxious is helping me to be more diligent and thought-provoking, more conscious about my schedule. So I thank you that this is preparing me to have a productive and fruitful week.

Oh, Kevin, it's so hard to shift from— I feel like that would start with sarcasm. Thanks a lot, God, for this anxiety that I've got right now.

But I knew the principle.

Get it into genuine—

yeah, I knew the principle, right? And so I said, thank God, thank you for the anxiety, thank you for that. You're preparing me, and this has helped me to focus on this week, and I'm going to be better prepared. And I started chuckling a little bit, huh? And I could, in my mind's eye, I could picture the Wicked Witch just melting. And the Wicked Witch was anxiety and it just melted. And then I went out. All that in a span about 15 minutes, right? Was about 15 minutes. And then I'm like, okay, we're good. Now we know what we need to do for the week. Now we can get busy. We can do this and that. I didn't want to be grateful for anything else. So I chose to be grateful for the anxiety. Life-changing for me. I don't know if that worked for everybody else, but for me, because I knew all the little tricks and the techniques and the breathing and all that stuff. I'm like, nope, not gonna do it. Just gonna take this test, fill in the bubbles, see where it lands me. 5th grade level.

Yeah. I mean, it's one thing to have the knowledge. It's another thing to execute on the knowledge for sure. But then I'm going to take that even one step further because knowledge and execution are becoming almost invisible and valueless the more that we get into the rise of AI. And so I know I'm going down rabbit holes here, but I'll bring it back by leaning into this idea of creativity and the one thing that the human mind can do that the mechanics and the robots will never be able to do is creation. And so Kevin was able to go back into his human brain and figure out how to use his creative problem-solving techniques to shift out of anxiety into gratefulness and reset his day. I love that. I find myself in those moments of being like that. You called her the wicked witch. I'll be a little bit nicer to myself, kind of feeling like a troll, right? Where you're just like angry or upset or against the world in that moment. And the first step is really like being able to look at yourself from the outside. Do I really look like this? I don't want to look like this. I don't want to feel this way. Help me get out of it. Help me shift my mindset, right? I mean, I had a 6-year-old's birthday party that we hosted on Sunday, and leading up to it, I found myself in that troll posture, right? Of like, oh, I hate this. I don't want to do this. There's so much to do.

Da da da da.

But step one is recognizing that you are the troll. Step one is recognizing that you are the Kevin standing in front of his police chief who's like, why are you so mean, Kevin? Why you gotta be that way?

You should be a pastor. Hence the reason why I'm no longer a pastor.

Well, thank you for that lesson on anxiety. I'm going to make sure that we dig a little bit deeper into that before we wrap up.

That's becoming more, more common. For people to talk about that. But yeah, let me just say this. Jordan Peterson said, "A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control." And I love that concept. Powerful. Talking about a harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a dangerous man who has that completely under control and can control himself. That's powerful.

And it speaks so well to the audience that you and I connect with, because we don't want to roll over, right? We don't want to be pacifists who just kind of give everything to everybody. There is this level of, like you said, I'm too strong to be a pastor at that moment in my life. I have the strength. What do I do with it? Yeah. Kevin, as we wrap up our conversation today, I do want to lean a little bit more into this idea of being at ease. Being able to talk yourself out of some situations where you're recognizing anxiety, but even deeper than that, how do you go through your life right now and be able to find that place of being at ease? Because you are pulling on some third-party trauma, having to talk with and deal with and take on the stories of all of your clients. You are out there still training and working in very difficult situations. How does Kevin Barnhill step back and be able to be at ease in this time in his life?

Knowing, for one thing, that I don't walk this life anymore by myself alone. I'm developing better circles around me. But the center of that circle for me is Christ, is knowing His Word, is knowing that He would never leave me nor forsake me. That is powerful. And coming up onto the Easter season, knowing that he did all of that just for me, and if I was the only person alive, he would have did the same thing. Knowing that my circle of friends is getting stronger and better and more elevated, because as I lift myself up, I'm attracting more of the the higher quality people, right? Such as yourself. I think we have a decent relationship and friendship, and I appreciate that. But surrounding yourself with people that are at a higher level, knowing that me being at ease, I'm not always at ease, knowing that I have this 9th grade person that sometimes wants to, hey, I'm here again, and he wants to just fill in the bubbles that he didn't hear the question to. I'm like, no, no, no, no. Remember, that didn't work out so well last time. We have to constantly just be aware of who we are. And I try to do some introspection for me when that happens. You know, I do a lot of research, I do a lot of reading, and knowing that my brain is sometimes totally contradictory to my heart and trying to link those two together because my brain wants to dive into the negative intrusive thoughts, the all this stuff. It's my choice how long those thoughts stay here. I can't control— I cannot control what comes into my brain, but I can control how long it stays there. And what learned in training and definitely honesty with me— am I doing it for rebellious? Am I prideful? Am I stubborn? Being truthful to me, keeping me at ease. Knowing that I'm not always— calmness isn't just going to happen. It's a trained, it's a trained thing that you, each person needs to grab ahold of and train themselves on being calm.

I will second that. I don't think that calmness is, um, is my natural personality. I think I'm right there. I'll be ready to jump on a motorcycle. Kevin, for our listener that is so in love with you right now, how can they get in touch with you and keep up with you?

So cadencecounseling.org, www.cadencecounseling.org. Always willing to work with people. I just speak with different organizations. I work with the state of Michigan for behavioral health. I work in the police academies for that. I speak at police departments for that and other places. We are definitely starting a 12-week program for first responders that is part of a reboot recovery. And they have it for military and trauma. They also have one for first responders. So we're doing the first responder one. And if people are interested in that, it starts actually on the 7th of April for 12 weeks. It'll be on Tuesday nights, 6 to 8. And then after that, we'll do another one and another one. But we have some great leaders. We just want to bring healing and restoration to our military, our first responders, even our frontline workers. So we know we were built for service, but we're also built for restoration, right? What broke us doesn't have to keep us broken.

Built for service and also for restoration. Kevin Barnhill, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your wisdom today.

Thank you so much, Shelly Rood.

The thing that got Kevin out of the spiral wasn't motivation. It was looking at the wreckage he had caused and realizing he just couldn't keep going. His kids asked him years later, "Why couldn't he have changed sooner?" That question, that landed so hard on him because the answer was simple: he finally had to. His ex-wife saw him transform and asked the same thing. I'm sure every parent of a wayward child asks that as well. Kevin just acknowledged that the person he had become was no longer acceptable to himself anymore. And he did the work to bring himself back. That's what's in sitting in front of you right now, not shame about who you've become. Today's episode wasn't an attempt at a pep talk about potential, or just think of all the things that you could be in life. Today's talk is really just an honest recognition that you're damaging people that love you, And staying where you are, that's not an option. Recognizing this, this is the beginning and everything else flows from here. That's where Kevin started, and that's where you can start in this transition also. Kevin, thank you so much for walking us through this and for being honest about the wreckage and then doing the work to come back. Kevin's story is something that pulls at my heart because I've been a version of that as well. And if you found a likeness in his story, well, all of his information is in the show notes, cadencecounseling.org, his speaking engagements, his 12-week first responder recovery program. So check those show notes and be sure to connect with him. The shift in our lives, it doesn't happen because we decide tomorrow we're going to be better. It happens when you get totally honest with yourself about what staying here is costing you. And then you train, you train yourself, you train like Kevin trained in firearms. He trained in de-escalation. He trained in his own healing. You train yourself to stay at the center when everything wants to tighten up and cut everybody else off. If this episode helps you to recognize your own drift away from from yourself, then your challenge is to simply connect with us. Let's keep this conversation going at join.othersoverself.com. That's where leaders like us are choosing to build something different, and we're doing it together. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, please do. It helps ambitious leaders discover this systematic approach so that we can each keep our edge without going over the edge. Now, next Tuesday, we're diving back into the framework that anchors all of these discussions. So you can count on me then with another dose of practical wisdom for hardcore leaders, because we refuse to go over the edge. So until Tuesday, stay hardcore, be at ease, and trust the process.

You're listening to Hardcore and At Ease. Keep the conversation going at at join.othersoverself.com.