Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: It's Not Real. Getting Others Over Fear.

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Getting your child (and others, including yourself) over fear. More valuable tools for getting over a break-up and crushing forward. Being someone you can be proud of. Managing adrenaline dumps, nervousness, and high-stress situations. Embracing responsibility to get to the next level. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground podcast, number 170, sitting here with Echo Charles. We are going to present courses of actions available to you based on questions from you about your current situations in business, in family, and in life. Many aspects of life, by the way. Yes. Okay, first question. I'd say that the word life encompasses all those aspects. Yeah.

But you can reiterate if you want to. Oh, yeah. Of aspects. Thank you. That's why you said life. and I specifically chose to say many aspects of life, which is the same exact same thing. You just reiterate it big time.

Leadership is hard and challenging and difficult. There you go. Seems to me. Thank you. All right. First question. My son is five. Last year he ended up seeing the trailer for the It movie and it terrified him.

It has been a problem ever since. He won't even go to the bathroom without me or my husband going with him. He says he can't get Penny Wise out of his head. He wakes up terrified after dreaming about him. It's a very sad. I hate it. I don't want him feeling this way. I really don't know how to help him conquer this fear and feel okay to do things on his own again.

I thought it would be a phase, but it has been months and months of this on and off. Do you have any advice for helping kids feel brave or just less afraid? So this goes back to Wave the Warrior Kid. Exposure Therapy. Right exposure therapy. I did not know that exposure therapy was a thing, but it is a thing. What is it? When Jordan Peterson came on the podcast the first time and he explained how you get someone to overcome their fear of needles,

you put a needle in the room and you tell them, hey, there's a needle in the room. I want you to just go to the, goes close to the door of the room as you can, knowing that there's a needle in there. Don't push them. Don't force them in there. Don't freaking grab the needle and surprise him with it. That'll make it worse. And when they feel, they get to the, to the, the door itself and they can't open the door, but they're like, I can't do it.

Okay, say, fine. Yep, cool. Come back the next day. Hey, go as close as you can again today. You know, and you continue to expose them to this thing that they're afraid of. And over time, that fear will dissipate because they'll realize there's nothing to be afraid of. In the warrior kid, we show that with water, with the kids scared of water. So what do you do?

You take him to the river. Just wades in the water. And then he goes up to his knees in the water. And then he goes up to his waist in the water. And then he goes up to his chest in the water. And then he puts his head under water. And all voluntarily. All voluntarily.

So that's the idea that we're talking about here is exposure therapy. Now, so for the movie It, you know, it's a scary looking clown, right? So I would begin some experience. Brozier therapy with very happy-looking clowns, right? Clowns that cannot be remotely related to it, you know, and just pictures or drawings, you know, something that is as abstract away from it as you can possibly get with still some connection.

You know, so maybe it's a picture, maybe it's a, you know, if you find a funny TV show that there's a clown or something like that, but again, we don't surprise them. We don't make them uncomfortable. That does the opposite. And I would just slowly over time, you know, it's, can you look at this? There's a picture of it or there's a picture of a clown in the room. Can you look at the picture?

And we escalate from there. Okay. And then maybe eventually say, hey, there's a picture of the clown that's in it and there. I think another huge opportunity that you have here is since it's a movie, you could do things like show the guy getting his makeup put on. You know, some behind the scene stuff. It's all fake. show that guy laughing and joking, show the kids laughing and joking on the scene, explaining that this is fake, it's all fake, it's not real, it's not real,

the whole idea is just someone made it up in his head. And I think that would be my approach. You, again, just to reiterate, you have to do this at your kids' speed, right? You don't make them uncomfortable, don't force me to do it. The other thing is, as much as you can possibly do this, and this is a huge point, part of dealing with kids is don't make things bigger than they are. Right? Don't make things bigger than they are. If this becomes the focus, this becomes the focus.

If you start saying, you know, I really want you to overcome this fear. You know, if you really make it into a big deal, it's going to become a big deal. I did a good job for a parent kind of, you know, accidentally or just instinctively of never making something into a big deal that could have become a big deal or in fact in some cases is a big deal in your child's head. Like something will blow up.

You know, they get called a name. They get told something. They're afraid of something. Something happens. And it's really easy as a parent to make it into a big deal and then it becomes a bigger deal to them. Where's it a parent?

You're like, oh, you know, if you, they called me whatever. Kids at school call. called me, you know, what do they call you? Plate face. Plate face, that's from where your kid. You know, my kid, come on, they call me plate face. You're like, oh, okay.

Hey, can you pass the, pass the malk? I'm hungry. I need some protein. You know, like, but if you go, what do you mean? Well, listen, you're not a plate face. It's okay. You go that whole nine yards, you make it into a big deal, bigger deal than it is.

Don't do that. And, you know, that applies to everything. it's like you in your own personal life don't make things a bigger deal than they are in your business don't make things a bigger deal than they are and with your kids don't make things a bigger deal than they are just start small exposure therapy don't make a big deal out of it

joke about it joking about things doesn't hey you gotta be careful it's not funny because we don't want to get that reaction but just go slow take it easy this isn't a big deal your son has been

scared for for months cool he's got 80 years left he's only going to be scared of this clown for another like six months maybe a year and then he's not going to be scared regardless if you don't do anything

you won't be scared of this clown in the year you could do nothing at all he's not going to be scared so the cool thing is you can teach him about how to overcom his fear the military does a good job of that the military makes you climb over the cargo net, which is 50 feet up in the air, whatever, how many 50 feet up in the air? And then it makes you repel off of a wall.

And then it makes you flash rope out of a helicopter. Then it makes you parachute out of an airplane. You've overcome fear, overcome fear, overcome fear, overcom fear, overcom fear, overcom fear. You've learned how to do it. You have an opportunity here to make that happen. Good opportunity to learn. Mm-hmm. That's what I got.

Interestingly, I went through this exact same scenario with both my kids. And you're right. Both of those things were correct. We did both. What were they scared of? Well, the most recent one was Megan. You ever watch that? Megan?

It's a movie. Robot. Yeah, it goes rogue and she's scary. That was my daughter back when the first one came out. Is Megan too now? Yes. Well, she wanted to. Okay.

I thought it was a freaking kid. It is. It's literally, it's more of a teenager's kid toy robot movie, you know? I wasn't thinking like, you ever watched Child's play? I'd never watched it, but I remember Chuckie. Yeah, Chuckie. Like, to me, it came off as way more child. movie than Chuckie.

Chuckie was kind of psycho. The first one. Yeah, I remember Chuckie's a horror movie. Yeah, straight up dog. Anyway, but the exposure therapy wasn't with Megan. To me, I understood, hey, Megan's a scary robot for kids. So that's not

what I want her to get over. I think with age, that kind of, you get over freaking Megan the robot when you're freaking 15. Who cares? But this idea of like going places by yourself and I don't know maybe Megan's there maybe it's another freaking horrible monster you know I don't know I feel I just felt like that was her issue so with the stuff that she would want me to go with her like to the bathroom and we have this bathroom that's kind of down this hall and it's like

I kind of understand when you're a little kid red rum so what I do is I'd go with her and then slowly I'd be like hey like just so you're not scared in the future you go and just you go in the ball go with you but I'll just cruise outside the bathroom she's saying and then after while it's like you know what I'll just go to here you go the rest of the time we'll turn on the lights all good but that was the exposure therapy was like doing stuff with her that she required the Megan part I was like bro let's not watch Megan and how's this she wants to watch Megan too and she just watched that same Megan recently she's 12 now yeah yeah but she's gonna be

scared of forever exactly right they get over it for that kind I well I would I would like scaring people yeah it's kind of fun for me and and I scared have you ever seen have you played the game scary maze no so scary maze is a game it's like a website you go play scary maze and as you you you just have to move this little object down this maze and it starts real wide and then it gets narrow and narrow and each time you hit a wall it starts you back at the beginning and so what it does is it lures you into being more and more closely intent on making this work and finally you like turn the corner for this last little little thing You got to move the with your with your mouse.

You got to move this little object down this very, very skinny kind of hallway. And, and this freaking satanic. So that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jaco underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platform. so we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support the Jocko podcast,

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