Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Recover From Trauma | Smashing Through Set-Backs

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<Fitting workouts into a busy schedule.Feeling unfulfilled as a vet who didn't see combat.Recovering from Trauma and ultimate success. Smashing through set-backs. How to overcome fear. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko Underground Podcast. We're sitting here with Echo Charles. We have some pretty good questions this week. We will now answer at this time. Start off with the first question. Next question. Dear Jocko, I hope this email finds you well. I want to reach out to you because I admire your insights on resilience and mental toughness.

Okay, so growing up, I faced consistent verbal and physical abuse from my father, who frequently told me I wasn't enough, tore me down, and made me doubt my own worth. Those years were extremely difficult, but through that, I found inner strength that allowed me to rise above my circumstances and build a successful, fulfilling life. Today, I'm a nurse, proud of the impact I make in people's lives. I'm in a healthy, supportive relationship with a kind man who believes in me. I've come a long way, but part of my past still follows me.

Despite all I've achieved, my father's words and the memories of his treatment still linger, sometimes surfacing as self-doubt or insecurity. I want to fully overcome the impact of his work. words and actions, not just live around them or push them to the side. I want to silence those voices for good and free myself from the hold my past has on me. I would be deeply grateful if you could offer any guidance on how to truly move forward and leave the weight of that abuse behind me. How can I work fully, work to fully overcome what happened to me so I can live in a way that feels truly free of that past. Thank you for taking the time to read this and being such a powerful

source of strength and inspiration for so many, including myself. Well, first of all, awesome work. It sounds like you're doing an outstanding job in your life, right? You're a nurse, you're a good relationship. All those things are awesome. And here's the thing. Your dad's, your father's, I should say, dad's like a little bit of an endearing term. I'm going to take that away from him right now.

Your father's commentary was back then and is a reflection of him. and not you. That's what's happening. He is a troubled, I would say man, but he doesn't sound like much of a man. He was a troubled human. He's likely very insecure, very self-doubting. At a minimum, at a minimum, he didn't achieve what he thought he should have achieved, or he didn't achieve what he thought he deserved at a minimum.

And so you probably And you know what? Even if he achieved things, it wasn't enough. He thought he deserved more. Because I'm thinking, you know, as I was saying that, maybe he's this rich, you know, oil tycoon with all this money. Still, he didn't achieve what he thought he should. That's why he's demeaning of you.

That's why you threatened him. Or I should say you were threatening to him even as a child. And this is why I say he's a troubled person and a horrible person to be honest with you because he didn't want you as his child to be better than him. Think about that. That is a terrible parent that you don't want your children to be more successful and better than you are. And even if you have that feeling, keep it inside for crying out loud, but to actually let it out and berate a child's, disgusting and and then physical abuse mental abuse just just terrible so this is what we have to recognize we have to recognize your father for what he really was what he really is and listen

this doesn't mean you have to hate him in fact you can still love your dad believe it or not it's just that he's imperfect in fact he's far from perfect everyone's imperfect he's far from perfect you ever heard me echo charles i've talked about breakups yeah and i gave i've had a lot of people give me feedback over the years about my commentary on when, when, you know, a girl cheats on you or whatever breaks up with you. And my key point to convey in those situations is that the girl that you were in love with doesn't actually exist. She doesn't actually exist.

It was an illusion that you created in your head. That she was going to love you forever, that you were going to get married, that you were going to live happily ever after and all that stuff. That was not true. and the girl that you were in love with doesn't really exist. She was a liar. And you convince yourself in your own head of what she was like. In this scenario, it's a similar scenario in that your father, the father that you wish you had and the father that your father should act like doesn't actually exist.

He's not a leader. He's got a crazy ego. He has an agenda. He's insecure. He's got a bunch of shortfalls. He's emotionally unstable. He lacks perspective like he is a terrible person. He is a terrible person, but guess what he's your father? Here's the problem. You've assigned the weight assigned a bunch of weight undeserved weight to the words that your father speaks just because he's your father. you've assigned a bunch of ways you ever been insulted by someone echo charles yes many times have you ever been

have you ever had someone say something that really hurt your feelings oh yeah i have yeah i have been a while have you ever been had your feelings really hurt by someone that you didn't respect or care about no of course not so for some reason if we don't care about someone or if if if we don't here's the word if i don't respect you I don't really care what you say about me because I have no respect for you. And this is kind of a similar scenario right now. You assign all this weight to the words that your quote unquote father says about you. And you shouldn't.

You shouldn't. You're giving him weight to words just because he's your biological father. Just because he had a moment in time and he completed a physical action. that created you, which is kind of a random action in many ways. Like he, he did that thing. And, and because he did the thing that, by the way, monkeys and horses and dogs do, were given him some kind of authority over your mind. It's not right.

He doesn't deserve that. He doesn't deserve that at all. Look, if he cared for you and took care of you and raised you and was gentle with you, and taught you and mentored you and cared about you. And then he said something negative. Yeah, you should be going, wow, this hurts. But this dude was abusing you physically, psychologically, emotionally, verbally. That's this is, this guy is, you should not listen to anything that this person says.

Honestly. The only little thread is that just you happen to have this weird biological connection to him. which by the way that can be meaningless it can be it can be totally meaningless it can have meaning or cannot have meaning it doesn't really matter you get to decide you get to decide if you want to give that meaning or not in this case I would say don't give it any meaning I would say do not give it any meaning there's no reason to you are a squared away respectable awesome person doing an honorable job helping other people as a nurse

you're successful professionally you're in a good relationship so here's where I'm going to kind to here's the little curveball I've got for you and I think this is because you want to be free and clear of this and I'm going to tell you this is a hard to do you've got to recognize that he's terrible got to recognize that his words should carry no weight I'm going to say that they It shouldn't carry any weight at all. This shouldn't mean anything more to you than a squirrel. Like it should just mean, it should mean nothing. It should mean less to you.

So you have to recognize that that's who he is. And then here's the tricky part. You got to forgive him for it. Yeah. Yep. My father is a flawed person who is cruel and abusive and terrible. I forgive him. And he's, he, I don't, his, his words no longer and his actions no longer have any

weight over me. You have to forgive him for those shortfalls. Understand the shortfalls. Forgive him for those shortfalls. And then you got to move forward, move forward without the burden of his selfish and self-absorbed and egomaniacal words, because that's what it is. They, those words from him, those actions from him mean nothing. That little thread that when I say that and you go, yes, they do. Yes. Nope. Nope. They actually don't. they actually don't they actually don't mean anything you are giving them value and you don't have to so that is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the jocco underground podcast so if you want to continue to listen go to jocco underground dot com and subscribe and we're doing this

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