Overcoming the Silence: Men’s Mental Health and Post-Traumatic Success with Kevin Donaldson

Welcome to Obsessed, where Mika, Tia, and I challenge the thoughts that limit you, where we provide the tools for transformation. Be prepared to be swept away into the raw power of obsession, unlocking secrets and stories behind the insatiable hunger for growth and change. This is more than just a podcast. This is your story. It is a manifesto for those who refuse to settle, who dare to dream, and who are relentless in the pursuit of living a great life. Get obsessed with your life. I want you to take a moment right now. I want you to take a moment and think about your deepest, darkest hour. The hour where you didn't think that you could persevere. You did not think that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. All of us have had moments like this. All of us have had moments where we knew what it would be like to just embrace a fulfilling, like all body consuming darkness. And typically I would think it would last just for moments, just for moments in terms of things that we've been through. Maybe someone died in your family or there was some tragedy, but to be in a flux of suffering, to be in the grips of suffering for so much of your life, I just don't know how anyone can deal with it. And I'm not saying that they should take any sort of action, but it's not within my realm. of consciousness, but today it is because we have someone who embraces suffering. We have someone who has seen darkness, the depths and despair, and still he rises and still he rises. He is the host, the co-host of the, a top rated podcast called the suffering podcast, which ranks number one globally. And his book, man, you are crazy is out is due out this fall, which I'm super excited about and I have to hear all about that as well but Kevin Donaldson is changing the way especially men have conversations about mental health that depth and despair that we all have felt he really shouldn't be here right now but he is and I'm honored to have him I call I'd like to call my friend i hope it's reciprocal but kevin your story is so poignant is so large is so grand is so suffocating it's so wonderful it's so vibrant it's so different than any other story i've been privy to i want to thank you for being here that's a lot a lot of adjectives to describe me yeah there are a lot of adjectives describe the the real kevin donaldson yeah the real kevin donaldson um Yeah, I've danced with the devil a time or two. And I've seen the darkness. I've, you know, I can't say that I've fully gotten away from the darkness, but, you know, it creeps in from time to time. But the difference is, from now to where I was, I have a few more tools in order to deal with it. You know, I meet it head on rather than trying to run away from it. I spent my entire life trying to run away from the darkness. us why are you here i i have to ask you why are you here why i want to hear your story as well everybody needs to hear your story but let's start it off let's kick it off why are you here right now unobsessed because because you are my friend and you're broken that's why i'm here but i am here because uh a while ago i think i understood that i'm not done yet all right i got a little bit more to do. You know, we're not done until we're done. And I have a few more things to do on this earth before I check out. Because that's coming for us all. You know, this is something that you come to grips with when you've been to where I've been, that there is an expiration date to every single one of us. We're not going to live forever. It's what we do while we're here that matters. And when you're done, you're done. I'm not done yet. So that's why I'm still here. and there's a reason why i asked that question it's not it was not a question to be flipped but you have seen that the depths of despair and depression you've been through hell and back and hell and back and the collateral damage i'm sure you've been trying to pick up for the past couple decades that being said you're also quite an advocate for mental health you're an advocate especially for men to be able to speak about their mental health. You are an advocate to many to understand that suffering is a part of life. And when we embrace it and don't fight it, that's where we become real, real humans. And we should start talking about this. So how do you, when you go to the gym, when you try to get your body in some sort of shape and some sort of physical fitness. Oh crap. We're going to be talking about this now. Yeah. I'm sorry. Because it goes hand in hand. When you go to the gym, how do you grow? How do you how do you shed pounds get into shape it doesn't come by by taking a pill doing the next fad diet or doing the the latest craze you know abs of steel video it comes from hard work it comes from doing the hard things and that's suffering okay everybody can relate to suffering um the difference between me is I've come to realize that the more you try to run away from suffering the bigger suffering gets and you're never going to outrun it you know it's you're never going to you're never going to run far enough away from it where it's not a danger if in the beginning and this is very very hard to do in the beginning when you if you have adversity in your life and you meet it head on the duration of that suffering is going to be so much smaller because everybody goes through suffering everybody has dark times everybody has bad things happen to them but those people that face it, they're the ones who get through it quicker. For instance, if you have a bill coming in and in that bill, you owe X amount of dollars. Well, if you just put that bill aside and don't deal with it until next month, guess what? That bill gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So that's my view. And again, I've tried my best to rebrand the word suffering. Suffering, I've never met one person in my own. Wow. I love that. Rebrand the word suffering. because everybody's had it everybody's had it and everybody thinks it's such a bad negative word it's really not you know suffering I've never met one interesting person in my life who doesn't have some junk in their past that's the truth all right so if suffering makes those people that's the commonality amongst all the interesting people in my life they have some things in their past and if that's what it takes to make you interesting why are we running away from it Do you want to just be this average, dull person? No, you want to be somebody interesting, somebody that that flocks to you. You know, and a lot of it is for me now, it's about living life on purpose. You know, there's something about a purpose driven life that draws people in and makes them gravitate towards you. You know, if you're if you're just walking through doing the motions, people are going to sort of they're not going to pay much attention to you. but if you live life on purpose wow I'm going to tell you it is a beautiful thing but it wasn't always beautiful for me and it took me a long time to come to this revelation you know and it took a major event in my life in order to do it the beauty look different to you 20 years ago 30 years ago Beauty to me 20 30 years ago was you know having the perfect house and having the perfect children and having enough money to sustain myself and being in a position where I didn have to break my ass every day Beauty to me now is waking up tomorrow. And the sun's rising and the sun's up. That's the beauty. I can't explain it, but those people who have been through some sort of trial, some sort of suffering and made it through, God, they look at the world with so many different, such different eyes. I hear that a lot from cancer survivors, that cancer is the biggest gift that they ever received. Isn't that something? The biggest gift I ever received when somebody shot at me. Yeah. And tried to kill me. Wow. Seeing your life pass before your eyes, understanding the fragility of life and that you had no support within the ecosystem that you thrived there was there's support out there but it's very you're very hesitant to go to that support you're very hesitant to seek out that support because you got to remember from the time I was little I've had to do every single thing myself if I wanted something done I had to do it myself we didn't have a lot of money growing up so if I wanted something I had to learn how to build it if I wanted something done, if I wanted to learn a new skill, I had to learn it. There was nobody there to really hold my hand and walk me through. So when you're a police officer and you go through trauma, especially the way I thought, I thought, I got to fix this myself and you can't. And you just can't do it. So what do you do? You don't want to let any of these doubts out because it makes you seem weaker as a human being. It's a lie you tell yourself, but it seems like the truth. so yeah it that's that's part of the beauty now that i'm able to sit out go out there and speak about it but it wasn't always that way you just eat it you internalize it you see as a as a retired police officer some of the things you see while you're working you can't imagine like they slowly chip away at your soul and you don't want to go home there's nobody you can talk to if you say to one of the guys you're working with hey that that call really bothered me you're going to be viewed as weak or you're going to see yourself as weak or if you go home and tell your spouse that hey uh you know this this this just happened tonight I'm a little screwed up you're supposed to be that strong stoic person and especially as a man and a type a personality you're supposed to be able to handle these things yourself and you can't you need help and that's where kind of people have been through it come in. So obsessors, if you are kind of understanding at this point, Kevin's story, he was shot at, he was a police officer, a lot of trauma feelings, maybe shame. I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but a lot of things bubbled up and it did not manifest in a healthy manner, right? No, it, and in a crazy manner. And we love the word crazy around here, don't we? Well, again, you got to rebrand the word crazy. What do you think? I think, man, you are crazy. Man, I am crazy, which is the name of the book coming out in fall of 2023. And, you know, just like suffering that I've attempted to rebrand that word, that word crazy is a stigma that's attached to certain people, maybe with mental difficulties, because not even mental health, mental difficulties. Did you come into the picture with like with some deficits in your mental health, would you say? Or do you feel that it was situationally based being shot at seeing your life flash in front of your eyes, just all the things that you have seen? I mean, first responders, when I hear your story and your partner, your co-author, Detective Chris Anderson story, you know, talking about how many dead bodies you've seen, the carnage, the blood, the guts. For me, my kid, you know, sneezes and I freak out. So I'm talking like this is big, this is big, powerful visuals that are imprinted in your brain forever. One of the reasons that Chris and I started co-authoring this book is because there are some deficits in how you're brought up as a police officer. The old timers are, you know, even men. And I'm going to talk strictly about men here. From the time you're a little kid, you get hurt on the football field. You get hurt on the baseball field. What do the coaches tell you? Get up. Rub some dirt off. Rub some dirt on it. Walk it off. Don't cry. Crying shows weakness. wait there's no crying in baseball there's no crying in baseball said by the great Tom Hanks who was a character after Jimmy Fox, Jimmy Fox was a great baseball player who coached in the women's league in the 40s when all men were at war so that's true, that's 100% true and that's how I was raised, I'm a child of the 70s and the 80s so you had to be tough, you were taught from a very young age to be stoic, to be tough and even to this day If I stub my toe, I don't cry. I actually get angry. It's an unhealthy coping mechanism. But that's how you're taught as a young police officer, too. You're going to see these horrible things. So there's deficits in the training. Young police officers, they will train their bodies to run a seven-minute mile. They'll do so many push-ups. They'll do so many pull-ups, trying to get ready to be physically in shape to be that police officer. The one deficit, and it's changing now, it is changing now, but the one deficit in the way that I came up was this should be in equilibrium with your body. And it's not. It's not. So from the minute you get on and you start seeing these horrible things, you don't know how to cope with them because you're seeing things that you, you know, outside of a funeral parlor, I never saw a dead body. You know, I really never saw a dead body outside of a funeral parlor. Maybe I saw somebody get hit by a car once or twice. But, you know, the first day out on the road out of the police academy, 83-year-old woman. I can still tell you the address. It was number 23. The road starts with an M. I won't say the address, but 83-year-old woman. It was a townhouse complex, and she was in a position. You know how Muslim people pray? The way they get down, their bodies are genetically engineered in order to pray in that position. Well, that's the position she was in, except it was a spot about that big. And I go there, and there's an old sergeant, and his hands are up against a wall like this behind her. And he goes, well, we've got to do something. We drag her out, bare the chest, and that's a whole other bit of suffering. You bare the chest, and I remember having to pick her teeth out. Her teeth were so rotten, I have to pick her teeth out to put the bag valve mask on her so I can start giving her breaths with supplemental oxygen. And we did CPR on this for day one on the job. And, you know, unfortunately she didn't make it, but that's, I'm like, wow, okay. And, you know, right after that call, it's like, okay, what are we doing for lunch? That's how you deal with it. Yeah. You had me at pulling the teeth out. Yeah. You pull the teeth out and you throw them to the side. Oh. What else are you going to do? I mean, I could never be a first responder. I always would think it would be great to be a nurse or doctor. This is the reason because I threw up in my mouth. But I mean, that devastation like that pulling people from either the precipice of death or seeing them over the precipice of death every single day. That going to mess with your mind Even if you come in as a totally sane person I don think there anybody that is totally sane Well it you know you hoping for that win and they do come They do come But sometimes the loss win ratio as far as medical calls anyway the loss win ratio is usually somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 Wow. Yeah, I mean, you know, there's one story, and just so it's not all gloom and doom, police work. You know, there was a suicidal female, and we go to the house, and right next to her was her little boy. Her little boy was about four years old, and his name was Mason. And she had a knife in her hand. Now, there's something called the 21-foot rule. You never get within 21 foot of a person with a knife because they can stab you before you draw your gun and you have a chance to fire. So it's a dangerous situation. I broke every protocol because there was a little boy there, and I was concerned for the little boy. But she wouldn't let anybody take the little boy from her. She's going to kill herself. And she's sort of hugging the boy and stuff. So I'm sitting there, and I'm just talking to this woman, just talking to her. Say, listen, what's going on? Why do you want to do this? You've got this beautiful little boy here. And over time, so the boy's real shy away from me. And over talking and talking, you see the kids start inching closer. And, you know, there's a big cop there. He's got the guns and a badge and all the stuff on his belt. He gets interested and he starts coming a little closer and he realizes I'm not a threat. I mean, kids are smart. Kids know this stuff. Kid just starts getting closer to me. We were able to get that woman out of there, get her some help, get her the mental help that she needs. And, you know, you forget about it. You forget about that whole incident. About 10 years after that, I'm in the supermarket. and um i hear i'm in street clothes and i hear out of the back saying hey officer kevin officer somebody yelling officer kevin i'm looking around and this is a teenage boy and he says um he says you're officer kevin right and i said yeah i'm i'm kevin what's going on he goes well my name's mason and you were the officer in my house and you helped my mom and she's better now because of you and I just want to say thank you and that's the hope like that's the hope that's the win and you don't look for it you don't you don't want it but when it comes you need to identify and that was one of the biggest wins of my career no matter how many people that I saved with defibrillators no matter how many people that I got out of danger or or how many criminals I arrested it didn't matter that right there made my career and it was something so so small and an oculus that it i i think about that all the time i think about that one incident all the time mason mason but for every call like that there's 10 other ones where somebody puts a gun in their mouth and and does the does the deed yeah and your ability to cope and i'm going to do this in air quotes your ability to cope led you to down to a path of not being able to cope and just rather ending it all and i guess i have a couple questions you know this is a very sensitive topic suicide talk about of suicide could be very triggering and if you are having suicidal ideations please reach out for help we can have some links in the show notes you're not alone and kevin will let you know just dial 988 on your phone and that'll take you to help that'll take you to help which the 988 number, which is relatively new, has seen such a rise in people texting them as of late. They're a crisis hotline, a suicide hotline. Well, suicide used to be a crime. Yeah. I mean, like, what are you going to do? So if you talk to anybody who lost a family member to suicide, this is very, very important. And you say, oh, like, say their daughter or their son was lost to suicide, and you say committed suicide, you will inevitably get very upset with you for saying that. They were lost to suicide. They didn't commit a crime. They didn't go out and rob a store, steal a car. They didn't commit a crime. Their damage was done to the people around them, which can be construed as a crime. But up until, I don't know, I don't have the exact statistics, but up until very recently, suicide was a crime. Who are they going to arrest for it, in all honesty? and that's probably a biblical crime if you will oh it's definitely a crime against against your power every major religion will have that but you know my coping mechanisms you start to become withdrawn you start to become very angry and you don't understand why and there's nobody to talk to you go home to your spouse my wife my wife is she really is a saint a saint she's shout out Trisha. She, she dealt with me for quite some time coming home and she's like, well, how was your night? And you know, it's the, the boilerplate answer. It's, oh, it's fine. You know, it's fine. Don't worry about it. I mean, and then she would say, well, you never talked to me. And that's a problem because what really do you want to know? Do you want to know the color of that dead baby I was just on? oh my gosh you want to know you want it was kind of turquoise you want to know that you know so what are you going to say because we signed up for this job and they didn't you know they signed up for the job with you being your spouse but they didn't say that not really they don't know like i'm guessing no they don't know what i mean that's a whole conversation talking to wives of first responders or husbands spouses partners anybody because everybody you know they're the unsung hero of the first responder world yeah it's that so that you don't know what to say how are you gonna how are you gonna accurately describe what you're feeling to somebody who doesn't understand who who doesn't didn't sign up for that so you just internalize it or maybe this is why a lot of cops start drinking alcohol because it's an anesthetization of their pain of their feelings they're they're running away from their suffering you can't run away from it because it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. Somebody once told me that, you know, alcoholics don't become cops. Cops become alcoholics. Now you know why. Because the bottle never judges you, never walks away from you, actually makes dealing with these things much easier. Or you get into risky behavior. You know, risky behavior where... Because you don't give a crap anymore. You just don't. You start to feel somewhat invincible. Where, you know, listen, I made it through so many hairy situations that, you know, nothing's going to get me. Nothing's going to get me. But, you know, eventually, so we're all born. It's my belief that we're all born with a glass. And in that glass is the amount of pain and suffering you can take. And nobody knows how big the glass is that they're born with. And each one of these events, you know, all the dead bodies and the car accidents and all the carnage that you see, a little bit goes into the glass. A little bit goes into the glass. And it could be just a non-event that makes that glass spill over. Or like me, you could have one big event that just makes you break and that glass just spills over. So throughout your life, you know, and I think if I were to go back now and speak to, and I do, and I speak to police academy classes and things of that nature, I teach them that you got to learn how to empty that glass. Whatever way works best for you, that glass has to be empty periodically. Otherwise, you are going to spill over. And it usually happens around the 10 to 15 year mark. Wow. And you, I mean, you being a grown man and all the suffering. I'm a big boy. You're a big boy. You're a big boy. And I love that. And I'm just thinking, you know, and we don't have to mention, and I can cut this out of the episode but you have two young sons coming home and you teaching them how to deal with their emotions now You teaching them like it okay to not be okay What does that look like And what does it look like for you your family for your future as in your next step Because I do see you as a thought leader specifically for men and the people who love them, more specifically for first responders, dealing with the trauma that they see every single day. yeah well my boys now i have a 13 year old and i have a 10 year old it's a fun age let me tell you when i went through my shooting my youngest was seven or eight months and my oldest was three and a half years so were you checked out then when they were babies or little because you were just like so into your pain my youngest i couldn't take crying he's a seven eight eight month old baby i couldn't take him crying i had to leave the house um but thankfully again there's There's always a bright side to it because thankfully I went through that stuff early enough in their lives and learned how to deal with my pain and my and letting my emotions out that I can teach them the proper way to do it. I can teach them holding it inside is not the way to go. It's going to eat you alive in the end. My oldest is the tough guy, sports guy. My youngest is the artist, the creative person, more sensitive. And they're both parts of me, but it's like they took me and separated me. because believe it or not, you know, don't let the tattoos fool you. I'm very sensitive. Okay. I'm very creative, but I also love sports and I am tough. And I, so they really, I couldn't have asked for a better mix of children because one of them feeds my creative and sensitive side and the other one fulfills my sports and tough guy side. I love that. Yeah. Wow. And that's, that's a testament to you. And of course your wife, but the fact that you're putting it with me. oh my god i am oh i'm telling on you i'm telling on you mr mr no my kids they're they're wonderful as far as how they deal with their feelings now so seriously if they cry over something you get mad you don't get mad at them do you depends on what they're crying over are they crying over no see that like you don't cry again it's i've learned i've failed so many times in my life you know and I don't like crying over failure I I don't yell at them for crying however I calm them down I say okay what did you learn from that do you like this feeling does this feeling feel good to you all right so whatever you're crying about unless it's like a video game that they lost then then I don't have any tolerance for that okay yeah they sometimes yeah so sometimes they will do that that I don't have any tolerance for but when they're crying over something that they failed at, I try to take those tears and turn them into a lesson. Okay, what did you learn from this? Right? You're going to fail so many different times. Like there's a great quote that Thomas Edison said when he invented the light bulb. He says, I invent, I figured out a thousand ways to not invent the light bulb. You know, every success you have, the road to success is peppered with failure. You know, and it's a long and winding road. Do you ever see the movie, Joe versus the volcano. No, the symbol throughout is this long and windy crooked road. And that's the road to success. No matter where he goes, there's this, there's this long and winding road. And that's everybody's road to success. It's not a straight line. It's, you know, sometimes you go down, sometimes you got to go back up. Sometimes you come in, sometimes you start, you go back to the start. And so that's the main lesson I teach my kids is success is not a, it's not a road. It's not a straight line and it takes a lot of work to get to that to that top and that's the one lesson that I instill in my kids is just work work work work hard work I become obsessed about it should I say oh I love that you know and I always say if you love what you're doing you'll never work a day in your life and that's the truth and I think I can see absolutely the joy in your voice, the joy of what you're doing, the joy of rebranding the word suffering, the joy of rebranding the word crazy and bringing it to the consciousness, bring it into the vernacular of both men and women that it's okay to be a little crazy. It really is. It's what weaves a beautiful tapestry within ourselves. And we can lock arms if we support each other. we're not going to think Kevin's crazy right now. He's actually the voice of reason here. Guys, he's really just the voice of reason right now. Go back seven, eight years ago. You want to see crazy? I'll show you crazy. Yeah. Well, that's why we're here today. We're not here. We're not in a time machine. But you failed. You've learned. We all are creating building blocks of our success, our life. And if you didn't go out and do this, if you don't, if you're not bold, like you are in sharing the story, because some people may be afraid to share their stories and ashamed to share their stories. But my God, you start a podcast, you know, about it. You start a podcast. You are authoring a book. You are speaking on stages. You're going to be on the face. You're going to be on billboards across the East Coast. I don't think they want this on a billboard. Well, I think it's true, though. I think that's what you told me. So to know Kevin Donaldson is to know someone that is true, authentic, and who is an advocate for not only those who don't have the voice to speak, but those who are finding their voice to speak. So I want to thank you, Kevin. I'm sure I'm going to have you on again. And if ever you can come on again, maybe we can get that partner of yours to come on again, Detective Chris Anderson, and talk more about your book, Man, You Are Crazy. Anything you want to leave us with, everything about Kevin Donaldson will be in the show notes. He's amazing. He's raw. He's real. He's the real Kevin Donaldson. Yeah, I just would appreciate you follow all my social media accounts. You know, it's realkevindonaldson on Instagram and the Suffering Podcast on Instagram. Go to manyouarecrazy.com. Find out all about our book. Of course, follow Man You Are Crazy on all social media accounts, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, all the popular ones anyway. And there's new stuff up there all the time. But most importantly, most importantly, it's that Man You Are Crazy website. ManYouAreCrazy.com because that's going to give you all the jumping off points to what's coming up in this fall. Because this book is near and dear to my heart. And it's something I want to get out there. And it's something that I believe one of our friends coined the phrase the Bible for men's mental health and police work. Yeah, that's right. It's so true. So I'm so excited to learn more. I love people who are pioneering and telling their stories and unabashedly bold about it. So fortune favors the bold, my favorite quote of the day. But thanks, Kevin Donaldson. Make sure you guys follow Kevin Donaldson. You've got all the links in the show notes. Follow, follow, follow. And be sure to sign up on the website, Man, You Are Crazy, just to be the first to know when this book is dropping, any events that they are speaking at. It's going to be a game changer. I'm telling you this, guys, get obsessed with your life. And don't forget to rate, review, subscribe to this podcast because you know we're obsessed with you. Until we meet again. Thank you for listening to another episode of Obsessed. We're obsessed with you. 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