billy interview
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[00:00:00] Hey everybody, this is Stacy. I'm here today with a very special guest in a lot of ways special. My husband Billy, has decided to come and visit with us 'cause I have a bunch of questions and he's willing to take them. And welcome Billy. Hello. Do you wanna give a little bit of your background or you want me to give your background?
Alright, so Billy and I have been married for a long time, but one of the reasons I want him to chat with us today is because he is a combat veteran. Three tours Iraq, Kuwait, and UAE. And I've been talking a lot with men and mental health and I just think he has some pretty important work. And insight around men's mental health.
So Billy, let's talk a little bit about the beginning of your [00:01:00] career. You've been in the military now for 24 years. What was happening from a mental health standpoint 24 years ago in the military? What do you mean? Was there mental health 24 years ago in the military? No, not at all. It was very stigmatized if you saw.
Mental health and your career was over. So nobody went down that route 'cause they didn't want their career to be over. Okay. So now you're 24 years later, a lot has happened in that 24 years, but where do you think mental health, behavioral health and the military is at today? I think it's like light years ahead of where it used to be.
It's definitely more. Valued and more accepted than it was before. Although there still is the stigma that if you seek behavioral health, you're weak or there's something wrong with you, [00:02:00] but it's no longer a career ender. Gotcha. Okay. So I think, we said it's been stigmatized, it wasn't really accepted.
Now people are starting to go to mental health. I guess what I'd like to really dig into, how I feel about Crust deal vetch. I love them and we have a lot of them in our life. And you are one. And now I am one too. But I really wanna talk a little bit about, you were in Iraq in oh 6 0 7, is that right?
Yes. Okay. And you were there, you did a really long to her and it was in, the height of the war. And I'm curious if now on the other side of this, can you know, continue? 'em where mental health is a little more accepted. What would've happened if you had gotten maybe some mental health assistance support sooner when you came home from that deployment rather than decades later?[00:03:00]
I don't know the answer to that 'cause I was pretty young when I left. Still pretty young when I came home, and I didn't really know any different and nobody around me knew any different. So I don't know how much of a difference it would've made at the time. In hindsight now, it probably would've made a lot of difference, like in the trajectory of my life.
But you don't know what you don't know, and nobody knew what they didn't know. So it was just the way you did things. Sure. So as you think about, health Now, do you think first of all, are you receiving any mental health support? What kind of mental health support are you receiving and is it helpful?
I see a therapist about once a month now. It was once a week for a [00:04:00] while and then once every two weeks, then once every three weeks, and now I'm about once a month I do talk therapy and brain spotting, and I feel like it has been. It's been very helpful. It's been hard, opened a lot of stuff up, but it's definitely something that is needed and more people probably need to go down that route than they think they do.
So I would definitely recommend reaching out to somebody and just seeing what works best for you. So if you were just doing talk therapy, do you think it would've been as effective? No, not at all. I've tried that several times and it wasn't very well. It. It makes you feel better in the moment, but it doesn't get you any further ahead once you leave there.
Once you leave that therapy appointment, it's like nothing changed. So you're just stuck in whatever rut you were in before you went, and that's not helpful. [00:05:00] In your own words, I'm a therapist, so I always try to describe these things, but you are not a therapist. In your own words, how would you describe Brain Spa?
And how come it's helpful? I call it witchcraft. I don't really know how it works or why it works. I just know it does, but it's definitely like black magic. Just for the record, none of us have been trained as witches or black magic providers. It's a very interesting experience and what I often tell people is that brain spotting is about getting out of your cortex.
And getting down to your brainstem, which is where we store a lot of memories. And you could sit and talk therapy for 20 years and never land on some of the things that you land on when you're doing brain spotting because the client is in charge of their own journey. You're the one that's really navigating all the things.
So my next question is, do you tell your therapist everything you brain [00:06:00] spot? I don't even talk to my therapist. He never, he doesn't ask you questions. I don't tell him anything. It's great. So how is this helpful? Because you're, you don't need to talk therapy and that's not the reason you're there.
You're there to work on things and you work on things by yourself, so you don't need to talk to them about things if you don't want to. I imagine some people it's probably helpful, but it just, that doesn't work for me. So I just go in there and I do my thing and that's it. What I love about this, and I really appreciate you sharing, this is because the amount of times, especially veterans who are like, I don't wanna talk about my feelings. I don't wanna talk about the stuff that happened in the Middle East or at war. I don't wanna talk about it. So when you're doing brain spotting and you're doing your own work internally and you're not talking about it, are you working on things from your war time?
Are you working on things from your childhood? Are you working on your wife and your. [00:07:00] Relationship, like what is, what are some topics that you internally have worked on? All of those. Yes. And then what do you notice as, like you're saying it's helping and it's getting better and what are you noticing?
How do you gauge that? How do you know that you're feeling better? You're getting better. Things are working out better when you go through the process and you actually do it. Brain spotting, brain spotting. Incorrect. You will you'll still have the memories and everything will still be there.
It's just dull. And it doesn't, you don't have the type of reaction that you used to have. You don't get agitated, you don't get angry, you don't get anxiety. They're still there and you can still call them up and you, it's important to still live them, but they don't control your life anymore. They don't make you feel a type of way anymore.
So that's how I know that it's working. 'cause I can think about stuff that happened to me or things that I've done. On [00:08:00] that no longer make me have a physiological response to it. Yeah. And at the, in the worst moments, you and I have had people in our lives that the worst physiological response is that person maybe has wanted to complete suicide, right?
Correct. And we've seen the growth or the shift that when people start engaging in this kind of therapy, they know. Longer feeling that really deep pain or shame or they're neutralizing it. Is that what you see also? Correct. Okay. So if you had somebody, I guess my question now is, you know, the regs, do you get kicked outta the military for going to the therapy?
That's a gray area. No. You don't get kicked out for the therapy at. Self, but the [00:09:00] things that it opens up could be so debilitating that you can no longer wear the uniform and associate those feelings with what you're doing now. But there's no, there's nothing that says you go to therapy, get kicked out.
That's a myth that's been perpetuated for as long as I've been in. But the things that you experience and you work through. Those may be the things that you're just like, I can't do this anymore. And it's not necessarily the army making that decision for you. It's you making the best decision for yourself based upon where you're at in your healing journey.
Got it. So let's talk about those those unique pieces like aviators, special forces. We know that there are certain groups, and for me, there's. Certain groups that I really get concerned about EOD people, infantry the slick shit [00:10:00] killers or the flight medics that are, flying in these medevac zones decade, hours at a time.
And they're evacuating people, we know that if they go and they see a medical person and that gets reported, they may have to, they may get down for a period of time. Do you have any opinions or thoughts or even Briggs. On that kind of information. And if you don't, that's fine. I feel like if it's important to, first of all, the down slip is not, it's not a career ender also, and it's not a punishment.
It's a tool that's used to remove the individual from the environment that's causing the issues
and allow. Them the time they need to work through whatever they need to work through. Again, they won't be kicked out because they go to behavioral health or seek mental health, but they could [00:11:00] get to a point where things are just overwhelming and it may be in their best interest to cut sling load and go a different direction.
Got it. It also might be in their best interest to not fly in a moment of time when they're really stressed and they're working through something, work through it. And then get back up. We've seen that too, right? We've seen people who've had an incident, been in a helicopter crash, gone through a divorce, they're getting a down slip while they work through the emotional health of all that, and then they get an up slip.
They get cleared when they're done. You've seen that too in your career. Yeah. Again, it's a tool. It's a tool that's used to remove the individual from the environment and give them the time they need to work through whatever they're. Working through. And then when they're done, if they feel like, Hey, I'm good now you get cleared by behavioral health, medical, whatever it is, and you go right back to doing what you were doing it's not a career end [00:12:00] or it can be, but it's usually not.
So a couple questions that come up for me are I don't wanna take medication, which is a often a very fair response. Do you. Have to take medication if you are brain spotting. No you don't. And you're really trying to get to a point where you don't need medication. But some people will never get to that point.
I'll never get to that point. I've been taking medication for 18 years and I'll probably take it the rest of my life. But that doesn't mean that it will be the same for someone else. Yeah. And I appreciate you disclosing that you didn't have to do that. I think that there's a stigma around medication also.
And one of the things that I hear and I just got home from a deployment, you've been around a lot of people who've deployed. You've come home from deployment [00:13:00] and a lot of times people will say things like, I'll be fine. Everything that happened is just what happened over there. I'll be fine.
I don't need help. I don't need therapy. It's okay. This is just what it is. And they live. I always crack the joke that y'all like to suffer a lot and they live with the suffering. What do you think is what's the straw? What, how do you, what would you tell service members like, no dude go chat with somebody.
What are the symptoms? What are the signs that you, as a lay person who's not a therapist, would then say to your buddy come on man, you need an appointment. Go see somebody. I think it's really. Dependent upon the individual and their circumstance, but when you start thinking about you're getting in trouble at work or you're having issues with your spouse or you're drinking a lot, and those are not things that you had experienced before you [00:14:00] left, those are probably red flags that you need to go see somebody or at least evaluate the decision.
You're making. 'cause you may just be, you may just be stuck in a moment and you may not need therapy. You may just need a little push from one of your buddies to get you out of the rep. Maybe it's just a conversation, it's whatever. But if that doesn't work or these things are like really uncharacteristic of you is probably a sign that you need to talk to somebody.
And it may, therapy doesn't have to be forever. It could be a moment. It could just be a moment in time that you need. Help getting through. Maybe you go and you like it and you just keep doing it, or maybe you go and you see somebody for six, eight times and you feel like you're good and that's all you need.
It really just depends on the individual and the circumstance, I think are all therapists. The same, absolutely not. It's really important to find [00:15:00] one that gets you and that you feel comfortable with 'em usually. I think it probably takes people multiple attempts to find the right therapist. Maybe you get lucky, find the right one.
Maybe somebody comes highly recommended from one of your buddies, but I don't think that's normally the case. Probably need 2, 3, 4 attempts before you get to the right person. Okay, so let's talk real talk. I would imagine that we have some service members that are listening. There's probably some spouses that are listening.
There's also probably just some men that have never served that are listening. There might be some spouses of those men that are listening. I wanna talk about this idea that many men have been faced with. How passionate I feel about men that, people, men who cry are pussies. You have feelings, you're weak.
If you go to a therapist, you're weak. Please [00:16:00] just give me some thoughts about that. I think we, as we have as men have been taught growing up, that we need to be masculine and we have this wild west idea of what masculine looks like, like the John Waynes of the world. And so from a young age, men are taught that you don't cry, you don't have feelings.
If you have feelings, you don't share them. And I think while that may have gotten people through things in the past. Life is hard now. Like John Wayne didn't have the social media, John Wayne didn't have the news. There's things now that really affect you, that 25 years ago people would've never thought about.
And so I think with that being said. It really is going to take like a culture shift for people, for men especially to realize that it's okay to have [00:17:00] feelings. It's okay to, it's okay to not be okay. That's a feeling too. But until more people start to accept that and society starts to shift, men are gonna, especially men in like masculine occupations, like firefighters.
Police officers, military people, they're still rigs drilling, like out in the west, working on the rigs and all those kinds of things too, right? Like they're around men all the time. Yeah. And it's like a very macho culture. And so until we as men also start to accept that doesn't necessarily have to be the end all, be all of what, who we are or what we do.
In a lot of ways we do it to our. We hold ourselves to a different standard that isn't necessarily helpful or beneficial or even [00:18:00] positive. Like we hold ourselves to this weird idea of what masculinity looks like, and it masculinity comes in all shapes and sizes. It doesn't mean that you're weak because you have feelings or you're weak because stuff gets to you like.
That's just being a human and being a good person. Love that. Thank you for sharing that. I think it would be, I don't think we'd be doing the right service if we didn't acknowledge that men are also killing themselves at higher rates than ever before. That's true. And I really think it comes back to this masculinity thing that men are having these emotions now, and everybody's telling them that they're.
Wrong for it, maybe even including their spouses. 'cause everybody is caught in this image of what masculinity looks like. And if you are not at that level or at that [00:19:00] idea, then it's easy for you to feel like you're less than or you don't belong, or you don't fit in, or you're not a real man because you don't feel.
Or you don't think like this, and that's just until culture shifts I don't know. I don't see it slowing down. Yeah. So let's say there's a spouse, a wife, a partner that's listening to this. 'cause that's what happens a lot, right? Women listen to this and then they're gonna say, Hey husband, you need to listen to this person having this conversation.
But you and I are having a great conversation today, but we've been married and a lot. Of times, we've had some goes around some of this stuff. And so what would you, from the lane of veteran combat, veteran man, got into therapy much later in life working through maybe some of your own childhood shit that you bring to the [00:20:00] table, what would you say to a woman or a spouse, a partner, a wife, and how they can support their.
And because women are fucking judging mcj, judger tense. And we are very hard on men. And I think sometimes we shut men down when they're starting to open up because we can't always tolerate the way. Maybe they're learning to express their feelings or they are expressing their feelings. And so I'm just wondering if you have any good insight for how we can be more supportive of men who are willing to go on this journey of healing for themselves.
That's a good question. I think if, and not necessarily just men, but like in general, I feel like if somebody's opening up to you, you owe them as much as at least to listen to them. You may not like what they're saying, but it's not for [00:21:00] you, like you're not working through the issues. It's for that person to feel safe enough.
To tell you how they feel, what's going on in their life, what's bothering them, what their dreams are. If you just crush that once, that's never gonna happen again. And it's not just men again, it's anybody, right? It's just being a good human and a good friend, a good partner, a good spouse, but especially men, like because of the way culture tells them that you can't feel like this, you shouldn't have these emotions if they're opening a.
Up to you. You really probably just owe them enough to listen. And maybe that's all it takes. Maybe they just need to get it off their chest and you don't, they don't want you to solve their problems. You don't need to solve it for them. You just need, they need to know that you're in it with them and that you're not gonna shut them down and you're going to not judge them.
I really think that's about what it boils down to. Yeah. [00:22:00] I think I appreciate you saying all those things because I, you and I both know, like we're not. Heading here representing all women, all men, all veterans, all combat veterans, all, we're not representing society, but we do spend a lot of time with different pieces of this culture and the amount of conversations that you and I have had with these specific populations.
I think there are some broad stroke things that can be really helpful. I know for me you and I have had this conversation, but I've all. So had this conversation with many people in my office around things they've done because of the uniform, what they've worn, and the shame that comes with that. And they don't want to tell people that.
And so I try to coach spouses, partners, family members to say things around what you've done is not who you are. What you've done is not who you are. We can get through this together. There's nothing you're going through [00:23:00] that's too much to handle. We can do. This, I'm here for you. Do you think those kinds of words are helpful or do you think they're more like antagonistic?
I really, I think both can be true. I really think it's the way that they are being set and the way that they're being portrayed. Like people will know if it's just lip service, if you're just saying that, just to get them to shut up or stop talking The. If you really mean it, then I think it, it's very helpful, right?
Because it lets, unless that person know that they're not alone, that they're not walking through this life alone and nobody wants to be alone. Everybody wants to belong or have a partner or something in life. Nobody wants to be alone. And when you feel this shame and guilt about things that you had to do because that was your job, not because you wanted to, but [00:24:00] because you had to.
And people are putting you down for that. It's very detrimental to your hu human health, mental health. Like it drags you down and sometimes that, sometimes you get to the point where you think there's no way you can get back from it and then you make a sudden decision that has lifelong impacts. Yeah.
Thanks for sharing that. One more question. At least right now, you may say something that will generate another. Question. That's how it is between you and I. But do you think that understanding the science behind emotions and your body and physiological memory and all that, do you think that's helpful for people?
Or do you think that it doesn't really matter? I have no idea. I'm not that smart. When you started doing brain spot spotting, did you have a physiological response? Absolutely. I would, my bo body would like start. [00:25:00] Sweating. My temperature would go up to 104, and I would just melt for 48 hours every time.
I did it for probably like a year, so once a week I was having this terrible response to it, and nobody knew why. They just said, oh, this is just what happens. I just took it at face value. I'm like, oh, okay. How come you kept going if it's that miserable? Why did you keep going? Because I like to suffer. If I'm gonna be honest, I was, in the beginning, I was doing it for you.
'cause I could go through life the way I was and I was fine. Like I was fine. Nobody else was around me was fine, but I was fine. Right? But I mostly, I did it for you in the beginning. And then when things started shifting and I started working on things that. It had nothing to [00:26:00] do with you then I was like, oh, okay.
This is there's probably something to this. There's probably some validity and some value in this, and now I've been going for three years and I still go. Do you still find it valuable? I do. It's, are you still getting your fevers? No, I don't get the fevers once in a while. It just depends on what topic I go through.
But most of the time I don't even have a topic when I go in. Like I'll just start talking about something and then I'll grab the head, like the headphones and then I'll go into a trance. But there's becoming less and less things to work on. Which is kind of what you're hoping for. That's the, if you have a good therapist, they don't want to see you once a week forever.
They want to get you to a point where it's like maintenance. Maybe once a month, once every other month, once every quarter. And then you just come in and you like work on the things that have happened in [00:27:00] that time. But there's becoming less and less frequency of things that I'm like, oh, this is still bothering me.
'cause I've been doing it week in and week out for a year plus now that it's still helpful, but it's becoming less of a. I don't wanna say less helpful, less of a need, maybe less of a need. Yeah, the need for it isn't as much, which is why I am only going once a month now instead of once a week.
But I still get value out of it when I go and it is nice, like I started leaning a little bit more into like talk therapy with my therapist. 'cause there's not as much brain spotting things that need brain spotted. A lot more like I just need to talk to someone to get like stuff off my chest that I don't want to talk to you about.
Sure. Which some people might say, you should be able to tell your spouse anything, and I don't believe that. Like I feel that [00:28:00] there's things that happen to anybody as a person that you know, you should be able to be selective about who you share those things with. Obviously if it's something that's going to.
Fact, like your marriage probably need to tell your spouse, but if it's just like something that's happening at work or something like, I don't know, for me anyways, I don't need to tell you everything, but I wanna tell somebody. Sure. And he gets paid to listen to me. So he's he's my guy. Sure.
I appreciate that you said you started to go because of me. I'd asked you to go right. I really saw a lot of value. In you being able to go. Do you think that one, I thank you, thank you for going, because a lot of men just wouldn't. But a lot of men also would go they want their spouse to be, our spouses know us really, really well and much like, you've called me [00:29:00] out on my bullshit and you've said, listen sister, you need to get some help with this.
You know me and I value your opinion and I really believe, that in a healthy marriage, our partners have our best interests at heart, and so if we see something in our partners or they see something in us and they're asking us to do something for the betterment of ourselves, I think that's really important.
So thank you for going. That being said, do you think that this journey through your mental health journey has added value in your relationships, in your job? In your performance, like what, just in your own mental health, where is the value add that you see? I'm definitely more engaged than I used to be.
I pay attention to things more. I pay, I, I noticed things around me and other people that I probably wouldn't have [00:30:00] noticed before. So I feel like all in all, it's helped me both. Mentally and physically in my life. And it's like there's things that you, that it's helped me that you, it's hard to just pinpoint to say that this did that, but this probably facilitated that, if that makes sense.
Yep. So in all, in all, it's been good for just about every aspect of my life. Not just my relationship with you, but my relationship with my other people really. Relationship with my employees that I now manage. What about with your relationship with yourself? I mean, that's a work in progress.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Do you feel less shame maybe about some of the things that happen when you've been deployed or maybe even have happened, decisions you've made? Do you feel like, do the, you said maybe less reactive. Do you, [00:31:00] are your feelings more neutralized maybe. I don't know if I ever felt a lot of shame about the things that I had to do.
I've always been able to separate the two, that this was something that I had to do not 'cause I wanted to do, and those didn't really affect me that much, but it has made dealing with the things that I did easier to manage, not not from a stress standpoint or shame or anything. Just from like purely a human being standpoint of you did things that you're not proud of, but they don't define you and they don't make you feel that way anymore.
Gotcha. So it's a lot to have a wife who's a therapist, that's a lot. And you always are signing up for my pulse. [00:32:00] Shit. And part of that is having this conversation today I wanted to have it for a lot of reasons, but one of the main reasons was just, I talk to the people all the time and you also talk to people, but you have a story that's I think very important for people to hear and that journey.
And it's good for people to hear from their peers, right? You're one of, you're one of them. I am not one of them. Whoever. Them is. And so do you have any last thoughts that you would have? Any questions that you wish people had asked you? Any ways? My goal with this conversation is just to help, right?
I really just wanna help people. And I think you and I have both been in these situations where we've had these conversations hundreds of times with different people and just recording that conversation and putting it out in the universe, that's the goal for me, is just to help people and give them some knowledge.
Do you have any other [00:33:00] lasting thoughts or thoughts you would leave at the end of this that you'd wanna share? Yeah I think the thing that I would stress the most is that it's okay to not be okay, and it's okay to ask for help. It's okay to realize that you're going through things that are bigger than you and you need some support around that.
That's really what I would say are like the things that stick out in my mind the most when I talk to people about it, about things is they don't feel like they should be able to feel the way they feel and that makes them less than or not important. So I really think that. To just stress that it's okay to not be okay and it's okay to ask for help.
Yeah. As always, I appreciate you and I love you very much. Thank you for having this conversation. We're on a road trip. You and I have spent so many hours having these kinds of conversations [00:34:00] and for those of you who are listening, I would just say feel free to reach out. You've got my contact information.
My, my email is Stacy at go. Dot org. If you're a military member, feel free to reach out there. Also we can find you resources in your community. We talked a lot about today about brain spotting, but there are some other sensory type therapy interventions depending on what your needs are that are also effective.
We've got EMDR, we've got IFS. There's a list, and so what I really want people to do is get educated about what's effective. And dealing with the roots of the issues, not just the symptoms of the issues. And reach out to me if you're across the world. If you're across the United States, we can find therapists in your area that can be, that are qualified in what you might need.
So we really appreciate you hanging in there with us. Thanks again, Billy, as always for saying yes to my ideas. I appreciate that about [00:35:00] you. You're welcome. Alright, take care friends. Until next time, have a great day. Go be you.
