Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

PTSD Recovery Tools for Veterans | EMDR, Gratitude & Healing With Cole Grace

• Travis White | Mental Health Advocate • Episode 36

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Combat veteran and author Cole Grace knows firsthand the daily battles many service members face long after leaving the field. In this powerful conversation, Cole shares PTSD Recovery Tools for Veterans that helped him shift from hypervigilance and perfectionism into a life of balance, purpose, and peace.

From EMDR therapy and gratitude practices to faith, affirmations, and crafting a personal mission statement, Cole opens up about what it really takes to rewire the mind after trauma. He explains why calm is a tactic, how to identify triggers, and why investing in your internal world transforms your external reality.

Whether you’re a veteran navigating mental health challenges, a family member seeking to understand, or simply someone who wants to learn proven strategies for resilience, this episode offers actionable PTSD Recovery Tools for Veterans that anyone can apply.

What We Discuss

  • The combat experience that shaped Cole’s hypervigilance and perfectionism
  • How EMDR therapy helped reframe traumatic memories
  • Daily gratitude and affirmations as powerful PTSD Recovery Tools for Veterans
  • The role of faith and a mission statement in building resilience
  • Breaking stigma around masculinity and men’s mental health
  • Tools for calming triggers like anger and road rage
  • Shifting from external control to internal growth

Learn More About Cole Grace

If this conversation resonates with you, please share this episode with someone who could benefit. Don’t forget to follow Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast on your favorite platform, leave a review to support the mission, and join the community at OvercomePod.com.

Together, we can break stigma and spread hope.

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Hello and welcome to Overcome a Mental Health Podcast. I am your host, Travis White. This is a place where you can share your mental health stories. I'm very excited to be with you today and very excited to be speaking with Cole Grace. Cole is a combat veteran who has struggled with PTSD for over 20 years. He wrote a book about practical ways to manage mental health and improve your quality of life. The book is called, Internal is Greater Than External, Calm the Chaos Within. Cole, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on Travis, I'm excited to get into talking about it. My pleasure. And I'm just going to have the time right over to you and let you share your journey. All right, well, you know, the journey starts in childhood where most journeys do, but I didn't really acknowledge this trauma. This is something that I talk about until further on in my journey. But there what I would call little T traumas or micro traumas or abandonment. My parents were divorced when I was four. I had like a stomach surgery when I was six weeks old. We lived in Texas, Houston, Texas. My dad was doing hurricane work. And he's sober now, but at the time he was an alcoholic and a drug addict. So it was kind of tumultuous in the first four years of my life. Then they divorced. And then from four to eight, we moved around a lot. But there wasn't anything that stood out as far as physical abuse or sexual abuse or anything like that. So I kind of just whatever. I'm eight years old and now I'm starting to do better and through high school playing sports and living a decent life. So I didn't really, but I didn't apply myself in school and certain things. And, you know, that would carry on into when I went overseas after I joined the military. After that, I joined the military and it was a pretty high stress job that I did was route clearance where we would find and disarm roadside bombs. And then I would also like to be a security escort for supply convoys that were, we would ride like a thousand meters out in front of them with a gun truck and I'm being a turret and we're trying to set off like ambushes and look for any signs of roadside bombs before the main body of the convoy gets there. So both of those jobs are pretty intense and those led me to having hyper vigilance. because of a constant state of fight or flight and awareness and having the chemical dump of adrenaline and cortisol going through your body. And also perfectionism because like I said when I was younger I didn't apply myself very much. I didn't do that well in school even though I was intelligent. But when our first people got killed in Iraq it was like if you make a mistake people die. and you don't tend to pay attention as much. This is this identity, this negative belief that I had about myself. So I created this really mean perfectionist inner critic to never make a mistake. And that served me in that moment, in that time, while I'm doing what I'm doing, but then afterwards it carries over into civilian life after. And now I have this really mean inner critic and it's not life or death, so it's not necessary and it doesn't serve me. But I started to do some work on the combat trauma when I got home. It was 2005 where I was overseas, 2006, 2007, 2008. I also developed stomach issues working with radiation and trying to figure out a different method of disarming bombs without anybody having to get out and manually do the work. They were gonna try to basically microwave the road so that if you put metal in a microwave that reacts, well that was the idea for having the bomb, the blasting cap in the bomb to explode and then. we could just drive this vehicle down the road and nobody would have to have to approach the bombs. So when we were doing that, they didn't have a weapon system on top of that vehicle. So they had me right out in front of it as the security element, like we were talking about with the supply trucks. And I started to have stomach episodes of pain, nausea, vomiting that continue to this day. So then I have... Kind of like childhood trauma, combat trauma, then chronic illness trauma from being like having anxiety about eating or going to an event and having to leave. Guilt about not being able to go back with my friends when they redeployed overseas, so medically discharged. And then having like guilt about feeling like a burden when I do get sick and I need help. So I got this really mixed bag of trauma. But at the time, I'm only really focused on combat trauma because that's all I'll give kind of acknowledge. I remember going to the first therapist and like asking me about childhood trauma and I like kind of custom out was like, I just got done disarming bombs in Iraq. Childhood was fine. I played football. Everything was good. But it wasn't. Later on, I learn more about mental health and I start to revisit some of these. Core beliefs that I formed in my younger years from like zero to five when my brain wasn't fully developed, but you develop these Beliefs that lie subconscious like I'm not worthy maybe from abandonment. I'm not lovable certain things like that that are very impactful later on in life and I was like more of a people pleaser seeking external validation trying to check off things off the external checklist to make myself happy, like getting a good job, getting awards, getting more pay, getting, you know, whatever, a car, whatever you can put on that external checklist. And then as I'm getting, moving to Costa Rica even, and as I'm getting these things checked off, I'm still not, I'm happy for a little bit, but I'm not still at peace. I'm still having these internal negative thoughts and negative. self-sabotage moments and so started to really dig into the childhood and where these negative beliefs and subconscious, it's like in your, there's a statistic, like 90 something percent of the choices and decisions that you make in a day come from your subconscious. So if you're never aware of what's happening in your subconscious, it's just on autopilot and you're making decisions based off of old scenarios like I talked about being perfectionist after being in Iraq, that doesn't serve me anymore. And if I never go back and understand why I'm not like that, I'm going to keep doing that and a square peg round hole, you're not going, it's not working. So I need to like reprogram that. And how I do that is when I find things like that, I do like positive affirmations, I do a gratitude practice and I have a mission statement. And so the positive affirmation would be like, in traffic, let's say I'm having road rage because basically if somebody cuts into my convoy they're a threat, they're trying to blow me up in combat. It's not true in civilian life. So I have to tell myself I'm not in Iraq anymore, you're safe. That's like a positive affirmation whenever I have that trigger and I do that like daily in the morning anyways. And then so I'll find things like that where I have negative self-talk. If I find myself saying like, always have bad luck, I'll maybe have a positive affirmation that I don't have bad luck. and that sometimes things go wrong, but overall I have a good life. And what happens with that is like your brain has this thing called a reticular activating system and it's your filter for reality. And so if you can prime your filter, you can say, you I wanna, you wanna look for red cars and all of a sudden you're gonna see a bunch of red cars. And it can be primed subconsciously, so. If it has negative beliefs and negative things that you're... believe you always have bad luck, then you're going to be looking for examples of you having bad luck and it's going to filter and show you those things. Well conversely, if you flip that and you do a positive one, your brain is going to be looking for things that you're grateful for. It's going to be looking for things that support these positive beliefs and so your reality is actually going to start to... Seemingly change and you're going to start to even attract some of those Things that you're you're almost manifesting them because you're believing the positive side of that so I started to realize You it's hard when you first start to do it because it's you know, knowing is half the battle It was like oh, I understand now that my road rage comes from being in Iraq and then I'm like I solved it And now I have to do the work and unravel it because it's a really ingrained learned neuro pathway and your neuroplasticity and your brain will Route this reaction your body and mind are connected. So when I feel it can be a smell it can be a sound it can be anything that reminds me of that traumatic event or that Threat and it'll send me into that that are the reaction that I've done every time. And so if I'm aware and I can pull myself out, it takes time to re-create a new neuro pathway. And so it's like going to the gym, you're gonna have to do it multiple times and it's gonna have to become like part of your lifestyle and practice instead of just trying to do it situationally like when you're depressed and then be like, okay, I'm gonna do positive affirmations and like meditation now that I'm depressed. not gonna work you're gonna be like this is bullshit this doesn't work but sorry but yeah it's uh it's interesting when you know I come from a culture where it's not it's not cool to have mental health problems it's not you know it's a tough guy type thing and you're trained to do these things so and then admitting to it can kind of lead to like problems and if you're staying in the military and So for me to switch my beliefs and humble myself and allow myself to defeat my ego and look at some of these things as more than just feel good, like positive, whatever, that there's actual neuroscience behind it and that there's actual, I've seen results myself. And so it's... eye-opening for me and now I really like to talk about that to people and then to normalize the conversation around it and to explain to people who might not know that that there is a way to improve your quality of life and it's you know sometimes I think people who are are neuroscientists and maybe who are psychotherapists they they kind of have lofty goals they're like you know meditate for like an hour a day I cannot meditate for a minute right now. It's hard. My book that I wrote and stuff is starting small and it's about making progress. It's not about perfection. And I don't have it all figured out. I still struggle. But when I stick to the concepts and I go back and start giving myself grace and just get back to doing the work, it helps. And you mentioned an important word there, grace. I think that's really important when it comes to like mental health struggles. I found that when I, I struggle with depression and anxiety myself, and I found out when I was able to start giving myself a little bit grace, a little bit of grace, that's when things kind of started falling into place. And I started feeling a little bit better about myself and was able to actually subconsciously recognizing that the things that I was thinking like off about like you know like for instance the negative thoughts like it's when I add that little bit of grace towards myself and like oh like this is what I'm doing bad this one I'm thinking negatively so I like that you mentioned that but it's important as a soldier you're trained to fight in a different way. I'm trained to eliminate the threat and I'm trained to really, it's a violent fight. when I'm, this fight is with myself. And so I have to really be soft on my tactics like you're talking about. And you know, the second chapter in my book is awareness, but I paired it with acceptance because you have to have that grace and that acceptance that you're. You're doing the work and stop beating yourself up so much and we're our own like harshest critic and it's really it's really good to be nice to yourself. With the being part of like kind of, well not kind of, like an actual pretty dangerous job or task in the military, how did that affect your view of life, trust, and your own self worth, or sense of worth I should say? So that's a good question. At the time, it really makes you accept death and you accept the fact that you could be dead and your true authentic self really comes out. And you repress a lot of the fear and lot of the emotions that you go through, which I had to work through eventually later on. I had a good sense of worth at that time because I was really good at what I did. Like I said, I was a perfectionist and I did these dangerous jobs, but I did them and I stayed alive and I kept other people alive. So then when I come back home though, I'm a pizza cook and I'm getting yelled at for putting too much cheese on a pizza. And I'm about to punch the guy in the face. Cause like, you don't know what I was just responsible for when he gives a shit about, you know, the cheese on the pizza ring. Like, are you serious? And so it was really hard for me to go from being in that important of a position to coming back to the civilian life and then not being that important at all. And as far as trusting other people, they don't have that same sense of urgency. So I don't really trust them as far as any type of security or keeping me safe. So I'm always on guard. I would imagine that would be really hard to come back and do that. You're feeling so important and then come back and be in a pizza cook. That would be a hard transition. At what point did you begin to suspect that military experience caused deep trauma? So that one, I would say the big T trauma that I talk about, everybody that I talk to afterwards, doing the job that you did, oh, okay, you obviously have trauma. I automatically qualified for PTSD just because of the job that I did from the VA for disability for a certain percentage, just from where I was and what I did. So it was almost like... big flashing sign and it was like, hey, you have PTSD. And I was pretty reactive when I got back. So it wasn't very long before I admitted like that, that I had some issues from Iraq. The tough part was admitting that I had issues from childhood and from like even the chronic illness. Those issues did you? So you if you mentioned it the very first when you went to therapy the therapist want to talk about childhood and here now I just got back from combat so Was it not until that point that you got back from combat that you were actually able to recognize that you had childhood trauma or did you you know? It took a little bit longer. So I even worked through some of that combat trauma. And then I started to go after that external checklist. worked through some of the, I started to have a little bit of relief from like I worked on the road rage and I worked on the hyper vigilance and a couple other things that were from combat. And I started to have a little bit of relief. So then I distracted myself and poured myself into school. I went back to school and I was going to college for computer systems information, computer information systems. And then I was getting 4.0 and high honors there. I got hired back through the government for a IT project manager and it was like six figure job. I was a team lead going through the ranks really quickly in that position. I was still getting sick, but We were thinking that it might be like ulcers or something that would heal that I would be able to fix. I kept working on that stuff and having the stomach issues. But I was really distracting myself with external things. And I actually wouldn't have the stomach issues. I'd have to go to the hospital and they would have to give me pain medicine, nausea medicine, and an IV bag usually. Well then, the opioid crisis also started. around 2013, right, when I started working for the government. And when I'd go to the hospital then, they wouldn't treat me anymore. They would just give me like, try to knock me out with like Benadryl and some other things, or just give me the nausea medicine, send me home in pain still. So actually started to use medication that I would purchase off the streets illegally and then I became addicted to that. I started using it and justifying, well, I have a good job and I'm still getting a 4.0 in school and da da da da da. So eventually though, I decided that I could see it was increasing the amount that I needed to take when I was in pain and it was gonna lead to bad places. So I decided to go to rehab for nine days and while I was there I read a book called unlearn your pain and depression by Dr. Howard Schubiner and he's actually from Michigan and I'm looking through his thing and it's talking about mind-body connection in the childhood and the core beliefs and all of this stuff is it's like the pages are jumping off the book at me so I'm just like whoa this is you know this is like this guy's reading my life and That's when I started to really dig into the childhood stuff and that was around 2017, 2018. And I went through a lot of books I read like The Body Keeps the Score and I probably read like 30 something books on trauma and self-help and different things. oh Then I medically retired from that position that was the IT position because I kept having the stomach issues. I retired from there in 2020. And then I moved to Costa Rica in 2022 and I was divorced in 2024. And then I wrote the book and I wrote the book actually in like 2018, but I shelved it for a while because I had like imposter syndrome and I didn't feel like not a psychologist and I'm not a doctor. So who am I to be talking to people? And a lot of just like negative self-talk and stuff that I had to work through using some of the tactics that I wrote about in the book actually. And then I released the book in 2025 and then I started to speak about it on podcasts. And now that's kind of been part of my mission is to normalize the conversation around mental health and to... be a guest and spread the word. you're doing an important thing. We're on the same page there. One of my goals is to normalize speaking about mental health. I appreciate your platform too, man. It's awesome what you're doing. Thank you. So when you were back in 2017 seeking help, was there like a turning point or like a breaking point where you were thinking like, oh, I need the help or did, was there no like kind of significant moment there? No, there was some significant moments because of the fact that I could no longer go to the emergency room. I'll be vulnerable. I could no longer go to the emergency room and I could no longer get medication. And now I'm having to do the, you know, the self-medicating thing. And now I've become addicted even. And so I'm having to take more medicine when I'm sick. And it's, I'm actually somewhat having suicidal ideations of how am going to my life like this I can't just keep getting illegal drugs to fix this problem that doesn't even fix it because now I have to take more and I'm addicted so all these things and I'm like not wanting to live and so I had to have somebody take the key to my gun safe and lock my guns up and that was a turning point where then I went to the emergency room and you know I had said something about not wanting to live because I was in so much pain and they were going to admit me to a psych ward and I decided that or I had talked to him and I was like I'm not really suicidal like I'm not going to kill myself I just don't have any options I don't know what to do and so I promised it I like had already signed up to go to rehab at that point because I had that episode where I had to take more pills and it didn't work and I ended up... So I already found a rehab place and then it was like a day or two later that I had this another episode and had to have the guns locked up and so I told them I'm like I have this rehab set up and my parents have my gun key safe or whatever the guns are in my house they have them and so she didn't make me go to the psych ward and just allowed me to go to that rehab. So that was kind of like a culmination of suicidal ideations, having to take more pain medicine and being addicted and all of that. Yeah, and suicidal ideation is really hard to deal with. I've had some moments with that myself. It's not easy to work through. I got some tactics for that though. For me, it comes as questions. I always have questions pop into my head like, what are you doing this for? Why are you still fighting? What's the point? And so I have answers for those questions. In doing so, I have a mission statement that I write and that kind of helps me find purpose and lay it out. Like how do I want to show up in my role as an author, as a speaker, as a Christian, as a father, as whatever your roles are. And then you write down like how you want to show up in those positions. I also keep a gratitude journal. And then I have positive affirmations like 10 or 10 to 15 that I have written down or memorized that I repeat. And with a mixture of that, when I start to have those You know, I have to do this. I have to practice this as a daily thing because when it gets bad, I can't just start doing it when it gets bad. So when I do have the suicidal ideations or I'm going into that depression hole, I can refer back to my mission statement. can read my positive affirmations that this is temporary, you know, these things that remind me that it's going to be OK, that the pain will go away. And then I read my gratitude journal to see all the things that I've been grateful for recently and that helps me to answer those questions. It's good stuff. love it. What were like when it came to therapy, what were some of the first ideas or maybe even books that really clicked to you and helped to help you begin to shift your mindset? All right, I really liked EMDR therapy. It's a little bit abstract sometimes, like you're reprocessing things. But how I got over that weirdness about it was that if you've ever watched on TV, like somebody rolled their ankle or get injured and you can actually like get goosebumps and feel it, it didn't really happen. You just watched it happen. Well, you can have like a memory and you can do that for a positive thing. So you can think about a time when you were grateful, a time when you were happy and you can actually release chemicals into your body as if you were experiencing it at that moment, even though it's just a memory. And so you can have the, thinking about these things that may not, know, that are happening or that have happened as a memory, you can actually trick your body into believing that it happens. So it's a pretty interesting trick and the same concept applies. I've heard about EMDR before. never done it. I think at one point my therapist was talking about it, something else worked for me, so we never ended up doing it. I was... the trick that they have you do in the EMDR part, that's like tricking your body. Your body doesn't know that you're reprocessing it with something different. So that's pretty cool. I'm sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead and tell me about. you're good. I was going to say I love hearing about the different forms of therapy that work for people. Yeah. And then as far as books, you asked about books. I really liked Seven Habits for Highly Successful People. The Body Keeps the Score is another good one. Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow by Daniel Kuninen is another really interesting one about how your brain works. It's more brain science. Then there's another one. It's a cuss word. It's called... on F yourself by, I forget who somebody Bishop, but that one's a good one. And then there's like 12 rules to life by Jordan B Peterson. So now they're really good one that I liked. So those are some of the ones that I think I would recommend off the top of my head. And I've heard of a few of those. And of course, internal is greater than external, calming the chaos within by cold grace. That's another good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you were writing your book, what was the process like? Was it hard for you to write? Did it just stir everything up in your mind or were you okay as you were going through the writing of it? was healing, to tell you the truth. It helps me to, in order for me to present or teach something, I really have to dig in and learn it. So I really had to, I even went further in depth into things and reread some of the books and some of the parts to make sure that, you know, what I'm saying is factual and not, you know, it's experience based, but also like that I have things that back it up and where I got it from. And so, And also being authentic like I'm not gonna write about something that I'm not doing myself So it really helps me held myself accountable like you're gonna be talking on these podcasts and writing a book you better be like Living it. You know what I mean? So it's really helped me to To be accountable for that and then to use those tactics to see the benefits of it and then to understand the scientific and neuro type reasons why it works is pretty cool. And so you mentioned that you shelved the book for a bit. You wrote it in 2018. Did it come out until 25? What made you decide in 25 to pick it up and actually get it published? Well, I'm a Christian too, and I felt like this calling that I was supposed to write the book. I really, when I wrote it, I flew through the pages. I wrote 80 % of it in like three months. was all but done. I just had to like transition the chapters, write the introduction and write the conclusion. But I stopped working on it. I was having problems in my marriage, the pandemic hit, I retired from work. And then, you know, I didn't feel calm in my own life and I didn't, I had a lot of negative self-talk about being vulnerable and about how I would be judged and not really wanting to deal with any of that. So I kind of just started having the story of, well, it was healing for me to just write what I did. So that's enough. But I kept feeling this calling like, no, it's not. You need to put this out. You need to do this. And so finally after the divorce and after all that, I got the book back out to really just start doing it for myself again, to start going through and start doing the work again. And in doing it, I was like, man, this stuff, this is actually still relevant. This many years later, there's not much left. I don't have to change much. I just have to add a little bit here and there. So was like, I'm just going to, I'm going to finish it. And I finished it in a couple of months, published it on Amazon. and didn't get any nearly the bad feedback I thought I was gonna get. That was all like self-projection. So I had to use a lot of the tools in my book to overcome this, the negativity and to be nicer to myself and to move forward without being perfect and to realize that that's an advantage, that that's actually powerful, that I'm not coming from a place of... I have it all figured out, I'm coming from a place of I'm still working through this too, and this is what's working for me. And it's crazy where it's like we're always our own like worst enemy when it comes to criticism. man, so mean to ourselves compared to how we are to other people. It's crazy. Yeah, it's, it is crazy. But like you've talked about a couple of times, positive affirmations, that type of stuff play a huge, they have played a huge role for me as well. And everybody I talked to on this whole circuit that I've been doing, I've been on like 15 or so mental health podcasts recently. And it's a consistent theme that this stuff works, you know, and your thoughts manifest into reality. And if you have negative thoughts, you're going to have a negative reality. And I never really believed that, but it's true. I'm right there with you. I didn't believe that for the longest time until I actually went to like some Start going to therapy and when he was telling me all this stuff, I was like and I actually tried it I Was like, this actually works like I You know, like two years ago told you you were lying like there's no way that that the person I was like two to five years ago would have even tried this Right, like just being positive is gonna change my life. Okay. Yeah, I'd have told you, whatever. Yeah, that would probably said some not nice things, but you know, it's, and so for me to be saying this and sitting here talking to you about it is important for people to realize that, you know, it works and it doesn't happen overnight and it takes practice. But once you start to see the results, you'll become addicted to it. And you're going to love reprocessing things that are blocking you. once you're going to notice all of your relationships improve from business to personal, romantic even, and family, they've all improved as I've become more humble and as I've worked through some of my triggers and become more calm. My whole life has changed. Yeah, it's, I want to tell a short story about the calmness aspect, because I'm actually seeing that a lot in my life right now. have, married and have three young kids. And one of my problems is like a lot of times I have an issue with overreacting too quickly. should say at all, like not even too quickly, but I... have a little bit of a temper sometimes. And I know my kids have seen that and I don't want my kids to see that. And so my therapist is like, we've always had a, let me go back a little bit. We've always had a problem with like bedtime, which I think is fairly normal. Maybe I'm mistaken. Yeah. But it's like, know, kids like, oh, I need to eat. I'm not ready for bed. I don't want to get in my pajamas. Like blah, blah, blah, Yeah. So anyways, I talked to my therapist about it and he's like, well, maybe you need to just try to be calmer instead of like going and just turning off the TV and saying, okay, you're not having TV for two or three days now. And like giving that reaction, just, you know, have a calmness to you. And I've tried it in the last like two weeks and I can see huge difference. My kids are starting to... to recognize it. like bedtime for the past two or three weeks has just been so much easier. Yeah. your own stuff, what you can control, and then how that influences the external. You worked on the internal and just influenced the external completely by working on the internal. And that's amazing. It's like stoicism and it's being, there's a quote that I heard that was called, it was like, be the thermostat, not the thermometer. So you're the one as a thermostat setting the energy or setting the temperature. You're not just reading the temperature. And so a lot of times when we're reacting to things, we're like a thermometer, like somebody sets off a stimulus and then we respond or react to it instead of, no, I'm not gonna let you control my inner feeling. You're not going to throw me off my center and make me reactive. I'm in control, I'm calm, and no, you don't need a water, you had a water, this, that, the other, know, whatever, and just remain calm. And once they, kids are weird, man, they can sense that energy and read it more than your words. And so if your energy is all anxious and upset, then they know that they kind of got you. But if you're not, if you're just not putting up with it, but you're not reacting to it, it's like, all right. I guess he's just too serious. Like you said, it's weird when you turn internal how that actually helps you like influence the external more than if you try to focus on that external thing and change it. It's not gonna work. Oh yeah, for sure. And they feed off your energy, good or bad. But I liked your analogy with like, you're the one who sets the temperature of the room. That's good. When you started like telling your story to people, like whether it be podcasting or through your book, was it hard for you to be vulnerable? Like at the very beginning to actually get your story out there? Yes, sometimes it still is. I don't like talking about how my moments of weakness, you know, that's not something as a society, we're not, we're kind of trained to do the social media model where you see the highlight reel and I don't talk about this stuff and I deal with this stuff on my own. So for me to open up about it and how are people going to react? Are they going to think that I'm a poor me? Like I've had it worse than you, you know, what? All these things that I thought they didn't even manifest in real life, I got a lot of good responses. But we have a tendency, I don't know, you can get like hundred good comments and one bad comment and likely you'll remember the bad comment. So I just remind myself that, you know, of the good time, like I had somebody example, you know, I'm having a down day where I'm like. Am I being annoying or people even really watching this? I'm saying the same thing. It's like the 10th podcast I've done. Maybe I should stop posting some things or I can keep talking to these other audiences, but I don't know about what my friends are thinking. So somebody that never liked or even commented on any of my videos ever just sent me a message. He's a veteran friend of mine. And he said that, keep doing what you're doing. It's inspiring. And I'm going to get help and whatever date in June. And so that was an uplifting, you know, message. God kind of knows when I need one and sent it my way. And just a reaffirming of the fact that, you know, and I still get down sometimes. I don't have it all figured out, but I still have to refer back to the things that I know work. Give myself grace for falling off for that moment and get back on track. And that has really helped instead of beating myself up and going down the negative path while like if you can't even stick to the diet, what's the point and then just giving up or you if you missed the gym today then why even go tomorrow and you can really get into this defeating self-sabotaging type thing so I use those like I said the positive reaffirmations the gratitude and the mission statement to remind myself this is what I want and I don't care if I feel like doing it you know it'll it's it's it's part of my mission part of my purpose and in doing that and pushing through that sometimes and just having that reminder lets me just kind of remember that yeah you know this is important and it's really changed my life in that aspect of giving me a purpose and a reason to you know purpose out of the pain. oh Yeah, of course. And those one-off comments like that, that's really, to me, what makes it worth it. Like, I say to myself, if I even just reach one or two people, and I get just a few comments like that, people reaching out saying like, oh, I was able to open up because of you, like I was able to share my story or do this, or it made me feel better. Like, that's really important to me. Because I know this is a way that I can... help people to the best of my knowledge. Like, I'm not a therapist. I'm not that type of person at all. Right and like you said before a lot of times we can be our own worst enemy our own worst critic and then having those reminders to pull you out of that and to help you you know and those are things that I put in like my gratitude journal and then I can refer back to those when I am finding myself in a negative like that happens when you get in the funk and the key is not figuring out how to never get in a funk or how to never have anxiety. It's how to deal with it when it happens and how to shorten the time that you're in it. So, you know, that's what I try to teach. Yeah. Which is an important concept to teach because I think, too many people out there believe that like your anxiety or depression goes away. And I'm not saying that you can't have spousal depression. Maybe you don't have like clinical depression or whatever, and you just get in rut and you get out and you're completely fine. But for the most part, depression, anxiety, PTSD, whatever it is that you deal with. It doesn't go away, it's a work in progress. And you have to rebuild your habits to make things work out for the better. far you progress you can always backslide you can always have bad some things happen and and that can set you back but that's where I if you have your identity and your internal things like your mindset your attitude your beliefs your know calmness your reactivity things like that beliefs when your external world changes it's not as detrimental and it doesn't throw you off as much whereas If your stock is in your title, your job, all that stuff can be gone in two seconds. then all of sudden your world is upside down because that's where you had your identity. And so that's why in the book I talk about the internal being greater than the external. And when you focus internally like you were talking about with your kids, you influence that external. far greater than, know, I think the seven habits of highly successful people talks about your circle of influence versus your circle of concern. Your circle of influence are the things you can change, like you can control if you approach the situation calmly or how you react, how you respond. Whereas your circle of concern are things that concern you, but you don't have any control over politics, other people, know, certain things like that. And he says, if you work inside of your circle of concern, your circle of concern will grow. But if you work inside your circle of influence, your circle of influence will grow. And so that's where working on that internal stuff, you're growing your external influence. And so it's really important for me to, it's not to not acknowledge feelings like some things are annoying and some things are frustrating. But once you acknowledge that feeling, how am I going to respond to it? A flat tire is a flat tire. Is it going to ruin your day? Or are you going to be like, man, this sucks, but I'm going to change the tire, and I'm going call my work thumb. I'm going be late. get on with it you know or you can like I always have the worst luck and my boss is gonna kill me and then you call and you're taking pictures of your flat tire and trying to over explain everything and you know freaking out for no reason and you get to work and everything's fine but you're still all messed up You're just making your whole day worse. all you're doing. May not be realizing it at the time, but... justified. seems like it's the right response, you know? Yeah. So if there is like one thing you could say that this is what I really want to people to get out of my book, what is that one thing? I would say that continual learning, I'll put it that way, that we were talking about it, you're never arrived. And in the book I talk about iterations like if you're learning to meditate or whatever, know, like you start small, but then you keep building on it, and you keep building on it. And with me, continual learning, I wrote about doing positive affirmations and doing gratitude and doing a mission statement, and I wrote about it from an experience point of view. But now that I'm talking on podcasts, I'm doing more research and I'm learning about scientifically how it works and neurologically how it works and how those things affect your brain chemistry and more and more. I keep adding to it. And even going through counseling, I continue to dig into things. I don't necessarily dwell on them or whatever, but it's a continual process. And like you were talking about, I don't think PTSD or anxiety or depression go away. And it's similar, I think, with alcoholism or addiction, is that you can abstain from it for a long time, but as soon as you stop doing the work and you go back, it's just as bad as it was before. And so you can... progress very far in your healing journey, but then let go of the wheel, stop doing your affirmation, stop doing your gratitude stuff, stop doing your deep breathing and stop doing all that stuff because you think you're healed and watch how quickly this stuff starts to come back. You know what I mean? So I think that being cognizant that this is going to be something that it's going to be a lifestyle. And if you look at it like that, I think you'll have lot better expectation of the results that you're gonna get. Yeah, that is for sure. It is part of your lifestyle. like you mentioned, it doesn't take long for you to fall into old habits, like, or old ways of thinking. So I just have a few more questions or thoughts on my mind. if somebody that's been in military service and is home from war or home from being deployed is going through suffering with PTSD but doesn't know how to get the help they need, what advice do you give that person? Yeah, it's definitely difficult without a support system to make that first step. And there's a lot of bureaucratic hoops that you have to jump through to go through military type things. So if you're looking to get disability, there's disability lawyers out there now. And you can talk to them and they'll help you get private doctors to verify your conditions. If you're looking for mental health care. You can go through the VA. They offer a lot more services now. Like they do offer EMDR and some community care where you can not necessarily have to do the exposure therapy or do it through the VA. You can do it through private practice and they'll still help try to figure it out, help you figure it out. Once you get into counseling and you start doing some of that stuff, there's programs called like vocational rehabilitation where you can go back to school. if you have a certain level of disability percentage, and they'll send you back to school for free and pay for some things. You can use the ADA, the American Disability Act, while you're in school for absences or hospital visit or anything that you have to do related to conditions. So I've had to use that because I have the stomach episodes that happened, and I've missed tests and been able to make them up and turn in homework at. that was due but I wasn't able to make it. So that really helped me there, helped me at work too, to work from home and to have special accommodations. But I think one of the big things is to start being nice to yourself and start to, the self love, the self care, the positive self talk, the positive affirmations and to be... Because when you're your own worst enemy and you're the meanest person to yourself and then you don't have a support system, it's crushing. so if you could work on one thing, if you could just work on being softer with yourself and giving yourself some grace and just taking the next step forward, and it doesn't matter how many steps backwards you've taken, take a step forward. keep taking a step forward and before you know it you're going to accumulate a bunch of steps and it's going to start to add up and you're going to start to notice a difference and you're going to continue to progress. So I would say to have hope and to know that there's people who are doing better now who are wanting to kill themselves a few years ago. You're not alone, that people struggle. Not everybody says they do, but they do. And not a lot of people show it. So you can get caught looking at a highlight reels on social media and being like, man, my life really sucks. But a lot of times if you were to really look closely at what you envy, you would see like, you know, the details that don't get shared as much and that there's actually problems. it. With this question I ask pretty much every guest that I have on just because I like to hear the different responses. So what do you feel is the biggest stigma to mental health? I would say in my experience it is that mental health is not masculine, that working on your mental health is not masculine. I think that is one of the biggest stigmas and one of the biggest fallacies that there is. Because I think that when you don't work on your mental health, that your emotions control you. And I think that like stoicism and people like Marcus Aurelius and very masculine men, control of their emotions, they weren't controlled by their emotions. And they were really in touch with knowing who they were and why they operated the way that they operate and why they make the decisions that they make. And I think that that is something that has been like, it's not strong to work out, know, whatever, to do counseling or to be seeing a counselor or to be doing positive. affirmations or some girly stuff, you know, emotions. But I think that's where I would say it's one of the biggest fallacies that I see out there. Yeah, yeah, it's our society definitely teaches that, that like men are supposed to be a certain way and that's not the way they're supposed to be. Yeah, men don't cry, you know, all that stuff. So. And just kind of a couple little follow-up questions. Where can people find you and your book? You can never find me. I'm like, I live in Costa Rica. um You can find me on YouTube. It's at SeaGrace21. And then I have like a playlist where it's all the links to all the podcasts that I've been on. I also have some videos that I made about different chapters in the book. And I'm on Facebook, just ColeGrace. And I'm on Instagram too, I think it's Cgrace2180 underscore. Yeah. But I basically just post a lot of the podcasts on the YouTube. You can find my book on Amazon by searching Cole Grace. And then you'll see Internals Greater Than External Calming the Chaos Within. And yeah, that's it. And I'll make sure to put links in the show notes to all those that you mentioned. Alright. Last thing here, is there anything that we have not discussed that you would like to bring up? No, I think we did a good job on covering a lot of topics. know, again, with the suicidal ideations and things, you're not alone. Don't be embarrassed by it. And you can talk about it with somebody that you trust or find a counselor or somebody to talk about these things with and don't just dismiss them and hide them and keep them secret. Well, thank you, Cole. Thanks so much for joining the show and speaking with us and being so vulnerable. I admire the work that you do and the people and love that you're out there helping people. appreciate it, Travis, and I appreciate what you're doing and providing a platform for people like me to speak on and an audience and you know, you're doing great things. I appreciate that. Thank you. And thanks again to all the listeners out there. Please follow us on all social media platforms. Listen, share our stuff. And thanks again for listening. Until next time.