The Mindfulness Medic: With Jason Warn

EP35-The Mindfulness Medic

00:00:00 Jason: I wanted to transition out of my career, so the fastest ticket was to go get my EMT certifications and immediately became obsessed and just loved everything about it. The majority of it is pretty benign and routine, but there are those aspects that start to kind of weigh on you. I got hired with that hospital-based DMS agency that I really wanted to work at. That was my pinnacle career goal at the time and that was also where I would experience the call that changed my life forever.

00:00:34 Jason: These calls, when you look back on them, there's like the fog of war, there's the confusion where things don't make sense, and there's a lot of ambiguous nature to it all, and you're trying to piece the puzzle together, which just adds to that cognitive stress, but you have a job to do. And I just got tired of running. I decided to just start taking action in my life because I was watching all of the havoc that I had caused through my inability to deal with my own trauma. I hadn't realized the damage that it was affecting my family and my relationships. So I think it's important to figure out where we're going in life and where we are. We have to kind of go back and figure out where we came from.

00:01:13 Cinnamon: It's the first responder, the first to get the call, the first on scene, greeted by God knows what, pushed beyond the limits that they don't even set. Then what happens? You're listening to After the Tones Drop. We're your hosts. I'm Cinnamon, a first responder trauma therapist who founded our practice after seeing the need for specialized care following a local line of duty death. 

00:01:39 Erin: And I'm Erin. I'm a first responder integration coach. 

00:01:45 Cinnamon: We help first responders receive transformational training, therapy, and coaching. 

00:01:50 Erin: Now we come to you to explore, demystify, and destigmatize mental health and wellness for first responders.

00:01:59 Cinnamon: Our show brings you stories from real first responders, the tools they've learned, the changes they've made, and the lives they now get to live.

00:02:14 Erin: Quick heads up before we start. We want to acknowledge that some of the content we discuss on our show can be triggering for some listeners. Some of our episodes may touch upon themes like traumatic experiences, PTSD, suicide, and line of duty deaths. We understand that these topics are sensitive and might evoke difficult emotions. If you are currently struggling with your mental health or have experienced traumatic events recently, listen with caution. 

00:02:41 Erin: You may consider taking periodic breaks or skipping the episode altogether. We want to thank you for joining us today. Your dedication to serving our community is inspiring, and we're here to support you in any way that we can. Now, if you're ready to proceed, let's begin.

00:03:00 Erin: And it's official, we are recording. So that means that we can finally talk to this freaking awesome guest that we have on today, Jason Warren. We have been pumped to have you on the show. So the listeners know I've been following him on Instagram and he is a very inspiring individual. So if you are on our social media of any kind, I'm still learning, I'm old. 

00:03:26 Erin: And so I'm still learning how to share on Instagram and I don't know, are people seeing it? So hopefully you're seeing some of his stuff that I'm sharing because he is coming from such a really great and inspiring place and I would hate for you to miss it. So definitely check him out. But I want you to prepare for an enlightening episode today because Jason is here as a seasoned firefighter paramedic with an impressive 11-year tenure. Is that correct still or is it more? 

00:03:56 Jason: Yeah, in EMS. The majority of my career, firefighting just started last year. So I transitioned into the fire service. 

00:04:03 Erin: Oh. Picking up a little extra, are you? 

00:04:09 Jason: Yeah. Just made a transition. 

00:04:11 Erin: Awesome. 

00:04:12 Jason: Yeah. 

00:04:12 Erin: Well, I can say that I believe that you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to what resilience is for a first responder. Obviously, you are in the thick of it every day. And then you turn around and inspire listeners and talk about real life stuff that's going on in this world. And part of that contribution is through you being the owner of Mindfulness Medic. It's a lifestyle and mindset brand. Is that the best way to describe it?

00:04:41 Jason: Yeah, it's a lifestyle mindset apparel brand I use as my vehicle to just share my journey, share the path and the story that I've had in my transformation from going from a person who suffered from a lot of darkness, years ago, mainly related from a lot of stuff that I experienced on the job. And the things that I've done since then to try to just make myself a better person, improve my mental health, improve my physical health, be a better father and husband and just share my journey so I can help try to impact other people and inspire other people that might find themselves in similar situations. 

00:05:17 Cinnamon: Man, I love it. I also admiring the pictures behind your head. 

00:05:22 Jason: Yeah. Those are some of the designs, yeah. 

00:05:25 Erin: It's awesome. Well, we are finally starting to roll the episodes out on YouTube. We're a little behind the curve because as we shared with you before we started recording, I have been teaching myself how to do everything. So go on YouTube and watch this and you'll get to see the cool pictures in the background that he has, everybody. But like I said, and I say this often, I think to our guests, like it's so awesome to have such forward-thinking people on our show.

00:05:52 Erin: And I think that's just because it feels like this is a slow moving ship right now. But I would say in the big scheme of things, it's moving much faster than like us on the inside, maybe are experiencing it to move. So we love having folks like yourself on to highlight both sides, like what it was like in that darkness and then what you've done to recover and to come out of it, not only come out of it, but use it as a vessel and a tool to inspire others. So what we'll do is just turn the floor over to you. And if you can tell us a little bit about your story, we would love to hear it. 

00:06:29 Jason: Yeah, absolutely. So I think it's important to figure out where we're going in life and where we are. We have to kind of go back and figure out where we came from. So it's funny, I've noticed this almost thread that's relatable a lot of people in first responder land, people in public safety and healthcare who seem to always kind of have this similar or shared experience of shared adverse childhood trauma or like these events that occurred early on in their life. 

00:06:57 Jason: And for some reason, it tends to push us towards that path of servitude to others and wanting to help other people and dedicate our lives to just being that person that tries to alleviate pain and suffering and other people. So I come from that same background in my childhood. It was a dynamic childhood. A lot of things that now, even at 38 years old, I'm starting to process and starting to work through.

00:07:21 Jason: A lot of stuff I probably won't go into now just because it's probably not the right forum, but I'm starting therapy soon for the first time, which is huge for me. And I'm starting to integrate a lot of these childhood things and I've recognized that common thread. So the majority of my young adult life, I wasn't even in public safety. I was in the restaurant business for most of my adult life. I worked my way up to being a head chef of a couple of restaurants. 

00:07:44 Jason: Had some fun doing a catering company and bakery with my mother-in-law. We had like a family-owned business for a while. And like a lot of people, I just had that calling in my soul for the majority of my life. I grew up in a law enforcement family. My dad was a cop for over 30 years. So I definitely had that culture and that vibe and that feeling in my life of wanting to do something more, serve in a higher capacity. 

00:08:09 Cinnamon: Although serving, preparing food is a really lovely thing too. 

00:08:15 Jason: Yeah. It definitely is a parallel as far as like stress inoculation and resilience in that field. Definitely, definitely like parlays well into public safety. 

00:08:24 Cinnamon: True.

00:08:25 Jason: So we had a mutual family friend. My wife and I had a friend who's on the local fire department in my town. So we had him over for dinner one night. Long story short, I ended up signing up to join the fire department. I wanted to transition out of my career. So the fastest ticket there was to go get my EMT certification. So I enrolled in my local EMT class and just immediately became obsessed and enthralled and just loved everything about it. 

00:08:53 Jason: I loved the clinical aspect of pre-hospital medicine, taking care of people in their time of need. So I just immersed myself 100% into this new world and then I crushed it and then got that. And then I was able to transition out of the restaurant world and into EMS. That was around 2014.

00:09:15 Jason: So all the while I'm still on the local fire department and starting to have experiences and calls where I'm realizing that my expectation for what I thought this was gonna be was a little bit more idealistic than it actually was. You start to experience a lot of that darkness, a lot of the bad calls, the trauma. I mean, the majority of it is pretty benign and routine, but there are those aspects that start to weigh on you.

00:09:43 Jason: The analogy I've always used is like rocks in a backpack. We just slowly add up over time. And at the time I didn't even really realize it. I just thought it was kind of just part of the job as young, excited, naive, a little bit ignorant to the propensity and like what I was really trying to deal with. Got my advanced EMT and started working towards this other agency. I wanted to work for in the area. It was a hospital based EMS system. That was my golden ticket, the place I really wanted to be. And that's where I would spend the next eight years of my career. 

00:10:15 Jason: So I wanted to touch on the volunteer service too, because coming from a career fire department now, there's always this stigma in the public safety world of volunteers and not being taken as seriously as the professional side. And it's something that I've come to learn, at least in my opinion, is that the volunteers oftentimes have it a lot harder than we do on the career side. 

00:10:37 Jason: As far as access to resources, either on the front end of prevention of the mental health injury and then on the back end too when the traumatic events already occurred and they need that back-end work to help heal them they're at home with their families, enjoying a nice dinner or throwing the ball around with their son in the backyard, having a tea party with their daughter their pager goes off. 

00:11:00 Jason: And they just have to leave that world and go respond to somebody else's bad day and again a lot of the times it can be benign and kind of routine, but there's a lot of times where it's not. I was finding myself personally in that world, going from those like really happy family moments to now doing chest compressions on someone for the first time or peeling out a mutilated body out of a motor vehicle accident. 

00:11:26 Jason: And it's just like this really surreal experience when you're new. So then when that's over, you go back to the station, you clean up your equipment, you give the cursory, you good, yep, you good. And volunteers go back home and they're expected to just reintegrate back into their families and pick up where they left off. So that creates this whole weird confusion in the mind. It's like this isn't normal. 

00:11:53 Jason: But the way the culture is set up is just like, it's part of the job. You have to deal with it. So I've always had great respect for volunteers in the Volunteer Fire Service and Volunteer EMS, just because they don't have those resources that we often have available to us in professional side. And then even on the professional side, it's lacking in a lot of areas, I think, as far as mental health is concerned. 

00:12:15 Jason: So the years went by. I got hired with that hospital-based EMS agency that I really wanted to work at. That was my golden ticket. That was like my pinnacle career goal at the time. That was also where I would experience the call that changed my life forever. August 2nd, 2016. I can still remember the day. I think everyone in public safety has that one call for them that changes the trajectory of their lives personally and professionally. 

00:12:46 Jason: And it can be a big gradient. It can be different for everyone. The details are going to be different. The instances are going to be different. This one was a suicide. And I remember the day like it was yesterday. I had just arrived on my shift. They worked night shifts at the time, 7PM. to 7 AM

00:13:05 Jason: My normal partner that I usually worked with wasn't in that night. So he was dealing with a new dynamic there, was checking the ambulance and the call came in for a gunshot wound pending more information. So it's like, okay, wow. Still relatively new. This is like the first real trauma call I'm getting. So we bring the ambulance out stage at the end of the parking lot, wait for more information to come in. Ends up being gunshot wounded, the head self-inflicted, patient's still breathing. 

00:13:30 Jason: So, okay. So we're responding to the scene, lights and sirens, and it's just all of the normal things playing through my head. Algorithms, clinical courses, what we're going to do, who's going to grab what. So we get there, and it's on a lake. It's like this pristine picture out of a storybook. I remember the moon was out and the moon was reflecting off the lake, and it was just a very weird, surreal feeling. 

00:13:55 Jason: So get out and start walking down the embankment, and there's a bunch of commotion on the end of a dot. And that's where the resuscitation was occurring. A couple of cops who had gotten there first and some of the local volunteers who were there trying to resuscitate this patient. And there was a woman coming out of the lake. It was a very weird instance. 

00:14:15 Jason: And there's like these calls when you look back on them, there's like the fog of water, there's the confusion where things don't make sense. And there's a lot of ambiguous nature to it all. And you're trying to piece the puzzle together, which just adds to that cognitive stress, but you have a job to do.

00:14:33 Jason: You have something that you need to get done. You have a list of things you need to not do and that's why you're there. So I remember going to the end of the dock and there's one of the law enforcement officers is cradling the back of the guy's head and cradling his neck. And I get the story of what's going on and he's in a shockable rhythm. So we do have a viable patient. And I just remember feeling that feeling for the first time that this was my responsibility, this was up to me now. 

00:14:57 Jason; And that was the first time I had ever experienced anything like that. I had seen injured people before, but nothing like this. And it was just, it was heavy at the time. It was the first really acutely sick person that I had to manage. My partner at the time was up in the ambulance for some other reasons, like another dynamic to the story. 

00:15:20 Jason: But so I was down on the dock and it was dangerous that we could feel the dock moving and like one guy almost fell in and there's just, it was like a really twisted Monty Python skit. Something just crazy like that. So we're working him in, we deliver one shock because he was in a shockable rhythm. 

00:15:36 Jason: I noticed that he needs airway management because he had shot himself underneath the chin and it had transected his trachea in a way that I knew we weren't gonna be able to orally intubate him. So we're gonna need to perform a cricothyrotomy. So get him packaged up and we're moving him up to the ambulance, get him onto the stretcher and up until that point, it was heavy and it was really dark, emotionally.

00:16:03 Jason: But the part that changed my life forever is when I was loading him into the back of the ambulance, I was lifting the stretcher up so they could lift the wheels. A little boy came around the back of the ambulance and he looked at me and he said, "Is daddy going to be okay?" What do you say to that? So I didn't say anything. I can't say anything in that instance. So I just looked right through him and loaded his father into the back of the ambulance.

00:16:30 Jason: So we did everything we were trained to do in the back of the ambulance. We cricked him and we brought him to the ER. And the cool thing about the place I worked at at the time is we would be involved in all the care in the hospital because we worked in the ER as well. So we would just transition basically into ER techs, working in the licensure level that we were trained at. So that was always cool because in our jobs, usually we drop patients off at hospitals and we have no idea what happens to them. You never get that follow-up. 

00:17:00 Jason: So, in this instance, it had the drawback of I was involved in the resuscitation the whole time. The physician ends up terminating resuscitative efforts because there was just no chance of a meaningful recovery. So come to find out, I got more details on the call and the patient was a police officer. He was up on vacation at the lake house with his wife and kids. And I guess he had been struggling for a long time with some mental health issues.

00:17:28 Jason: And he had asked his wife actually on multiple occasions to please hide my duty gun because I'm not feeling good. I'm really struggling. So they had gone up to the lake house to just try to have a refresh reset on everything. And that night he had his duty gun and he walked to the end of the dock and that's where he shot himself. And the lady who was walking out of the lake when I got there was actually his wife who had heard the gunshot when it happened.

00:17:53 Jason: Called 911 and then ran down and jumped into the water to pull him out of the water onto the dock. So we bring the wife into the ER, into the trauma bay, so she can start the grieving process. And that's where the second part that happened that changed the trajectory of my life occurred. And people often ask what the worst part of this job is. And they're usually expecting the dramatic stuff. The blood, the guts, the accidents, the explosions. 

00:18:22 Erin: TV stuff. 

00:18:24 Jason: Yeah, like all of that overly dramatic stuff. And my answer is a bit different. My answer is the worst part of this job is watching the loss of hope and the destruction of hope from another person's eyes when they hear that their loved one is dead. Because that's what happened that night when the physician told the wife that her husband was gone and there was nothing else we were going to do. 

00:18:48 Jason: There's a particular sound and response that someone has when they learn that news. And it's the most visceral, gut-wrenching thing you could ever witness as she collapses to the floor in just absolute grief, crying out. And you witness that loss of hope. And that loss of hope is the worst thing about this job because it's so relatable. Because as humans, we have this innate desire to always hedge on everything.

00:19:20 Jason: Maybe God will make it work out, or maybe if I just win these lottery numbers, everything will work out, or if I put everything on black, I'll just win. And you fight and fight and fight and then you watch that hope being lost forever. And that changed me. It fundamentally changed me from being idealistic and really naive about what I was going to experience and really understanding firsthand, like this was it. This is what alleviating pain and suffering looked like. That it was going to be heavy.

00:19:50 Jason: And I remember my boss came in that night because it was a bad call. He came in just to see if he could help out. And we were standing in the ER unit coordinators area and he walks up and he goes, "You guys good?" And we're like, "Sure". "Is it you guys ready to go back in service?" And I'm like, "What do you mean? I just told this lady's son essentially that they, who came up and asked me if daddy was going to be okay and she's on the floor crying in agony like, "I'm not okay." 

00:20:23 Jason: But what do we do? We go back into service, because that's our job, right? We compartmentalize, we suck it up, and we bury it deep down inside. So you go from that to just going back to work. And there was no follow-up, really. It was just, that was the end of it. And there was a debrief afterwards, like a few weeks later, but it was the typical just checking a box type of critical incident stress debrief where everybody got together, talked about their feelings. 

00:20:53 Jason: Most people didn't talk about their feelings because they're not comfortable being vulnerable, turns into just kind of a feel good measure. Everybody goes home without truly integrating what they just experienced. So I just pressed on with my career. Went into paramedic school, fell more in love with the job, became more obsessed with the job and learning everything I possibly could.

00:21:16 Jason: And now looking back, realizing that a lot of that was just a defense mechanism. That the more I obsessed with being the best that I could, had more to do with me trying to run away from the pain and the darkness than I had anything else. It was my way of justifying in my head. If I could be better than maybe that will happen less. So that's also when my personal life started to take a hit.

00:21:45 Jason: And I started to have this downward spiral in my life. My world was on fire and my life was falling apart around me and I didn't even realize it because I was just so obsessed with trying to be better and just working and working and working and not dealing with the pain and not dealing with the trauma in my mind. So my family life started to suffer and I didn't recognize it. I wasn't present at home like I should have been with my wife and our newborn kids. 

00:22:15 Jason: I mean, there was years of my child's life that I can't even remember because I was just so busy working and making excuses for myself. And not going to the family events because I was too tired or I had a stressful night at work. And I just became a victim to my own circumstance, a victim to my emotions, blaming everything else and everyone else for my problems. So that just continued. That spiral continued.

00:22:43 Jason: My world was just on fire, like I said, and then I kind of hit that rock bottom in 2019, 2020, where it was just like rubble all around me. I was very unhealthy. I was morbidly obese. I was depressed, anxious all the time. Never formally diagnosed with traumatic stress disorder, but exhibiting all the signs. Irritable, short-tempered. Brain fog. Couldn't concentrate flashbacks, all of that stuff. And I just got tired of running. 

00:23:16 Jason: So in 2019, I decided to just start taking action in my life because I was watching all of the havoc that I had caused through my inability to deal with my own trauma and trying to just push that to the side. I hadn't realized the damage that it was affecting my family and my relationships. So there was no like catalyst moment for me where I decided it needed to change. 

00:23:43 Jason: It was just like I need to do something. So I started getting into the mindfulness stuff. I started journaling. I started meditating. I found a guy called Wim Hof. Usually everybody's familiar with him. He's into a lot of breathwork and cold water immersion. And I started doing those things and I was noticing all of these physiological improvements I was doing for him. I was improving my mental clarity my level of anxiousness was decreasing and my depression was going away.

00:24:10 Jason:  And I was like, wow, there's like, there's all these tangible things that I can do. And it makes me feel better. And I was like, why don't they teach this stuff? Why do we always talk about in public safety about the problem of mental health? Or we wait until the end and we're like, here's a phone number to call. If you're feeling suicidal, you're not feeling good, but we never do that front end work of being like tears.

00:24:38 Jason: All of these things that are available to you that can help you, that can increase your mental resilience, your physical resilience, that can prevent you from even feeling depressed in the first place. Or if you're feeling depressed, it can help you heal through that without having to go down all of these traditional routes, pharmaceuticals and all these other things that people can take. And if they work for you, that's great. 

00:24:59 Jason: I'm not saying anything against them, but I just noticed this trend in public safety, how we just do a terrible job, in my opinion, at prevention. We always react to the tragedy. We don't ever try to prevent the tragedy from occurring. So it was just years of slowly starting to implement all of these things in myself and really realizing the important investing in myself and realizing that if I want to serve other people in my highest capacity to my best ability, I need to take care of myself first. 

00:25:28 Jason: That I wasn't showing up to people's worst day or I wasn't showing up for my family as my best version because I wasn't taking care of myself. I needed to put the oxygen mask on myself first, which is something it seems like in public safety and in healthcare we're just so bad at because we just take care of everyone else's needs first before our own. And it comes from that altruistic vision of just wanting to help people and make everybody's life more improved.

00:25:59 Jason: So after a while I was doing all of these things and I had this idea in my head for a long time about this phrase, the mindfulness medic popped into my head one day. And I was like, well I'm a paramedic and I like mindfulness so that's really cool. I vibe with that. But then on a deeper level I was realizing like, wow, okay, no matter what I'm doing career wise, I'll always be a mindfulness medic because my mission here on earth, I believe, why I was put here is to alleviate pain and suffering in other people. 

00:26:29 Jason: So I'll always be a medic, and I can just be a Mindfulness Medic. And then I realized anybody can be a mindfulness medic. Anybody can share their journey and their story of transformation from the darkness and do those things for other people. So that's where the Mindfulness Medic was born. And then I realized that there was ten in six fundamental things that I was doing in my life and applying to my life that was leading to that transformation. And that's where my six pillars came.

00:26:58 Jason: And that's kind of the whole basis of the Mindfulness Medic. I've used presence, gratitude, spirituality, family, fitness, and financial freedom. Those are my six pillars of how I've transformed my life and what I use to always fall back on when things get hard in my life. Because when I use and apply those six pillars, they always point my compass true north again. 

00:27:18 Cinnamon: I'm just speechless and I'm like tearing up. I have wrote the littlest that I have ever written because I'm just hanging on whatever comes next. This is a little bit different. I only have a page and a half of notes. And because I've just been like, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, what else?"

00:27:46 Erin: Hey there, listener. If you could ask any question or freely talk about any challenge related to being on the job and no one would know, what would you say? We are excited to share about our confidential hotline that we created just for you. Through this confidential hotline, you can leave a message sharing a success, a struggle, or simply ask a question. 

00:28:08 Erin: We will spotlight calls and offer feedback and insight from a licensed therapist and a certified coach who work exclusively with first responders. You can access our hotline voicemail by visiting afterthetonesdrop.com and clicking the voicemail tab. Additionally, you can join our mailing list if you'd like or easily follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all the most recent updates. You know the drill. Telephone, tell a friend, tell a first responder.

00:28:52 Cinnamon: Erin, I'll let you talk for a minute. 

00:28:53 Erin: Well, one of the things that I do for our private practice is I am an integration coach. And so often, folks will come to me after the fact. After they hit a certain part of their process and their treatment with Cinnamon, they'll come to me. And we are focusing on just the things that you explained, the gratitude, the mindfulness, the presence, the personal responsibility, the accountability, all of that. 

00:29:17 Erin: And so to watch all of the things or listen to all of the things that you've gone through, the fact that you intuitively had this, whatever it was inside you say, oh wait, it doesn't have to be like this. I could do something different about it. So much so that you did it. I mean, that is just unheard of in the human form in general, most of the time. I mean, let alone in the first responder form. It's like, oh no, I couldn't possibly do these things.

00:29:51 Erin: And some of the things that I work with my clients on is they don't even know what presence is. And I'm like, do you know what your butt is right now? Your present, you know, like it's starting with such small little details like that. And it's this mind blowing stuff that they're uncovering. So when you said in the very beginning like, oh, I'm just now gonna start going to therapy. I was like, what? How? 

00:30:14 Cinnamon: Right? 

00:30:15 Erin: And creation cannot be possible because again, like I said, I watch your videos. You're so well spoken. It's Incredible just how you articulate and communicate in a way that I could feel everything you were saying and understood completely. You have a real gift So...

00:30:33 Jason: Thank you.

00:30:35 Erin: Thank you to the powers that be that put you in this place because I really foresee you making such a massive difference You already are. 

00:30:42 Jason: Well, I appreciate.

00:30:48 Cinnamon: Okay. So can I just have you go through, I feel like our listeners will have need to hit rewind, but can you go through your six pillars again? 

00:30:55 Jason: Yeah, absolutely. 

00:30:56 Cinnamon: Just so our listeners can hear that one more time. 

00:30:59 Jason: Right. I do wanna preface, I don't know if it was a point of intuition more than it was just survival mode. I needed something to apply to my life to change my direction. So maybe a little bit of intuition, little bit of survival. I just wanna be fair with that assessment. 

00:31:17 Cinnamon: We talk a lot about the preventative stuff, but man, I've watched departments offer yoga, I've done trainings on mindfulness, and the reality is, is that most of our first responders think it's bullshit or unnecessary until it's reactive. And that's not a slam on our people. That's more about it takes something happening for what you called survival mode, but also for you to tap into that intuition and pay attention. Like wait a minute, this is not working. 

00:31:55 Cinnamon: First, I have to break through some barriers to acknowledge that it's not working. Then second, I have to have the wherewithal to be able to stop and think and identify these pieces and then know how to at least have the initiative to go do the research to like, okay, I have this concept that pops up in my head, but now like, what does that mean? And how do I make my experience make sense if I go Google it and realize there's a whole world about mindfulness out there, but I had this epiphany in my own little bubble that connect. 

00:32:32 Cinnamon: So as much as we preach, and I am a big advocate of this, of that preventative stuff. It's almost like there's this huge barrier before the come to Jesus moment when we realize this is what we should have been doing all along. And how do we get that buy-in, not even just from the departments and the agencies, but from the individuals that this needs to be something a part of what you're doing as much as you're taking off your uniform, washing it to get the carcinogens off. All of the things, like how do we do that preventative stuff in a way that looks like cancer? 

00:33:16 Jason: It's a grassroots effort, I think, in normalizing vulnerability. Vulnerability is this really scary word to people. It has a lot of connotation of weakness applied to it. And I think in order for us to start that change within, I don't know if we'll ever be able to change the whole culture, but I believe that we can make a culture within the culture, if that makes sense. And by doing that, we'll lead by example. And it just takes that normalization of vulnerability. It takes people just standing up and going, "Yeah, I suffer from this stuff. I have those bad thoughts. I suffer from that same darkness. And it's okay. And these are the things I use and apply to my life to make myself better." Try them out. They might work for you. 

00:33:16 Jason: The vulnerability thing is like a superpower, I think. And it's something that people need to realize that it doesn't mean that you're weak. It doesn't mean that you're incapable. It doesn't mean that you're not cut out for the job. On the administration level, people need to feel secure in their jobs. If they approach people and say, “Hey, I'm not feeling good or I'm having suicidal thoughts,” or, “I think I might have PTSD.” They need to not feel like there's going to be negative career ramification on them. Or are they going to lose their health benefits if they get fired? Cause all those reasons. So I think the main thing, like, just to answer your questions, that grassroots effort from within departments of normalizing vulnerability, you can still be tough and rough and still be vulnerable at the same time. It's not. 

00:34:41 Cinnamon: Well, don't you think there's almost oxymoronic in the sense that we think of vulnerability as a weakness, but not to be vulgar, but it takes a whole lot of balls to walk into a room and say, "You guys, I am struggling." That is, to me, vulnerability requires the absolute apex of strength and courage and bravery because you know what the possible costs are and you do it anyway. So to me, it's just, well, oxymoronic that we would categorize vulnerability as a weakness when in fact it takes the utmost strength to acknowledge what everybody in the room has already endured to some degree. 

00:35:34 Erin: Yeah, well, and the idea of vulnerability though, and it being considered a weakness, that's been the conversation since the beginning of time, I believe, because if you think about vulnerable, like I'm thinking like if you have... I don't know, a piece of paper and it gets wet, then it becomes vulnerable to breaking. And so I think that that is what often people liken it to is this idea of it getting weak or not as strong. And I think that that's where the conversation can change is we're not implying it's something that is tangible like that, that would then make it weak. It's the bigger picture. And for me, vulnerability and surrender go hand in hand. 

00:36:20 Erin:  And you use the word survival. And in my mind, I'm like, it sounds like surrender. Sounds a lot like I'm waving my white flag. This is not working and something's got to give, which is again, another word that people are like, "I'm not giving up." I'm like, no, surrender is actually not giving up. Surrender is like putting down the weapon and being in that moment. Like I'm gonna be here. But again, culturally words like vulnerability and surrender have gotten lumped into this thing of, "Well, you're just weak. You're giving up. You're a coward." And I'm like, "No, not at all. The opposite." So...

00:37:02 Jason: I  think a large part of it too, is the fear of judgment. And that was a massive roadblock for me for a long time. So we have all of these fears of being judged by our peers, our colleagues, and everyone externally, and then we also have the fears of our own judgment in our own minds, which prevent us from doing those things like being vulnerable. And one of the keys for me was just, was realizing that this was up to me. This was all about self-rescue. I realized nobody else was gonna solve my issues, nobody else was gonna swoop in and solve my mental health issues, nobody else was going to save me from this but myself. 

00:37:38 Jason: And then I realized everyone else has the same fears that I do. Every single person on earth intrinsically shares similar fears, one of them being the judgment of other people. So when you realize that everybody in the room that you're being vulnerable with deep down inside, whether they want to admit it or not, has the same fears, what's the barrier then? Everyone's the same, everyone has the same fears, everyone has those same apprehensions. So just be vulnerable and be your authentic self. Because by doing that and sharing your story and sharing your message and making your message, it can really impact other people's lives. And if people within every department would just be willing to do that, we would see the reduction in suicides and we'd see the reduction in improvement in mental health. 

00:38:28 Erin: Go ahead, Cinnamon. I feel like I'm bogarting the questioning today. 

00:38:31 Cinnamon: Ooh, different. Well, I was just thinking about what you said, Jason, the idea that everyone in the room has had moments, if they're honest with themselves. Have had moments that are similar to that being shared by the person opting to be vulnerable. And my experience has been in the aftermath of that listening to folks and how much respect they have for the individual sharing. And it's almost like there's a fear and then there's the reality of what actually happens. And the fear is so paralyzing that we very rarely get to experience the gift of being accepted and being respected for our honesty. 

00:39:24 Cinnamon: I have never, ever, ever once had anyone come to me, whether it's in a session or outside of a session, and said, "You know what, I told them, and they all laughed at me. They made fun of me." That is not been, you guys are caring, like helpers. So the idea that you fear the judgment of each other, given that you have committed your life to helping is again, one of those oxymorons that just, God, it doesn't make sense in the light of the lives that are being lost and the suffering. 

00:40:01 Cinnamon: And I don't know, we haven't got to this part in your story, but how many divorces have happened, but then they get it together afterwards, but it's too late. We had a guest who talked about the destruction of his marriage and how tragic it was because he's such an advocate and such an inspiration today, but like him and the love of his life don't get to be together anymore because he waited too long. So what you're doing and what you're talking about, and I really hope you and your wife are still together, is so--

00:40:32 Jason: Yeah. We are.

00:40:35 Cinnamon: Without therapy, which is odd. 

00:40:37 Erin: I know, I'm still like, what?

00:40:39 Cinnamon: Yeah, the fact that you self-directed through this is honestly a goddamn miracle. It is so rare that we get to hear people do what you're doing, say what you're saying, and then say, you know what? I had to figure this out all on my own. 

00:40:55 Jason: All of that, but I realized too at this point, there's a lot of weight you just can't lift by yourself. And that's why I decided to start therapy for myself, starting a couple of weeks. So even throughout that transformation, there's still that epiphany that you have where there's still a lot of unresolved stuff there that I need to unpack.

00:41:16 Cinnamon: Sure. Well, you mentioned, and if you've listened to even the last three episodes, we're kind of childhood trauma junkies, or I in particular am a little bit obsessed. Those are my two areas of expertise as first responders in childhood trauma and who knew they would overlap the way they have. But I think it's important because it was at the beginning of your story that we go back and acknowledge it, that you have even noticed that there is this common thread that runs through when we talk about childhood adversity or childhood trauma, and it's wanting to be the person that someone had or wanting to be this person that someone didn't have, that you want to help. 

00:41:55 Cinnamon: And it also gives you this other identity of rather being the victim, you get to be, I don't wanna say the savior cause I don't think it's that, but you get to be on the other side of that. And we talk all the time about the linkage of childhood adversity and first responder work. And the numbers just prove what you have to say. We know that most first responders have at least one ACE and it's usually closer to four or six. 

00:42:29 Erin: Yeah. We get really excited when our guests are the ones that bring it up. So we don't seem so obsessive all the time, but right. Yeah. What I was gonna ask you and I had to write it down so I didn't forget, but I wonder you are on this path to healing and to mindset and everything else. So how do the folks that you work with receive what you're up to? And I'm just like envisioning this like super calm Buddha like department out there and the States are in the country somewhere, but I'm sure that's probably not the case, but are they on board? 

00:43:03 Jason: It's like everything else. You have a lot of people who support it. And then there's also the old school generation is like, Oh, I don't know about that whole mindfulness thing, which I get. It's not for everyone, but I think the core principle behind just taking accountability for your situation and applying simple things to your life to make yourself just more mentally and physically resilient is pretty universal. So rather than using the word gratitude, I'll just be like, "Do you have things you're grateful for?" I'm just going to change these things to make them a little bit more relatable to a wider spectrum of people. But yeah, I mean, for the most part, it's all well received.

00:43:42 Jason: I get a lot of good feedback from people online in the social media space who send me messages just saying thank you. It's helping. So I know the potential for impact is there for sure. Even people being apprehensive of reaching out because they're like, well, if I reach out and say thank you, then that shows I'm weak too. So it's just getting over those barriers slowly and just changing that culture. 

00:44:02 Erin: Right. Except for no one would really know. It's like why we have our hotline. So you can just call, no one has to know it's you. I mean, you have that more of an intimate space, but you also do coaching, correct? Don't you have a side of MindfulnessMedic that's a coaching service? 

00:44:20 Jason: Yeah. 

00:44:21 Erin: Did I make that up? 

00:44:22 Jason: It's a private. 

00:44:23 Erin: Okay. 

00:44:23 Jason: No, private one-on-one coaching, just aimed towards first responders, people in healthcare who have that similar thing that I had in life where you just have that. Because I got to a point in my career where it was just I needed to not identify with being a firefighter paramedic anymore. I needed to identify with who I truly was as a person. And I realized that my identification with my career was also contributing to a lot of this mental health stuff. I was just so heavily invested in being a firefighter paramedic and my titles and my accolades and everything else. I lost who I was. 

00:44:53 Jason: So the whole premise of my coaching group is just people who have that same frequency, who want to do more, that they have that voice, that calling to do more with their life, they want to serve in a new capacity, a higher level, that I can help them with that through my experience, through my journey, and really help them focus in on what that is for them, what their true purpose is, tapping into their highest potential in life, and realizing that it's okay to have that pursuit outside of being a first responder. You can still love what you do, but you don't have to be identified with it. 

00:45:25 Cinnamon: So what you're making me think of is one of the challenges that we see, and I think we even did an episode on identity and what it means when your entire identity is consumed by this first responder career role that you have and how it pushes everything else out. And then if something happens, whether it's retirement or injury, and you don't have that, there's almost like this collapse, almost like if it was like a ghost on Scooby-Doo. It just like is this inward collapse that I don't have anything left if you take away that identity. 

00:46:06 Cinnamon: And what does that say about our families and our children and our hobby? Like if we aren't anything without this identity, then somewhere we went wrong and put the emphasis too much in one place. And I love the idea that your focus is, okay, it's not about being a firefighter or a paramedic or a police officer or a corrections officer. It's about being on that frequency of wanting to contribute to the greater good. And let's open up and expand our thinking in terms of ways to do that. And how do we start at home in our own bodies.

00:46:57 Erin: Hey there to all you fearless folks who've been tuning in to After the Tones Drop. You know, we've been dishing out some real deal mental health wisdom for our first responders and we need your help to keep it rolling. So here's the deal. Take a minute and do us a favor by leaving a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform. And listen, we're not expecting a novel here. Just a few lines about what you're appreciating about the show. Whether it's our interviews, perhaps the educational aspect, or just our goofy humor and metaphors. And your feedback, it's like the gasoline in our engine, fueling us to bring you more of the good stuff. So let's keep that siren wailing and those reviews pouring in. Thanks, we appreciate you.

00:47:44 Cinnamon: I like you, Jason. I like you a lot. We're big fans.

00:47:47 Erin: So speaking of being a big fan listeners, if you want to learn more about Jason, what he's up to about Mindfulness Medic, you can obviously, find him on Instagram, find him on Facebook. His website is mindfulnessmedic.net and on there you can get yourself some sweet swag. I'm like, "I know I'm getting Cinnamon for Christmas," Mindfulness Medic shirt, some stickers, but it's all there. 

00:48:13 Cinnamon: I do love stickers.

00:48:14 Erin: Yeah, learn. 

00:48:15 Jason: Who doesn't? 

00:48:15 Erin: I know, like a good student. But yeah, maybe get yourself some one-on-one coaching.

00:48:21 Cinnamon: From this man. Obviously it's clear that he knows what he's talking about. And it's so organic. Can we just talk about that again? The fact that this isn't stuff that you learned in a book or necessarily initiated by reading online. This was this internal self-seeking process that whether it was intuition or survival mode or intuition prompted because of desperation, who cares, you got there and it's a higher plane than most of us arrive at before the time we leave this earth. 

00:49:00 Erin: Right, that's what I was thinking was higher calling. You tapped into your higher calling. So wow. Well, is there anything that you felt you left out, Jason, or that you would like to add that you would like for our listeners to know. Obviously, I'm going to post all your deets in the show notes so people know how to find you. 

00:49:18 Cinnamon: She's still 40 something. Do not let her fool you by using the word deets. 

00:49:23 Erin: I'm cool. 

00:49:27 Jason: That's fine. My son says words all the time and I'm like, "What? What is going on?" I thought I was cool. Not anymore. 

00:49:35 Erin: Right. I know. Now we're old.

00:49:42 Jason: Really. I'm old. I mean, I could talk about the six pillars. I know Cinnamon had asked me about that. 

00:49:41 Cinnamon: Yes, can you repeat those again? 

00:49:43 Jason: I get easily distracted and I go shiny object a lot. So the six pillars are in the logo, one, two, three, four, five, six, which a lot of people don't know, makes up the two Ms of the mindfulness medic. That's pretty cool. 

00:49:55 Erin: Did you do that too? Or did someone design that for you? 

00:49:58 Jason: My brother's my artist, so he helped me design it. 

00:50:00 Erin: But you came up with it. 

00:50:02 Jason: Yep. 

00:50:03 Erin: Graphic designer too. 

00:50:07 Cinnamon: Another hat. Another bullet point on the resume. Yeah. All right. Pillars. 

00:50:12 Jason: So the pillars, so presence, just the realization that we're running out of time. That's the resounding message that was in my head as a young father with kids and realizing that I was going to have all these regrets in life if I didn't start maximizing every second I had. So presence in the moment that nothing else exists, that getting wrapped up in future anxieties is just the anticipation of pain and things that haven't yet occurred, like they're not real. And then also not getting caught up in the things that have happened in our past. And just trying to be present in the moment as much as possible. 

00:50:46 Jason: That's where the hourglass design came from, because each design has its place in one of the pillars. So the recognition that we're handed an hourglass at the beginning of our lives and we don't know how much sand is in it. So maximize every moment you have. Gratitude is just finding those simple things in life that we're grateful for. 

Those things that fill our cup, that bring us joy, and to really focus in on those things. And that no matter how bad we think we have it, no matter how bad our life is, no matter how much trauma we think we have, if you're really honest with yourself, there's always something to be grateful for. And as long as you can hang on to that, it'll give you hope. It'll be your light. It'll be that lighthouse you need in order to guide you from crashing into the rocks. It'll help you triumph over that darkness you're feeling. 

00:51:30 Jason: And then spirituality. I think it's important for everyone to have a belief in a higher power into something bigger than themselves. I don't care what you believe in as long as you believe in something that's the main premise. So finding that something that gives you purpose in life helps you drive forward, whether that's God, Buddha, Jesus, the universe, like whatever label you want to give it, believe in something bigger than yourself. 

00:51:55 Jason: And then fitness is physical and mental fitness. So I believe in my opinion, the way you feel physically and the way you treat your body has a direct correlation to how you feel mentally. So instituting a high degree of physical fitness in your life, that's what I did. I used to be 260 pounds and I lost all that weight and I started to feel better about myself. I started eating clean, healthy foods, less processed stuff. Just started incorporating all those things in my life. Started training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, ice baths, helped with the mental resilience and the mental fitness. And just holding that high degree of fitness in your life.

00:52:34 Jason: Family and tribe is just the people you surround yourself with. So family is the most important thing we have. Our families are the ones who are there for us at the end of all of this. That point got driven home with me. I had a colleague who I worked with. He was my partner for a while who ended up passing away. And I realized that the brotherhood quote unquote, they ended up forgetting about him in a matter of a month and they moved on with their lives, right? At the end of all of this, you're lucky if you get a park bench or a tree named after you, that the people who will remember you forever and who truly care about you are waiting for you at home. 

00:53:11 Jason: So while it's important to invest your time at work into formal relationships, people that truly matter in our lives are the ones that we tend to ignore the most is our family. We end up sacrificing them for our careers, our children and our spouses. And then tribes, just the people you surround yourself with. Surround yourself with people that genuinely want to see you succeed and win in life. And those are your people. Those are the people that you should hold dear to your heart. 

00:53:36 Jason: And then the financial freedom thing is figuring out what it is in your life as far as making your money work for you rather than working against your money. Whatever method you want to work into investing, paying off debt, what has worked for us has helped us set ourselves up where I don't have to work all that out over time. And I don't have to burn the candle at both ends to make everything work. So by making sure we're financially sound and secure, it affords us the ability to not have to work all of that over time like we do in public safety and healthcare just to pay the bills. 

00:54:12 Cinnamon: So does that mean that maybe we would go rent a cabin on the lake and rent a boat rather than buying a lake house and a boat when we only get to use a little bit and then we have to work overtime all year long to pay for it. 

00:54:26 Jason: Right. Yeah, stuff like that. Buying the brand new pickup truck as soon as you become a firefighter, which is like a thing, apparently. And a mortgage payment every month. 

00:51:30 Erin: And a motorcycle, a staple, you know. 

00:54:36 Cinnamon: And either an RV, a camper, or a boat, right? There's gotta be, yeah, there's like a starter kit. 

00:54:44 Jason: Yeah, they're burning themselves out, having to work two overtime shifts per week to pay for it also.

00:54:53 Cinnamon: Which then not only does it burn you out physically and mentally, but then it pulls you away from your family and you start to disconnect. 

00:54:55 Jason: Exactly. 

00:54:55 Cinnamon: Because when you are there, you can't connect. There's no time for connection between exhaustion and just simply being out of the house. 

00:55:05 Jason: There's second and third order effects to it all. It's like the rock and the pond analogy with how far the ripples go. You think that that one decision is having this remote effect while it's actually having this massive effect. 

00:55:23 Cinnamon: Yeah. Beautiful. 

00:55:19 E : It's really yummy. Cinnamon, are you just writing things down?

00:55:23 Cinnamon: I am. I'm gonna just turn it so you can't actually see. And that's just the last page. This is one of the second page. This is what I do though, cause I have that brain, that ADHD brain that I can hear you and I can write it on paper, but I can't comprehend it until I'm done listening to you. And then I can swallow it down. So I have to make sure that I have it in writing. Otherwise I will completely miss what you say. 

00:55:50 Cinnamon: And again, we notice that there's a huge correlation with our first responders and something like ADHD that has similar characteristics when it comes to cognition as trauma. That brain fog, that difficulty thinking, and one is obviously related to a trauma. The other one is just being neuro-atypical. But yeah, I've learned that a lot of the ways that I have to do things to make them work for me. I offer those same suggestions for my clients that have post-traumatic stress or a co-occurring disorder of ADHD because they've worked around as much as they could and then it becomes something that they can't work around anymore. And it's kind of one of those things. With everything else, I've always been able to handle this. Why all of a sudden can I not handle this? I'm like, well, because you got zapped twice. So in a nutshell, I'm a note taker. 

00:56:55 Cinnamon: I say I'll have to say this. So I do have a question, Jason. Are you open to us adding you as a resource on our resource page for folks to potentially reach out for coaching or support? 

00:57:06 Jason: Absolutely. 

00:57:08 Cinnamon: Okay. So if you are looking to contact him, you can find him on our resource page. All the links will be in the show notes. And Jason, wow, we are so thrilled to have had the opportunity to meet you. What you see is what you get. What you see online is what you get in real life. And it's that authenticity and from the heart thing that you've got going on that I know will take you really, really far. So thank you for taking the time to be on our show.

00:57:38 Jason: Thanks for having me. 

00:57:39 Cinnamon: I imagine you've been on shows before, have you not? 

00:57:42 Jason: Nope, it's the first. 

00:57:43 Erin: Well, buckle up, honey, because- 

00:57:45 Cinnamon: Oh, get ready. They're coming for you. What you have figured out and what you possess and what you are willing to share with everyone else is, again, I don't wanna sound woo, but this is beyond just like that logo. This is a higher plane that most of us do not get to access in our lifetime because we don't slow down enough to do so. And so for those of our listeners who have the desire, the curiosity, the willingness to work with someone like Jason, I can just tell it is life transforming to do what you have done and to be a part of those that come under your wing for your coaching. And I would strongly recommend our people reach out and at a bare minimum, start following this man on some Instagram. 

00:58:41 Erin: Yep. 

00:58:42 Cinnamon: That's where it's at. 

00:58:44 Jason: Well, I appreciate the kind words. I just want everyone to realize out there that on the other side of that darkness, they may be feeling that suffering that they're experiencing that there's a life of joy and potential on the other side. It's just getting over that. It's just taking that accountability and wanting to change their life. 

00:59:01 Cinnamon: And no one is so special that your philosophy can't work for. We hear a lot of that like, yeah, but that won't work for me. No, you're not that special. You are not so special that this program, these concepts when applied cannot be life-changing for anyone and everyone. 

00:59:21 Erin: Right, it's like, it's okay to be afraid and it will work if you do it, period.  Cool story, bro. That's been my thing. I'm bringing that back too. This is how old I am. 

00:59:32 Jason: I remember that.

00:59:41 Erin: Thank you for joining us for today's episode of After the Tones Drop. Today's show has been brought to you by Whole House Counseling. As a note, After the Tones Drop is for informational purposes only and does not constitute for medical or psychological advice. It is not a substitute for professional healthcare advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please contact a local mental health professional in your area if you are in need of any assistance. You can also visit AfterTheTonesDrop.com and click on our resources tab for an abundance of helpful information. And we would like to give a very special thank you and shout out to Vens Adams, Yeti, and Sanda for our show's music.