I’ll work on keeping this short…my parents were decent and did the best they could do with the issues that they had. Â My parents were both addicts when I was a kid and some type of physical or verbal abuse was a daily occurrence. Â Of course it wasn’t all bad, my parents had their good attributes as well, unfortunately the negative far outweighed the positive. Â I spent the majority of my teenage years in an almost constant state of rage and tremendous sadness when I was around my family.
As a preteen, 10-11 years old I started lifting some of my fathers old plastic covered standard weights…the idea was that I would become big and strong enough to protect myself physically from my father. Â From the early years of lifting on my own to starting to play football and lifting weights in high school it all worked like I planned. Â At 15-16 years old my father came at me pissed off and grabbed my shirt like he was going to swing on my and knock me out. Â I told him he gets one shot and after that I wasn’t going to hold back. Â He let go of my shirt and stormed out of the house screaming at me and throwing things.
I wish I could say that the abuse all ended there…that didn’t happen though. Â The verbal abuse became much MUCH worse and that became my internal voice. Â Fast forward to meeting my girlfriend, now wife, cutting all ties with my parents, graduating college, and starting to do some serious work on myself.
Obviously I’m skipping some significant steps, however for the sake of time I’m jumping ahead. I spent years in therapy, reading and taking different certifications on Mindset and creating sustainable changes.
Now the reason for THIS blog…Complacency. Â That’s a BAD word…I was on cruise control this year, especially after the pandemic hit and business got shut down. Â Everything had been going good for years! Â Marriage is great, being a girl dad to three beautiful girls is unbelievable, and business continued to grow and improve year after year…then a couple months ago I allowed one person and about 2 minutes to allow all of the years of work to come crashing down. Â I had a former client send me a barrage of texts and it triggered me back to the way my father would verbally abuse me and talk smack about most everything in my life. Â At first I thought I was good, I raged a little bit and wanted to contact this person and go off…cooler calmer heads prevailed and I let it all go. Â I was actually doing pretty good until this person contact me again after about a month and wanted to come back and start training again…WTF, HELL NO!! Â They did not want to take no for an answer and I had to go to the police station and eventually block all contact. Â The contact from the individual after a month was the tipping point.
I started having anxiety over protecting my family and myself…the entire reason I started lifting weights to protect myself came rushing back and I started eating and training and overthinking and negative thoughts. Â It was too much and took its toll on me. Â I gained over 20 pounds within a couple month period and the anxiety took over when I wasn’t keeping myself busy. Â A couple weeks ago it came to its peak and I ended up in the ER with chest pain. Â I believe it was a panic attack, however the chest X-ray showed enough to need to follow up with my PCP and have a stress test and echocardiogram to be on the safe side. Â The complacency and comfort I felt along with not being totally honest with myself led me into the ER and I felt a little silly to be honest…however it forced me to get back to the basics that allowed me to create the change of mindset in the beginning. Â At this point and time I feel fantastic and feel I’ve put all of this behind me. Â It was a reminder to not allow myself to take my mental health for granted after dealing with all of the shit I’ve gone through and doing all the work to become mentally healthier and stronger. Â I found people to talk to and used numerous other techniques to work through and at times distract me from the PTSD that was this incident and I’m happy that it wasn’t more of a detriment…at a different point many years ago this could have caused some major issues. Â Stay Strong and COMMIT To NO BULL In Your LIFE!
