133 | Peace After Combat with Dr. Tiffany Tajiri

Because this is a very serious podcasts. We need to open up with a very lighthearted dead joke. Why do ducks have tail feathers? Wait for it to cover their butt quack?

Yeah. Coming home. Welcome to the military veteran dad podcast, where it is our mission to bring every dad home. I’m your host, Ben Cooley. I’m a United States Marine veteran husband, and a father. We will bring authentic conversations to inspire action in your life so we can close the gap between the dad you are today.

And the dad you want to be tomorrow. This is the military veteran dad podcast.

Hey guys. Welcome to the week. It is episode 133. I’m your host, Ben coy, as always back here, the microphone to talk about. Impactful episode, I recorded this way back in July. So it’s a little bit of a timeline. It doesn’t have any of the Afghanistan stuff going on. It was actually one of the breadcrumbs to help me get John Troxell that we had on a few weeks ago as well.

So this episode really is going to hit to the core of a big, big question. Where is God in war? Because today’s guest Dr. Tiffany, heard this over and over in her counseling sessions and little, did she know that this would be the answer to her prayer for her own life? For what was going to come next? She is a licensed board certified clinical psychologist, veteran us air force officer and special operations trained psychologists.

And it’s taken part in a lot of cool stuff. I’m just going to leave it at that. She just created rhythm restoration and innovative faith based method that utilizes visualization and bilateral simulation to help those who have endured psychological, painful life experiences and her book peace after combat hands down, can’t recommend it enough.

There is a link down in the show notes. And if you use that link, you were actually supporting the show because it is affiliate link with Amazon doesn’t cost you anymore, but Amazon does give the show a kickback. So if you would like to support the show, please go down there and use the link that’s down there in the show notes to buy that book on Amazon peace.

After combat this episode, we are going to go into some places we’ve never been. I’m going to get counseling and I’m going to go through a rhythm restoration session live right in the podcast. Very sudden, we’re also going to test my dad patients cause my daughter and her ups is twice. And so, and I left those in there just so you can experience the whole arc of what it’s like being a military veteran, dad, podcaster, raising a family and still putting the podcast out every week.

So guys, without further ado, I’m going to get you started right now with Dr. Tiffany the jury. And if you want to hear my big, big, big takeaway, hang on to the other side. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Tiffany. It’s my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me, Ben, we have got another A-class episode here because you have written a book peace after combat, which it kind of continues this theme of talking about PTSD, talking about trauma and talking about no shit going through.

Kind of that battle after the battle that every veteran kind of needs a face. And it doesn’t matter whether you’ve been to war, whether you’ve not been to war, we all have these stories inside that we need to kind of face and go forward through and find that piece. So go ahead and a little bit unpack of what your life looks like today.

A little bit by your military experience. And then we’ll dive into a little bit about the word. I really like what you just said, you know, you said peace after combat, but truly it’s peace after any difficult life experience. Cause life is just tough. Right? And so we got to put on that battle rattle every day, but about me, I am a licensed and board certified clinical psychologist.

I work for the army currently for active duty soldiers. Um, I am the chief of the largest behavioral health clinic at Fort bliss, Texas. I am an air force veteran. And I served for five years. My husband is fantastic. He retired and he was army Colonel and served multiple combat tours. So the two of us together have this huge heart for helping people recover, whether it’s from combat, whether it’s just from life.

We want people to find healing. And most importantly, we find our mission to be within the spiritual realm. So I wasn’t interested what is the Genesis because not every veteran wakes up one day and says, I’m going to go out there and help other veterans in the capacity of what you’ve done. And there was probably this kind of like, almost like a before Christ after Christ moment where you woke up and you’re like, this is where it is.

There’s this higher calling for you is take us to that Genesis moment where you said, this is the path that you were going to. Yeah. I mean, there’s been multiple Genesis moments. So I guess, you know, joining the military was an aha moment for me. I think that was God inspired. He anointed that path. I didn’t expect to join the military.

I didn’t need it for school funding or anything. I had previously gotten a very wonderful, generous scholarship, so it wasn’t something I needed. Um, but all of a sudden it spoke to my heart. Like I wanted to be a psychologist. For our service members. Now, it wouldn’t be the tip of the spear, but I want it to be the one that would be able to support them in whatever endeavors that they were facing.

And then I had another Genesis moment. One day I was bathing my son and I thought, Lord, I feel like I’ve plateaued where I’m at in my career. And you know, I made a supervisory position as a chief of a clinic and I’m a doctor in board certified. Where do I go next? And uh, basically the words I got back that spoke to my heart, where everyday daughter, you are asking me the question.

In fact, every day, people are asking you the question, I’m sorry, where is God in war doc? Every time your soldiers sit in front of you, they ask, where has God in war? I used to be a Christian or I used to be spiritual, but now after the things I’ve seen, I think I’ve lost my faith. And so I thought, wow, this is the perfect time, the perfect opportunity.

So I decided to write. Piece after combat, because I wanted to answer that question to let them know God was on their side is always on their side. God’s not the author of the painful things. They saw ESA walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil because God is with me. And he goes with us and goes before us.

And from a spiritual perspective, living in eternal life, we have to really look at no weapon formed against us, will ever prosper in the spiritual realm. So I want to go to a different moment within that story because what I’ve had to learn and what a lot of other people I talked to learn, the hard way is God will always lay things on your heart, but it’s up to you to take the first step.

Was there something else that kind of helps you take that first step or was it kind of just that moment where you realized this. You know, prior to God had placed in my heart to right, to right. To right to. Right. And so I wake up at zero dark 30 when I was still active duty. We’re donating the uniform as a green Suiter.

And I woke up every morning to write these fiction novels that were like dystopian fiction, totally goofy. It was like that whole hunger games timeframe. Do you remember that with Suzanne Suzanne Collins? I believe the author. I was like, I’m going to have the best dystopian fiction. So I work with woke up every morning, writing, writing, writing, and it went nowhere.

I got rejection after rejection. I was like, Lord, why did you place this in my heart? I was very confused and swollen about it and then took a couple of years off. And then all of a sudden I had that aha moment. And then everything just came together. I got a literary agent the same week. I put out a proposal and then.

A publishing deal came down the pipeline rather quickly. And so it was really an anointing over my life. And I was really excited about that and I knew that was the path. So God is good. So let’s go towards the book and finding this idea would that you wanted to write the book. Now, most veterans have this idea that we have first, almost without, before we realized that there’s peace.

And we realized that we can be the captain of our own ship through our own storms in that component within your life. Was there something that you kind of needed to go through and process before you could fully have the capacity to write this book? Like, was there a feeling or a story that you were kind of running from from the past, maybe.

You know, I, I absolutely agree with you. There was this one time when I was in the air force and I believe I was a young captain at the time I was in my late twenties. I had just become a doctor and a psychologist, and there was air show mishap, and one of the aircraft downed and ended up catching fire.

And we lost the life in the aircraft. And many of us were there to witness that and overcoming that myself, having to. Raise my hand and essentially say, Hey, I got to be vulnerable. I know I’m a doctor. I know I’m a psychologist. And I know everybody wants me to treat all the people who just witnessed this, but I witnessed it too.

And, um, I need help. And so before I can help anyone else, I had to get the help that I needed. And it was a blessing because the psychologist I worked with was phenomenal and she did a form of treatment that helped inspire the treatment I do today. And the form of treatment I created, which is called rhythm restoration.

So it was all a blessing in disguise. I learned so much and, uh, found closure in it. And that also helped me get to a place to understand where other people might be going through in their difficult times, especially in combat. And I think what you’re hitting on here is within like the, all the stories that veterans go through, whether it’s tragic or whether it’s fairly ordinary, but still something you need to process what we all try to do or what I’ve done with my podcast and this podcast, helping others.

Is when you take your mess and make it your message. Now your message doesn’t have to be something you go out there and try to do something with, but your message could just be a conversation with the veteran that’s in the same spot and you help them through when you can find purpose in that shared kind of like that shared hell that you walk through.

Like that is where you can truly kind of, um, kind of build some strong foundation to find that peace because you no longer have this like darkness holding you back. It’s actually something you can carry with you on the front of you within the light. And it’s something you wear as a badge of honor versus something that you think is holding you back.

And I can imagine that story was almost like was probably an imposter syndrome a little bit in there as you were going through that, like you have this inner darkness, you’re trying to do these things on the outside and this conflict. And until you merge them, you couldn’t find your own peace to be able to write the book with that.

Could they have the whole title in the narrative? You’re absolutely right. You know, the goal with the human brain is to find closure. The goal of the human brain is to find peace is to find wholeness, right? I know you talk a lot about home, but home does not necessarily need to be a place. It’s a, it’s a being in a state of wholeness.

And as a Christian, I firmly believe it’s found in God’s love. And whenever we have something rattle us and we get stuck on it, the goal is to find closure, to find peace and to become whole, oftentimes the hallmark trait of PTSD is avoidance. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to talk about it.

And the more we avoid the worse it essentially gets. And so with that being said, we need to confront it so that we can make it whole again. So let me give you an example. You’ve heard, have you heard of Phantom limb. I have not. Is it where you lose a limb and you kind of have this pain from like feeling it?

Is that just a Dr. House episode? That’s the only reason why I know. And he used some. To make this guy, have his brain and see an arm there. And his brain stopped having the pain of the muscle, trying to make a movement and an arm that doesn’t have it stop stealing my punchline. No Phantom limited. So an amazing phenomenon, um, once you heal it.

Okay. So this is talking about wholeness. There’s when you lose a limb. And so many of our combat veterans do lose a limb when they come back and, and the limb is like in the last position that it is, the brain has a mask for it. Right? So the brains neuroplastic, which is amazing, it can change shape. It can change direction based on where your mind directs the brain.

All right. And so. When you have fans of limb, you’re feeling the pains that you had in the last position your arm was in, but the arm’s not there, but there’s still a map on your brain for the arm. Hasn’t gotten rid of it just because the arm’s gone doesn’t mean your brain has rewired itself yet. And so they use that box, that mirror box to help them overcome.

So what you do is you get into that box and you, you use the limb that’s working properly, and that can move. That is, that is present. And you see it in a reflection through a mirror box and it looks like. The limb that you lost. And when you release the arm, you’re able to put it in a position where it brings it comfort.

It actually rewires the brain. And it has a residual effect that lasts a very long time. And so what I’m getting at here is that the mind is always trying to find wholeness, right? So from a spiritual perspective for me and healing spiritually, what did I have to do to overcome? I had to visualize the pilot that we had met, and I had to visualize him in heaven.

I had to visualize him whole and healed. I had, you know, I had some stuck points. I felt like, you know, if I was a better traumatic stress response team leads, somehow this wouldn’t have happened. You know, the enemy is always whispering. BS lies in your head. Like you could have done more. Had you done this dah, dah, dah, and I.

Drawn to that and had some form of what I called twisted guilt. It’s a manipulated form of guilt for something I could not control. And so I had to dig deep and I had to, um, visualize one of my things that I do in rhythm restoration is visualization. And so I had to visualize the pilot hole. I had to visualize the pilots, homie, Hey, it’s all good.

You did your best. I’m in heaven. I’m at peace. And I made whole in Christ. And so that gave me closure that brought my trauma to completion in a sense that it brought peace and a sense of wellbeing where I could move forward and then have a testimony. Right. My mess became a message, like you said, then the one thing that I wanted to kind of aluminate within that is something you talk about in the book, which is called the illusion of country.

Which is something we don’t have, but we almost feel, and I think it’s tied to that. The part with the arm is you want to control, but you can’t see it. And no matter what you try to overthink, you can’t think your way out of trying to control something that you’d never had control of in the beginning. So go ahead, unpack that and how we often get that.

Yeah. You know, there’s control in the sense of internal and that’s the only thing we have control of our own thoughts, our own emotions and our own behaviors. That’s internal. We choose how we react. We direct, like you said, we are the captain of our choices and decision-making, it is our mind that directs the glob, the gloop of the brain and determines how it’s wired.

Okay. So. External, however, we have no control over anything externally. And the word that we have is influence how it can be a high degree of influence or a low degree. Now, when we’re in military language and we’re in combat, we want to have positive control over our battlespace. Right. And, um, that’s an illusion, the correct term, essentially, so that we don’t fry our own minds later down the line is we want to have as much influence maximal influence over the objective as possible.

Um, implying that we have control really means that everything that happens is our own responsibility. When really we don’t have control. We can’t, we can’t determine whether a UFO is going to come out of nowhere and obstruct our mission, you know, so we only have influence and giving ourselves that term influence actually gives us grace.

When we find ourselves in. So as you were talking there, I had this idea that I want to go towards it. I’ve never done it before. So we’re going to see where it goes. I’m going to create a story of a veterans out there listening that I know is out there listening in some shape or fashion, cause I’ve seen in different shapes of this veteran out there.

So David David lost two friends in Iraq, both were FA family members and left kids behind David came home every day. He struggles to reconnect with his current family because of the guilt of knowing that his friends didn’t come home. And he did, what is that dad need to work through? What does that dad need to understand about how God shows up in war and how God showed up in this cluster?

Fuck of an example, that is this guy’s story. What does that David need to know to walk through? For sure. Let me get you set up first for success. And that is about this algorithm that I have put together in the book. So God neuro, biologically wired you and I to love and be loved. Okay. So we are neurobiologically prime to, for love and in order to have love.

We have to have relationships. So relationship is a precursor to love and then a precursor to relationship is free. Well, okay. God’s not going to ever take away. Our free will because the purpose of our creation, which is love would then be null and void. It would essentially be obsolete. So freewill is imperative and everything that we do, the decision to enlist in or commission in the military is our choice.

It’s freewill God, doesn’t twist our hand to do that. Right? The same thing goes, when we go into combat, we know what we could potentially be getting ourselves into. So freewill is very, very important. And the enemy obviously has free. Will I always tell everyone that we are vessels and vessels are meant to do tooth two things and that’s be poured into and pour out of them.

And the question is, what do you allow to pour into yourself? Which consequently you will pour out. Are you going to pour in London? And pour that out or darkness, sadness, grief, revenge, anger. And then consequently, pour that out as well. You’ve got to choose. And for people who are like David, their vessel unfortunately is congested.

And so they’re not pouring much in important, much out. So we need to decongest that vessel. I confront that hurtful and painful experience. So the bottom line up front for me with David is, Hey, God loves you. God didn’t will. The death of those. You loved God has the eternal life for them. They were gone right away.

They were here one moment and gone the next, the right hand of God, they are made eternal, you know, Jesus fully God fully man was not immune to the suffering of the world. And if anyone understands sacrifice. And life, it would be him. And so when they look at that, like even God went through having to sacrifice, even God went through suffering, it’s no doubt that we’re going to as well and not to the same degree that our Lord did.

And so one that helps them realize, you know what God is on my side. Did you know that spirituality is actually the most important protective factor when it comes to suicide prevention research has proven that. And so with all that being said, what I would do in a session with him is I have this home in my book and titled if they could speak.

And in that book, it’s basically the service member up in heaven. I’m talking to David, the service members, they would say, Hey bro, we love you, man. You know, I am a kite and you are tethered to me by a line and the line that tethers on. Is so negative. It’s so toxic. I wish you would just get rid of it, but you are so stubborn, David.

We know that you’re not going to because you think that if you let go of that line, that somehow our sacrifice will have been in vain, but that’s not the truth. If you’re going to be tethered to it, that tethered to us, I want you to cut that line of hurt pain and suffering. And instead, I want you to tether to us with a line of love and gratitude.

You know, I don’t want you to remember what I looked like when I died. And my worst moment. I want you to remember that time that I immediately laughed so hard. You pissed your pants, bro. You remember that one time when, and it goes on and on. I want you to be happy and I want you to be free. You know, stop thinking about suicide.

Stop contemplating, how you want to end your life. Get present, be with your family. I sacrifice my life so you can have yours. I want you to live yours. Well, live it loved and live it. And so I have them visualize this, doing a sense of like meditation, where they do bilateral stimulation, um, tapping with their eyes closed and they go into these scripts and these scripts bring them closure.

They rehearse them over and over again, and kind of like that Phantom limb, their neuroplastic brain starts to find closure, healing and wholeness in these visualizations. And that’s where we find peace. I absolutely love that because in a much more or less delicate sense, I always kind of shortened it down to he didn’t come home and you did.

So it takes up to you to create and love your kids two times as much, because there’s a kid out there that never gets to feel his father’s love of getting you do. And by you not coming home and honoring the gift that he gave you by the come home and to love your kids still, like it is at the core of love.

And when you don’t honor that, and don’t show up in your kid’s life, you’re not honoring the gift and the sacrifice that he did. It’s that, um, it’s I kinda like that house switching from like, why did my service matter to my family matters? And I need to show up the legacy of family from the legacy of our service is usually what we get caught up on.

So I absolutely loved how you stretch it out and just kind of walked us through. I could imagine anybody out there that has a similar story to David is probably has severe goosebumps right now, because that’s what I feel right now. When I feel that story and knowing how many dads I’ve talked to that have a similar story that kind of gets them stuck.

I want to season David with one more criteria that I’ve actually just talked to a veteran that listened to the podcast and this veteran just like David gets stuck in the present. He is so fearful of the future that he just stays present in the moment. And so he doesn’t work on the past. He doesn’t actually work in the future and he is just kind of stagnated in the present of insecure on which direction he should go almost to the point where he can’t see the direction of the light that he’s being pulled in.

Almost out of a fear. And he also had kind of a failure of leadership, the leadership structure that he had kind of broke his trust, that he could trust his intuition because he trusted it with them and they failed them almost kind of a moral injury within the context of like, uh, an army officer telling you what to do.

That is something immoral. What does that dad need to know when he’s kind of stuck in the present, but not able to live within the future and coming home for the, in that context? Well, it sounds like he’s stuck in the present because he’s truly stuck in the past. It’s the past experiences where in his brain, his twin.

And so in order to get unstuck, we have to take those memories. We have to, you know, when we have trauma, the trauma is stored in the amygdala of the brain, which is the fear center of the brain. Okay. So we have to take that trauma from the amygdala to the frontal lobe, which is our problem solving part is the part of us that makes us different than primates.

Right? And so when we dissect it and we look at it from a multiple perspective approach and see the traumatic experience, instead of seeing our pain and suffering. Take off our blinders to our pain and suffering. And instead look at where God was in the midst of it. Now he’s not the author of the destruction in it, but he is the author of every good thing.

He is the father of heavenly lights. We’re in every good and precious gift comes from him. And so the divine connections that God put in the pathway of his brothers at arms who were with him, right? The divine connections of a raise or a child that was born, or you never know all these little things that he may have missed because he’s so stuck on his pain.

When he’s able to look at it from a multifaceted perspective, minimize the pain and understand that he has a loving God who is on his side, who understands pain. Then he changes the memory. He actually changes the physical substrates of the memory all the way down to the itty-bitty neurons, even deeper than the neurons themselves to the DNA of how it’s wired.

So when you change the shape of the memory, you file it back into the regular memory. Part of the brain, the longterm memory known as the hippocampus, which is super cool. So he needs to first get on stock before he can move forward. I would, um, if he’s a spiritual person, I would absolutely say, Hey, when has God ever abandoned you?

In the reality, people have abandoned you because they’re selfish and they’re jerks. When has God ever abandoned you? Because we’ll find when we look at our life that yes, there have been jerks. We’re not immune to the jerks of this world. Sometimes we’re the jerks and we understand that hurt people, hurt people and they do selfish things for.

God knows what reasons, but God was the one who parted the red sea. God was the one who oftentimes gives you at the right place at the right time at the right situation, orchestrates all goodness. And so when he’s able to see that yay. As I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you were with me.

When he sees God with him as a companion who walks alongside him, then he won’t be so terrified to step outside of his house. He’ll be like, God always had my six this entire time and you know what? There’s always going to be enemies in the world. And I got to continue to put on my spiritual battle rattle.

And we have literally a section in Ephesians that talks about putting on the whole armor of God, because we are constantly in spiritual warfare. And that’s the reality. We have to understand that what this nuance of David is experiencing is spiritual warfare. And you can choose to listen to the enemy and his BS lies, or you can listen to God’s truth that he did not give you a spirit of fear, but of power love, and a sound mind you didn’t mean to, but you just deepened my thesis on the word home, because you said step outside of the home as the physical structure where we think we’re already safe, but yet we’re not, it’s this a Mirage of safety and security.

And that, that home is the wholeness that you already feel on the inside. As you walk with. And that you’re always home because he’s always with you. Yeah. He’s always with you. If you choose to activate him and acknowledge him. I mean, I mean, truly, even if you ignore him, he’s with you, but it’s whether you feel him or not is whether you choose with your incredible mind to activate his presence within you.

Because there’s different times where, especially in the last year and a half, as the universe has tested me and have a dive deeper into like, just showing up more in my own life. Like when you get that feeling that the universe and God has your back, despite the world around you. And despite all the chaos of the world around us, there’s a lot of chaos.

There’s a lot of reasons why things won’t work out. But if you believe that the universe has your back and that there’s this thing that always is pushing you forward to your better self, and it’s always got your best interest like that feeling. I have felt that more and more leading up towards this the year before.

That the universe has had my back throughout this entire, my entire life even, but I really started to feel it and trust it. And I think that’s that combination of that wholeness. When you trust yourself, you trust that he’s there. And I like what you talk about the word wholeness. You bring that up a lot.

And I often relate backpack to the military core value of integrity and break it down from mathematics. Integrity, broken down is integer an integer and mathematics is a whole number. It’s an fractioned it’s fully whole. And I also like how you talk about the light and darkness, because when you live your life wholly in the light, there is no darkness that kind of consumes your subconscious to kind of keep in the shadows.

And the more you will live your life in the shadows, the more your subconscious has to spend a lot of time to keep it there. And the more you can’t be fully present as well. So if you want to fully live in your life in the light, you’ve got to be a whole life. And I always like seasoning with Superman that he gets his strength from the sun and the light.

Anytime that he’s been. He’s always going to the sun to heal himself because that’s where he gets his power from. And that’s, I think the same kind of feeling that I feel when, anytime I illuminate more of my life where I feel like I’ve stepped more into it, it’s that full strength. And I even feel it when I go for a walk in the morning, I feel when the sun hits my skin, like it’s my Superman moment where I feel like I have this energy now to go through the day to do whatever I’m commanded to do.

I love it. We are rocking in a roll in right now and I love the word chaos in particular, you know, God is not a God, a chaos. God is not a God of confusion. Okay. That’s not from him. You know, the thief comes to steal. This is John 10, 10. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. But I have come that you may have life and habit more abundant.

So there’s a real theme in this world is going to come and destroy. And we’re going to allow that thief in or not. We are going to allow the Cazena. There’s going to be natural chaos in the world around us. All right. That’s just inevitable. But are we going to allow the chaos, electromagnetic, chaos, electrical, impulse, chaos in our brains to throw us off and allow the enemy to wait.

Oh, heck no, we gotta, we got to take our minds, hold them captive to the word. Scripture is so important because it really speaks life. It tells you who you are. It says he, who is in me is greater than he, who is in the world. I am the head and not the tail above and not beneath. It says that we are blessed going in, blessed going out.

There’s so much scripture that declares life. And when we hold our thoughts captive to the truth of who God calls us to be in his love, then the chaos has no place because wherever light is shining, darkness is not relevant period. And I think if, if dive into even focusing on military dads to season it with some advice from that I learned from Oregon Snyder who wrote becoming a king, which is how to enter into the kingdom that God entrusted you with, which is your family.

And I think as military dads, that’s like the final frontier of peace after combat is when you can truly enter the kingdom that is within your field. And lead and protect that kingdom within the walls of what God has given you. I’d like to hear you dive into a little bit of how you see like that family component being a, a really great modality for fatherhood to help a dad go through some of this, but realize that love from your family is one of the most powerful forces that you can feel, especially from your kids like that.

Ron is that no matter how you feel on the inside, they still see you as this perfect human being that God sees you as well. And it’s almost that reminder that we need to feel, but it’s that anxiety and bullshit darkness that tells us that like, we need to pull back, but actually it’s where we need to go closer towards.

So I’d like you to hear it, unpack it and see what, um, how you break that down. Yeah. I believe there’s a part in scripture that says, forgive me if I’m wrong, let the little children come to me. Do not hinder them for the kingdom. Of God belongs to such as these. And what I equate that to is that children are just so precious in the sense that they have this awe and wonder of the world that, you know, we don’t have as adults, we are tainted, right?

We seen things we just don’t believe, you know, they think and think in terms of Santa Claus, fairies and little Easter bunnies that travel around and lay eggs. I mean, it’s just so fantastic and wonderful that children truly have no sense of. I can’t go to mom and dad and tell them exactly what I want right now.

So why can’t we as adults have that same go boldly before the throne room of grace to God and say, Hey, this is what I need, dad like help me out. I’m struggling for real, you know, we have to have that all in wonder on wonder of the world around us. And I think having children in particular helps. To remind us that we need to see life through that spiritual lens, a lens that is pure, that is not yet tainted by the negativity of the world.

And when we see their love and all of the world, it allows us to feel grounded once more. It’s a beautiful concept. And just as you were explaining that my daughter came in here, my five-year-old daughter came in to get a good night hug. And it was almost like perfectly seasoned with how kids are so innocent.

She knows what I was doing. She still came in here anyhow. And she said, daddy, I just need a good night hug. Like, it’s that feeling that they just need to be reminded that you still love them. Even though I get predator bed, I told you that I love your 10 times when I put her to bed. She still needed that.

Just one more. It’s like just that reminder that they’re so, still pure. And it’s this also this calling that God has given us to lead them into their lives. Through the richness of our own life. I think this is something that many veterans don’t tap into. And I think it’s the, like the biggest untapped potential as military debt.

When you dive into the richness, the sadness and the excitedness of what your life has unfolded, that you’ve seen a lot of the world good and bad. And if you can begin to unweave, then teach that within your conversations with your kids. Like you’d no longer just create a richness of money. You’re creating a rich person of depth of wisdom of they understand that there is evil in the world.

They understand how you face evil in the world and you understand how you’re not defined by evil. Like that’s the richness that I see in every military dad, especially one that have been seasoned with a lot of trauma. And there is something that I learned from Oregon Senator as well, and probably Proverbs 14, four that I’m really starting to dive into and memorize that verse.

It talks about where there is oxygen. There is life and where there are no ox and there is no life. And he politely translated that it takes a lot of shit to make good. And great soil leads, great fruit, and you have great harvest from that soil. And he actually has a podcast become good soil. And the thing you want soil to do is you put shit on it to make it grow better, to fertilize it, to enrich in it.

And like, that’s what I feel like we’re called to as veterans to do with our family, with our tragedy. And I think this is like part of that peaceful component where you realize that, yes, I have a steaming pile of shit, but when I learned to work it in the soil, it can create something that I can’t even imagine.

But, you know, and. It’s going to get you where you need to go. Brilliant analogy. I love it. I always tell that to dads because a lot of dads get hung up on just this idea that their life is too heavy. And they’ve had too, too much trauma. Almost. They either didn’t have a dad, like they just walk around with this E or type mindset.

And I’m like, just remember it takes a lot of shit to make it soil. And if you want good flowers, you need more shit. And the people that have climbed to the highest, if you think of even Oprah, anybody that’s top Tony Robbins, all these people just had a big pile of shit in the beginning, and they learned how to work it into the soil to cultivate a much stronger version of themselves later.

That is so on point. I love it. You know what so, okay. As a dad is just to be vulnerable in front of your children, you know, it’s okay to make mistakes and then call yourself on it and say, Hey baby, I, I lost my temper and that wasn’t right. I really shouldn’t have been so short fused over the situation.

Your kids learn so much more when you call yourself. So the table when you’ve done wrong and they have so much more respect for you and they’re quicker to do the same when they, when they do something wrong, they say it out loud and they’re like, okay, dad, I’m sorry. I made this mistake, but what does this promote?

It promotes resilience. It doesn’t promote hiding it under the rug. It promotes getting back on the worst when you fall off. And that’s what we have to do is, is promote that resilience. And one other thing that I thought was really neat is that your daughter just came up to you and, you know, as a father, you’re going to be the closest to Jesus that your children will ever know.

At least you want to be the closest to Jesus that your children will ever know. Right? You may be the closest to Jesus that anyone will ever come in contact if you’re really living in the word. And if you’re really reflecting his love and compassion, For everyone. And what I loved about your daughter right now is that when she came up, she has no hesitation.

She knows you’re in the middle of something important. She knows you got probably the do not disturb sign on your door, but she has no hesitation to come to you because she knows that she will be met with fatherly love. And in that same way, no matter where we’re at in our lives, whether we just did something, we really shouldn’t have done.

We can always go to our father because our father is searching for us. And if we really think about it back in Genesis, Adam and Eve, they ran away from the Lord when they did what they did. In fact, God wasn’t mad at them. He was looking for them to bring comfort to their hearts. So we got to run to God for everything.

And we got to go boldly before him to get the things we need and want. And that’s exactly what your daughter did. So kudos to you for, for walking that incredible fatherly walk. You just gave me goosebumps. Cause you tied like 15. Really big idea moments that just popped in my head for the very first time.

And one of them started off when you were talking about how being vulnerable. And I often talk one of the most tragic things a dad can do is leave this earth. And at our funeral, our kids are, they’re talking to our best friends and they hear a story about our life for the very first time. And their kids say, why didn’t my dad share that with me?

I would have loved to have heard that to him and had a conversation. And most military dads hide who we are and we never reveal and get a true connection to show and we’ll help our kids know who dad was, because if they don’t know who dad is, they can’t walk with that beyond your time here on this earth, they can’t go to a fishing spot and say, what would dad do in this moment?

I need some dad that wisdom. And if we don’t really know who dad is, we’re not going to feel like he’s walking with us in life, whether he’s here with us every day or whether I’m moving in a different. But when you know who dad is, and you’ve walked with them in the early years, like my daughter being five.

Now there’s those moments that she knows that I’m always here and she knows that I’m in her head and most dads don’t create that connection. And I often short and cut them in the early ages. I’m still like incubating a lot of these ideas, but I always say be there for the little things later in life that bring you the big things.

But at the same time, as you were twining it together, I was like, Jesus really showed up in a way that he revealed who he was, the positive and the negative and walked with him. And so that people always knew who Jesus was. And you think of the entire Bible is it is an example of knowing who Jesus was, so that we can learn how to walk in a similar way.

If we don’t reveal our own life to our kids, they can’t walk in the way that we want them to walk within our life. And it’s all tied together. Like that’s the beauty part that I was just connecting there, like that whole thread of knowing Jesus, us walking like Jesus and learning how to be more like Jesus.

And then even from that book becoming a. Like when you realize that all men and sisters, our brothers and sisters, because we all share this common father, like it’s not about your past, whether you have a good dad or not, we all have this common connection. And we all have this common reflection to how he did his son and who he was, which then allows us to walk in a very similar way.

Whether you have a trauma story, whether you had a mom or dad, or no matter what happened, you always have this truth that you can go to learn how to walk with it, but then also bring it home and learn how to be more of it within your family. And like, that’s like the, like the core of coming home is being able to go home and be more like Jesus, but in a way of just letting them know, not necessarily who Jesus was, but who you are like Jesus did to the disciples when they thought.

Hey, man, you know, you need to get a WWJD bracelet and then your daughter needs a WW, D D Delta Delta four. What would daddy do? And you would go around with what would Jesus do? And you guys be set. Yeah, I haven’t thought of that, but like this whole thing, like this, that thread, just like it threaded together in a way that like, cause I think one thing that is I’ve found my way with God, it’s often difficult to kind of just intertwine yourself within the context of there’s so many different versions and there’s so much kind of like hardness to try to like walk within that path.

But then like that book becoming a king kind of broke it down into very simpler way for me of like, this is how God called you to lead your kingdom. And it helped me understand and have a conversation with God for the very first time. And when you learn that there’s things out there like life that have been talking about Jesus for centuries and millennia, but no one really likes said, by the way, these are the same me.

Like it almost kind of like gives you permission to like the world starts to make sense in a way that you don’t have to be Protestant Catholic or agnostic or any other religion to understand how to have a conversation with God. And I think that’s often I grew up Catholic and that’s where often where I got caught in my own cause Catholics Catholicism I grew up was like, more like you follow the rules, you get into heaven, but that wasn’t really how you walk with God or have a conversation with them.

It was just you follow the rules, you get into heaven. And it’s been kind of like me re coming home myself and having that conversation and growing through that at the same. Wow. Yes. I’m all about relationship. Religion is a hard, hard pill for me to swallow. So I’m all about that relationship that walk with him.

You know, I’m going to put you on the spot. I didn’t think I was going to do this, but I think I’m going to just because you’re so much fun and you’re easygoing. I love the banter back and forth, but I do something called rhythm restoration and rhythm restoration. I’m going to say it out loud. You can see me on the zoom screen, but it’s like tapping back and forth like a butterfly hug alternating.

So rhythm helps regulate the autonomic nervous system to calm us. Bilateral stimulation is how the brain processes and digest things. Okay. So it helps us to call it consolidate memories and to make them more fluid, whatever we need for the moment. And then finally visualization is bringing something to mind, to rewire incredible brains, but I want to work more in terms of imagination.

So if you will. Go with me. I say, I’m me. I’m a doctor. And I’m just kidding. So getting your tapping pose, I want you to close your eyes. Okay. We’re just going to be tapping for just a moment here. Get into your rhythm. And I’m going to ask you to bring your visualization to mind. Now you said you have your kingdom.

So what I want you to visualize Ben is a Lord placing that crown on your head. Now in the Bible, it stays five times that he gives us the crown of life because of all the difficulties that we’ve gone through on the crosses that we’ve carried on our own with God’s help, of course, but I want you to visualize him placing that crown on your head.

What does that crown look like? What does that crown feel like as he places it on? Maybe you get a glimpse of his face and how pleased he is with you.

He also stays and he gives you the full armor of God to protect your kingdom, to protect those you love, but on that full battle, rattle in Ephesians. And I want you to visualize what your armor looks like.

It can be as abstract or as concrete as you want it to be, to keep tapping for the next 10 seconds. All right. Take a deep breath in and let it go. And just come back to the present moment. Then what did you experience with that crown in armor? Similar moment that I traveled to a couple of years ago when the Eagle golden anchor was handed in my, put my hand and it was a very similar moment that something was passed down to me when I was putting my.

Of something that has been built for 250 years and thousands of Marines have given their blood and life and earned that title. And that I was entering into that allegiance with that identity of being something bigger than just myself. And that was a similar feeling of light and love because in that same moment, I remember looking at my dad in the audience and looking down in a hearing and seeing how proud he was.

And that whole experience of this was a moment that I fully didn’t even imagine I could do. And I entered into it. I completed that like a crucible and the proud, proud is something that I haven’t, I didn’t always feel for myself. I was always struggling to kind of feel proud of like on my own that versus an external validation.

And that was something that I visualized in his face as well as he was putting that crown, because it’s an acceptance of your role within your family. And it’s almost like within your place within the, like the. Your place of being within the family and what you get to do and what you’re called to help your family lead through.

And it was just kind of a feeling of love. And for me, that armor was something that in many ways, it wasn’t actually physical. It was something that was me, just almost like as a muscular strength and of light love that the actual armor that repels the things that I no longer choose to believe about myself is actually something that I’ve always had the capacity and you don’t need to buy or install some additional armor on the outside.

You just need to be whole on the inside. And it’s that light that kind of creates that bulletproofness that we all look for every. Boom. That’s all I have to say. That is so I’m point. How amazing is that, you know, just visualizing, visualizing yourself, getting through an event where you don’t see yourself overcoming seeing yourself do it, laying down these healthy neural networks in your brain to rewire your brain to be capable.

If you’re David, you’re going to visualize David. As in the example you were talking about earlier, you’ve got to visualize getting out of your house and doing things, see yourself doing it. You got to see it to believe it in order to manifest it. So putting on your armor, putting on that crown, that sense of authority that God has given you over your domain and to be a reflection of his love and grace to so many people is so important to make sure that you’re always wearing that crown every day and guarding your hearse with that armor on the other component that.

I didn’t fully tie it together until we just did. This is I never had a good purpose for a challenge going and I was working with the coach once. And he’s like, take your challenge coins that you probably don’t use. And I want you to hold it in your hand. And when you do remind yourself that United States Marine and your mode, the, any emotions that you’re feeling right now, and that you’re still have that shrink of all the Marines that came from before you.

So going back to the, kind of like that moment when the Eagle globe and anchor was handed into me, and I remember kind of creating a meditation after this exercise and telling them that for me to grab this coin. And I remember sitting down and I remember visualizing all of the Marines that came before me, and I remember kind of verging them into this light that came running towards my chest visually and running down my hand into this coin.

And on those days where I felt shaky and I didn’t feel that it maybe, and you could relate this to guide and just snap your fingers where you didn’t feel called to do exactly what this was. I would remind myself of who I was and what I became through that. I’ve become a United States Marine. And that’s something that I carry with me of all the Marines that came from before me.

And like that helped me through so many times because there was times where I would describe my emotions. Like when life got hard, I would just feel like I would be floating down the river and then 10 miles down the road. I’m like, how did I get here? But when I grabbed that coin, it’s like jamming a rod in the river and the water flows around me and I’m no longer like flowing with life, but I can stand my ground and be where I need to be, to protect the people that I need to be in that moment and still show up.

Like it was something that was probably like two years ago that I did that. And it all kind of tied together. When you were doing this exercise in the context of God, it all kind of like, it’s the same thing. Only a little bit more of a higher power doing it the same. That’s a bad-ass visualization. I love it.

I love how it is used to ground you and why not just roll with that? Maybe there is an object, something that people have prayed over or something that is spiritually meaningful to you, that can be kept in your pocket. Some people have a worry stone or your cross, whatever it may be. I do have a wooden cross that I’ll hold from time to time when I’m gained stressed out.

But it’s such a wonderful anchor. It reminds us where our love is at because bottom line, whatever it is, that’s anchoring us. No matter how we boil it down, it will boil down to love eventually. And wholeness for me, the part of the Marine Corps identity with that Eagle of an anchor. When I was looking for a time when I was proud of myself, because that was kind of the exercise, the Genesis of that whole thing.

Like that was the moment I went back to. Like, that was a moment where all the BS, I told myself it wasn’t true. Like that moment I did something that I didn’t believe I got something that I didn’t think I could do. And it means something so much more to Marines that this is something that we carry from us, not just why we serve but forever.

And like it was this moment of energy that I can go visit and visualize that getting put in my hand. And there’s no way that I don’t think I can concrete it. Then it comes that day because I’m not alone, which is what you have in the same context of knowing that you have God and Jesus. And you’re walking with everybody at the same time.

And knowing that even if your friend didn’t come home with the same idea, that we’re all still together doing it together and that while we’re in different planes of existence, we’re all still together. If you choose to believe that you have the energy with you at all, Yes. You know, I was just talking to my husband today.

I was like, you know, we were talking about the concept of wholeness. It’s obviously divine that you’ve brought this up several times as well. And we’re talking about, I was like, thinking about why if life has a beginning and an end, right? And you draw a line, but align is not whole. It is not complete. A circle is whole.

It is complete. It is continuous. And so when I think of our lives, it is continuous. It’s eternal and you’re right. We have to ground ourselves in that sacred space, knowing that even if dad left us or brother at arms or sister at arms left desk, they have not left us in the spiritual realm. And they will always be there.

Shall we call on them? You know, I never had this thought pop in my head. You’re doing this a couple of times. Now it had a whole bunch of new thoughts pop in my head that when your eyes are open, you can only see one direction and something within my story is learning how friends became the mirror for the things that I could have.

And without that mirror, I couldn’t like step into something that I didn’t understand. And so friends early on kind of said, like the way you put words together is something special because it gives me goosebumps. I love reading what you put together. And so that kind of like put these breadcrumbs together to go towards it.

And when you close your eyes, you can visualize a circle. You can visualize it all. It’s like an internal movie theater that you can visualize anything needs to come true. But the moment you open your eyes, all you can see is that a straight line. But most people walk and visualize with their eyes open, which is almost why we struggled to believe what we need to see, because we can only see in a straight line.

And unless you have the people in your life to reflect back like you, or even just having friends or family, you’re always going to struggle to see your own truth and wholeness, because it’s always in that straight line, unless you’re doing the visualization work or meditation work with your eyes closed, you’re struggling to see that full circle and holding this because you need people in your life to complete that.

And it kind of brings it all together for me, from where my first started, my journey started with seeing a load of dads at the park. And to now we’re like what we just did with that exercise and visualizing that wholeness, God made this divine connection right here, right now for you to put things together in your life for you also to connect the dots for other people.

And just using me as a vessel and you as a vessel to me to, uh, to bring hope, to bring healing and to, and wholeness to other people through this conversation that is now being reflected back to people that need to hear it. That can’t see it because they’re always looking in that straight line. All I gotta say is God’s got your six.

There is one component that you talk about of kind of this, the struggle between science and faith. Can you dive into that a little bit, then you are a series of chemical and electrical impulses. You. You are neurons. You are cells, your mitochondria, your DNA, your genes, you are science. God created you and you are science.

So God created science, not rocket science there. The reason why I wanted to go there, because this is something that I think a lot of us, all people struggle with is this balance of science and faith. And as I’ve struggled, as I’ve talked about here, that part of me that kind of just leans more towards like, how do you know God just didn’t snap his fingers and the big bang wasn’t part of the plan.

Like to me, it’s like, it’s all part of like this, like God has obviously patient, because if you look at the Rocky mountains or anything else that has been carved over the lines of years, all of these things are true showing patience and understanding. And like within the idea, and especially when you get into the whole world of energy work, like when you realize the magnetic fields that operate more of the world than most people realize.

You realize that there’s so much more of this that we don’t even really know to me, it’s all tied together, but we often just fuck it up to burrow, lack of a better term to really bring all this other stuff to the party, which then just makes it complicated and then pushes us back. But it’s really all part of the same language.

And I think that’s what a veteran probably struggles to know when he goes through this, something like this, or even just acknowledges, he may be having trouble or walking conversation with God or understanding these issues with war and combat. And God, like all of these things are real struggles. And I think it’s something that we often need to go through and she’s back come boldly before the throne room of Gray’s baby girl, she loves her.

Right now 11. So we’ll see 12. I love it. So you’re, you’re absolutely right. You know, I think science can look like a whole bunch of chaos to the untrained eye, but the reality is when we dig deeper, we see the patterns, we see the order, we see this universe, we see that we have just a right, right. Amount of gas in the universe that we can breathe just enough gravity to hold our bodies, where everything is just so, and everything is just perfect that, um, science is one of God’s many miracles, and that’s how we also Marvel at him.

I haven’t ever taken a biology class and learning like at the molecular level, how sex truly worked. And I’m like, there’s no way that this would just randomly happen at a Pietra, just in a pool somewhere like there’s, to me, there’s just some type of influence that had to happen in order to make it all come true.

And like, when you look into those really complicated things, like. To me. That’s where like my faith really comes to the surface of like, I trust that there’s something I don’t understand, but that trust, I know has my back. And that’s where the good stuff starts happening. Absolutely. Right. And we have to appreciate and understand the brain, the mind, how it functions.

Psychology is a part of science though, a soft science it’s still science. And when we put God’s word to psychology, we get the best results in my humble opinion. Well, I really appreciate everything we’ve talked about. We’ve done at different letter areas and just like all the other PTSD episodes. This one is just going to rock the veterans socks off out there.

Listening to this episode. I have one question for you as a mom, married to a military dad who is also working on becoming a stay-at-home dad. What advice do you want every dad out there to hear from a mother’s perspective about this process or even life that can be from any case. You know, communication’s the biggest thing, be transparent with your emotions and how you’re feeling.

You have a demon on your ass. Let me know. And I will, uh, pray in a way with you. If you have a demon on your ass and you need some time to take care of you, let us know, don’t try and hide it because you can’t hide it. We see it in your face. So the best thing to do is if you can, if you, you have the courage confronted in the moment, um, and don’t let arguments last forever confronted in the moment, address it apologize quickly.

We all need to apologize quickly and move forward so that we can have productive, productive, loving lives. Well, I really appreciate that advice and kind of wrapping up that whole conversation in a very simple way of being visible is what I hear in that. And that’s kind of the way through that as well.

Well, Dr. Tiffany, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. If people want to grab your book, where’s the best place to connect with you and get more about what. There are peace after combat healing. The spiritual and psychological wounds of war can be found on Amazon Barnes and Nobles, Walmart, Christian book.com.

So I pray you grab a copy. I think it’ll speak life over you. It provides what we call psycho-education on what PTSD is, but it has some really awesome gritty stories, like first person experiences. And yes, it’s a Christian publisher that let me drop the F-bomb way too many times in the book to speak our language.

So I’m super happy about that. You don’t want to read, then we do have a awesome audio book. Celiac retired. John Wayne Troxell is a Ford writer and he is a bad-ass and enough himself. He was the highest ranking enlisted service member in the entire DOD just a couple years ago. And he’s got a phenomenal perspective.

You can reach me at Dr. Tiffany to jerry.com. That’s D R T I F F a N Y to Jarius bell, tango alpha, Juliet, India, Romeo, india.com. Really appreciate you again, Dr. Tiffany and I can’t wait to get this episode out there, cause I know it’s going to help them in military dads home in a way that they may be not even visualize.

That could be true for themselves. God bless you, Ben.

Wow. Can you believe that episode? I can’t, I’m still a little bit shocked as I was getting ready to release this episode. And relistening it, the book, everything about this episode, deepened, my understanding of everything that we’re doing here, the crazy part about starting this podcast is when I started it, I started with the word.

And man was I level one. When I started with that word home, it looked good on a website. It sounded good when you said it. But everything that this podcast has taught me is miles deeper than just that word. Because as we talked about it in this episode, the idea of wholeness, the idea of these two things of building your house, what that actually feels like on the inside.

There’s another thing that I’ve recently learned is that Jesus talks about building your home on a rock. Now, when I first read that, I literally interpreted it as actually building a building, but as we highlighted in this episode, and I’ve now deeply learned about that passage, that passage is talking about, are you a foundation for something to be built from in your life?

And if we don’t have that structural integrity, going back to what we talked about with the word, integer and integrity, That structural integrity to your home, that foundation under the rock is the catapult that builds every other layer. So when you do start building your skyscraper on top of that foundation, you know, that every layer is built upon a sturdy foundation.

So my big takeaway is that this word home in many ways is still so much getting started because when I think of the faith connection to the word home, when I think about everything that I’ve talked about in this podcast, I’m still at the very early stages of what it truly means even after this episode was recorded.

And a few weeks ago, I just also deeply connected that a lot of what the home is, is actually connecting in creating a foundation for you to realign where you go in the future towards a purpose driven. Because I didn’t have a purpose in my life. I wasn’t driven and I wasn’t going anywhere in the future that I felt I wanted to.

I was going where everybody else wanted me to. And so building a purpose driven life is almost the end result of why coming home is so important because you can’t create a purpose driven life until, you know, wholly who you are and that you get to show up as that version of you with everything that you do that to me is this next catapult where we go in our conversations, where we go with interviews on the podcast, all of these things.

And again, we’re in year three almost, and we’re still in many ways just getting started. And as I said in the beginning, if you’re a longtime listener, thank you so much for hanging on through this journey, hanging on. As we dive into what it truly means to come from. And what type of layers that has and what that journey looks like.

And then all the different processes there can be to come at it and still get to the same end result. Guys. I hope you have an amazing week. I hope that everything that you want to come true this week does help you get some amazing data adventures in there. As I know that false starts to wrap up here and in Wisconsin and CRNA get cold, we’re starting to get pumpkins out everywhere.

We just wrapped up a pumpkin party where we got everything picked up the front of the house looks like it’s fall. So it’s coming guys. Hang on, enjoy it. Make some memories. Cause I know when it’s going to be 15 inches of snow outside and 10 degrees going to be wishing I had this week back. So guys have a great week and I’ll be back with you on Friday. .