Voices for Voices®

The Unbelievable Healing Journey of Mark McAdams | Episode 173

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 173

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The Unbelievable Healing Journey of Mark McAdams | Episode 173

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Chapter Markers
0:01 Trauma Coping and Life Warrior Brand
11:24 Navigating Trauma and Seeking Help
22:50 Global Connection Through Life Warriors

How does one face the relentless storms of trauma and still rise as a beacon of hope for others? Join us as we sit down with Mark McAdams, a dedicated firefighter with over two decades of service, who shares his deeply personal journey through the challenges of mental health in the line of duty. With raw honesty, Mark recounts harrowing experiences, including the emotional toll of responding to calls involving children, and the heartbreaking story of a colleague who paid a steep price for speaking openly about PTSD. Through these stories, Mark paints a vivid picture of the cultural stigma that plagues the firefighting community, and his unwavering commitment to breaking down these barriers through the Life Warrior brand and his powerful advocacy.

Mark's path to healing wasn't easy. He discusses the momentous decision to leave the fire department to focus on his mental health, emphasizing how finding the right therapist played a crucial role in this process. We explore the global impact of LifeWarriorUnited, where Mark fosters a community of support for those battling similar adversities. With life-affirming stories and a vision for global connection, Mark illustrates how resilience and community can transform pain into a powerful movement. Listen in and discover how you, too, can become a warrior in your own life, equipped with the strength and support to overcome any challenge.

Trauma shapes our lives, but it doesn’t have to define them. Mark McAdams shares his journey from firefighter to advocate, emphasizing the need for mental health support and the transformative power of sharing one’s story. He discusses the Life Warrior concept and how connection through shared experiences can foster healing.

• Trauma's impact on first responders
• The vital role of finding the right therapist
• The emergence of the Life Warrior concept
• Sharing life warrior stories as a source of strength
• The connection of struggle across cultures and communities
• Advocating for mental health awareness and support

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for joining us today on this episode. It's part two of a two-part series with our guest, mark McAdams. We want to thank him for his time and being so transparent about his experiences and now turning into being that advocate that is trying to share and help in whichever way he can. If you could do us a favor on social media like share, follow it doesn't cost anything. We're on every platform over 17 platforms. You can find this as well as the over 150 episodes we've already put out there.

Speaker 1:

Guests are just amazing in what they've accomplished, what they've shared, and there's at least one episode out there for you. So if you could do that, we would greatly appreciate it, and if you're able to, we are a 501c3. If you're able to make a donation now or in the future, we would greatly appreciate that so we can keep continuing to bring this show to you and the masses. We're in over 50 countries, 470 cities and counting with all the other platforms. So if you know a podcasting platform or a streaming platform, you can find us. You know a social media platform. You can find Voices for Voices there. If you would like to donate, we would greatly appreciate that. If you are, there's no expectation that you need to, but if you do, you can find us on Venmo, voices for Voices, or you can find us at lovevoicesorg, which that'll take you directly to the donation page. You won't have to cut through any of the drop-down menus, which can be a little bit hectic at times.

Speaker 1:

All right, so we're going to get right back into our episode with Mark McAdams. Aer 22 years, he has the core goal of helping anyone that wants to be a better version of themselves, and so our last episode talked heavy on the experience, the career, the career path. Got into at the end some of the trauma, some of the things you see in here that come a little bit with the territory, I guess I would say. And now we're going to start there, at that trauma, and then we're going to build up to the Life Warrior brand, the podcast, the merchandise and how you can learn more and participate with Mark. If you're able to, or you know somebody that might be a good fit for a guest, or just have a conversation, because that's really what we're here for is to help others. So, a little bit outside of Dallas, texas, we want to welcome back to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast Mr Mark McAdams. Thank you for coming back.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, glad to be here. Glad to be here again. Like I said, any opportunity to get the word out and help whoever I can help. That's why I'm here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. And last episode was powerful on so many levels of two weeks on the job and finding himself in a situation it was like, oh my gosh, I'm not working on the training, this is like a real person and it's an infant, a baby. And with that, as your career evolved over the 22 years, can you describe a little bit, maybe a little bit additional trauma, but then how you started to cope in a positive way and what work that took, because it's not just to turn the page and move on so, um, you know, man, it crazy thing.

Speaker 2:

And and again, there's the guys that I worked with. You know again, I don't want to make this sound like this is, uh, just me. You know there were guys on those calls with me, on that ambulance that I worked with my whole career, that experienced the same things. Um and um, to tell you a little bit about how this was looked at, the whole being a firefighter and talking about PTSD stuff and trauma, one of my best friends who is still working at the fire department now, man, early on we went to fire academy together, him and I, and early on he experienced those same kind of calls and it affected him, it hit him pretty hard. And this guy's you know I'm talking about a tough guy, he's a true cowboy, the cowboy that ranchers call from all over the country to come help them herd cows. And I mean he's a cowboy, tough as can be. But that messed his head up a little bit, all those things he saw, and when he voiced that it ended up our chief at the time, you know, old, it was old school and officers, all these people, and it ended up in him losing his job over it and because, well, they said, well, you can't ride the ambulance anymore. So you, you too, you too, I can't I can't say the words. They called him. But uh, so they, they fired him and it took years of struggling financially and stuff with him and his family to get his job back, which they finally had to go through court cases and lawyers and they had to give him his job back and and back pay and all that stuff.

Speaker 2:

But but that's how it was looked at and so for me, I remembered that later in my career when it started kicking in on me. I was like I know how this is going to end up and this is late in my career, I can't afford that. I got to get to my retirement, right, and so I just held it. But him and I, it was crazy. We saw those same kind of calls and we rode the ambulance together and stuff a lot and um, but mine it did. Mine got so bad that guys would call in sick or take off vacation or whatever if they saw they were riding the ambulance with me, like I was this black cloud. They were like, and if, if, they would take me off the ambulance and put me on the back of the truck to give me a day off the ambulance or something. The old guys would come to the chief and go, hey, what are you doing, man? Why are you putting this guy on the back of the truck with me? You know he's bad luck. We're going to do some stuff we're going to be up on. I mean it was. You know he's bad luck. We're going to do some stuff we're going to be up on. I mean it was. And so that now in your head you're like man now I'm starting to believe it Like I am, I'm a dark cloud here. Nothing good happens when I'm here at work, right, and so I bought into that too.

Speaker 2:

And then seeing all the stuff, it just kept, like you said, it's like stacking on top of each other and at some point you can't hold the weight anymore and so ended up in that place we talked about before, which is, you know, know, you lost financially, almost lost everything, marriage lost that, um, it was a really bad, dark, dark time and, like I said, luckily the fire department brought me back from it. But, uh, you know, there's not a day that goes by, not one day out of seven, that one of those calls doesn't come back to me in a memory somehow um, might be just real quick, it might be, you know and I still have these nightmares. I still have the dreams, and when I say dreams, I mean I can smell blood and I mean they're so vivid that that I, you know, I, I can. It's like I'm there again and that I can see. I can remember what the suicide notes said, I can remember the clothes people were wearing, I can remember the conversations, like in my dream. It's crazy what your brain holds on to and remembers. And so I realize now that's never going away, it's going to be the way it is for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2:

But I've learned to, like you said, I've learned to cope with and understand. Okay, this is happening right now. It's I know. Now there's like a window, there's like a one to two week window. This is going to mess me up for about one to two weeks and then I'll be good again. And so I just do things that I love to do during that time, which is I go work out, I lift a lot and take it out that way.

Speaker 2:

And now I do this, I talk to people and that helps me, and so and that is a true representation of what the fire department is and I don't want to. I'm not trying to scare anybody away from doing it Because, again, if somebody said, hey, we want you to come, you know we need your services, we need you, can you come back and we'll pay you? And I'd probably go cool, let's go, let's do it. You know, I just love the job and love that being around the guys. You know, politics of the fire service has changed. That was a hard thing for me to get by, that's just the way of the world now too. But because I think sometimes it gets twisted with cities where it doesn't become about service, it becomes about other things, and so morale of the fire department drops and it's hard to come back from that for some cities, from that for some cities.

Speaker 2:

But, um, so that that trauma for me over it started probably in 20 I would say 2015. Those things started coming back, having dreams about those calls and I'd be like, I'd wake up like man. What was that about? Like, like I said, the three month old that passed, that was the first one, very first nightmare or dream that I had was that call and I was like man. I haven't thought about that since 1998. And where'd that come from? All of a sudden? And then it just recurred. And then it was that call and another one, and then it was that one, that one and that one, and then it was you know. And so it was like man, where is all this coming from? And you got to keep it in. You got to you know, keep your mouth shut, don't say nothing. It in, you got to, you know, keep your mouth shut, don't say nothing. Um, and so that was a really hard thing for me to to deal with in those that time period and to act normal. Now I'm trying to act like you said. Now you're trying to act like a normal human being too, at the same time, when you're off. I got kids, I got family and it's messing me up there too.

Speaker 2:

So it was a really dark six, seven years and finally, like I said, I came to that realization, if I don't do something and I honestly think getting out of the fire department was the best at that moment, was the best thing for me, because I didn't have to go say, tell the chief and tell everybody, you know, I'm in a bad way, I can't do this I was able to walk away differently and uh, and then go, all right, let's, let's go do something. I got to get help somehow. And so that was a whole different routine, you know, of trying to find the right therapist, because sometimes you don't jive with them. It took me numerous therapists to. You know I'd be like you'd know immediately like this is not working. You know this is not helping. And you know, doing things like EMDR and things like that, I'm like this is not working for me.

Speaker 2:

I don't, I don't know, you know, until finally I found that one guy that just you know he knew exactly what to say. He was no nonsense, which was what I was all about. Like, just here's your problem, here's how we're going to fix it, it's what you're going to do. Started and I was like all right, and that's what he told me. His deal was you're never getting rid of this. This is the way it is and that's what I needed to hear. Now, let me show you how to cope with it. And so I was like all right, that's exactly what I needed to hear. I don't, I know it's not going away, so how can I deal with it? Help me deal with it. And man, it was perfect. That was. That was the one like. I got it now and that's what I do now. I use whatever techniques he showed me. Those are that's what I do every time something like this stuff comes up. That's what I do. And so that's kind of the whole gambit of the trauma.

Speaker 2:

And there were other things. My good friend, robert Pointer, was my captain Twenty sixteen. I was his lieutenant. We got to be really close. We were on the same shift and there's TV shows about this. I've been on a couple of TV shows about this. But Robert was my friend. Bob was murdered by his wife and the guy she was sleeping with because they wanted his six hundred thousand dollar insurance policy.

Speaker 2:

And so that was while I was on shit on duty and working and I had to promote in his position. I had to take his locker, his bed, his seat in the captain's truck, and so that you know it wasn't just the trauma of the calls. Then I'm dealing with this survivor's guilt and my friend who we were supposed to retire. He was one year away from retirement, oh my gosh. And so now I'm having to deal with that all that at the same time. It's like I said, it's like one stack, one thing on top of the other and finally it just broke. But again, I was one of the lucky ones. I saw the light out of the dark and was able to come back from it, which is where I'm at now.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and when you talk about the therapist and the first one might not be the right one, to keep going, and I think that's important for people to hear and to see, because, yeah, I knew at least for me going into therapy I was like, okay, whoever the first one is, that's who I have to stick with, for whatever reason. I had this norm in my mind, that that's what it told me. Nobody actually told me, but I was like, oh well, this has got to be the therapist and I and I think what I realized that it didn't have to be that person if it wasn't working out. That it's, it's okay. I I know from my experience, just being an impatient person, it's like I'm at the fix now. I want to know exactly right now. Oh, I can't get until next week. And so there's all that scheduling and a referral and all these hoops that we have to jump through, which there's we talked about that a whole other couple of episodes on that, just from making it easier that when, cause it's hard to, I mean to talk about you know these, these experiences, and you know some people may look at it and be like, oh Justin, he's crazy, that's nuts, Like how, how'd that happen and I don't want to be associated with him, his organization or what would have you. But I found for me, you found that once you're kind of honest with yourself and you're just like all right, yeah, this is going to continue, but I'm going to enact these steps or these methods to help get me through this.

Speaker 1:

And I always think about a story I heard. There's a gentleman. He was traveling through I think it was Antarctica. He wanted to go all the way from the west to the east and so he was backpacking and it was just super cold and windy and he kept asking himself like, why am I doing this? Why, why? Why do I even continue? And he was telling himself in those moments that this is just a moment in time. This isn't the whole experience, the whole moment. This is a moment in time. So if somebody's going through that type of an extreme experience, then it might be helpful at least to think about like, okay, yep, I'm present in the moment, yep, I'm feeling these emotions and that's okay.

Speaker 1:

And when I got to the group therapy sessions and you know, because then we worry about or we think about like, oh, I'm the only one going through, I'm the only one that. But when I sat around a table and there was ten people and each one of them was talking about something a little bit similar and a little bit different, but they were still going through some stuff, I was like, oh my gosh, like I'm really not the only one and it needs to. And that's, I think, part of where the organizations are just sharing the voice, whatever that is. If you're able to communicate verbally, or if you're deaf and you play an instrument or whatever that voice is, share that, because that is everybody's kind of entitled to share that experience.

Speaker 1:

And if we want to continue to help people, we have to continue to talk to people and to to listen and to, to share. So thank you for that therapist bit was it was huge, because I I talked to people all the time and I don't want to do that because what if that's not the right person? Like, well, then you find, you find another, well, how am I going to do that?

Speaker 2:

and then their mind goes through these rabbit holes, as we know, as we well know my brother was in the army 31 years, did five tours in Iraq, he was in Bosnia, he was in Panama. During that whole thing he saw a lot and it, it, it messed him up. He stayed in 31 years and he's. You know, I've watched him go from being not a brother I knew anymore to now he's back to who I would say he is, and it took him years. You know, the VA is not the most helpful all the time with guys, um, but I have watched him for years struggling. He finally was able to get into this program and he had to go to mexico to do it and he was down there and now it's like the lights came back on and so there, you know, he's that same guy. He's like me.

Speaker 2:

There were many times in his head he wanted to quit and just cash it in and be done. But he had that, you know, warrior life, warrior spirit thing, like I do, and it's like wait a minute, I'm not. I've never quitted anything in my life and so I'm not quitting today, you know. And so I always tell people all right, you want to quit, quit tomorrow. Don't quit today, just quit tomorrow, wait until tomorrow and and then tomorrow, quit the next day, don't quit that. Just you can tell yourself you want to, just don't, just don't quit that day, and so that's kind of how I get myself through. Some of those times it's like, all right, today I'm not quitting, today it's going to be bad, but you know I'm going to fight through it. And then you know we'll worry about tomorrow later.

Speaker 1:

So Absolutely Well. We got about six minutes left, so yeah, uh, I, if you want, uh touch on how, life warrior, that that whole brand came about and how people can find out more and what you have going on and what to look forward to I would always tell these people.

Speaker 2:

You know, people come talk to me, tell me me their stories, and I would try. Here I am in my life trying to figure out how to help people. And again, people would come tell me these life warrior stories, no matter where I went and my wife even says she's like my gosh people just pour their hearts out to you, no matter where you are. And uh, and I would always say these words at the end I'd be like man, that's life where your stuff you're doing. Man, that's life where your stuff you're doing, not even really thinking about what I was saying. And then finally, it was like god reaching out, going hey, dummy, do you hear what you're saying? You, that's it. And so I was like man, so I started studying it, going okay, what's the definition of warrior? Anyone trained in combat. There's another part of it it's Webster's under that where it says anyone engaged in conflict or struggle, anyone. And so I'm like that's it, that's that's life. Right, you can be a warrior, go train. Even my brother was a warrior, but then he had to come back and do normal person stuff and had to do life, pay your bills, go to work when you don't want to, you know, wash your car, do all these life things. That it's a struggle because you're you're still dealing with whatever, but you do it because you're a, you have a warrior spirit but you have to do life, life warrior. And so I'm like man. That's everybody that's, and it's crazy on my lives.

Speaker 2:

On TikTok I'll have people from Poland, scotland, argentina, chile and they'll come and they'll listen. They're like oh my gosh, I'm going through that divorce thing right now. Oh my gosh, my husband was abusive to me. Oh my gosh, I lost my brother, my dad, my whatever. It's like, oh, I'm going fighting through cancer.

Speaker 2:

It's like and that's my goal is to make everybody understand, like you said, you're not by yourself. There's people in Poland dealing with the same thing you're dealing with here in the US, dealing with the same thing you're dealing with here in the U? S. It is a true, we are connected by conflict and struggle. Everybody around the world is connected by that and so. But you pass by people in the street, like we said, you might see somebody acting like a jerk and you're like man, that person's man, what a jerk. But you don't talk to anybody. So how do you know they haven't just lost their kid to cancer, or maybe they're going through a divorce, or they just lost everything financially or you don't know, because you don't talk to them. You don't talk to anybody anymore and maybe if you did, they'd tell you that whole thing and they'd level out a little bit.

Speaker 2:

And so my whole goal behind this Life Warrior is to give the podcast is to give people a place to tell their Life Warrior stories, which, if you go to the YouTube page, the Life Warrior I'm not to the level you are yet I'm learning all this. Yeah, you're good. The YouTube page Life Warrior YouTube page some of the Life Warrior stories I've already had on there are amazing. The trauma that people have dealt with, the things that they've dealt with, is crazy. But I give people a place to tell their life warrior stories. But the best part is, what is it positive that you are doing or have done to get yourself out of that dark place? And and because there's somebody listening to your story that's going through similar what you're going through and they don't know how to get out of it. They don't know what to do, and so tell your story, tell them how you got out of it. And it's been cool, been really cool.

Speaker 2:

The website's lifewarriorunitedcom. You can go there and check it out. And we're you can register there. All my social media stuff's on there. We're trying to partner with people like you, nonprofits to. My goal is to build a network of people to help wherever they are. I've got people in Kentucky that are therapists Now reaching out to other people. I've got people in Midland Texas. I've got it's. It's starting to grow and we're trying to help as many people as we can. So, um, that's, that's what how the life warrior came about. And so every day I wake up now and put my feet on the floor and I say, all right, man, get up and go do life for your stuff today. Floor. And I say, all right, man, get up and go do life for your stuff today. That's what you're doing.

Speaker 2:

And uh, and so that's just the the motto now doing life for your stuff. So yeah, that's how it came about.

Speaker 1:

I mean it's just incredible.

Speaker 1:

I mean to just you know, and it's hard for us, you know, when we're in the weeds working through things and okay, what, what I want the logo to look like and all these things but then, like, when you take a step back, it's like, oh, wow, like this is actually pretty cool and yeah, it's taken a little bit of time but it's moving along. And I wholeheartedly believe I mean being down in your neck of the woods a few weeks back and meeting you. I mean talk about just having just being in the right place at the right time. It's like, oh yeah, like I would love to have your insight and talk about your experience. And here we are and we're doing it. And then, you know, hopefully helping you out, but just continuing that and not, you know, as things come up and as hey think about this, or can you help this way? Or I mean, you know we can do this. Every year we have several guests that we have that each year. It's kind of like an update, like oh hey, where are we at?

Speaker 1:

what are we doing? How can you?

Speaker 2:

help yeah well, we are anyway. Any way, we can get the message out there to help people. That's. That's what I'm about, yeah, so we have like 30 seconds left.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, uh so, uh time, time flies. Thank you so much for joining us for two episodes, really greatly appreciate the time. I look forward to having you on mine, absolutely, and stick on. We'll grab a couple photos afterwards and we want to thank you, our viewers, our listeners here in Northeast Ohio, across the United States and across the world. Like Mark said, we'll help one person at a time and there's people everywhere that are experiencing some of the same things that we are and we have. We thank people like Mark for the work that he's done and he's continuing to do to help people. As human beings, we have a lot of things in common and it's awesome to be able to get his insight. So until next time, I am the founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes, and we'll see you next week with another episode. Until then, please be a voice for you or somebody in need.

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