Due to prior trauma I had to confront my mortality (I was around 40 at the time). Since then I have encountered challenges (fears) but they had little power over me because I'd already had a stare-down with death and I won! Now in my 70s, I'm still ready to weather whatever storm might come ... bring it on!
CLF...now THIS is the comment I hope everyone scrolls down far enough to read.
You just gave the whole article a better ending than I did. You didn't run this pattern as an eleven-minute exercise...life handed you the full-immersion version at 40...no rehearsal...no linen pants.
You did the one thing that separates the people this BREAKS...from the people it BUILDS: you completed the trip. You went in...you FELT it...and you came back out with the answer your nervous system...had been BEGGING for.
"I'd already had a stare-down with death and I won." That's the ENTIRE mechanism in one sentence. Every fear since then shows up at your door...checks the ledger...sees the account was settled thirty years ago...and slinks off.
Notice what you're NOT saying. You're NOT saying nothing bad can happen. You're saying "bring it on"...which is a statement about the INSTRUMENT...not the WEATHER.
That's the distinction most people never get...and you've been living it for three decades.
Thank you for putting your receipts on the table. Somebody reading this today...is carrying a fear they THINK is permanent...and your comment just showed them what the far side looks like...at 70-plus...still standing...arms crossed...waiting on the storm.
I have been overwhelmed by grief the last few days—so many layers of it:
~My job in which I see so much animal pain and suffering
~my state which is on fire right now and simply won’t ever be the way it was when I was growing up— my daughter won’t know the Colorado of my own youth
~the absolute farce of America’s 250th birthday
I could go on but this is so heavy already.
When I’m done ministering to the 4-leggeds, I’ll sit with this awhile and grieve
Debby...this one stopped me, so I'm going to answer it straight...no showmanship.
First...what you do for the four-leggeds is ministry in the truest sense.
You stand in a river of suffering...most people couldn't look at for TEN minutes...and you do it daily...on PURPOSE.
That grief is NOT a malfunction. It's the receipt for a working heart...in a hard job. I hope you never lose it entirely... just its weight.
Second...I want to hand you one distinction before you sit down with this tonight... because it matters for someone in your position:
Some of what you're carrying isn't pre-grief. The animals...the fires...the Colorado your daughter won't inherit...that's not an imagined future. That's real loss...ALREADY here...and it doesn't need a rehearsal.
Jack, some good advice on this Independence Day eve…and as I do have hope for the midterms, the reality of what may happen has been lurking in the back of my mind for a while now. All we can do is to prepare in every way we can for the possibility of the direst of outcomes, and then move forward from there. For years, with colon cancer in my maternal family, I’d wondered what I would do if I should be diagnosed. 23 years ago I found out, Stage III, felt the bottom of my world fall out that March afternoon…grieved myself, grieved for my husband and our children over the next week…it took about that long for me to say HELL NO…I was not going to let cancer destroy my world, and so I worked to do everything I could do to treasure every moment I had and to fight! I will take the same approach to what we may face come November. I hope that everyone will join together and continue to do what we can to salvage what we may have left and to continue to pushback!
Tomorrow we are not celebrating this country…instead we are celebrating our granddaughter’s birthdays, which should have happened last month but they were sick and so the celebration was delayed. We will celebrate them, our family and simply being together!! Thank you for the wisdom and thought provoking words you share with us…so glad you are here!
Christie...you just did something I want every reader in this comment section to notice.
I wrote eleven hundred words explaining a technique. You lived it...23 years ago...in a single week in March...with the stakes as REAL as stakes get. Bottom falls out. Grief comes...yours...your husband's...your children's...and...instead of fighting the wave... you let it complete.
Roughly seven days later...right on schedule...the wave turned and something UNDERNEATH it stood up and said HELL NO!
That's the ENTIRE pattern. Steps one through six.
You didn't learn it from a newsletter. You learned it from the hardest teacher there is... and you PASSED.
And...notice what the grief did NOT do: it did NOT make you passive. That's the misunderstanding I fight every time I write about this. People think grieving something means surrendering to it. You're proof of the opposite...the grief was the IGNITION... not the EXIT.
A week of honest mourning bought you 23 years of fighting and treasuring at FULL strength. That's the trade. It's the best deal on the market...and almost nobody takes it.
So...when you say you'll take the same approach come November...I damn sure believe you...and I'd add only this: you're not preparing to use the pattern. You're a VETERAN of it. November should be nervous.
Tomorrow sounds exactly right. Two granddaughters...a delayed celebration...a family in one room. You've been treasuring the moments...for 23 years on PURPOSE; no wonder you know PRECISELY which thing to celebrate...when the calendar gets complicated.
So happy every day I am here…not that every day is great, some are going to be better than others, always glad to be here!!
PS…a little postscript…I couldn’t metabolise my chemo protocol and by the second round my hair was coming out…one nice May afternoon my dearest friend came by to take me for a ride in her car…she put the top down and as we were driving my hair was blowing off my head…she thought I was crying, but I was laughing…trying to imagine what the drivers behind us thought of all that hair coming towards them!
Jack is correct that fear is a crop, and someone is always tending the field. History records the specific mechanism he’s describing without naming it: the manufactured emergency, the citizen kept perpetually bracing, never once allowed to exhale long enough to think clearly.
File the date: every regime that consolidated power quickly did so against a population that had not yet grieved the thing it feared, because ungrieved fear is malleable fear. It can be pointed. It can be sold a savior. A population that has already sat with the worst outcome and mapped its own response is a population that cannot be stampeded, because stampeding requires an unanswered question, and Jack is describing exactly how to answer it in advance.
Note which figures in history moved fastest and met the least resistance: not the ones facing the boldest opposition, but the ones facing the most exhausted one. Exhaustion was never a side effect of their methods. It was the objective. A citizen too spent to grieve properly is a citizen who reacts instead of decides, and a nation of reactors does not hold its ground.
File the date more precisely: February 27, 1933. The Reichstag burns, and within twenty-four hours Hindenburg issues an emergency decree suspending nearly every civil liberty in the Weimar Constitution — speech, assembly, press, privacy, all of it, gone overnight, justified as defense against a communist uprising that never materialized as described. SA stormtroopers rounded up roughly 4,000 people that same night, many tortured as well as jailed. The population wasn’t defeated by argument. It was exhausted first — years of hyperinflation, street violence, and cabinet turnover behind it — and an exhausted population signs away its rights faster than a rested one ever would.
Note what came next. On March 23, the Enabling Act passed 444 to 94, with Communist deputies already barred from the chamber and Social Democratic deputies detained under the decree Hitler had just extracted. SA troops surrounded the building on the day of the vote. This is the mechanism in full: manufacture the emergency, exploit the exhaustion, remove the opposition through the emergency itself, then legislate the permanent power while the country is still catching its breath.
Jack is correct twice over, then: once on the psychology, once on the historical record. Weimar’s tragedy wasn’t that Germans failed to see the danger. It’s that by February 1933, they had no reserve left to meet it with anything but relief that the chaos, at least, might finally stop. A rested, unspookable citizen, pointed at a real problem, has always outlasted the men counting on his panic.
There are two comments her and I will separate them into two postings. This first one deals with inoculation training. The Navy submarine force has been doing this for years. I can personally attest to its effectiveness.
Naval Submarine School in Groton Ct has several trainers that are used to train submarine crews on actions to take when everything goes south. The first is their ship’s diving simulators. These are recreations of a submarine’s diving stations on gimbals that allow the crew to experience how a ship will respond to actions the crew takes in emergency situations. The ship’s attitude, pitch and roll responses are very realistic and prepare the crew for the worst possible ship control casualties. While I never actually experienced one of these casualties at sea, all the trained crews knew they could handle the real thing if it occurred. The confidence this gave the crew was noticeable.
The second trainer type were fire control trainers that were actual setups of the ship’s sonar system and control room tracking and weapons launch stations. Training scenarios could be input into the simulator computers and the crew could train on solving the tactical picture of the enemy and deploy simulated weapons. I have been through countless hours in these trainers, and they were particularly beneficial for me as it gave me hands on experience with digital fire control system, something none of the submarines I was stations were equipped with them. The crew’s ability to analyze the sonar inputs and translate them into a clear tactical picture was invaluable. When on one deployment when I was in command, we experienced a sonar display we did not expect. The crew was able to calmly analyze the situation and take necessary actions that allowed the mission to continue. We proceeded to have one of the fleet’s most successful submarine deployments, one where I was asked to debrief the President of the United States and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Steven...when I wrote "the military calls it stress inoculation," I forgot the comment section might produce a submarine commander...with the receipts.
This is the whole thesis...in steel...and salt water.
Those diving simulators on gimbals weren't teaching the crew that casualties WOULDN'T happen...they were answering the only question a nervous system ever asks: "Can I survive this?"
And...they answered it BEFORE the sea got a vote. So when that unexpected sonar display...showed up on your deployment...your crew didn't meet a stranger. They met something they'd ALREADY buried...forty times in Groton.
"The confidence this gave the crew was noticeable." That sentence is doing quiet work. Confidence you can notice from the outside is confidence that's been earned on the INSIDE...rehearsed...NOT recited.
A calm crew...a completed mission...and a debrief to the President. That's what maintenance done often looks like when the stakes are real.
Thank you for your service, Captain...and for putting a periscope-depth view...on what I could only describe from shore.
This works. And for after funeral care, look around yourself this weekend at the people at your block party or the friend group who always shows up for you and realize that they will be the ones there when the world goes sideways or you have a catastrophic worry actually come true.
It is eerie how your timing is always spot on. As an early “communications” major, NLP fascinated me to the study but Nonverbal was my jam. A few years later, when Tony Robbins popped up with his mishmash of all the theorists work and called it his own, I was disgusted. Albeit, he was able to reach those who wouldn’t have had the exposure to the concept.
I’m at the point in life where using the funeral is perfect. Thanks, Jack! I truly appreciate you & wish you and all your readers the freedom from worry this Independence holiday.
Kimberly...a communications major who went deep on nonverbal...no wonder the timing feels spot on.
You've been reading the signal under the noise...for decades.
You said the fair thing about Robbins...better than I usually do: the packaging was borrowed...but the reach was real. Some people needed the arena version to find the door. You and I...just happened to come in through the LIBRARY.
Glad the funeral arrived at the right season of life. That's the thing about this tool...it doesn't care when you pick it up...only that you complete the TRIP!
Freedom from worry right back at you, Kimberly...this Independence weekend.
Interesting concept here, Jack. I'm of the age where I don't get to emotional over feelings I may have with regards to Politics. However, this would be helpful for the frequent deaths of friends and family members, that happen a lot more when you're of e curtain age. TGIF to you and All of your readers. Here's hoping you have a good, Safe 4th of July weekend, and will reStack ASAP 💯👍
Politics was ONLY ever the training-wheels version; what you're describing...is the real thing. At a certain age...the phone rings more often with THOSE calls...and each one asks the SAME question of your nervous system.
The Stoics wrote premeditatio malorum for exactly this: friends...family...mortality.
The election stuff came two thousand years later.
A good...safe 4th to you as well...and thank you for the restack!
Jack - The depths of your knowledge and experience continue to amaze me plus you have a great sense of timing as other folks have commented on. I have not studied any of these techniques previously for various reasons but my coping skills are about maxed out. I have an inquiring mind and a mental approach to life that is data driven. This newsletter and the confidence I have in you are much appreciated. I’ve shared this with others, have reread it, sent it to my printer and now need a quiet place and time for my funeral today or tomorrow. Looking forward to the experience although it will cause some tough times in my life to the forefront of my mind but I’ve survived them before and can do it again. Thanks.
Jay...a data-driven mind is EXACTLY the right equipment for this.
You're not being asked to believe anything...you're running an experiment with a sample size of ONE...and you already have the historical dataset: you've survived these things BEFORE.
The funeral...just lets your nervous system read its OWN records.
One thing, said plainly...because you mentioned your coping reserves are running low:
Go gently. Pick ONE thing...not the whole pile.
And...remember the rule; the return trip is the medicine. If the wave carries you out and won't bring you back...put the tool down and talk to someone.
That's not failure; that's reading the data CORRECTLY.
You've already done the hard part once... in real life, WITHOUT a manual. This time YOU choose the hour.
Oh, and, Jay...I certainly appreciate your kind words about this newsletter. I do.
I went through the steps Jack laid out today and I will admit that the clarity it awarded me was noticeable.
My worry – What if the Trump Administration was successful in interfering with the mid-term elections by deploying ICE and his unregulated militias so quickly that our slow legal system can’t respond quickly enough to stop it.
Letting it flow. I timed this and it took 18 minutes. I saw masked people with AR-15’s surrounding voting places, stopping anyone who was black or brown. If any tried to enter the poll anyway, they were shot. Anyone attempting to interfere was shot as well. This continued until the poll closed when the armed militia members left. The dead in the streets were finally cleared by the local government, and the news showed this happening all around the country.
What’s still standing. Me. My lesson’s learned mindset asked how this could have been prevented.
Now what. What matters now? It’s too late to do anything about what has happened, so the only option is to prevent this from happening again.
What can still be built? The local law enforcement can be strengthened and better coordination within the state and maybe the country. The poll workers can be told they did their job, despite the distractions and that we as a city are proud of them.
What do I choose to become in this future world? I will lead a campaign to shore up the weaknesses and run for political office to show I still support our way of life.
Come back to today. I need to do the shore up steps now and not wait for this eventuality to happen. I am attending a gathering with our district’s Democratic House of Representatives candidate next week. I will begin putting together a skeleton plan to be prepared for the onslaught that I “experienced, “ and try and convince him that it is in his and the nation’s best interest to be prepared.
I will begin working on this plan in the morning and will share it on my Substack A view from the Cheap Seats, One Man’ s opinion in a Sea of Pundits.
Steven...you ran the full protocol...which is OUTSTANDING...and I want to point at something you did right...that most people miss.
You went somewhere genuinely DARK.
Eighteen minutes in heavy water. But look at what you wrote AFTER:
A candidate meeting ALREADY on your calendar...a plan you're starting in the morning...a role you CHOSE for yourself.
You didn't just visit the wreckage...you came back with a work order. That's the return trip. That's the ENTIRE medicine.
Notice what your fear looks like now...versus this morning: it has a task list attached. Fear...with a task list...isn't panic anymore...it's preparation. Your nervous system got its answer.
One note: from my experience running this pattern with many people over the years on fear based issues...you don't need to revisit that particular movie again. It did its job.
From here forward...your energy goes into the daylight work...the meeting...the plan...the shoring up. That's where the horsepower belongs.
Go build it. And post the link when it's up on Cheap Seats!
Well done...and thanks for being a great example of DOING.
You have given me a tool I have needed so badly to cope with life’s challenges. I used to wallow in my anguish hoping that would cure me of my grief eventually. It didn’t, but I felt I was so “sensitive” I had to be suffering to be alive. Marching forward well-armed now. Definitely life-changing. Thank you!!!
Sara...you just named the trap that catches the most tender-hearted people: the belief that suffering...is proof of depth.
That wallowing IS feeling. It isn't; it's the wave...with no SHORE. The funeral you NEVER leave.
Your sensitivity was never the problem. It's the instrument. You've just learned to play it on PURPOSE... instead of letting every headline pluck the strings.
"Marching forward well-armed." That's it exactly...same heart, now...with a MAP
Jack, I had to deal with the death my dad at 16 and the rape by a cousin at the same time as we were staying at my aunt's in Memphis and I was left alone with the creep. It happened several times and then when my dad died there was a funeral catholic mass for it back home here in Florida.No one told I could go to communion and the whole church it seemed like got up and went to communion but me. The priest gave the eulogy like a homeless person had just died not a man in a wheel chair due to WW II injuries that helped fund and build that church. Somehow I d=survived and graduated from high school. But I got married right out of high school because I was running from everything. It lasted 10 years. Igave up a full scholarship to the Florida Institute of technology to go into computer(1969) and i also had the va benefit of free schooling because dad was 100% disabled. Once I got my feet on the ground with 2 kids in tow I rebuilt my life. Not perfect but I was able to see where things occurred and become an RN and help people and be able to make the kinds of decisions in Home Care where it is just you and the patient..no one to run to ask.I was always analytical and that really helped. DO the right thing and not dilly dally about as it can be the difference between life and death for patients. I remember arguing with paramedics one day about a person in respiratory stress and the gut says I don't hear anything when he was listening to her lungs and I said because she can not breath properly. .She was in the hospital and the rehab for over a month with pneumonia. She thanked me later and I said not necessary, I was doing what was right for you. I very seldom panic in my life anymore. Thanks for this article it explained some of my behaviors to me.
“Only when you’ve lost everything are you free to do anything.”
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
When I was in my late teens/early twenties, I went through a very deep and introspective period. During that period, I became aware of two primal fears:
- The fear of death (the cessation of life)
- The fear of dying (the process to achieve death)
During that period, I overcame the fear of my own death. I accepted and came to respect death.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I began to have health issues. (It’s hell getting old! 😉) I felt things I’d never felt before. I’d felt really, really bad. Not that I actually was, but it was then that I understood and learned to respect the process of dying.
Once I overcame those two fears, my worldview changed. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. I will still have times of anxiety and stress, but not fearing death and dying really takes the edge off.
Thanks for the process. When something goes sideways or this farcical political climate infringes, I give it 5 minutes, mutter, stomp, and have my hissy fit. then, I do something very active or creative. So much talk was given lately to democrats and independents not celebrating the 4th. I was determined not on my watch. So I bought new bunting, an America 250 ( no freedom 😡), Marine Flag, got out my American flags, and Army flag and proudly built a display for my house. Trump may have disasterized the National State Fair and tried to usurp our symbols. I dissent. When questions flew from some magas on a post. I stood up to them.
Due to prior trauma I had to confront my mortality (I was around 40 at the time). Since then I have encountered challenges (fears) but they had little power over me because I'd already had a stare-down with death and I won! Now in my 70s, I'm still ready to weather whatever storm might come ... bring it on!
CLF...now THIS is the comment I hope everyone scrolls down far enough to read.
You just gave the whole article a better ending than I did. You didn't run this pattern as an eleven-minute exercise...life handed you the full-immersion version at 40...no rehearsal...no linen pants.
You did the one thing that separates the people this BREAKS...from the people it BUILDS: you completed the trip. You went in...you FELT it...and you came back out with the answer your nervous system...had been BEGGING for.
"I'd already had a stare-down with death and I won." That's the ENTIRE mechanism in one sentence. Every fear since then shows up at your door...checks the ledger...sees the account was settled thirty years ago...and slinks off.
Notice what you're NOT saying. You're NOT saying nothing bad can happen. You're saying "bring it on"...which is a statement about the INSTRUMENT...not the WEATHER.
That's the distinction most people never get...and you've been living it for three decades.
Thank you for putting your receipts on the table. Somebody reading this today...is carrying a fear they THINK is permanent...and your comment just showed them what the far side looks like...at 70-plus...still standing...arms crossed...waiting on the storm.
#HoldFast. You clearly always have.
-Jack
Thanks Jack!
Definitely what I needed today.
I have been overwhelmed by grief the last few days—so many layers of it:
~My job in which I see so much animal pain and suffering
~my state which is on fire right now and simply won’t ever be the way it was when I was growing up— my daughter won’t know the Colorado of my own youth
~the absolute farce of America’s 250th birthday
I could go on but this is so heavy already.
When I’m done ministering to the 4-leggeds, I’ll sit with this awhile and grieve
Debby...this one stopped me, so I'm going to answer it straight...no showmanship.
First...what you do for the four-leggeds is ministry in the truest sense.
You stand in a river of suffering...most people couldn't look at for TEN minutes...and you do it daily...on PURPOSE.
That grief is NOT a malfunction. It's the receipt for a working heart...in a hard job. I hope you never lose it entirely... just its weight.
Second...I want to hand you one distinction before you sit down with this tonight... because it matters for someone in your position:
Some of what you're carrying isn't pre-grief. The animals...the fires...the Colorado your daughter won't inherit...that's not an imagined future. That's real loss...ALREADY here...and it doesn't need a rehearsal.
Glad you're here, Debby.
-Jack
Jack, some good advice on this Independence Day eve…and as I do have hope for the midterms, the reality of what may happen has been lurking in the back of my mind for a while now. All we can do is to prepare in every way we can for the possibility of the direst of outcomes, and then move forward from there. For years, with colon cancer in my maternal family, I’d wondered what I would do if I should be diagnosed. 23 years ago I found out, Stage III, felt the bottom of my world fall out that March afternoon…grieved myself, grieved for my husband and our children over the next week…it took about that long for me to say HELL NO…I was not going to let cancer destroy my world, and so I worked to do everything I could do to treasure every moment I had and to fight! I will take the same approach to what we may face come November. I hope that everyone will join together and continue to do what we can to salvage what we may have left and to continue to pushback!
Tomorrow we are not celebrating this country…instead we are celebrating our granddaughter’s birthdays, which should have happened last month but they were sick and so the celebration was delayed. We will celebrate them, our family and simply being together!! Thank you for the wisdom and thought provoking words you share with us…so glad you are here!
Christie...you just did something I want every reader in this comment section to notice.
I wrote eleven hundred words explaining a technique. You lived it...23 years ago...in a single week in March...with the stakes as REAL as stakes get. Bottom falls out. Grief comes...yours...your husband's...your children's...and...instead of fighting the wave... you let it complete.
Roughly seven days later...right on schedule...the wave turned and something UNDERNEATH it stood up and said HELL NO!
That's the ENTIRE pattern. Steps one through six.
You didn't learn it from a newsletter. You learned it from the hardest teacher there is... and you PASSED.
And...notice what the grief did NOT do: it did NOT make you passive. That's the misunderstanding I fight every time I write about this. People think grieving something means surrendering to it. You're proof of the opposite...the grief was the IGNITION... not the EXIT.
A week of honest mourning bought you 23 years of fighting and treasuring at FULL strength. That's the trade. It's the best deal on the market...and almost nobody takes it.
So...when you say you'll take the same approach come November...I damn sure believe you...and I'd add only this: you're not preparing to use the pattern. You're a VETERAN of it. November should be nervous.
Tomorrow sounds exactly right. Two granddaughters...a delayed celebration...a family in one room. You've been treasuring the moments...for 23 years on PURPOSE; no wonder you know PRECISELY which thing to celebrate...when the calendar gets complicated.
Happy birthday to the girls!
Glad you're here...23 extra years' worth of glad.
-Jack
So happy every day I am here…not that every day is great, some are going to be better than others, always glad to be here!!
PS…a little postscript…I couldn’t metabolise my chemo protocol and by the second round my hair was coming out…one nice May afternoon my dearest friend came by to take me for a ride in her car…she put the top down and as we were driving my hair was blowing off my head…she thought I was crying, but I was laughing…trying to imagine what the drivers behind us thought of all that hair coming towards them!
Thank so much for your kind words, Jack!
Jack is correct that fear is a crop, and someone is always tending the field. History records the specific mechanism he’s describing without naming it: the manufactured emergency, the citizen kept perpetually bracing, never once allowed to exhale long enough to think clearly.
File the date: every regime that consolidated power quickly did so against a population that had not yet grieved the thing it feared, because ungrieved fear is malleable fear. It can be pointed. It can be sold a savior. A population that has already sat with the worst outcome and mapped its own response is a population that cannot be stampeded, because stampeding requires an unanswered question, and Jack is describing exactly how to answer it in advance.
Note which figures in history moved fastest and met the least resistance: not the ones facing the boldest opposition, but the ones facing the most exhausted one. Exhaustion was never a side effect of their methods. It was the objective. A citizen too spent to grieve properly is a citizen who reacts instead of decides, and a nation of reactors does not hold its ground.
File the date more precisely: February 27, 1933. The Reichstag burns, and within twenty-four hours Hindenburg issues an emergency decree suspending nearly every civil liberty in the Weimar Constitution — speech, assembly, press, privacy, all of it, gone overnight, justified as defense against a communist uprising that never materialized as described. SA stormtroopers rounded up roughly 4,000 people that same night, many tortured as well as jailed. The population wasn’t defeated by argument. It was exhausted first — years of hyperinflation, street violence, and cabinet turnover behind it — and an exhausted population signs away its rights faster than a rested one ever would.
Note what came next. On March 23, the Enabling Act passed 444 to 94, with Communist deputies already barred from the chamber and Social Democratic deputies detained under the decree Hitler had just extracted. SA troops surrounded the building on the day of the vote. This is the mechanism in full: manufacture the emergency, exploit the exhaustion, remove the opposition through the emergency itself, then legislate the permanent power while the country is still catching its breath.
Jack is correct twice over, then: once on the psychology, once on the historical record. Weimar’s tragedy wasn’t that Germans failed to see the danger. It’s that by February 1933, they had no reserve left to meet it with anything but relief that the chaos, at least, might finally stop. A rested, unspookable citizen, pointed at a real problem, has always outlasted the men counting on his panic.
Jane...you just gave my psychology its history exam...and it passed.
February 1933 is the mechanism run at NATIONAL scale: exhaust them first...then the emergency does the rest.
Your line about ungrieved fear...being malleable fear...NAILS it.
A rested citizen really IS the regime-builder's WORST nightmare.
Thank you for the receipts.
#HoldFast.
-Jack
There are two comments her and I will separate them into two postings. This first one deals with inoculation training. The Navy submarine force has been doing this for years. I can personally attest to its effectiveness.
Naval Submarine School in Groton Ct has several trainers that are used to train submarine crews on actions to take when everything goes south. The first is their ship’s diving simulators. These are recreations of a submarine’s diving stations on gimbals that allow the crew to experience how a ship will respond to actions the crew takes in emergency situations. The ship’s attitude, pitch and roll responses are very realistic and prepare the crew for the worst possible ship control casualties. While I never actually experienced one of these casualties at sea, all the trained crews knew they could handle the real thing if it occurred. The confidence this gave the crew was noticeable.
The second trainer type were fire control trainers that were actual setups of the ship’s sonar system and control room tracking and weapons launch stations. Training scenarios could be input into the simulator computers and the crew could train on solving the tactical picture of the enemy and deploy simulated weapons. I have been through countless hours in these trainers, and they were particularly beneficial for me as it gave me hands on experience with digital fire control system, something none of the submarines I was stations were equipped with them. The crew’s ability to analyze the sonar inputs and translate them into a clear tactical picture was invaluable. When on one deployment when I was in command, we experienced a sonar display we did not expect. The crew was able to calmly analyze the situation and take necessary actions that allowed the mission to continue. We proceeded to have one of the fleet’s most successful submarine deployments, one where I was asked to debrief the President of the United States and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Inoculation training works if done properly.
Steven...when I wrote "the military calls it stress inoculation," I forgot the comment section might produce a submarine commander...with the receipts.
This is the whole thesis...in steel...and salt water.
Those diving simulators on gimbals weren't teaching the crew that casualties WOULDN'T happen...they were answering the only question a nervous system ever asks: "Can I survive this?"
And...they answered it BEFORE the sea got a vote. So when that unexpected sonar display...showed up on your deployment...your crew didn't meet a stranger. They met something they'd ALREADY buried...forty times in Groton.
"The confidence this gave the crew was noticeable." That sentence is doing quiet work. Confidence you can notice from the outside is confidence that's been earned on the INSIDE...rehearsed...NOT recited.
A calm crew...a completed mission...and a debrief to the President. That's what maintenance done often looks like when the stakes are real.
Thank you for your service, Captain...and for putting a periscope-depth view...on what I could only describe from shore.
-Jack
This works. And for after funeral care, look around yourself this weekend at the people at your block party or the friend group who always shows up for you and realize that they will be the ones there when the world goes sideways or you have a catastrophic worry actually come true.
Mary Ann...you just added the step I should have numbered seven.
The funeral tells your nervous system "I can survive this." Looking around the block party...tells it "and I won't be doing it alone."
That second answer might be the MORE powerful one; catastrophes are survived by NETWORKS...not heroes.
The fear-farmers need you isolated at a screen. The antidote...is standing in a yard with people who SHOW UP.
Well said!
-Jack
It is eerie how your timing is always spot on. As an early “communications” major, NLP fascinated me to the study but Nonverbal was my jam. A few years later, when Tony Robbins popped up with his mishmash of all the theorists work and called it his own, I was disgusted. Albeit, he was able to reach those who wouldn’t have had the exposure to the concept.
I’m at the point in life where using the funeral is perfect. Thanks, Jack! I truly appreciate you & wish you and all your readers the freedom from worry this Independence holiday.
Kimberly...a communications major who went deep on nonverbal...no wonder the timing feels spot on.
You've been reading the signal under the noise...for decades.
You said the fair thing about Robbins...better than I usually do: the packaging was borrowed...but the reach was real. Some people needed the arena version to find the door. You and I...just happened to come in through the LIBRARY.
Glad the funeral arrived at the right season of life. That's the thing about this tool...it doesn't care when you pick it up...only that you complete the TRIP!
Freedom from worry right back at you, Kimberly...this Independence weekend.
That's the only kind worth declaring.
#HoldFast
-Jack
Interesting concept here, Jack. I'm of the age where I don't get to emotional over feelings I may have with regards to Politics. However, this would be helpful for the frequent deaths of friends and family members, that happen a lot more when you're of e curtain age. TGIF to you and All of your readers. Here's hoping you have a good, Safe 4th of July weekend, and will reStack ASAP 💯👍
Karen...you just took the tool to its truest use.
Politics was ONLY ever the training-wheels version; what you're describing...is the real thing. At a certain age...the phone rings more often with THOSE calls...and each one asks the SAME question of your nervous system.
The Stoics wrote premeditatio malorum for exactly this: friends...family...mortality.
The election stuff came two thousand years later.
A good...safe 4th to you as well...and thank you for the restack!
-Jack
Jack - The depths of your knowledge and experience continue to amaze me plus you have a great sense of timing as other folks have commented on. I have not studied any of these techniques previously for various reasons but my coping skills are about maxed out. I have an inquiring mind and a mental approach to life that is data driven. This newsletter and the confidence I have in you are much appreciated. I’ve shared this with others, have reread it, sent it to my printer and now need a quiet place and time for my funeral today or tomorrow. Looking forward to the experience although it will cause some tough times in my life to the forefront of my mind but I’ve survived them before and can do it again. Thanks.
Jay...a data-driven mind is EXACTLY the right equipment for this.
You're not being asked to believe anything...you're running an experiment with a sample size of ONE...and you already have the historical dataset: you've survived these things BEFORE.
The funeral...just lets your nervous system read its OWN records.
One thing, said plainly...because you mentioned your coping reserves are running low:
Go gently. Pick ONE thing...not the whole pile.
And...remember the rule; the return trip is the medicine. If the wave carries you out and won't bring you back...put the tool down and talk to someone.
That's not failure; that's reading the data CORRECTLY.
You've already done the hard part once... in real life, WITHOUT a manual. This time YOU choose the hour.
Oh, and, Jay...I certainly appreciate your kind words about this newsletter. I do.
-Jack
Part two, the exercise:
I went through the steps Jack laid out today and I will admit that the clarity it awarded me was noticeable.
My worry – What if the Trump Administration was successful in interfering with the mid-term elections by deploying ICE and his unregulated militias so quickly that our slow legal system can’t respond quickly enough to stop it.
Letting it flow. I timed this and it took 18 minutes. I saw masked people with AR-15’s surrounding voting places, stopping anyone who was black or brown. If any tried to enter the poll anyway, they were shot. Anyone attempting to interfere was shot as well. This continued until the poll closed when the armed militia members left. The dead in the streets were finally cleared by the local government, and the news showed this happening all around the country.
What’s still standing. Me. My lesson’s learned mindset asked how this could have been prevented.
Now what. What matters now? It’s too late to do anything about what has happened, so the only option is to prevent this from happening again.
What can still be built? The local law enforcement can be strengthened and better coordination within the state and maybe the country. The poll workers can be told they did their job, despite the distractions and that we as a city are proud of them.
What do I choose to become in this future world? I will lead a campaign to shore up the weaknesses and run for political office to show I still support our way of life.
Come back to today. I need to do the shore up steps now and not wait for this eventuality to happen. I am attending a gathering with our district’s Democratic House of Representatives candidate next week. I will begin putting together a skeleton plan to be prepared for the onslaught that I “experienced, “ and try and convince him that it is in his and the nation’s best interest to be prepared.
I will begin working on this plan in the morning and will share it on my Substack A view from the Cheap Seats, One Man’ s opinion in a Sea of Pundits.
Steven...you ran the full protocol...which is OUTSTANDING...and I want to point at something you did right...that most people miss.
You went somewhere genuinely DARK.
Eighteen minutes in heavy water. But look at what you wrote AFTER:
A candidate meeting ALREADY on your calendar...a plan you're starting in the morning...a role you CHOSE for yourself.
You didn't just visit the wreckage...you came back with a work order. That's the return trip. That's the ENTIRE medicine.
Notice what your fear looks like now...versus this morning: it has a task list attached. Fear...with a task list...isn't panic anymore...it's preparation. Your nervous system got its answer.
One note: from my experience running this pattern with many people over the years on fear based issues...you don't need to revisit that particular movie again. It did its job.
From here forward...your energy goes into the daylight work...the meeting...the plan...the shoring up. That's where the horsepower belongs.
Go build it. And post the link when it's up on Cheap Seats!
Well done...and thanks for being a great example of DOING.
-Jack
Her is a link to the article on A View from the Cheap Seats.
https://stevenerick.substack.com/p/a-view-from-the-cheap-seats-95e?r=bmogg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Great advice Jack. A fleshed out way to "live in the moment."
Gary Nelson...you're most welcome!
-Jack
You have given me a tool I have needed so badly to cope with life’s challenges. I used to wallow in my anguish hoping that would cure me of my grief eventually. It didn’t, but I felt I was so “sensitive” I had to be suffering to be alive. Marching forward well-armed now. Definitely life-changing. Thank you!!!
Sara...you just named the trap that catches the most tender-hearted people: the belief that suffering...is proof of depth.
That wallowing IS feeling. It isn't; it's the wave...with no SHORE. The funeral you NEVER leave.
Your sensitivity was never the problem. It's the instrument. You've just learned to play it on PURPOSE... instead of letting every headline pluck the strings.
"Marching forward well-armed." That's it exactly...same heart, now...with a MAP
.
-Jack
WOW.!! Thank you.
Melinda...YOU...are welcome!
-Jack
Jack, I had to deal with the death my dad at 16 and the rape by a cousin at the same time as we were staying at my aunt's in Memphis and I was left alone with the creep. It happened several times and then when my dad died there was a funeral catholic mass for it back home here in Florida.No one told I could go to communion and the whole church it seemed like got up and went to communion but me. The priest gave the eulogy like a homeless person had just died not a man in a wheel chair due to WW II injuries that helped fund and build that church. Somehow I d=survived and graduated from high school. But I got married right out of high school because I was running from everything. It lasted 10 years. Igave up a full scholarship to the Florida Institute of technology to go into computer(1969) and i also had the va benefit of free schooling because dad was 100% disabled. Once I got my feet on the ground with 2 kids in tow I rebuilt my life. Not perfect but I was able to see where things occurred and become an RN and help people and be able to make the kinds of decisions in Home Care where it is just you and the patient..no one to run to ask.I was always analytical and that really helped. DO the right thing and not dilly dally about as it can be the difference between life and death for patients. I remember arguing with paramedics one day about a person in respiratory stress and the gut says I don't hear anything when he was listening to her lungs and I said because she can not breath properly. .She was in the hospital and the rehab for over a month with pneumonia. She thanked me later and I said not necessary, I was doing what was right for you. I very seldom panic in my life anymore. Thanks for this article it explained some of my behaviors to me.
#HOLDFAST
Teri
“Only when you’ve lost everything are you free to do anything.”
- Tyler Durden, Fight Club
When I was in my late teens/early twenties, I went through a very deep and introspective period. During that period, I became aware of two primal fears:
- The fear of death (the cessation of life)
- The fear of dying (the process to achieve death)
During that period, I overcame the fear of my own death. I accepted and came to respect death.
It wasn’t until I was in my 40s that I began to have health issues. (It’s hell getting old! 😉) I felt things I’d never felt before. I’d felt really, really bad. Not that I actually was, but it was then that I understood and learned to respect the process of dying.
Once I overcame those two fears, my worldview changed. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. I will still have times of anxiety and stress, but not fearing death and dying really takes the edge off.
Thanks for the process. When something goes sideways or this farcical political climate infringes, I give it 5 minutes, mutter, stomp, and have my hissy fit. then, I do something very active or creative. So much talk was given lately to democrats and independents not celebrating the 4th. I was determined not on my watch. So I bought new bunting, an America 250 ( no freedom 😡), Marine Flag, got out my American flags, and Army flag and proudly built a display for my house. Trump may have disasterized the National State Fair and tried to usurp our symbols. I dissent. When questions flew from some magas on a post. I stood up to them.
❤️🤍💙🇺🇸
#HoldFast