The Silent Warrior Is Killing Your Mental Health
There’s A Silent Warrior Surreptitiously Killing Your Mental Health, And You Know Who It Is.
There’s a silent warrior surreptitiously killing your mental health.
If an operator in the special operations community raised his hand or filled out one of the many questionnaires and claimed to have anxiety, depression, loss of hope, or angry outbursts, well, he could kiss his deployment good-bye.
And within that circle, war was a reward (but that’s the topic for another article).
Nobody — not a single SEAL I ever worked with — EVER wanted to forego a deployment. For any reasons.
What’s so ironic here is the stigma of weakness surrounding mental health. The dominant perspective is that if an operator seeks support for mental health, then he must be weak. But if you think about it, the truth is the exact opposite.
“The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth… their delight is in self-mastery… They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.”
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Moreover, in a community that preaches the priorities of Mission — Team — Me (in that order) how does the mission get accomplished if the individual doesn’t show up his best self? How does the team function if its members are only showing up half of what they’re capable of showing up as?
But, most important, if operators do, in fact, consider themselves warriors yet they avoid doing something for fear of what others *may* think, well, that doesn’t exactly personify warrior ethos, does it? After all, a warrior, in my opinion, is somebody who punches fear in the mouth, stomps on its ankle to immobilize it, then stuffs its face in the mud.
Warriors crush fear by confronting fear, not by allowing it to live another day.
So, by that rationale, if asking for help is hard, that’s what a warrior should do — pursue hard things.
Avoiding an issue isn’t a show of strength, and the stigma of weakness surrounding mental health needs to be flipped on its head because being healthy mentally is what gives you strength.
The problem is, the silent warrior never goes away. Hell, he doesn’t even let you know he’s there (I mean, that’s why he’s “silent,” right?) until it’s too late. He just keeps sabotaging your mental health with excuses, or, as some may rationalize them as “reasons” for why they “can’t” get a check-up from the neck-up.
The worst part about this silent warrior is that he (or maybe it’s a she, who knows?) NEVER…SHUTS…UP.
He’s in the back of your mind ALL THE TIME, planting new seeds of anger, resentment, hopelessness, apathy, all so he can win the war. And do you know what that war is?
It’s the war with yourself.
That’s right. You are at war every single day of your life whether you know it or not.
Every time a critical thought creeps in to tell you you’re not good enough and you nod your head in agreement, the silent warrior wins the battle.
Every time an excuse pops into your nugget to remind you why you shouldn’t talk with somebody or why you shouldn’t ask for help, the silent warrior wins the battle
Over time, the more battles the silent warrior wins, the closer he is toward winning the war, and when he wins the war, all hope gets lost.
So how do you fight this warrior, and win? After all, he’s the best at what he does, which, in this case is sabotage — self-sabotage.
But you’re not. You don’t consider yourself a “warrior,” per se. You’re not a fighter in the traditional sense. You’re You.
You don’t know how to turn negative thoughts around, otherwise you would.
You don’t know how to find purpose, otherwise you would.
You don’t know how to stop being so self-loathing, otherwise you would.
You don’t know how to stop feeling depressed or worrying about things outside of your control, otherwise you would.
So, what the hell do you do?
The Truth About the Silent Warrior.
Steven Pressfield, in his bestselling book The War of Art, calls this silent warrior Resistance, which Robert McKee refers to in the foreword as an:
…all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish — that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that’s actually good.
The silent warrior’s role is to prevent you from living the life you need and instead convince you to live the life you want.
Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.
– Steven Pressfield
When you stop feeding Resistance, the Resistance weakens. It’ll never go away but it won’t have the strength to fight back because you’ve overpowered it with a willingness to fight back.
And you already possess the weapons you need to fight back:
Curiosity
Patience
Love
Humility
Laughter
Is this too touchy feely for you? If so, good. You’re exactly who needs to hear this. (And if you want to start “fighting,” ask yourself, “What part of me feels uncomfortable with these words?”)
Forget the War. Win the Battles.
When I was going through Hell Week in BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training), if I had considered the enormity of staying up for five and a half days while sleeping just four hours the entire week, I would’ve never made it. It would’ve been too much for my mind to handle, especially on Monday night while freezing my ass off in the cold waters of the Pacific.
So instead, I broke the week down into bite-sized pieces and just focused on a single evolution at a time because that was more mentally manageable.
When the week seems too long, break it into days.
When the days feel too long, break it into phases of morning, afternoon, and night.
When the morning/afternoon/night lasts too long, break it up into hours.
When the hour feels like it drags on, focus on the moment.
And when the moment just sucks (because you’re freezing your ass off in the Pacific or you’re waiting your turn to give a presentation), focus on your breath.
You can always do something, just pick your battle. The more battles you win, the closer you are toward winning the war.
Keep Fighting.
When you choose to fight, you’re fighting against yourself — against the fear of what others may think, against public scorn or ridicule, against peer pressure — and it sucks. It’s not comfortable and it’s not for the faint of heart. Facing your fears and discomforts is dirty, messy and full of shame, guilt, embarrassment and every other dark place you’ve ever experienced, as it’s all waiting to come to the surface like an inflated beach ball submerged underwater. You can only keep it down for so long before it resurfaces. However, there are two ways that ball can resurface:
On its own
With you as the driver
If it surfaces on its own then yelling, anger, impatience, emotional outbursts, frustration, will ensue. After all, that ball of emotion is apparently in charge.
But, with you as the driver, that submerged beach ball of fury, contempt, resentment or whatever is wants to go “pop!” can gently rise to the surface and just float on the surface. You feel like you can breathe. There’s a weight lifted off your shoulders. You feel cathartic because you just let go of a LOT of shit you were carrying around.
This is a practice you can cultivate every day with the right tools. You just need to re-program your mental software, which is extremely hard to do with the same thinking patterns that got you into this mess in the first place. Trust me, I’ve tried.
If your silent warrior is sabotaging your mindset, sabotaging your potential, and you’re sick of it, find someone to guide you with the right mental tools to win your daily battles. Set up an appointment today to discuss.