Episode 471 Ron Schneebaum Healing the Inner Wounds of War Transcript

This transcript is from episode 471 with guest Ron Schneebaum.

Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio. And today my guest is Dr. Ron Schneebaum. Dr. Schneebaum is a retired pediatrician and author and advocate for emotional and mental healing. And he’s the author of Bigger Hearted, which is a book that teaches, teaches how to lead with love and compassion to overcome life’s challenges.

Uh, challenges. So today we’re going to talk about his two part approach to helping veterans heal their inner wounds, including reframing their service experiences and practicing focused inner listening, which we’ll get into in just a bit, but, uh, Dr. Schneebaum, uh, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here.

Ron Schneebaum: Well, thank you so much, I’m really, I’m honored to be here. I consider it a privilege,

Scott DeLuzio: we, we look forward to the conversation. I’m sure, you know, that the, uh, information, uh, you know, just from the intro, just talking about kind of your, your background and experiences and everything. Uh, I’m sure it’s going to be valuable and useful to [00:01:00] the listeners. So, um, maybe we can start, uh, with, if you can help us, uh, you know, kind of explain why it’s important for veterans to reframe, uh, How they see their military service.

And what does that mean?

Ron Schneebaum: well, you know, a thing that’s an important one to think about so is how veterans were placed in a situation as in the armed forces that they didn’t necessarily set up for help to choose. They didn’t create it and say, well, this is perfect for me. so you had to, you had to be put into a situation, not of your choosing, and be good at it.

You had to practice and train and be good at it. And then you saw horrible things, many of you. And all of that, and you weren’t allowed to voice your opinion, you weren’t allowed to, to think, you weren’t allowed to, you weren’t allowed to deal with your emotions. And with all of that and seeing the horrible things, that’s one side of the difficulty.

Another side that happens is when you come home. When you come home, you don’t have the same [00:02:00] kind of prestige or position or routines. And you can’t relate to what other people are concerned about. So figuring out how we can reframe that and how we can re see that, um, is, is one way of tackling this issue of, of, of coming out okay.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. So yeah, reframing that is really good. Um, and, and you touched on, on kind of my next point here, uh, that I, I kind of want to jump ahead a little bit because you, you already brought it up, but, um, I want to talk about kind of recognizing that the veterans didn’t create some of the horrors of war that they maybe witnessed or experienced, things that were done to them, things that maybe they were put in a situation where they had no choice, but they had to do this terrible thing.

I don’t want to say terrible, like they did something wrong, but it’s, it’s a terrible experience to have to be through.

Ron Schneebaum: it’s a terrible thing. Absolutely. Yeah, no, we’re [00:03:00] not built for that. And, and, and the horrors of war. Go back to the time of the first war,

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Ron Schneebaum: you know, and, and to live with that and deal with that, what we gather from the generation that fought World War II, the way they handled it was they didn’t talk about it. You know, many people, if they talk to older relatives, they’ll never hear them talk about the war,

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Ron Schneebaum: and so that wasn’t necessarily a healthy way to do it either.

Scott DeLuzio: No, exactly. And yeah, bottling everything up inside, uh, that’s, that’s going to lead to all sorts of other issues because if you’re, you’re still battling that stuff internally, you’re not letting it out. You’re not talking about it. You’re not sharing. Uh, you know, how, how do you, how do you cope with that?

Does Now lead to, now you’re not sleeping well. Now you start drinking more and you start, you know, maybe taking it out on other people, you know, your spouse or your kids or, you know, other people in your life. And then you just become that [00:04:00] grumpy old vet that nobody wants to be around. Right.

Ron Schneebaum: yeah, and maybe get into drugs and alcohol because that can help to ease it and soothe it. Um, but there is a better way. There is hope. There is a better way. So let me, let me start by telling a story. And this story is unrelated, but in the end I’ll show its relationship. Okay, it’s a story about something that happened with me, and it’s really, it’s got nothing to do with me.

So, I’m a pediatrician, and one day I was doing rounds in a newborn nursery, and I did rounds in the nursery before I went to my office. And I got paged down to the emergency department, because there was a baby that was brought in, that was being resuscitated, who died. was on the verge of death. And what happened was, the dad was at home with the baby, the mom had already gone to work, he went to wake the baby up, and the baby was blue and not breathing.

So he did artificial, so he did whatever resuscitation he could do, called 911, the EMTs got there, they couldn’t get his heart going, [00:05:00] they got him to the hospital, the resuscitation team was there, they couldn’t get his heart going, and they basically called us down to say, to say it’s over. You know, they weren’t pediatricians.

They felt more comfortable having a pediatrician do that and say that. So the mom was at work. The dad was still at home because the police wanted to interrogate him to make sure there wasn’t any child abuse that was the cause of what happened. And we knew that the mom was coming in. So, yes, indeed, I said to the staff, it’s time to end the code, and then I said, um, and they said, the mom is coming in, I said, is anyone going to be greeting her?

And they said, no, so I said, okay, I’ll do that, because I couldn’t have her just come back to this room and see her dead baby without somebody telling her what happened. So it turns out that this baby had been premature and was in our nursery, so I knew the, I knew the family. And it turns out this was the mom’s seventh attempt at a child.

Um, she had six, [00:06:00] um, uh, six babies that didn’t survive. Um, and so, um, so this was, um, so this was her first baby. And when she came in, I greeted her. And I said he didn’t make it, that Ramon didn’t make it, and she collapsed. And so I brought her into a room, and I thought, let me tell her the best I can do. So I said, he didn’t suffer, it wasn’t anybody’s fault, when your husband woke him up, he couldn’t get him to breathe, he did excellent things to try to help him, and everywhere along the line.

And so he didn’t suffer, and we did the most we could. And I had said to the people in the room before I left, I said, leave all of his resuscitation equipment intact. Because I didn’t know, but I thought that maybe moms look at him to see that he had all that, she would know that we tried everything.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah.

Ron Schneebaum: So I brought her into the room and, um, and then I had everybody disconnect everything and there were two chairs next to this little open crib.

And so we sat in these two [00:07:00] chairs and at one point I said, do you want to be with him alone? Do you want to hold him? And he said, sure. I said, do you want to be with him alone? And I felt a little funny, but it seemed like the thing to do. I mean, here’s a mom holding her baby who’s not living anymore. And she said, yes.

And then I had to go to my office because I had to go and see five year old Ramon for his birthday. It was his fifth birthday. And so I had a 10 minute drive. And I could take nothing of what just happened with me. I couldn’t walk in and say, you should see what just, what I just went through. So I had to be able to wipe that totally away.

And I said, how do I do that? One of the things I discovered is we think with our minds, we think intellectually about facts and figures. We also think with our hearts, with the things that affect us emotionally. And so, so I could review this, and I could say with my mind, I know that there are tragedies all around the earth.

At this moment, there are babies dying all over. I didn’t cause it. It’s one of the things that [00:08:00] happens. It’s a problem. This one happened to come to me. So then if I take, so I didn’t cause it, I wasn’t part of it, and with him coming to me, I did the best that I possibly could to try and get a good outcome.

When that couldn’t happen, then I thought emotionally. I could be the best person I could imagine for the mother who was there. And so I could support her. So I could say to myself, you know, given everything, you did a good job. You really did. There was nothing you left out. There was nothing else that you could have done.

And, um, uh, we had a, a review a couple of weeks later, we had a review with everybody who was involved and there I could learn, you know, was there something else I could do, but there really wasn’t. So, if I said, this wasn’t my cause, I did the best I could, and I was emotionally supportive and present and set that up right, so I could leave feeling okay.

That parallels what happens with the service.

Scott DeLuzio: Sure.

Ron Schneebaum: We go in there, and [00:09:00] we have the horrors of war, as we mentioned. We didn’t cause it. We also know that we went through incredible sacrifice to get to the point that we got to. We left our family, we left our homes, we left our lifestyle, and then we had to go through training, and we had to go through mental and physical, unbelievable training, just so that we could be good soldiers.

And we do that as hard as we can and give it everything. And we sometimes had to listen to commanders who were jerks. Who gave us a hard time, and we just had to do what they said. There was no talkback. There was no, there was no place to say, Gee, I’m not sure that’s fair. It doesn’t really, it doesn’t really work very well.

So we did all of that, and then we moved into the war. We went into war. And there, as you mentioned, horrible things happened. And we could have even been involved with someone. We could have had told someone, look, we got to run, and they didn’t, and they got killed, and we could feel it’s our responsibility.

It wasn’t. Even if something happened that might have been, that’s what happens in war. [00:10:00] It doesn’t go perfectly. You know, there’s an old saying that war is hell. So we can say to ourselves, if we look back, wait a second, I did a great job. I sacrificed, I worked, I did what I was told, I was a good soldier.

This other part wasn’t my fault, I really was a good soldier, so I can spend some time, and really spend some time, and I’ll talk about this later, I can spend some time to really drive it at home and realize I was good. The stuff that, the stuff that gets to me, sure, it’s really hard, but I don’t need to take it personally.

I can drop the personal connection.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Ron Schneebaum: And, um, you know, it’s something where, if we were on a train, and the, the, the conductor of the train caused the train to crash, we wouldn’t take it personally.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Ron Schneebaum: You know, so we didn’t cause this. We didn’t say, hey, I got a great idea tomorrow. Let’s do a war. You know, let’s go bomb these folks.

I’m going to drop some. You know, I didn’t do that. So then we had this next issue [00:11:00] of what do we do once we leave? So once we leave, enormous things happen. One is, it doesn’t happen that our whole community and our whole world is on their rooftops cheering and applauding us. That just doesn’t happen. And it can also happen that they might even say negative things about us and people might not like us and so on.

So we have to be able to say, again, that’s not about me. But we need to do a level of forgiveness. So when I say we need to, that’s really the food for conversation I’m talking about for good mental health. You know, it’s helpful to do a level of forgiveness. Forgiveness is to say, I am going to forgive the people that don’t understand.

So I can, um, go to the supermarket and people are all upset because their chai tea latte doesn’t have enough cream in it or they’re out of oat milk. And I think, come on, I was just in a war. You know, what are you guys talking about? So I had, [00:12:00] so there’s a place of remembering what we were like before we did any of this stuff.

In my medical practice, the way I would do that is I would think just because somebody has a kidney problem that doesn’t mean they know anything about their kidneys. How would I talk to them before I went to medical school? You know, so to be able to say I can forgive these people because I was in the same place.

If I end up not going into the service, I might be complaining that they didn’t have oat milk, or almond milk, or whatever it is, or our version of that. So, one part of forgiveness, and the other part is forgiving. They don’t know what we went through. They can’t know what we went through. And so, if we work on that, that can help.

And then, another part is, we were part of a team. Um, it’s hard to leave a team. Yeah, we get each other. If you talk to people who are retired athletes. It’s really hard for them that first training season when they’re not going to training with everyone. It’s like, that’s what I do. I, I go to spring training or training for football [00:13:00] and we’re back in the, in the, in the deal.

It’s really hard to leave that. And you know that it counts and it’s important if you have a little kid. Your little kid doesn’t care about what you’re, whether you’re an athlete or not. They want you to throw them up and down and make them laugh. Well, that’s really what the rest of the world is like. We don’t need to worry about our past.

So we really can, in some way, drop it, know that we did a great job, and that part of the thing is over. Then there’s the re entry into society. How do we find a job? One is, there are some people, and I don’t mean to say anything against it if it works, but some people go into military like positions. So there’ll be a guard, or there’ll be a watchman, or they’ll go into the police force, you know, something that’s similar.

That’s okay if it works, but you can also take some time, and ideally, our society would build this in. Our society should have a time that once you’re out of service, you have this amazing retreat in Hawaii, or somewhere beautiful, where you get to decompress, you get to discover who you [00:14:00] are, you take art courses, you It’s total leisure.

You get to be a person. It’s a shame that we don’t do that. If we cared, we would do that. We’d prepare people before they went in and we’d prepare them once they got home. So now we’re like any other person who has to find a job. We don’t have a lot of great jobs. You know, there are a lot of jobs that are really stupid that people have.

So, and a lot of folks in this country have a hard time with them. So we have such phrases as Wednesday is hump day because you’re halfway through the week. And thank goodness it’s Friday and let’s drink on weekends. So, with all that, we’re in the midst of that, plus we have all the stuff we’re carrying with us.

So, what I discovered is you can look at work in three different ways. One is you can first say to yourself, why am I doing this? It could be that this is the most interesting thing you imagined and you’re starting this entry level position and you really, you love this, you’d love to do this, you always wanted [00:15:00] to.

It could be that it’s the thing you need to do to pay the bills. So, if you do that, you don’t have to make a big deal. Yeah, it might not be great. But now how do I make it better? So there are two ways you can make it better. One is you can say to yourself, um, if I work here, what would I want for my co workers? How would I want my co workers to be? I’d probably want to have a good mood, to be helpful, to be hard working, to be pleasant, and all that stuff. Okay, let me do that. then the other part is if there’s a service component, What is it that somebody who goes to get a service wants? If you go to the doctor, what do you want?

You want to feel that people care about you and they’re nice and they treat you well. So you say, okay, I can do that. Whenever there’s a service aspect, let me be the nicest person I can be. Let me make it so people are glad that they’re here. It turns out if we do that, we’ll like what we do better. You know, I did a bunch of things in my life and, you know, I’ve I was totally non [00:16:00] qualified.

Before medicine, I worked in a logging camp in Alaska and I worked on a construction job. And I grew up in New York City in an apartment. I never did a stitch of physical labor in my life. And the only reason my bosses kept me was I had a good head on my shoulder and I worked hard. That’s all we need. If we do that, you can do anything.

I’m convinced. And then the last part is to see what we enjoy doing. If our work doesn’t give us any fulfillment, Then whether it’s volunteering or doing artwork or spending time with friends or family, and um, so that’s the, that’s the what we know part, that’s the what we work with part. Then how do we incorporate that? Now for the incorporating that, that’s where folks who are in the service are superior. We should be the best at it, because we went through all this training. We know how to take somebody who is a schlump. and make him into a soldier. We can do that. So I can [00:17:00] say to myself, I’m going to do this stuff. So there’s several ways and this is what I call focused interlistening.

One is to spend time all the time to say, I’m a good person. I didn’t create war. I’m a good person. And to just, if you even need to stomp in the shower and say, I’m a good person, I didn’t create war, that wasn’t my fault, that was nuts, you can do that. And then there are times where before you go to sleep, before you fall asleep, you can think about the things that bother you and say, how do I put a different light on this thing?

You know, how do I, how do I make it so that, you know, this person in the supermarket who was whining to someone, how, how can I not blow up at her or him? And so we can spend time before we go to sleep or if we wake up or if we wake up during the night. And um, we can take a walk. We can, we can take a walk and vent.

Go to some quiet place and scream at the people that invented war and the services. Now while there’s great stuff out of it, you know, really can bring tremendous things out of people, we really can vent. [00:18:00] And the vent is just to kind of get it off our shoulders so we can be ourselves.

Scott DeLuzio: Right.

Ron Schneebaum: And that’s really the main one.

And the other problem that happens is there are some people that didn’t go into the service with the greatest mental health. So then you put all these other things on it and then it makes it even worse. And the one other thing I want to add, I used to tell teenagers in my practice, it’s not for me to judge drinking and drugs, but if you ever notice that you take drinking and drugs because you’re inwardly hurting, that’s when you need to tell someone.

Because that’s not good, that’ll never come to a good end.

Scott DeLuzio: That’s true. Um, yeah, when you’re, you’re trying to self medicate and use that as your coping mechanism for whatever it is that you’re going through, that’s not going to work out very well for you. Uh, I do want to circle back to something that you said, uh, just a couple minutes ago. Um, but you’re talking about how You as a doctor or any doctor really, you know, talking with a patient, [00:19:00] uh, in that patient, let’s say they have kidney problems, right?

Um, but just because they have kidney problems, doesn’t make them an expert in kidney issues. Um, as a matter of fact, probably means the opposite in some cases, right? Because they clearly didn’t take care of their kidney. And now, you know, sometimes not to no fault of their own, but they could have done things, uh, you know, to it and cause some, some issues and You can’t look at that person as like, well, geez, you should just know everything that I know and use all the terminology that you would use if you’re talking to another doctor about the same, uh, condition that this, this patient has, maybe you’re, you’re, you know, getting another opinion from a doctor or something like that.

Of course, you’re going to use it. Let’s just call it doctor language, right? You’re going to use that vernacular. But in front of the patient, that’s not going to be very helpful because in a lot of cases, the patient doesn’t know really all the same things that you know. Unless the patient happens to also be a doctor.

But even still, their mind is going to be [00:20:00] someplace else. Because, okay, all of a sudden I have this medical issue, I have this health issue. Break it down in a simple sentence. Uh, format, um, you know, not, not because a person’s stupid, it’s because the person just doesn’t have the same experiences as you.

And so now, now, okay, let’s, let’s back out from that doctor scenario and let’s go back into, let’s talk about military and veterans, right? The vast majority of the population has not gone even through basic training or, and even fewer have served in the military. Combat. And so for you to look at that person and say, I can’t believe that you don’t know X, Y, and Z things about the military or about, you know, uh, combat situations and all this kind of stuff.

Well, honestly, thank God they don’t. Because if they don’t, that means that us as a military, we’ve done our job right, because the, the war is not marching down Main Street, uh, you know, whatever town they’re, [00:21:00] they’re living in. It’s, it’s often some foreign land and we’ve done a good job keeping it over there instead of over here.

Um, not to say that no Americans have experienced atrocities of, you know, war, obviously 9 11 is, is an exception, Pearl Harbor, those types of things. There’s others, um, but you know, those types of things are, uh, the, the exception. And, you know, for centuries, we’ve done a great job at keeping the average American citizen away from that.

And that should be something that you’re proud of. Um, you know, so,

Ron Schneebaum: what we did. You need to spend so much time being proud of what we’ve done and to be part of an amazing tradition and allow this country to be what this country is. Independent of what anybody else says, you know it in your bones.

Scott DeLuzio: And because if you look at it, if the person’s latte is the worst thing that they have to complain about. Hey, mission accomplished, right?

Ron Schneebaum: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And to really, you know what you say, Scott, it’s really it. It’s to be able to take pride and [00:22:00] acknowledge what you’ve done, to feel good about what you’ve done.

Scott DeLuzio: right?

Ron Schneebaum: And you gave up your life for it.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. And, and sometimes you might have to look at more than just what you did as an individual, but look at the overall picture because look, no one person is gonna go fight a war and win that war on their own, right? I, I don’t care how good of a soldier you are, or a marine or airman, whatever, uh, you know, branch of the service that you’re, you’re in, you as an individual are not going to win a war by yourself.

It requires. The, the people to your left, to your right, behind you, and, you know, all the way, even all the way back to home, you know, the, the people who are in logistics and supplying you with the, the bullets and the ammunition and the, the grenades and all the other things that they got to put them on a, you know, You know, on a, on a, you know, pallet somehow, get them shipped to you and, and, you know, deliver all that stuff, uh, the, the people who cook the food, the people who do, you know, there’s so many, the finances, all the things that, [00:23:00] that have to take place, um, in order for that one soldier to be out on that.

On that battlefield. And it’s not an easy task. There’s a lot of people involved. And so, Hey, you played a part in that, whatever your part is, no matter how big or small your part was, you played a part in that and without people like you. All those individual pieces, the whole thing falls apart, right? So, so you could be proud of that, even if you’re not proud, if you, you struggle to find, uh, you know, a way to be proud of your individual contribution, well, Hey, look, you were a part of this bigger thing and it was needed.

Ron Schneebaum: And you gave me goosebumps when you talked because one of the tenets and things about feeling good about life is gratitude. And you realize we can’t do things alone. If we could all mobilize around a certain ideal, boy, we can do incredible things. You know, so you learn teamwork and you learn, you know, learn [00:24:00] the importance of working together and all the people it takes to get something done.

That’s a phenomenal thing to have learned. And one other thing, when I talked about, to think about yourself, it’s not so much your accomplishments in the battlefield, you might not have done anything, but it’s all the work you went in to get to that place wherever you are. You really sacrificed so much and became good at what you did and, and, and really contribute in a way that other people don’t, that people not in the service don’t get a chance to do.

Scott DeLuzio: And just going back to what we were talking about earlier too, is that, you know, we’ve kept. The war off of, you know, that your average city, you know, your, your hometowns, your, your small towns, you know, we’ve kept the war away from them, from, from those just, you know, People trying to live their lives. Um, yeah, there’s exceptions and, and, uh, you know, we talked about those for sure.

Um, but for the most part, we’ve kept the bad things [00:25:00] away and that’s only able to be done as a collective whole, right? The, the might of the military force in our country is what is kept those people away from the good. The average citizen. And so even if all you did was you went to basic training and you, you served whatever your enlistment was and you served, you know, four or six, however many years, and then you got out, well, you were a part of that.

You were a part of that deterrent force. Right. And, and so, yeah, sure. Be proud of that too.

Ron Schneebaum: sacrificed your family, you sacrificed your life, you sacrificed everything to do that. You had to listen to people you didn’t agree with, you had to do things that you thought were wrong, you couldn’t think about that. You did a tremendous amount to get to that spot.

Scott DeLuzio: Absolutely. And so. So you have to look at yourself and be able to accept yourself, kind of almost love yourself, uh, in this, this process, right? [00:26:00] Um, how do we, how do we do that? Cause sometimes it’s, it’s hard. You got some people who are just really hard on themselves and they don’t even like what they look, they, they see when they look in the mirror, you know?

Ron Schneebaum: That’s why I wrote my book. You know, one of the things that happens is, a lot of it, in my sense, comes out of our childhoods. If we felt we weren’t loved and appreciated, somehow, somewhere along the way, we think that we weren’t deserving and we aren’t loving and we don’t deserve to be loved. We weren’t loved and don’t deserve to be loved.

And the child’s psyche can’t tolerate that, apparently, and it drives it into the unconscious. And that becomes the filter through which we see the world. if I feel lousy about myself, my life isn’t going to go well. So, and, and, and that’s not accurate or fair either. Because love goes beyond, if, [00:27:00] if our parents had problems, our caregivers had problems, That doesn’t mean we were unlovable.

Scott DeLuzio: Mm hmm.

Ron Schneebaum: You know, I think about newborns, I get to see them, and the love that parents have for their newborn is incredible. If the baby’s sick and it’s going to have heart surgery, the love is even more incredible. Those babies didn’t do anything to earn it, it’s part of it. If that baby then had a person who didn’t care for them well, that doesn’t take away that love, so we can reconnect with it.

And one of the things I suggest is this exercise before you go to sleep of first picturing any time in your life when you felt love. It could be petting your cat. It could be your grandmother giving you a chocolate chip cookie one day. And so remember that experience and then drop what brought that feeling and hold on to that feeling of love and eventually work with that enough so you can feel it.[00:28:00]

And practice that before you go to sleep when you wake up in the morning. Know that you’re worthy of being loved. You really are. If they were out of circumstances around it, that’s what my whole book is about. You know, my, my book is about if they’re out of circumstances, it’s like that army thing that wasn’t about you.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes the external forces that are in your life that the other people in circumstances, um, you know, they might have their own situations going on that they’re struggling with, that they’re trying to deal with. And, you know, just like You, you, a lot of us can imagine a veteran with PTSD or something along those lines who is angry and upset and frustrated with, and they, they take it out on somebody else.

Well, it’s not about that other person. It’s, it’s, they’re struggling with their own stuff going on internally. Right. And I think that’s what, what you’re trying to get at. And, and so [00:29:00] when somebody else, let’s now like externalize this and say, somebody else is having. A similar kind of issue. They’re, they’re going through their own, uh, struggles and they take it out on you.

Well, it’s not about you, it’s about them and what they’re going through. And so, so on occasion you might have to stop and say, Hey, what’s, uh, what’s going on with this person? Right? And, and, and try to think through what’s going on so that you’re not, um, gosh, you’re, you’re, you’re just not beating yourself up over it either.

Ron Schneebaum: Yeah. I think of it as if you were in a forest and a tree was falling in a big storm, you just step aside and say, wow, glad I got away from that tree. You know, that’s what it is. This person’s a lunatic. You know, and I can still relate to them. I just don’t have to give them that closeness because it’s not about me.

They have their issues. Yeah, we all do.

Scott DeLuzio: Right, right. And though, you know, sometimes it’s not quite as easy to just walk away, right, especially when [00:30:00] you were talking about, you know, a young child or something like that who, uh, you know, no fault of their own, they may have, they may have those issues, uh, with people who are in their lives and they, they may not have many options.

Um, but as you go, grow older, those options become more plentiful. Uh, you know, so that’s, that’s obviously, uh, you know, good things that you’re not, um, you know, stuck. Anywhere, right? You can step away from that tree. Um, but, but

Ron Schneebaum: in my practice who, um, I’m sorry, you’re gonna say something and I cut you off

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, just, just the last thought there is that, you know, you can look at that tree that fell and it didn’t fall because you were there. It was going to fall anyways, whether you were there or not. Right. Yeah.

Ron Schneebaum: Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, you know, there are many, there were so many situations that I saw in my pediatric practice and I saw it in my own family where these self images that affect our lives last forever. And we don’t need it. There was a kid in my practice [00:31:00] who, his mom brought him in because of his anger.

And he mostly would scream at home. He wasn’t as bad, although he had a problem with his hockey coach. When I got to know him and we got to talk, what the deal was, was that his father treated his mother terribly. And it really upset him. It got him so angry. And, um, the mom said, that they were close in high school, they stayed together, they went through drug and alcohol issues, she made it, he didn’t. And she feels sorry for him, so she hasn’t thrown him out of the house. And he treats his wife, he treats his mom terribly. And so I finally got to say to this kid one day, you know, if you have anger because you’re mad at the way he is, And you just don’t realize that’s the way he is, that has nothing to be with me.

I don’t want to be that. It had nothing to do with me. If you take that on, then in your [00:32:00] relationships, you will become just like him. He went, and a lot of us walk around with that.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, that’s true. And it’s a shame too, because, um, you know, had it not been for those experiences that that kid maybe would have turned out differently and maybe would have been, you know, a lot more pleasant to be around and

Ron Schneebaum: He’s a nice guy.

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, exactly.

Ron Schneebaum: saw another guy and ultimately what the deal was with him, because I saw him for anger also, and he basically was angry because his dad left the family when he was three. And I said, you know, if you think about it, your anger is really saying, listen world, I’m so mad, if I get mad enough, you’ll bring him back. He said, it doesn’t work like that. The only other thing you can do is you can be the, you can be yourself, you can be this great kid that you are. And if your father ever comes back, he’ll think, oh, am I sorry I missed [00:33:00] all that time because I missed this great kid. But it’s not your fault he left the family and it’s not your mom’s fault.

Scott DeLuzio: and that’s a good way to put it too is, um, you know, if you’re mad at somebody for something like that, let’s use that as an example. I’m mad that dad left when I was a kid and you know, all these, these issues. Well, if you really want to get back at them. Make him feel like, Oh, geez, man, I wish I got to see this, this great kid, uh, you know, growing up and, and get to experience all that, that greatness as, as he was growing up.

But, um, and you can kind of get back at him that way, you know, kill him with kindness. Right?

Ron Schneebaum: Unfortunately, it’s very rare to step back and get that appreciation just like we talk with the service people to look back and say, wait, I’m not a bad person. I, I didn’t choose to, you know, to, to do this stuff. That’s part of what my, what I, what I had to do for all the reasons you suggested. I’m not a bad [00:34:00] person.

I can, that’s not who I am. I can let go of that. I had to do it in a certain setting, in a certain situation. It was the right thing to do.

Scott DeLuzio: And, and look, Yeah, to that point, nobody’s taken away the fact that some of the things that you might’ve had to do because you were in a certain circumstance, uh, certain, uh, situation, we’re not taking away the fact that some of those things might be, gosh, awful things to even think about, right? You might’ve had to kill somebody, or you might’ve had to, uh, you know, do, you know, all sorts of other things that, Gosh, yeah, to, to anybody, that’s going to be a pretty terrible thing to have to think about.

Um, you were put in a situation where you were given no choice, right? It was either kill that person. Or you or somebody else, uh, gets killed by that person. And so, I don’t know, you kind of have to weigh it and be like, well, geez, I, I, I suppose I [00:35:00] came out ahead there because I’m still alive and that other person isn’t, um, that other person didn’t have to pick up that rifle or, you know, whatever weapon, they didn’t have to take that weapon.

They, they chose to do that. And, you know,

Ron Schneebaum: And if we had

Scott DeLuzio: was their

Ron Schneebaum: we had a smart military, we would have a pre basic training that said exactly what you said. And said, listen, you’re going to see terrible things and do terrible things. We’re really sorry. We’re really, really sorry. Don’t take it personally. Be the best you can, do what you need to do, and so on.

And we’d have that recovery time afterward to say, listen, let’s debrief. You did a lot of horrible things. It wasn’t your fault. It was needed. Even if it meant somebody who was innocent got killed. You know, that’s part of the horrors of war. And, and the fact that, that the service doesn’t do that, and that we have to take it on ourselves, makes it a harder thing to do, but still it’s the, it’s the thing we need to do.

Scott DeLuzio: It’s still necessary. [00:36:00] Sure. Um, and, and even if you look at some terrible situation that maybe you did, you had no part in, but let’s say, you know, a friend of yours was seriously injured, maybe killed, uh, something like that. And you didn’t pull the trigger. You didn’t, you didn’t, uh, you know, cause that person to be killed, but still, you’re going to take away from that.

Like, man, I wish I could have done more. Right? I, I, I, I am going to beat myself up because there’s something else I could have done possibly. And in this different made up scenario that we make up in our brains, uh, you know, maybe that person’s still alive because I could have done something different. Um, and

Ron Schneebaum: That’s what we need. That’s where we need to do this inner work. You know, we really have to, we really have to do that work of not letting that happen, like seeing where it’s creeped in, just the way if somebody has a bad outcome as a patient, I didn’t cause it. [00:37:00] You know, I can’t worry that I should have saved them or I could have done something.

Um,

Scott DeLuzio: And, and, and also to, to the point too, that, that you were talking about earlier about how the, um, that kid should, you know, try to be a great kid and, and grow up to be a, you know, great person. So that way you can kind of stick it to dad who left, you know, when, when, when you were young. Right. Um, Hey, yeah. I want to be the best person that I could be for my, my fallen friend who can’t be here right now.

So I’m going to, I’m going to start that business that we talked about when we were, when we had a little bit of downtime. I’m going to, I’m going to make it into this awesome thing. And I’m going to, I’m going to, you know, raise a family and I’m going to raise some great kids. And I, I might even, uh, you know, name one of them after him or something like that, you know?

And, uh, yeah, exactly. And so these are.

Ron Schneebaum: goosebumps, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna be so great [00:38:00] to his family.

Scott DeLuzio: Right, right. And I’m going to take care of them because, hey, you know what? He, he did so much for us, gave everything he had, and I’m, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that they’re taken care of and, and that’s, that’s a mindset, not the, not the woe is me

Ron Schneebaum: Yeah, that’s it. Or even if you think, if you value what this service does, and you say, I’m gonna be such a solid, great person, that when kids see me, they’ll think, I want to do what you did.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah. And that’s awesome. Um, you know, so I want to go back to your book. Um, yeah. And you, you mentioned it, uh, just a little bit, uh, earlier, but, uh, you, you talk about power of love and compassion. Sometimes those are things that, that veterans struggle with. Right. Um, how can we, I don’t know, how do we apply those to our day to day life?

Ron Schneebaum: [00:39:00] So, the first part, so we covered some of them. The first part is to realize that, at heart, we’re good people. If we were to take a look again, if you think of this time when you’re not sleeping, you’re lying in bed, If you’d have spent some time saying, what are my positive traits? I’m a good friend, I’m loyal, I’m honest, um, I have integrity, uh, and so on.

And if I just build it up, I’ll feel better about myself. And then another one that I suggest, this one is very interesting. Um, anything that we do that we care about, we think about before we do it. You know, so you don’t just go to your first day of basic training and say, okay guys, you’re now soldiers, here’s a gun.

See, uh, you know, you, you work for it, you practice and so on. So when I get up in the morning, I do three reviews of my day. The first one is I quickly go over the day starting from where I am now and just do a bird’s eye view. I’m going to go to, I’m going to get dressed, I’m going to go and see my [00:40:00] kids and have breakfast.

I’m going to go to work, come home and so on. Then I do an, this whole thing takes about 10 minutes and I keep my eyes closed. The next one I’ll do is I’ll look at specifics and I’ll say, okay. So, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have the kids this morning, my wife’s going to work early, and I’m gonna give them breakfast and drive them to school.

I’m not gonna look at my email until I drop them off. And then I’m gonna go to the gym and I have to remember I need to put my socks in my gym bag. And then I can, so I can go through my whole day. That lets you know I can do it. Then a third, then I’ll do a third review that says, how do I want to be? I have all these things I’m going to do.

How do I want to be? What’s the mood I want to create around breakfast? How do I want to be at work? Is there anything, anything I can do to anyone that’s going to kind of help our day and help us with who knows what? I can talk to somebody about something they did yesterday that was so [00:41:00] helpful or tell them a story that I think they’d find interesting.

And then I might say to myself, And I’m going to my kid’s soccer game and their mom is going to be there with her new boyfriend. I don’t want to get into any kind of tangle, I want to make it so it’s friendly. I want to do this so the kids don’t feel any animosity.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah. Right.

Ron Schneebaum: Okay, so I practice that and think about how I’ll do it.

Then before I go to sleep, I’ll do a quick review of just the highlights where I’ll start from where I am, And I look back and say, how did I do with that soccer game? You know, did I get triggered? And if, if I did, then say, okay, how can I do that the next time? So I feel better about it. And so we can think through our day.

I also start with that experience of love and feeling love. And, and so then we can get better at our lives.

Scott DeLuzio: I like that because especially the piece that you’re saying, you know, how do I want to show up for these people in various scenarios, whether [00:42:00] it’s, you know, having breakfast with your kids or at work or at a, you know, sports event or whatever the situation is, I’m pretty sure most of us don’t wake up saying, you know what, I’m not going to be a jerk today.

I really, really, really, I really want to stick it to these people and I really want to be a jerk. I don’t know. I mean, yeah, sure. Maybe there’s going to be a few people out there who are like, yeah, no, that’s me and that’s how I want to be. And okay, fine. Um, that’s, you know, best of luck to you, but that’s probably not going to work out too well.

Um, but, but I think most people genuinely, genuinely want good. They want to do good. They want to be good. They want to spread goodness. Um, you know, and, and think about like. What is that actually doing to those relationships? Now, I don’t know. Like, personally, I would rather have good relationships in my life.

And if they’re not good,[00:43:00]

Ron Schneebaum: more fun.

Scott DeLuzio: yeah, and if they’re not good relationships, then, you know, why are they really there? You know, sometimes you gotta have them there, right? Um, you know, you might wanna consider moving on in certain circumstances,

Ron Schneebaum: what’s interesting, if you think of any sport that you play, it takes practice and it takes work. And you enjoy it. You practice and so you go to the golf, the golf range and hit balls. You practice, you serve at tennis. It’s not for any other purpose, but so when you play, you’ll enjoy it more. So it makes sense that we’re not going to be perfect at life.

So let’s practice. We’re not going to be great, but let’s practice. Let’s check and take a look. You know, I’m impressed with how now in football games. They’ll look at pictures and videos of plays right after to say, Oh, that’s what I did, and I meant to do such and such. It’s not in a way to knock ourselves.

It’s we can learn and be better. So say, well, how did the jerk do today? What did I do wrong today? How could I do that better?

Scott DeLuzio: Right, exactly. And, and, you know, [00:44:00] and to your point, you don’t start off in a sport, being a professional athlete, you know, you’re, you’re going to start off probably making a lot of mistakes and not being all that great at that sport. And so. I think we can all wrap our heads around that and understand that that’s just normal and that’s how things are.

And so if you’re starting off this kind of practice where you’re kind of doing your pre work for the day and you’re thinking through all of these things and then, you know, at night you’re, you’re having your kind of after action report and you’re, you’re going through, you know, the day and trying to Think to yourself, you know, don’t beat yourself up.

If this is day one and you’re like, you know what? Yeah, I was kind of a jerk. Um,

Ron Schneebaum: Of course that happened. Now, the other one that’s interesting is that in the sport, suppose you want to play tennis or play golf. It takes a certain amount of talent. What we’re talking about is being ourselves. I’ve got the best, I’m the, I’ve got the [00:45:00] greatest talent in the world to be myself.

That’s all I can be.

Scott DeLuzio: there’s no one better.

Ron Schneebaum: yeah, so it’s really about wanting to be my, the self that I feel good about.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, I like it. I like it. Um, before we wrap up here, uh, this has been a lot of great information. I’m actually looking at the time here. I can’t believe time has flown by so quickly, uh, in this conversation. But before we wrap up, um, I know, uh, before we started recording, uh, you asked me to remind you if you forgot to mention, uh, you know, about a series of zoom.

Workshops that you have coming up.

Ron Schneebaum: so this,

Scott DeLuzio: tell us about

Ron Schneebaum: I didn’t, I didn’t have them coming up. When I realized I was coming here, the idea came to me,

Scott DeLuzio: Okay. Okay.

Ron Schneebaum: First, my book discusses a lot of the things that we discussed, not the direct service part, but a lot of stuff about how do you feel good about yourself, but these things take a lot of work.

It’s hard, and it might be confusing and unclear. Um, anybody who is interested in doing further work in this, I’m happy to offer a free Zoom, [00:46:00] free Zoom sessions. And what to do is, um, go to my website, it’s BiggerHearted. com, send me an email, and just have a subject line, Veteran. And I’ll get back to you and we’ll figure out how we can do a Zoom, a Zoom conference to kind of go over this stuff because it’s a lot and, and, you know, and, and folks that are suffering because their time in the service.

Got the bad end of a stick. It shouldn’t be like that.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, you’re right. 100%. And, um, I will have a link to your website. Also a link to your book, uh, I’m assuming it’s on Amazon and, you know, all the typical places that people can get books. Um, but I’ll, I’ll have a link, uh, in the show notes for the listeners to check out. Uh, so that, that way, um, make that nice and easy for them.

Um, but, uh, Uh, this has been a great conversation and I really enjoyed, uh, some of your perspectives and the way, you know, hopefully it’ll, it’ll get people thinking, uh, you know, how, how do I, [00:47:00] uh, turn the page? How do I, I make things better, brighter, you know, happier for the future. And, um, you know, with, with a little bit of, a little bit of elbow grease, I think, uh, we, we can make it happen, right?

Ron Schneebaum: Yeah, I once heard a woman who was a motivational speaker, and she said she was a drug addict, an alcoholic, and really at the lowest of lows. And she heard a commercial on television that said Ford’s has a, Ford has a better idea. And she thought, wow, if Ford has a better idea, why don’t I? So this is about that better idea.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, and, and that’s, I think the name of the game is just, you know, always trying to get just that little bit better, like, like we were saying before, you’re not going to become a professional athlete, uh, on day one when you pick up the golf clubs and, you know, all of a sudden you’re on the PGA tour, right?

You’re, it’s not going to happen.

Ron Schneebaum: That’s not going to happen? I was hoping.

Scott DeLuzio: I know, I know. I’m sorry. Sorry to burst your bubble there, but no, that’s not going to happen. Um, you know, but, um, [00:48:00] With a little bit of practice and some, obviously some, some natural ability, um, you know, you can get there if you keep practicing. Right. And so, um, yeah, keep, keep putting in the effort, keep putting in the work and we can make that happen.

So, uh, yeah. Um, you know, thank you again for taking the time to join us, uh, sharing these insights. I really do appreciate it. And again, for the listeners, the links to the book and the website will be in the show notes. So check that out and, uh, you know, get the book and, and, uh, sign up for those, uh, zoom workshops, uh, send, send an email, uh, with the subject line veteran and, um, we’ll, we’ll get those happening.

Excellent.

Ron Schneebaum: Well, it’s such an honor to be here and the work that you do and the service people have performed is really, it’s, it gives me goosebumps. It’s great stuff. So I will send as many people as I can your way.

Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Thanks so much.