in everything that makes this country great. 2023 will have its challenges. it is putting your priority first. i wish everyone a very happy new year. >> seasons washington journal, everyday were taking your calls live on the air, on the news the day. we will discuss policy issues that impact you. coming up sunday morning, we will discuss the year ahead in politics. watch washington journal, live at seven eastern sunday morning on c-span or on c-span now, our free mobile app. join the discussion with your phone call, facebook comment, xt messages and tweets. live sdaon in-depth. author chr hatchett will be our guest to talk about little

cold revolution,ar, and incarceration in america. the minister's books include america, trauma and transformation and in american prison. most recently, the greatest people and more. join the conversation with your phone calls. and taft with chris hedges, live thisy at noon eastern. we are concluding our annual authors week series with former credit party rising star and afghanistan war veteran jason kander. he is author of the book "invisible storm," a soldier's memoir of politics and ptsd. thank you for joining us. guest: thank you for having me.

it is good to be back. host: we want to go ahead and get into some of my conversation with jason. i want to give you all the numbers to call with your comments or questions for him. if you are in the eastern or central region, your number is (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific region, your number is (202) 748-8001. if you are an active military veteran, your number is (202) 748-8002. you can text us at (202) 748-8003. we will get to some of your questions and comments in just a moment. you begin the book with your story of your first visit to the kansas city veterans affairs medical center, which was on october 1 of 2018. can you tell our listeners and

viewers a little bit about that day? guest: sure. it is a funny story now. looking back. a little bit of context for the story is at that point, i was pretty well known in kansas city. and somewhat around the country at that moment because i had been getting ready to run for president. so was half of the credit party. people were running around iowa and new hampshire. two years prior, i had run in missouri in one of the highest profile u.s. senate races in the country and i came close to winning as a democrat in missouri. i had gotten a lot of attention for that. i was the former secretary of state of missouri at that point. i was running for mayor. i decided not to run for president and was interested in running for mayor of kansas city. that was going well because if you go from running -- for running from president to

running for mayor of your hometown, you ought to be a front runner. i was. professionally, things were going well. personally, things were not. i had served in afghanistan. that was a decade prior to that. i had been dealing with ptsd for that time and trying to deny it. i had gotten to a point where my symptoms had accumulated to a point where it was scary for me. i was having suicidal thoughts and that kind of thing. i went to the v.a. in kansas city and i went there to get help. i went to the office like a volunteer who was taking my information so i could enroll in the v.a. system. after a few minutes of answering these questions he said it seems like you need to see somebody today. and i said yeah, i think so.

he takes me to the emergency department and i fill out a slip of paper with two questions on it about suicidal thoughts and that kind of thing. next thing i know, i am being checked into what is the suicide watch. they take away all of my belongings, my clothes, they give me a set of scrubs that are several sizes too big and i go into this room with a stainless steel bed and a toilet and i sit there. the whole time this is happening, people are recognizing me. i had run for these offices and i was very well known. most of the time, when you are running for office, it's good to get recognized. it's part of the goal. everybody wants recognition. if you can have what i had running for mayor, which is nearly 100% face recognition, it speaks well of your chances in a race. but it is kind of mortifying to be recognized like that when you are being checked into the suicide watch. everybody was very professional

about it. they were not asking for selfies you could tell the way they did double takes that they recognized me. and then finally this psych president comes in who was new to town and did not recognize me at all, that was a huge relief. i spent 30 minutes with this fellow and i recounted the symptoms that i never told anybody but my wife. and he listens to me. after a while, he says well, he is getting ready to let me go. and he says do you have a stressful job or something? and i was like i'm in politics. and he said what does that mean? i didn't give him the whole thing. i said i was getting ready to run for president earlier this year but i'm running for mayor instead and i'm going to call that off because i want to get help. he was taken aback. i'm in scrubs that were several

sizes to double big and i am a patient in suicide watch. and he says what does that mean, you are going to run for president? i said i'm going to iowa and new hampshire. he said president of what? and i said of the united states. finally, he things about that for a second and says who told you you could run for president? by now, i have gone from excited that this guy in recognize me too irritated that he doesn't believe me. i said i don't know what to tell you. i sat down with president obama for 90 minutes, and he seemed to think it was a good idea. he think about that for a second and says how often would you say you hear voices? that was my first day at the v.a.. host: that is interesting. it sounds like he didn't know who you were. guest: he didn't know who i was. you have to think of it from his perspective, which is, you know, i'm this guy who is there on

suicide watch. i'm a 37-year-old patient of his who he just met who is like yeah, i was going to run for president. i sat down and talked with obama about it. i could totally see where he was like clearly this guy is delusional. host: i want to read a quick excerpt and ask you a question. we will go to the phone lines. you wrote the election was f months away. i didn't know what treatment entailed but i didn't know i -- but i did know i couldn't do it and run for mayor at the same time. my schedule was filled from sunrise with meetings. i lost the energy and desire to do any of it. i had to admit that the story i had been telling myself for a decade was a lie.

i read most of the book, actually. but, how difficult was it to step away from the lime night -- limelight and what did it teach you about the role that busyness -- you talk about ways people meditated themselves and you meditated with his enis and politics -- busyness and politics. how hard was it to walk away? guest: it was really difficult. for a few reasons. one, as evidenced on the fact it took me a long time, i came home from afghanistan in early 2007. i walked into the v.a. for the first time around october 1 of 2018. so, it took me a long time to admit to myself that i was having this problem. once i knew that i really --

that i wasn't ok -- which was something that i knew for the past couple of years of that, you know, then it was like can i stop what i'm doing? i remember saying to my wife and to my campaign manager at the time, i just have to keep going. as long as i keep going, i feel ok. on the one hand, that was extremely difficult. and i think this is true for anybody who is struggling with their mental health. if you have something, it could be some students, -- substance, work, for some people it is gambling. for people, it is a coping mechanism. for me, i had my career. i used that as a coping mechanism. walking away from that thing that kept me feeling like i was together and the only thing that was keeping me afloat, that was frightening.

on top of that, i also didn't really know who i was if i wasn't a politician. at that point, i, like anybody, had defined myself by my occupation. at first, i was a soldier. and now, to me, i was a soldier who was in politics. but i wasn't a soldier anymore. i was a veteran and that was a hard thing to come to grips with to begin with. to say i'm going to take this one thing in my life that is going really well, my career, because nothing else seemed to be going well personally for me at that point, and i'm going to just hit the self-destruct button on it, in hopes that i can get better, but i didn't know if i could get better. i didn't have any way to know. i didn't know about therapy at the v.a.. it was a big gamble, a leap of faith. i am grateful to myself and the people around me who supported

me in making that decision. i am in posttraumatic growth and i'm enjoying it. host: we will go to some of your calls, questions and comments for jason kander. we are talking about his book "invisible storm," a memoir of politics and soldiers with ptsd. if you are in the eastern and central region, your number is (202) 748-8000. in the mountain and pacific time zones, call (202) 748-8001. if you are active military duty or a veteran, call us at (202) 748-8002. you can also text us at (202) 748-8003. let's hear it now from greg in wisconsin, calling on the eastern and central line. go ahead, greg. caller: good morning, everybody and thank you for c-span.

i would like to make a couple of comments to your guest. the first comment would be please believe in yourself. god in jesus christ. -- and jesus christ. the second comment would be you are taking yourself way too seriously. everybody who is alive has issues. i'm not sure if you are taking your issues to try to make a living or if you are trying to be healed. host: greg -- i'm just going to stop and let you respond. because it really sounded like greg was downplaying the seriousness of mental illness. what are your thoughts about that, jason? guest: well, let's see. i guess there is a school of thought out there that says you are supposed to continue on like

mental health injuries are not real injuries. mental health and physical health are completely intertwined. i have learned in the last couple of years, the last four years in particular that mental health and physical health, you have to treat them the same. i spent a decade telling myself that what was going on with me didn't count. i had friends who were actually wounded or worse. so i was like this doesn't count, who would i be if i were to go into help for this injury? but it was in therapy that it became clear to me that that is sort of like if i had broken my arm really severely but i was like i know a guy who had his arm cut off. so, this doesn't count. and i never treated my broken arm and expected it to get better with time. that's not what would happen. what would happen is my arm

would become more and more mangled over time to the point where i wouldn't be able to use it at all and it would get beyond the point of return where i would just be beyond saving. that is what i did with my trauma. i said i know people who saw things that were worse. i know people who experienced physical injury. so, therefore, this doesn't count. and i'm not going to go treat it. something that could have been a much less severe injury to my mental health if i had treated it when i came home, i waited 11 years and it got worse and worse and worse. time does not make trauma get better. it's not like wine. it doesn't age well. it's more like an avocado. it doesn't take much time for it to get worse and worse. there is a reason nobody else avocado sellers. you are not supposed to hang onto them that long. in response to what greg said

about whether i am trying to make a living out of this, i'm glad you said that, it gives me an opportunity to point out that my royalties go toward the fight against veteran suicide and homelessness and the veterans committee project. i appreciate greg bringing that up. host: you're the president of national expansion, a nonprofit society dedicated to fighting veteran suicide and veteran homelessness. i want to point out that in the book, you were an army captain, and intelligence officer who served a four month tour of duty in afghanistan where you were in some harrowing situations that really did leave some lasting impact on you. folks will have to read the book to learn more about that. let's go to pittsburgh, california. tom is on the line. tom is a veteran. what are your thoughts, tom? caller: first of all, to jason,

from one veteran to another, thank you for your service and welcome home. i am celebrating my -- this is my 50th anniversary of being separated from the military. i'm a vietnam veteran. i am very familiar with posttraumatic stress disorder. we are dealing with a whole group of veterans that came back where we needed help and we were getting very little or none at all. if anybody thinks this is some kind of a game or we are looking for a handout, we never were. all we wanted was a helping hand and what was promised to us. instead, when it was vietnam, the politicians and congress started taking more and more away from us. and it became very, very difficult for us to get the help

that we really needed. a lot of suicides from vietnam veterans was the result, the direct result that we were not getting the help we need. i know that this is a whole new group of veterans, that you guys are coming home. men and women, putting yourselves in harm's way. and congress has to start addressing this issue. if we can't get help, then it is time that you and your group did. believe me, i worked for the v.a. for 15 years. certain amounts of improvements were done but a lot more could be done. i wish a lot of -- i wish you a lot of luck. believe me, continue your work and thank you for taking my call in happy new year. host: what do you think -- what more should or could be done to help veterans who return and need services? guest: sure but, first of all,

tom, thanks for your service. i appreciate the comments and the support. there is a lot. one thing, tom was saying he worked for the v.a. for 15 years and saw some improvements. i want to be clear and i'm sure he shares this view, the people at the v.a. are for the most part fantastic. get pretty much all of my medical care at the v.a. now. it's one of the best experiences i've had in terms of interacting with people in a customer service type level, in that yes, the system can be difficult. i think they are often frustrated by the limitations of the system. which brings me to your question, which is that most of the stations the veterans have with the v.a., whether they realize it or not, it is not the

v.a. itself, but the limitations and constraints congress has put on the systems that provide services to the veterans in this country. that comes largely from one central problem. which is that the main question that members of congress frequently tended to ask themselves when they are developing policy for veterans is how do we make sure nobody gets this who doesn't deserve it ? there is a central flaw in that. one is it assumes there are veterans who don't deserve it. and two, when you create constraints like that and you are constantly putting up guardrails to prevent anybody from getting access to something that you believe they don't deserve, you are inevitably creating a system that becomes more and more difficult to navigate for the people who you may deem worthy of those services. going back to the first part of it, something that the average american doesn't know is that it

is not as if all that has to happen is you raise your right hand and wear the uniform for a little while and you can go to the v.a.. unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. there are categories of people who are not eligible for v.a. benefits. it could be there discharge status. it could be, most often, the amount of time they served, whether they were a guard, reserve or active. it can be difficult to navigate the system and it doesn't have to be. we need to widen this and make it much more available. not a monologue on it too long but a couple of other simple things that could be done. when you are in the nilla terry and you transition from one post to the next, -- the military and you transition from one post to that next, when you do that, there is a readiness sergeant at your unit who knows that when you show up at your new unit, there is a sergeant who says we

have him or we have her. and we have made this transfer. however, when you leave the military for the last time, they know where you are going and where your hometown is and if you are not going to your hometown, they can look at your address to know where you are. there are no handoffs like that at the local v.a.. as a result, you are just out of the system altogether. when you do and often it takes time to show up at the v.a. to enroll, you understandably have an expectation that this military or rather this government that just, a very short time ago, had all of my medical records new everything that was going on with me, because they want to make sure i was deplorable -- deployable, and it's like they have no idea who i am. it is more difficult than when

you are a civilian and switched doctors and you have to give them your insurance again. it shouldn't work that way. it could be a much smoother process if it was just a handoff from one to the next. host: let's go back to the phone lines. cliff is in san angelo, texas, calling on the regional line. what is your comment? caller: can you hear me because i'm on speaker? i can take it off. host: you sound perfect. go ahead. caller: jason, thank you so much for revealing some of the problems, mentally, that you've had. i've been in the mental health advocacy game, so to speak, for over 20 years. i have something in common with you. i'm not trying to promote anything, i'm just trying to

tell you who i am so you get a feel of the problem and i will eventually ask you a question. i was the first ever world coins tennis champion in 1970. i won the davis cup with arthur. i have a book called "acing depression." after my tennis career, i was playing enough golf to be good enough to be involved in the celebrity pro golfer store, which was minor but it was important to me. i got to be a scratch golfer in tournament play. the last five years i played the tennis tour, my tennis game started to get away for me. i was losing that skill. to me, i made all of my money and my life was based on skill, either in tennis or in golf. when i got into golf, about midway through, i started losing that skill.

and, to me, posttraumatic and depression and all of that, and i want your opinion, is that depression and/or ptsd doesn't necessarily have to be on the battlefield. it can be the result of losing what is valuable to you. in my case, i lost it twice. the second time, i went into a three year depression that was so dark and bleak. like you were saying a minute ago, people were looking at me and saying you have a nice family, i had the money i need because i was a successful tennis player. i should have been the happiest guy in the world. and i cried every day. with my dad and said i'm going to beat this but i don't know how i'm going to beat it. the question that i have is i've been on zoloft and had canceling

for depression -- counseling for depression. i feel like i have a handle on that but i have ptsd. there are situations i don't feel like i can go back to. some of the feeling and teachings today are exposure therapy. get back at what bothers you the most. i found that never worked. my question is, do you think, and mine is so minor of ptsd and i don't know if there is minor. if you lose something that is not valuable to you, which was my skill in life. do you think there is really any viable, comprehensible therapy to get through and over ptsd? guest: i really appreciate this question. thanks, cliff, for calling. i want to underline what cliff was saying that ptsd is not

something that the military owns. in fact, the vast majority of americans, and there are millions who have ptsd, never served in the military. i appreciate this phone call because while we have made a lot of progress on the way that we regard veterans for ptsd in this country, we need to make a lot of progress on how we regard people with ptsd. because what we have done is we have sort of given people like me a license or permission slip to exist in american society with ptsd and not be judged quite so much. whereas we still judge others. the truth is that trauma is trauma. people say to me all the time that they will share something with me about what they went through, some sort of traumatic part of their life and they say i wasn't in a war or anything. and i always stop them and say it doesn't matter. my brain has no idea what your

brain experienced. as a result, comparing and ranking the two is a huge waste of time. i did it for 10 years and it did not get me anywhere. it delayed my opportunity to heal. whether somebody was in a car accident, had a career change that, for them was traumatic, like in cliff's case or they had a divorce or something difficult in their childhood, it doesn't matter what it is. if there is something that was an abrupt change for something that changed in your life that you haven't felt the same since, you should see somebody. as for therapies and the idea of getting over ptsd, i'm not a clinician. you don't get over ptsd and you don't get cured. what happens is you get to a point, speaking for myself, where ptsd doesn't have to disrupt your life. where you can manage it like any other injury. i like to compare it to my knee

injury. before i went into the military, i tore my acl and my meniscus in my knee and tore my knee up really good. it was in a pickup football game. then, in order to get into the military, i had to do a ton of rehab on my knee. so i did the surgery and rehabilitation. and i have always had some knee trouble. but, i am now 41 years old and i went through this career in the military and my knee was able to do it. i had to manage my need different from everybody else who had never had a knee injury. but at 41 years old, i play competitive baseball, not softball. actual baseball at 41 years old. still pretty fast. i play center field. i can still go out and run pretty far and go jog. but, you know, i have to be careful about icing my knee. i have to stretch out my quad, things like that. that's how i would depict ptsd

in my life at this point. which is to say that if i didn't ice my knee and i didn't stretch out my leg correctly, it would disrupt me. and it would make it where i couldn't go about doing the things in my daily life, physically that i want to do. and if i don't take the steps that i need to to maintain the progress that i have made in therapy, it will disrupt my life. ptsd would disrupt my life. instead, i do those things. as for different kinds of therapy, i did cognitive processing therapy. an exposure therapy at the v.a.. cliff was referencing exposure therapy, which was going back to the trauma. not necessarily physically but those things that you don't want to think about or talk about that you are avoiding. sitting down with a licensed therapist and working through those and going to the point of difficulty in your mind and what it has done for me, it was very difficult.

don't get me wrong. it was definitely the least fun part of therapy. but what it has done is it has made it where those traumatic memories no longer have a grip on me. they no longer control me. i have a greater degree of control over them. it is not as disruptive or intrusive as it was. i would wholly endorse it. different therapies work for different folks. one thing i would say is try something. if it doesn't work, try the next thing. or try it again with a different therapist, potentially. posttraumatic growth is a real thing and it is worth putting as much effort into pursuing it as you would any other professional goal that you care about. host: again, we are talking today with former democratic party rising star and afghanistan war veteran jason kander. the title of his book is

"invisible storm," a soldiers memoir of politics and ptsd. i want to remind you of the phone lines, if you are in the eastern or central time zone, call (202) 748-8000. if you are in the mountain or pacific time zone, (202) 748-8001. if you are active military or a veteran, we want you to call us at (202) 748-8002. let's go now to new orleans. frank is calling as a veteran. what are your thoughts this morning? caller: good morning. can you hear me well? host: yes, go ahead. i appreciate the conversation this morning. being a vietnam veteran, combat wounded, looking at the suicide rate, dozens of veterans die each day.

i know when i came home how i had to contend with the war on drugs and alcohol. i did that as long as i could to numb myself. i would be around people who say you don't seem to be like most veterans who come home. hiding it, mastering it, doing all kinds of things to alleviate this people that i've been through. with the smell of napalm and agent orange effects, i am very ill now with hypertension. liver disease. just going through it all. the horrible dreams that haunt me.

every night, when i close my eyes. and people say hey, forget about it. don't concentrate on it. when your subconscious mind and you are sleeping, and you have no control and it pops up. there it is, you are running. you're trying to get somebody before they get you or you witness some bad thing happen, like someone's throat being cut when you get up in the morning. and you dream that this is happening to you. when you get up, you don't want to go back to sleep. but, thank you so much for taking my call. host: frank, we appreciate your call so much and we want to make sure that you reach out and get the help you need. contacting your local v.a. or perhaps jason can share some resources. jason, when you talk to veterans like frank, what do you tell them? guest: i was going to ask frank

if he has been to the v.a. or has sought health treatment for any of this. host: he's not on the line. guest: well, i want to thank frank for his service and i want to thank him for the way he spoke about it. i relate to a lot of the symptoms he was talking about. i've experienced most of that, in terms of the symptoms after you come home. which turn into nightmares in hypervigilance, the feeling that you're in danger. particularly to emotional numbness. and getting therapy at the v.a. made a huge difference for me. whether you go to the v.a. or somewhere else, trauma therapy. one of the things that he said that resonated with me and people will, if they read the book, they will see i describe this vividly in detail.

the feeling of sleep not being a safe place. which isn't a good thing. that is a dangerous thing to get to that point. i was at the point where i was having nightmares every night. by the end, before i went to therapy, i was having them all night and i ended up with sleep paralysis which is a terrible thing to go through. i went about a decade without a good nights sleep as a result. if for any reason, nightmares being one of the worst ones, but for any reason you go a decade without a good nights sleep, it's going to have other effects on you. you are going to become depressed. you are going to be sick more often. you are going to be in pain, physically. sleep is a physically important thing that human beings do. i really hope that frank reaches out and get help for these

things. and if he has in the past, he continues to. another item that he mentioned was suicide rate. a lot of people are familiar that -- with the step that on average, 20 americans take their lives everyday. out of that 20, on average, 16 of those veterans, at the time they take their life, are not connected to any veteran specific services of any kind. that is a huge deal. it goes to what we talked about a few minutes ago about there being often too high of a barrier of entry in veteran services. too difficult to navigate. taking too long to get access to it. that is why i am so proud to be the president of the national expansion of the veterans community project. our approach has been different. if you raised your right hand

and swore the oath, we have no further questions to determine your eligibility. you qualify for 100% of our services. what we do is we work with the community to connect veterans with existing services. we streamline that process. sometimes it is the v.a. but other times it is other organizations so that we can create wraparound care for our veterans. going back to that 16 out of 20, when you consider the fact that on average out of the 20 veterans who take their lives everyday, 16 are not connected to services at the time that it happens, it is enormously important to connect people with those services. and to have a very low bar for doing it. it absolutely saves lives. because, this is true of veterans and i think it is true of a lot of people, once people get up the nerve or the resolution or the motivation to

ask for help, or just frankly, reach a point where they are out of ideas and hit rock bottom and they ask for help because they don't know what else to do, you have one shot with them. and if you are not able to help them at that time, they will be discouraged. and the chance they will ask a second time is pretty low. it is important that we grab people at that moment. host: before we get back to some calls, i want to read a tweet we received from ct yankee007. it says -- we are not treating mental health as large as the problem it has become. we will also go to john in illinois on the regional line. john, what is your question or comment? guest: jason, thank for being the cheerleader for ptsd.

i talked three of my buddies into joining the marine corps. we came back with all of our fingers and toes. i grew up with a medal of honor winner. i went to boot camp with a different fellow who won the medal of honor. my wife's first cousin was on the hilltop with a fellow who won the medal of honor. i've been on the periphery of pts. i went to veterans organizations to talk to other veterans. thank you for being a cheerleader for pts. you keep talking about it. you've got a big mouth and people have taken it different ways on the telephone this morning but you keep talking about pts. i've learned to compartmentalize the peripheral pts that i got.

and i'm thankful that i can do that. you keep cheering for us because we need cheerleaders like you. god bless you and best of he alth this new year. keep on trucking. host: can you tell us what is next for you, jason? there is speculation you might run again for public office. guest: sure, i will get to that in a second. first of all, john, thanks for your service and welcome home. i'm glad that john feels like he has things in the right place. as a fellow veteran, i would say to him, compartmentalizing pts without treatment, which i don't know, maybe he's gotten treatment and that's what he means, but attempting to keep it on the periphery on your own is not a sustainable course.

it is when i thought i was engaged in. the way i like to put it is you either deal with your trauma or your trauma deals with you. i thought i was out running my posttraumatic stress. it turns out it was faster than me. and the truth is it is always going to catch up to you. even if you feel like i have some symptoms but it is not all of them, it's fine, john mentioned when he had career changes, that is often what happens. is that you get to a point where whatever it is that has been occupying your mind and allowing you to avoid what is going on inside your mind, when that is no longer there or no longer working, in terms of inoculating you and helping you avoid, then you're left with yourself. if you have not dealt with what is going on with you, that can

be unpleasant. it can go poorly. i have encouraged people not to wait until it gets to that point and not do what i did. and to address it sooner. i appreciate what he is saying in terms of his approach. to answer your question, when i set out in the first place in 2007, when i started running for office, i was running for state legislature. i had grand visions of what i would do in public service. none of those visions including -- included being the poster child for posttraumatic growth. it's not what i set out to do. but i'm grateful to have the opportunity to in any way occupy that space. the last time i was involved in a campaign with a c in public office was a little over four years ago. the last time i was in public

office was six years ago. almost six years ago. at the same time, i can tell you that even though my amount of time now is not as long as my time as an active politician, there is no question in my mind i have made a greater difference in the world during this period, after serving in office than i did while serving in office or pursuing office. and i'm enjoying that. between the work that i get to do at the veterans community project where we are building campuses across the country and providing outreach services to all veterans and what we are better known for, provide residential services because we build villages for tiny houses -- or tiny houses for veterans. and are returning people to public housing and getting people out of homelessness at a record rate, that is something

that is a greater impact than i ever got to make. i held statewide office. i was in some influential spots. on top of that, over the last year, accidentally, not accidentally but i didn't on purpose get as deep into it as i ended up getting. i became involved with the evacuation efforts outside of afghanistan because i had a few people who i served with and i wanted to help them get out of that and it grew. i friends and i ended up doing it. it was successful. i ended up creating a nonprofit called the afghan rescue project that has gotten too thousand of our afghan allies out of the country, safely. it's not something i would have been able to do had i been in office. not to mention the difference i

have made in my own family's life or the fund that i have had being able to play and coach baseball. coach i sons little league team. -- my son's little league team. to answer your question about the future hopes for me, i don't know. and that sounds political. when i was getting ready to run for president, people were asking me are you going to run for president and i would say i'm not focused on that right now. that's not true. that's what politicians say. but no, i was wholly focused on that. i'm not avoiding the question. i just actually don't know. for once, i'm actually not focused on that because i'm enjoying my life as it is. when i was going through undiagnosed and untreated posttraumatic stress, i was eager to avoid what was going on in my own mind and avoid

presence because i had an inability to be present. i would think about the past in the future. mostly about the future because it would allow me to escape the difficult present. the present isn't difficult anymore. i've been enjoying it and i am making a difference. maybe one day i will run for president or mayor but maybe i won't. because i'm enjoying my life and i think i am making a big difference. host: i want to bring up, just a couple of weeks ago, you tweeted that you have been getting a lot of these questions. you wrote for those wondering if i'm in a hurry to run for office, consider this. i got home from my basketball practice -- baseball practice at the same indoor facility where i coached my sons practice in december, in missouri. i'm good for now. what i loved was the first reply , take your time, we will be ready when you are ready. i thought that was sweet. guest: it was very nice.

it's nice to be asked. there are the folks who are like you have to. sometimes that irritates me a little. because actually, i don't. i've come to the conclusion after years of thinking that i had not done enough for my country, i've come to the conclusion that america and i are square. it doesn't mean that i don't still want to do things to better america. i still do a lot of things to serve my country. but not because i feel i have to. but replies like that, that means a lot to me. i did spend a decade in politics, working hard to have people want you to run for office. having people want you to lead and be in charges flattering and i appreciate it a lot.

at the same time, i acknowledge to myself that i have the right to enjoy my life and that is what i'm doing. host: i want to get to more calls but this is important and i wanted to make sure we touched on it. that is the role of your wife, your family members. your wife actually has excerpts that she gives her perspective in the book. i want to read, this isn't one of her excerpts, this is mething you wrote about your wifedia. diana has spent a decade sleeping next to a husband who thrashed all night with nightmares, stopped the house with a gun and called to ask if the doors were locked. who would bellow with rage when angry and convinced her that white supremacis were coming to murder her and r son. it forced her to bear her terror alone, never confiding in anyone, not even family.

a lot of when we talk about mental health, you talk about the impact on family members, on loved ones. what has this season, how does she factor into your healing and how has her own healing been going? guest: thank you for asking. that's my favorite part of the book. she and i have been together since we were 17. she has known each version of me. she stuck with me and had to suffer through this period where i was never violent toward her but my hypervigilance, my enormous -- my obsession with the safety of our family in the sense that we were in danger all the time, it led to something that we were not aware of until i started therapy and that is secondary posttraumatic stress.

it's not like ptsd is contagious where if you work with somebody, you will get it. but if you are married to someone or the child of someone with posttraumatic stress, you can end up with the same symptoms without undergoing the same trauma. because i was so focused on safety and we were high-profile people. so, it, in context, would make sense that this danger was out there. combined with the difficulty of living with somebody who was becoming so emotionally numb as i was, it had a real effect on her. she had to go get her own treatment. we ended up going to therapy at the same time. she is doing fantastic. she reversed -- refers to this period as her second -- our second marriage. she said it is what we envisioned now when we were 17 and we are having so much fun together. in fact, not to spoil one of the happy endings in the book but

our son, who is now nine, he was born in 2013. my own symptoms got so much worse and worse that it was sort of unspoken that it was unlikely that we would have another kid because i was physically gone. when i was home, i was mentally not present. and in two years, two years to the day after i made my announcement and decided to go get treatment, we had a second child. our daughter, bella, who is now two years old, who you may have heard yelling for her mother to come in a few minutes ago. here on this broadcast, because she was waking up. i can't think of a better testament to the way that both of us getting help has changed the course of our life for the better. in that we got to grow this awesome family. host: let's go back to the phone

lines, we will try to go quickly. allison in katy, texas, what is your question or comment? caller: good morning. good job. you are doing a great job. i just want to say that right now, i am going into a little bit of anxiety because of the topic. i grew up, my mom and a single household -- in a single household. my dad was bipolar and an alcoholic. i didn't think it was ptsd but i lived with this constant anxiety and avoidance and stress and once i got out of the house and grew up, things kind of mellowed out. i became very introverted and everything was about avoidance. conflict, i move away from it.

a handful of years ago, i went through a high conflict divorce. you know, it is a hard time for both people. but, it really sent me into what i consider very intense ptsd. right now, it's been seven years, and it's really hard to shake it. and i have gotten to where i can handle it and not go down a rabbit hole. and not try to deal with it by arguing with somebody else. it's hard to think straight. it throws off your brain chemistry. and then you are different as

far as what i understand. when people deal with this high-level stress and anxiety, whatever they are dealing with, if they avoid trying to seek treatment, it just -- they continue in that area. i want to make a last point. a call or a day or two ago mentioned something about -- trump is being brought up quite a bit. but mentioned we were in an abusive relationship that ended when he left office. but the last time i went into an episode was the 2020 election. i was so stressed out about what was happening. i paced around the house all night. it is hard to not be dragged, once it is triggered, it is hard to ask plane. host: we appreciate it. thank you so much for sharing

some of your thoughts. i want to take one more call and we will let you wrap up. archie? caller: yes, i served in the u.s. air force 17 -- 1996 or 1 -- 19 76 through 19 sony nine. the children had to go through the situation during the cocaine wars, how do you think they could be helped? with their ptsd and their lives and everyday situation. host: closing thoughts? guest: i think i will address what allison and archie said together, which is what i would say is what they are really talking about is the fact there are unfortunately unlimited opportunities for trauma in our lives and there is nothing that insulates you from it.

it could be your childhood, it could be your childhood because of what was going on inside your home, because of what is going on outside your home if you live in an area where there is a lot of violence like archie was referring to. finally, it could be something in your adulthood you are dismissing as not worthy of considered trauma because it is what you saw on the news. if you found anything going on in the news to be triggering, something you can't stop thinking about, to be disruptive to your life, then it was traumatic. there is no point in ranking it or trying to pass some qualification test. we live in an era where people -- you don't have to be a comment veteran to be thinking about grouts of ingress and egress and where the doors are when you go to a restaurant or forgot safe to -- for god sake to a fourth of july parade. there is trauma happening in our

country because of things happening but also because of the way technology and media works, we are inundated with media we were not in the past. we are aware of so much more bad news than we were in the past. that all is real and there is no basic qualification test in order to be worthy of getting help. if things are not the way they were or if you do not feel like you are able to function at your highest level because of intrusive memories or disruptive thoughts, then you are worthy of going to get help and address it with a therapist. and what i would lead people with is the role i seek to play in doing interviews like this is to be the person who didn't exist on tv when i came home from afghanistan, somebody who says actually that image of ptsd you see portrayed most of the

time that is an out-of-control, violent person, that is not the predominate image of a, the predominant image what is happening out there is rarely portrayed as a person that has gotten treatment, address what is going on, and is in a posttraumatic growth phase of their life and you don't realize it because they have address what is going on with them and that is a real thing and is exists and is worth pursuing. and i hope people will do so and to listen to my words. host: thank you for being here with us, jason. his book's title invisible