Under Pressure: The Human Behind the Performance
Performance looks polished. Pressure feels human.
Under Pressure is a podcast about what really happens inside the human system when the stakes are high.
Hosted by Dr. Alyse Munoz and Dr. Matt Hood, this show explores the psychology, physiology, and identity behind performance in high-pressure environments — from tactical and first responder roles to esports, athletics, leadership, and everyday life.
Under Pressure: The Human Behind the Performance
Mindfulness for the Field: Intro to Tactical Mindfulness
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A machine gun that won’t stop firing is the kind of moment that exposes the truth about “performing under pressure.” You can be highly trained, technically sharp, and mentally tough, and still freeze when your system gets flooded and the situation goes off book. We unpack a live-fire story from the field, then use it to explain why performance usually doesn’t fail from a skill problem, it fails from a presence and regulation problem.
From there, we get practical. We break down what today’s common resilience and mindfulness approaches get right and where they fall short in high-risk environments, including stress inoculation training, MBSR, and military mindfulness programs that are hard to scale or too slow for real-time decisions. The thread that ties it together is psychological flexibility: noticing pressure thoughts and emotions without letting them run the whole show.
We share our tactical mindfulness framework in plain language: CORE for pre-performance (Composure, Objectives, Reality, Engagement), OR for decision making (Orient, Regulate, Execute), and AIM for recovery (Assess, Integrate, Move). We also talk about values, connection, and building a buffer against moral injury so you can keep doing hard work without losing yourself in it. If you’ve ever felt locked up in a big moment or “fine” until you weren’t, this gives you a map you can actually use.
Subscribe, share this with someone who works under real pressure, and leave a review if it helps. What part of CORE, OR, or AIM do you want us to expand next?
Presence Breaks Before Performance
SPEAKER_00Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Under Pressure. I think we're rolling, we're rolling into episode nine. Ten.
SPEAKER_02Ten. Big ten. One zero. Holy cow. Double digits.
SPEAKER_00Double digits. Yeah. It's it's been a long week. It's been a long season.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, welcome back. And this week, it's more of Matt and I talking about, you know, what we got going on here. Talking a little bit more about what to do under pressure. I don't know. What's what's the overview about, well, I guess going back to the very beginning, like what, you know, performing under pressure doesn't typically break because of a performance problem, but breaks because of presence problem, as I like to say. Or, you know, like we talked about at the very beginning, circa episode one, maybe two, about, you know, why performance can break under pressure. So maybe let's dive into some of the stuff we've been working on, you know, in the background, man.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I like you said, it's not it's not a lack of skill. It's it's the system going into chaos or rigidity. So it's yeah. It's usually never the person lacking skill, especially in the populations that we work with, because there's there's so much training that goes into what they do because it's because it is so serious. You got military professionals that train with live weapons, you got police officers that have to make like like split second decisions, and then you got firefighters that you know run into burning buildings and don't think twice. Some of them do, and it's like, well, way to go.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like and there's no time for it. Like even like I got I got I got a fun story to kind of kick this off.
SPEAKER_00Go for it. We love stories here.
SPEAKER_02Because it's because it's the seriousness of what the body goes through. And and I'm not discounting what athletes go through because it's just different. They go through their own stressors and their own freezes and you know performance breakdowns, mental breakdowns, stuff like that. It's just just it's different.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I I think that, you know, as a topic as a whole, right? Like pressure can break down performance across anywhere. And whether that's like, you know, whether that's the last straw before snapping at my kids to, you know, I miss the final pitch, you know, I I miss the final basket, I I miss the final catch. I forget my lines on stage, I say the wrong ones, like, or as we're kind of talking about, you know, a bit more actual life or death, yeah, you know, when performance breaks, which is out there, and then I think we're gonna use here, like you said, you have a story which really just illustrates the extreme version of that point, but it does apply everywhere.
The Runaway Weapon Freeze Story
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so last episode I introduced y'all to sleepy, and and today, today I'm gonna introduce you to Runaway.
SPEAKER_00These are the are these the these are the seven characters we've never actually been introduced to. Is there are there's five more of them somewhere?
SPEAKER_02I have I have I have I have really good stories across my experience, and I usually I'm usually the one that gives the nickname because you can't go through your through your military career without a nickname.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think that in the I think in the performance world, I mean everybody loves a good nickname. So I heard you say runaway.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we let's let's set the stage. So I was embedded with an infantry company working with multiple platoons. It was a it was a great experience, and we were it was a it was a 10-week embedment. So they got the whole they got the whole run of the gambit because it was the tail end of IRF two into IRF one, the deployment cycle, you know, stuff like that. So we're coming off of that and going into squad live fires. And so they got all the training. So there's Runaway had the mindset training, the mindfulness training, the energy management training. He's he's highly skilled in what he does because they train all the time.
SPEAKER_00Um proof of that is him getting to that point, right? Like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So we were out at squad live fire, and he was in part of he wasn't in the sus the the he wasn't in the sustained area where they're supporting fire from a distance, so he was in a movement element, he was carrying a saw. It was daytime, went through the sticks, went through the blanks. So he we get to the live fire portion, and in that movement, we were moving to take cover behind a building, and there's absolutely no reason for a saw, a machine gun to be firing or any weapon in that matter, and all of a sudden, I'm less than 20 meters away. The whole squad is within you know running distance of each other. Like we're we're so close, even first sergeant and the medic, because I was with them, and we hear this da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da I'm like this isn't right. And Runaway had a runaway machine gun. Oh, and what that means is there's a there basically a runaway weapon is when your weapon gets stuck in a constant firing position, so it is literally just my mouth sometimes, yeah. And a machine gun is gonna continue to fire until it runs out of rounds or completely malfunctions and it stops itself. Or you do the remedial action, which runaway froze. He forgot the amount of pressure and stress, the thoughts, the wanting to stay with the team instead of you know stopping and you know burying his muzzle into the ground or remembering to rip the the link in the the rounds, he completely froze. And it took it took the OC and the safety to like get him to stop moving because he was moving with it. Luckily, it was still pointed downrange, but we're getting ready to move behind a building, so now he's just gonna splatter concrete all over everyone, right? Um, but at the end of the day, his they got the link broke, the barrel was just gross.
SPEAKER_00That's crazy, yeah. It was scary, right? Because like he's moving, which makes everything all of a sudden become immediately unpredictable.
SPEAKER_02100%. And I was and what's awesome is he absolutely got dressed down, like you in the moment like that, you can't forget.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a little bit different than running the wrong play.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but uh but at the same time, you're trained well enough, like he's trained on the saw and knows exactly what to do when something like that happens. And after the AR and all the after action stuff, I was able to speak to him and was like, hey man, what was going on? He's like, I just froze, like I could not remember what to do. And it and it happens. That's that's a performance breakdown due to pressure, yeah. And he had all the skills, both technically and tactically, and mentally, I was I gave him all the skills and tools, and me talking to him, I'm like, so what did you learn from this? He goes, I know damn well. He's like, this will never happen again. And I said, This is a moment in your military career that uh it will most likely if it were to happen again, you wouldn't you you're instantly gonna go into remedial action because it affected you that much. And he goes, Yes, I could have killed every single one of you if I wasn't aware enough to keep my muzzle downrange. And he goes, It was very scary.
What Training Programs Miss
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So then, right, so you know, you mentioned at the beginning of that, which that feels like heavy for everybody involved, but obviously for sure for runaway, which again, like he said, you know, he's never going to forget that because of the real, very like the real exposure to that crisis. So I guess what I want to say too, right, is I think what I highlight is what's missing. Right. So before we get to what's missing, with I want to go back to what you mentioned that this individual, along with a lot of individuals, again, across performance, depending on the progressiveness of their coaches and training, which is rapidly evolving in today's world. But let's talk a little bit about, you know, in this particular space, what programs are out there that currently exist. You named a couple of, you know, the programs or the courses or whatever that he likely would have been exposed to, like everybody else that currently exists. You know, let's talk a little bit about those, you know, like the mindful, the mindfulness block that's in present day training. Um so I know, I know and have worked with stress inoculation training, which still, I mean, still has a lot of great, I guess, uh a good backbone. You know, case in point, it's something that, you know, teaches somebody a little bit about themselves, a little bit of mindfulness, a little bit of like a little bit of self-awareness, and then skills to regulate. Um, it's a little bit boxy in that it's, I don't know, in my opinion, there's the front loading of it is a little bit fluffy and it makes it hard to immediately apply it in a lot of tactical environments because in a schoolhouse setting, sure. In a controlled environment, absolutely. So an academy, a schoolhouse, the like. But once we're in a tactical setting, the ability to kind of refresh on that or to start from scratch, if for some reason the unit's never been exposed, it that becomes next to impossible, which I think is why we don't see as valuable as a program. We don't see it very often.
SPEAKER_02No, I mean, I've built in stress inoculation training in a lot of the tactical lanes that I would help uh, you know, squad leaders, platoon leaders, platoon sergeants, you know uh develop and incorporate those stressors that could potentially happen. But uh we gotta start out light. Stress inoculation training is you you build up to the at least in my mind, you build up to the exorbit amount of stress that way you when it does happen, you have trained the skills in various moments of mild to moderate stress that your body's become accustomed to putting those, you know, regulatory skills in place. I've also been a part of multiple mindfulness programs, you know, from the sitting meditation to yoga to body scans to mindful walking to mindful eating, you know, and there's a place for all of that. Don't get me wrong, like I'm not gonna poo-poo those formal mindfulness programs because there are there are a benefit to it. But what we've what I've found in a military setting or high risk setting, these programs are being ran in a very controlled environment.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's there's nothing there's nothing, there's nothing really stressful. And what I have found is a lot of people have a hard time translating those skills into a higher risk population. They just don't work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I I think going back to add on to what you're saying, right? Like, so I'm I'm gonna give a little bit more specifics for anybody who wants to, you know, look these up or is being exposed to or familiar, you know. So stress inoculation training created by Donald Mishenbaum. I'm hoping I'm saying that right. Words phonics are not my strong suit. Disclaimer. But uh yeah, but Donald Mischenbaum. So again, the one thing about stress inoculation training, it is really valuable. It has great research, it's been, it's been the it's been toted as the backbone of other resiliency programs, including like master resilience trainer, the MRT, which our tactical listeners are are familiar with. But one thing about it, it again, it's a a cognitive beh a cognitive behavioral therapy protocol, which means that it's you know, it's rooted in what I would say a bit more of a clinical layer. It's three phases, which immediately means time consuming. For me, it addresses a lot of stuff. What it doesn't address is it doesn't address like the values layer, which we'll get to in a little bit later when we when we dig into our framework. But the values layer, you know, like there are definitely skills acquired in stress inoculation, but it doesn't add any layer of identity or purpose, which I think is really important in the tactical high-risk setting where you're going to be exposed to things that will question or call into question or ask you to constantly be looking at how you view the world and the world that you're looking at. I'll just briefly go over like a couple of other ones that for some of you out there, if you're affiliated with any form of high-risk occupations in cognitive performance, but the well-known mindfulness-based stress reduction, MBSR, again, that is that is something I have seen pulled into a lot of spaces. And a lot of people, when they say mindfulness training for military, I find that they'll root it off of the MBSR. The problem with that one for me, and Matt, you can if you have anything too, but like again, I like it. It's too slow. It was built for civilians, so I think it's also missing.
SPEAKER_02It's an eight week, it's an eight-week program.
SPEAKER_00It's eight weeks, exactly.
SPEAKER_02If you go, if you go one hour a week for eight weeks, it's it's eight hours of training.
SPEAKER_00Again, it's a civilian clinical protocol. It's eight weeks, which is in some colleges a semester, right? It's heavy sitting, it's a it's a heavy academic, academic and application base, again, kind of tying it to like if I ask a group of first responders to sit in a monthly training for six hours and learn about yoga and breathing and mindfulness eating, it's all probably loosely based off of this structure.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00None of that is helpful seconds before a split tactical decision in the field, right? And then the last one I want to give a shout out to. Again, they all come from well-researched, well-intended backgrounds, but the mindfulness-based mind fitness training, which was also something that I found uh again, it's also eight weeks. It's been a well-studied tactical mindfulness program. It was quote, developed specifically for military populations. And I again, I like the concept. It teaches what we call flashpoint awareness. So it's helping. So like stress inoculation training helps somebody understand themselves a bit more under stress, like understanding the fight-flight response and how it affects them. This MMFT program targets the gap between the stimulus and the response and like what's happening, what you can do, things like the window of tolerance, you know, are thrown out here. But again, it's also an eight-week. It requires a certified facilitator, which means not everybody can say, I want to teach this and teach.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's like probably three of them in America that I'm aware of, probably the the two developers and somebody they like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So again, like it's super helpful, but it becomes bulky when it can't be accessible, approachable, or scalable, which all of these you know, populations we're talking about need that. And then the last two, I guess I'll say there's the cognitive flexibility training, which I would say I'm using that as an umbrella term. In my opinion, majority of the resiliency programs, I would even say the mindfulness for military or tactical programs, anything with the word resiliency attached to high risk, they are, I mean, even I could probably even toss in the OODA loop in here. Cognitive flexibility training, that umbrella, I would say, encompasses everything else that's being out there. So, you know, different resilience programs with different titles, grit and growth mindset training, you know, Duckworth and Carol Dweck derivatives, attentional control training, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm throwing those out there because, in my opinion, most of the things that are being brought to the sidelines in the tactical space outside of the schoolhouse or even in the schoolhouse is more cognitive flexibility trained. And while there is value there, majority of the people I've run into in these populations do not have cognitive flexibility problems. Majority of elite performers do not have cognitive flexibility problems. Like that's almost something that they naturally bring to the table.
SPEAKER_02And I think that kind of brings me to why and how, you know, tactical mindfulness became what it is. What's awesome is in its own way, I've always looked at awareness training, energy management, building that psychological flexibility piece in prior to performing. Because if you're not, if your body isn't aligned, your mind, your body, you're not tied into the mission. Again, that's where my tagline comes in, right? If you're not tied into your system and your system isn't balanced, I question whether you have access to the full amount of your cognitive flexibility or your full potential when it comes to cognitive flexibility, because what we do know is the OODA loop fails under pressure.
Psychological Flexibility In Real Time
SPEAKER_00Well, it does, and I think it does for the thing you just pointed out, right? Psychological flexibility. I mean, going back even to you know your story about runaway, I I think that we all of these things give us the ability to understand the environment and less of an understanding of how we're functioning in that environment, a little bit of awareness. The the problem is, is that I I'm holding this person to understand their environment or the weapon in their hand or their tools that they're using better than they understand themselves. And so, in a moment back to your story, where everything goes off book. I don't understand myself in that space because my body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do in a way where it's it's reacting in a way of like, oh shit, this is off book. Safety first, are we okay? Well, no, nothing is as it seems. So no, we're not okay. And now we're stuck in this like little loop, right? If we add in elements to tactical training, mindset training within, I mean, personally for me, across all areas of performance. If we start adding in the ability for somebody to be aware of themselves psychologically, psychological flexibility, then everything else we're teaching and the rest of that resiliency program gets enhanced exponentially.
SPEAKER_02And the the psychological flexibility piece is often what is missed.
SPEAKER_00Correct.
SPEAKER_02Right. And and ding ding ding. You if you can't regulate your system, you can you trick again, can you truly make a sound decision? Can you make a can you make a quick decision? Which is oftentimes in any domain that you work in, tactical or athletic, you're having to make split second decisions. And you may not make the right decision. Uh even if you are uh uh centered and aligned, the decisions could still be wrong. But at the end of the day, like I've said it before, like are uh were you uh aligned, regulated, able to make that clear decision, decisive decision. And oftentimes I would be willing to say no, because you were rushed, you you started to focus on the the outcome versus you know what if I don't do this, what if the all the whole what if the anticipatory worry comes in and well I think that on a you know a bit to an aside, not to get too far off track, but for me, in my from my lens, I think that we we as a generation, I'll I'll say this boldly, right?
SPEAKER_00But like we as a generation, and I would say like the generations raised by the older generations, you know, as it trickles down, because we are still perpetuating the problem, but we were handed like a blueprint for high performance, like period. And so again, like, but the blueprint was to push through it, don't show weakness, be you know, appear to have it all together. And so we were pushed to perform, like truly embracing the definition of performance, which is an act, right? So you have these incredibly higher achievers, you have they have great resumes, but then we slowly but surely are all just a bunch of people who are excellent just simply at performing without presence. And performance without presence isn't strength, it's survival. And I would say I would stand behind that at the smallest level to the biggest level because our brains aren't going to sit there and differentiate if that's all we're doing everywhere, right? Right. So I think so. To kind of come back around, right? Like this soapbox about psychological flexibility. I'm not sitting, I want to say as somebody who I know I'm seen as as the the clinical, you know, mental health on my forehead first.
SPEAKER_02It's not your fault. I mean, kind of I mean you you did big it.
SPEAKER_00I did big it. As me. But the goal, I don't want anybody to feel like they have to stop performing. I want them to think that they like I don't want them to feel like they're performing, performing their life. And I think, you know, when we when we from a very young age believe that everything is a performance always, then we start creating this gap between like who we think we're supposed to be and who we are. And then that starts getting tangled up because we're talking about like if I'm going on to my job and my job is a performance, and then I'm going home and my home is a performance, and I'm never ever taking inventory of how any of that affects me, then I perform without presence and that will eventually catch up to you. And I think when the stakes get higher and higher and higher, like we're talking about life and death, I think that it truly has a cost.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think when we when we look at tactical mindfulness and there I had a I had a conversation with an individual who was a veteran in special forces and well experienced, is now a mental health advocate, mindfulness instructor, teacher, and he he said, Matt, these service members, veterans, while there is a place for traditional mindfulness, it doesn't work effectively in the moment, in the moment of pressure. How can we keep them in the moment? Awareness, attentiveness, non-judgmental, how can we still keep that foundation of mindfulness, but without the the fufu of meditation or presumed fufu of meditation and body scans and and yoga. And again, I'm not I've taught everything but yoga. I don't do yoga, I have other ways to teach mindful movements, but there's there's a place for that. And for me, the meditation, the body scans, the yoga, the mindful walking, that's recovery, that's stress reduction, that's recovery after the performance. Yes, right, yeah, there's value to to do before the performance as far as getting you into the moment.
SPEAKER_00It's prep and recovery, it's a prep and recovery tool.
CORE For Mindfulness In Motion
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so I kind of took that to heart because I was like, Yeah, he's absolutely right. And that's kind of where tactical mindfulness for me came from. It's just now that I've I have the time to really sit down and put the thoughts and the way I went about working and adding you to the piece where we now have this framework where I feel like is a really great place to be when it comes to enhancing athletes, tactical professionals, business execs. Again, this is a model that can be done in the moment. It is mindfulness in motion. And some people be like, oh, well, that's just mindful walking or that's running medicine. No. This is a very distinct way of teaching informal mindfulness. It's not necessarily check-ins, it's not stop, it's not the three R's, it's not those typical informal mindfulness techniques to get you back to the task. This is a framework that starts with core, the psychological flexibility piece, the piece that gets you prepped.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_02The internal mechanism that gets you centered, ready to perform, the internal check. And it starts with the C. You got composure. Where are you? Are you are you ready? Are you calm, alert? Are you ready to perform? Then you have objectives. What are you? What should you put your attention on? Are you focused and aware of what is being said in the prep meeting, in the in the coach's meeting before you step out onto the field? Are you there in the mission mission prep meeting, hearing the objectives? And then reality is where we bring in that cognitive diffusion piece of the thoughts. What are some of the thoughts? You may not agree with the plan, you may not, you may agree with it, but now you're you can start feeling those thoughts come up.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And are you going to get latched on to that pressure thought that gets you stuck before it even starts? And then you have engagement. And that's that last piece of you've got your game plan, you're composed, you've got your objectives, you're clear, you're clear on your thoughts or got your thoughts under control, right? And you're ready to go.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I I mean, I think that, you know, so the first part of this framework, right? Core, like you said, it's prep. It's um, I would also say I don't think that anything about the framework we're, you know, discussing here. I want to make sure that everybody understands we're not talking about adding a new tool. I don't think we're doing anything, we're not really doing anything brand new to something that is, you know, we're just naming a mechanism and connecting the tools in the same way that anybody here that does performance, I could probably sit with you, which is something I'll do, and help you narrow down the prep work you've been doing. And then making, you know, how do we enhance it? You, you know, and so I think taking that framework, and like you said, it's tweaking it, it's adding a bit more intentional focus, maybe a couple of tool tweaks. It's bringing in, like you said, cognitive diffusion where you you can really assess this is what I have to do. One of my favorite things when I work with clients is like giving them permission to feel bad about a good decision. And like the duality of holding that space, that's cognitive diffusion, right? That's being able to acknowledge emotions, which are often like angry little toddlers and sometimes just need us to say, Oh, hey, you're here. I'm not changing my direction, but hang out. Like, I see you, I know you're mad. I'm still doing it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, so that I wanted to say, because like, and you know, again, I think we could probably continue to do like a whole other thing about research, but you know, we talked, I talked about the other frameworks that are out there, and then we mentioned psychological flexibility. There is a lot of research out there that shows that, you know, acceptance and commitment theory is which has a lot to do with psychological flexibility, works really well, and mindfulness works really well, but we can't keep operating in silos, right? And so I think core, as you mentioned, takes elements of what we've been doing and just shows you how to connect them so that they're, you know, that they become parts of a whole, you know, and not two pieces of of a of two separate systems.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it it's uh it is getting the system ready, right? Traditional mindfulness or meditation is a deliberate and intentional. You brought you brought up the word intentional.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02This is intentional. You this is the intentional piece of mindfulness, yeah. Present with the moment, aware, starting to connect the values, right? Because then we uh the last piece, and I'll let you touch on that, right? You the decisions that have to be made may not be in line with your values, like just it, and that's the way certain environments work, yeah, right? It but it's the intentional piece, it you're you're making it an effort to build it in and be ready for the moment. And well, no, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I was just gonna say, like what you're talking about, right? Like again, we're just adding on the perspective, like you just mentioned, right? Like we're just taking, we're just kind of framing what's already being done with a bit more of an intentional alignment, which means that we're not coming in and recreating the wheel. We're not coming in and asking you to build a whole new framework. We're asking you to intentionally acknowledge and maybe tweak a few steps within your prep. You know, because like I I feel like again, mindfulness, like you said, is intentional and it works and it can be very valuable. But without that psychological flexibility, it's like it's like I taught you how to calm down, but I but it has nothing to do with the calm. And so, you know, so trying to take those two pieces, you know, and again, acknowledging the controllables, being intentional. I think a lot of people are already doing that. I think a lot of people get themselves in the right headspace in a lot of different ways to go out and perform. I would say that said, I think that adding the element, adding the add-on, the framework, the theory of psychological flexibility means I think I think it just is a more authentic presence in your performance, which just has a healthier return on investment, means you're gonna be able to do it a whole lot longer. So um Yeah.
OR For Split Second Decisions
SPEAKER_02And I and I when you get when you get to when you get to core, and again, coming back to the psychological flexibility leading into the actual performance, and you have what we call OR. Yep, right? OR is Orient, Regulate, and execute.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_02We're we're taking the decision making model and adding a piece to it that still is missing in the traditional decision-making model.
SPEAKER_00Decision framework, yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you can't you you still have to find time to regulate even when making decisions, and it's not stop and take a breath, it's not stop and take long pauses because you can't. But uh can you do a posture check? Can you right? So the middle piece of or that regulate piece is is a key here. We can't it we can't ignore the orient piece because now you're in motion.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I mean, again, back to you know, I I guess we should probably be aligning this with, you know, an example like the one you gave, right? Where if, you know, if if in runaway situation he had oriented himself to like what's happening, right? I think there these are still this is very still a very much objective environment environmental, you know, person and environment scan of like, this is what's happening, these are the facts, is it is these are the objectives. But then that very the moment we take to regulate, and it's taking us a whole lot longer to say it than it does for you to do it, and like you mentioned, it could be a tool, it could be a posture check, it could be it could be bouncing away thoughts creeping in, it could be a breath.
SPEAKER_02Are you white knuckling that machine gun because it's in runaway?
SPEAKER_00Right. The overlap of aura and regulate, I think, is another good point you bring up.
SPEAKER_02It absolutely comes down to it because even in a training environment, he wanted to stay with the team. Luckily, he was aware enough to keep the barrel down range. Luckily, yes, yes, right, or at a at an angle to where it's not firing at people behind him or in front of him, and thank goodness for that. We had that, yes, but he still froze, yeah, he still froze because of the amount of pressure, even staying with right in and I don't think in a training environment coming to a stop and fixing that would have led to him getting you know dogged down the way he did by continuing to move, right? Because again, it's a training environment. Now in combat, yeah, he could be under fire and like you got he that whole that adds a whole nother piece to it. But the orient and the regulate piece was out the window for the most part for runaway, and he went, he was still executing.
SPEAKER_00He was stuck in execute. I think that's like think that's a really good point, right? He was stuck, and I think execute, which I would say, you know, some of that freeze. And this goes to the training, and there is value in this training, like the training that that you guys, you know, that you guys go through ad nauseum is to train a default to a standard operating procedure. It is to train, do this, then do this, then do this, right? And so I think so, yes, and we love that for a lot of scenarios because there's a lot, there is a lot of safety in that. The problem is, is like we have to expand to account for these other scenarios that happen a lot that require that extra element of psychological flexibility to be like, shit, we just went off book. And this is what yes, psych flexible.
SPEAKER_02It has psychological flexibility has to be a part of the entire performance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Even in even in the decision-making model.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And I think that that is something, again, to me, that is something that is valuable and is valuable to everybody out there who's in any sort of performance, is that, you know, any sort of performance, because I get that the elite of the elite, especially in the tactical world, probably go through an element of this, you know, that there's a little bit more of that built in, which gives them the ability to immediately check themselves, check their team, check their environment, and make switches for the unexpected. It's it's trying to take that and give it to more people.
SPEAKER_02Um I I think that that's where the performance side of stress inoculation training comes in. And in the the smaller training environments, you build in those moments of even in a stick, in a stick lane. Hey, boom, saw gunner, you got a runaway. What do you do? You just got his heart rate up because you ran across the field, you were doing the motion, boom, runaway, go. What do you got?
SPEAKER_00But I would also, I would also say, too, though, like that there's an element, and again, I guess this is where I go to the value of psychological flexibility. And again, as as young of an age as we can teach it, because you're telling, you're still talking about in the particular trading environment you just described, a lot of us are great at knowing the SOP. We know the book, we know, like in that environment, even with his heart rate up, he could have probably answered that question. It's when it's real that I don't have the ability to regulate. Cause how many of us, how many of us? I just followed on on a and I've been a part of this in crisis work, where you know, I have educated health professionals and other people about crisis response. So I'll I'll bring up things like suicide training or medical emergency response, right? Like where When I've been trained on it, I've been it's been talked to me and you know, to the point that you could ask me the question and I could give you the book answer. But when you drop us into a real life situation with a real life person, especially if I know that person, and then that person starts falling into a medical emergency, they become impaired, there's something off, they're suicidal, they're whatever, it's real in the same way that the gun, you know, like is now in his hands and is really going off, right? The thing that I knew how to answer about, but probably somewhere didn't ever think it would happen to me means that while I could give you the answer, I never quite processed what it would feel like to go through that experience.
SPEAKER_02And so and I and I think that's where comes back to where we were talking about in Darren's episode of we can only train and mimic combat so much. Yeah, that's true, and we're never going to truly mimic the emotional piece of an environment like that, truly mimic the stress component of that environment, and in runaway's position, he got a pretty good dosage of it in in real time, and that is one thing that could absolutely happen in a combat environment. It just so happened to happen to him in a training event, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and again, yeah, to your point though, right? Like we can't just like you know, the value runaway has from that experience, he'll never forget, but we can't subject ourselves to all the examples. Not only that, it would I mean some of us do, depending on the career you have, right? Like, never have I ever, never did I think, you know, didn't see that on my bingo card, but yeah, we don't we can't do that, we can't prepare for everything.
SPEAKER_02And and when we have that moment, it it that moment affected runaway will most likely affect him further down his career.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Because maybe it did affect him traumatically, you know.
AIM Recovery And Moral Injury Buffer
SPEAKER_00The emotional impact of almost killing his whole team, yeah. I think that that would and again, right? Like we're we're speaking to the heaviness, which I think, you know, is is where we segue into that last piece of the framework that that we've added on, which is a way to handle, you know, how these situations affect us and our values, our belief systems, you know, affect us morally. Because I think in certain lines of work, when our line of work is to show up on somebody else's worst day every single day, or when, you know, our job is to show up and be exposed to life or death and destruction, that I think it's it's a very human response for that to make us question. You know, and but so this last part of the framework, you know, lovingly referred to as aim, you know, which kind of hints at the idea of like a refocus or an evolution, but A is you know, to assess, right? And so this is something that I would say steps into the recovery piece. You know, it's kind of making sure, just like recovery from any sort of performance. Again, there's going to be a post-event. You're going to have some sort of cool-down routine, bedtime routine, after action routine. We're just teaching this to be a part of that. So, you know, A stands for assess, where you really just take inventory again, objectively, but also subjectively. You know, what are the facts and how did I feel about all those? I is an integrate, right? So taking taking pause to think about how it aligns or misaligns, you know, what it does or doesn't do with my with the current belief system I had coming into this day, this shift, this moment. And then movement. And and, you know, what do we do? How do we move out of that? How do we move forward? How do we evolve and integrate from this experience going forward? Now, as I referenced, right, I think that we, I think a big thing, a big problem that we have is that generationally we still perpetuate like a performance-first mindset, which means that I think for a lot of us, and this is something I've taken over the years, working a lot in transitions across a lot of different performance domains, is that our belief system in that transition oftentimes becomes incredibly dysregulated. And I think that, you know, I didn't think my career would end this way. I didn't actually see that it was going to end. I don't want it to end, you know, when we're faced with things that feel out of our control and we're not given the space on how to integrate, you know, how to feel bad about a good decision, how to acknowledge that our belief system changed the day we showed up to this event, this mission, this day. And why that's okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Why some of that belief system. So the the big, the big title out there, right? Like, and I've I've loved this phrase. It was part of what drove me to go down this line of work is the moral injury. I really like to expand on that. I think that a big passion of mine has been trying to figure out how we build a buffer against moral injury. For me, I think it goes to the fact that I think a lot of us come into adulthood with a set of beliefs that sometimes we forget to give permission to evolve. And those I think can be linked to performance, they can be linked to expectations. You know, some of them just need evolution, they need integration. And so that aim piece really serves as what I believe to be how we go about protecting or creating a buffer against, you know, who we want to be and what happened, who we thought we were gonna be, maybe who we turn out to be, you know, and then adding some of those pieces. So again, you know, assess objectively what's happened, integrate. We teach things about how to integrate them with ourselves, how to give ourselves permission to recover. What does that recovery look like? And back to your very intentional mindfulness pieces. But integrate also means connection. For me, it means authentic connection with your intimate world that could be your therapist, your pastor, the, you know, your faith-based spiritual connections, your friends, your colleagues, and then how we integrate into those. Because after any of these extremes, it all feels a little bit vulnerable and icky to go integrate, but it's such a valuable step. And that's where, again, movement comes in because we can make a plan, but then we have to move into the plan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think that that's again, relationships and connection are probably one of my biggest, I think one of the most biggest valuable pieces of that. Um it goes back to the word we've said multiple times through here, which is intentionality.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, so I, you know, and again, I think that's something that gives us the ability to take that high-risk world, give them the ability to kind of steward themselves through a career that doesn't cause their entire identity to foreclose when they transition out of it.
Culture Trust And Team Connection
SPEAKER_02Well, I think again, it comes back to a we uh all of that is a hundred percent true, and we can circle back to Runaway. Runaway, his day was not done. We were daytime live fire.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02There was six hours until nighttime, which means we start nighttime blanks, nighttime live fire. Yeah, he had to finish the day, he had to finish the day, and what I want to touch on is the connection piece because uh again, me as the performance person, I can't ignore all of those what may be seen as clinical components because I'm the only mental provider out in the field right now. Yeah, I have to connect with him, I have to check on him, but what was cool again, it comes back to Darren and what he talked about that in that particular battalion, the only thing that mattered is the Red Devils. And you what I saw was a broken private first class. Yeah, and his team, his squad, the first sergeant, the captain, while they were pissed in the moment. They connected. I had to connect and ensure that he was ready to go into the nighttime, and that's what's great about the environment or tactical mindfulness. Like I didn't have to teach that. Yeah, it was ingrained culturally, and some cultures or some organization is not like that. And that one it was great to see because it made my job easier when I connected because then I got to then I got to see him uh like re recage and go back to core, even though I didn't call it core back then. He was able to then go and start prepping for the night time because he knew he had the trust in his team.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, and that you bring up, right, the the trust and the connection. And I think that, you know, so I I think the other cool thing about this framework is that while we're, you know, we've talked about it at like an individual level, I think it's you know, it it's a scalable framework that has a slightly different connotation for the leaders. And you're describing a situation that, you know, that ended the way that it did because of the environment it occurred in, because of the team, because of the culture. And some of those things are a hundred percent built in. And I would say from like a team perspective, it sounds excellent, right? It sounds fantastic. But what I would say is, you know, so back to that framework, like being able to give Runaway the ability to come back and do core, right? And to kind of sit in that cycle. At some point, he needs to assess the aim, right? And like some of that was done in small bits and pieces when the leadership is chucking in, right? And they're, you know, talking to him about what he did wrong, and you know, but it's it's done in a way where there's so much trust there that the feedback is accepted. It doesn't feel good, but it's accepted because I know you're doing this because you want the best for me, you know, and then there's that integration of like, you know, like, okay, like this is where we're at, this is what's happened, and now we have to set this down and we have to get back to it, you know, and move. And so I think that, you know, to kind of illustrate, you know, like what's crazy, what's what's great about your story is that we're talking about how this framework already sits over a lot of this story, and little tweaks really in the middle, you know, are are where we're recommending, you know, the piece to take place. The other stuff was there, and so I think it's cool to illustrate. Like, again, we're not recreating the wheel.
SPEAKER_02And no, nothing. It just got a framework, some naming it some order to what a lot of us do. Yeah, it's just piece here, piece there. We have it all over the place, right? Again, this is everything that has been laid out in this episode was pieces to what I was doing. And now there's there's there's a structure to it, there's organization to it, there's meaning behind it. That way now it can be taught fluidly instead of boom boom boom instead of here there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02This is this is what we are. This is called tactical mindfulness, but I can assure you it is not your traditional mindfulness program. I'm not teaching you how to eat a damn sour patch kid, a warhead. I'm not have I can, yeah, I'd do it just to watch your face get all gross. But that's not going to help you in the moment. No, that six-hour block of waiting to go to the the night time, that's where you can do your your meditation, your body scan, your stretches if you want to do it that way. That's when you got time for that. Not in the heat. You don't have time for that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I and I think that's again, I think what you're you know, really highlighting is that it's about it's about teaching genuinely right, tactical split second mindfulness, split second psychological flexibility, these little intentional parts of the framework you're already using that have such a magnificent return on investment, you know. Yeah, I I think I look forward to continuing to expand on this.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What I would love to say, right, to I was actually gonna say to the listener, right? Like, I would say think back over the week, you know, think back over the week, over the weekend, identify, think back to a moment where you maybe are using any of these tools where you've, you know, maybe you you've done breath work, maybe you're doing meditation or yoga breath work, maybe you did a thought reframe, maybe you did a values check, like maybe you did any of those. However, all of these things that have a bit of like intentional support behind them were they done in isolation. If they, if they did, then I would ask, what it would have happened if you had integrated them together, right? Like, what would have happened if you would have, you know, done some breath work along with a values check while doing a thought reframe, giving yourself permission for some duality and thoughts and emotions. What would have happened then? And then I challenge you to try just once, you know, in some other point this week where the pressure gets heavy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I the the performer is a performers out there, this is a m this is an opportunity to try something different. To the professionals out there, this is something that is going to continue to grow, and we want, I want feedback. I want your feedback. I want to know what you think.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let us know. Walk yourself through the steps.
SPEAKER_02Because I have utilized it in multiple scenarios, multiple environments. Yeah, and I've had the same return. There's something here, and I think it's really time to start talking about it because I th we could go into a whole nother episode of how I feel like we could build a return on investment and show cognitive flexibility, true cognitive flexibility through tasks that are already being done.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We don't need we don't again, we don't need to recreate the wheel when it comes to utilizing a ton of technology, a ton of we don't need to spend more money on certain things when the thing that was being done is the cognitive flexibility piece. And I don't want to even go on a tangent on that, but like that's a whole if you want to know more about that, shoot me a message. I was gonna say just message him. Yeah, because like I think we have something, and I'm I can't wait to continue to talk about it.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, no, I look forward to, you know, like I said, we'll we'll definitely keep getting into it. I think we could definitely get more into you know some of the details that we're looking to run, you know. I mean, we've got visions and we'd love to share them with you, but uh, you know, for now, hear what we had to say. We challenge you to take yourself through any part of this framework, you know, core or aim. Go through it step by step. Give us some feedback, let us know what you like, what you don't like, what you think we're missing, what we hit on the head. Tell us what it's like to do things, you know, integrated versus in silos.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, yeah, to that.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening. We look to, you know, as we're as we're wrapping up this season, and I think, you know, we've got like one more in us. Yeah. Share some reflections. So yeah, I don't know. I think that's that's what we got for you guys today, right, Matt.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, again, I appreciate everyone that's listened along the way. And to one more. Yeah, one more for the season.
SPEAKER_00So till next time, you guys. Thanks for being with us under pressure. Bye.
SPEAKER_02Bye.
