Former Army Colonel John Mark Wilson: The Truth About Military Trauma, Alcohol Recovery & Healing

Yeah, I need to stop you there because As you said, you fought tooth and nail with your men, and it was the worst thing you could have done.

And because there were a lot of things that you didn't realize that you needed to clean up.

now you were with your men then you went into the white house and i think after the white house that's when you realized you had enough you had to leave but between going into tech and that white town how did you clean up what were the steps you had to do to rewire yourself

great question and full disclosure i'm still trying to figure that out you know i I think a lot of it is tech is high output environment, like the military.

You know, you're on software release schedules.

You have to get things done.

You're expected to work long hours, right? But I think one of the key things that's missing is in tech, there's a lot of time for feedback loops.

And these feedback loops are done in kind of a – non-structured kind of an egalitarian context right where people are actually evaluating you for your performance and your output the military is kind of different the military has a shockingly slow number of feedback loops right people will tell you if you're not doing your your technical job well if you're not performing your But people also will tell you if you're not conforming to culture, right? The military has a very different structured hierarchical, you know, kind of organizational design than tech.

And there is a lot of pressure, particularly for people in leadership positions to be institutionalists.

You have to do what's right for the institution, too.

You have to put yourself on a pedestal and achieve the highest standards.

You have to set the example for the people that serve with you, right? And part of that is not showing weakness.

Part of that is not showing vulnerability.

It's a huge part of military life.

And I'm not going to say that that's all bad because the military has a role.

There is a function there.

But what I have found was looking back, I would have approached this concept of, quote, weakness very differently because now I view weakness as a very different thing.

I view weakness as a pathway to strength.

I no longer view weakness as something that means that you're weak and it's a bad thing and in a zero-sum world.

weakness is a powerful, uh, tool, uh, to help you improve your life, to help you improve your performance.

And in the military, unfortunately, and I don't like terms like macho and that kind of stuff, but I kind of will.

There is this, there is this tension, right? That you need to be resolute and decisive and you need to be, um, strong and, uh, that is kind of that kind of runs against this whole idea listen i'll put it this way there's a lot of pressure in the military to be carrie grant or uh idris elba the strong silent type right there's a lot of pressure to be that no one wants to have their commanding officer be perceived as kind of an emotional wreck someone who's got real challenges Ma'am, that's a real problem.

That's a real problem.

And so for me, I'm now in an environment where certainly the quality of my work and the volume of my contribution is important, but I no longer have to worry about that facade of strength, if that makes sense.

Yeah.