John Ballen
speaker
344 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
John Ballen’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
If you're not successful and you wash out of training, you're stuck in the Navy in the sense that you don't get to pick another job. You kind of become needs of the Navy and you have to go do like these crappy jobs for like four years. Nobody likes being stuck if they don't have what's called a rate. It's like your job.
So it's like he's viewing it as both outcomes sort of come with big negatives. But the way it came out to me was he doesn't believe in me. He doesn't believe I can be a Navy SEAL. Like he thinks I'm not going to make it. I'm sure that was not what he intended, but that's the way I interpreted it. And it marked like a departure in our relationship in 2010. I left for boot camp.
And while he and I absolutely maintained some level of contact, from 2010 until quite literally like a few months ago, I barely spoke to my dad by choice. I had a lot of ill will towards him. I always just sort of felt like... he doesn't believe in me. He also, he got remarried and he has, and he's, you know, he got remarried as a family.
It just, I, I had a lot of resentment towards him that some was founded. Much of it was not. And it sort of became something that it never was, which is I had it in my head that my dad doesn't believe in me. That really was the thought. And it actually helped propel me to, at times there were, there were days in SEAL training where I would literally think to myself, well,
If I don't make it, I can't even fathom what it would be like to face my dad, who in my head at the time, I'm like, he'd be like, told you so. Like the idea of that made my skin crawl, you know?
So in many ways, my relationship with my dad had become sort of negative for many years, but it sort of maintained a pretty healthy chip on my shoulder that pushed me to sort of prove him wrong in a sense. But with self-awareness recently, like very recently through therapy with my boy Vinny Shorman and through some sort of the world lining up, he and I sort of reconnected and
And we actually had some frank discussions about that. And it turns out that no, my dad just literally was worried about his son and felt like I didn't like him or love him. And we sort of drifted and life happens. I had my life, he had his life. But we've reconnected now and I'm happy for it.
Sure.
I can see that.
I think that taking men specifically as an example... You sort of have like the socially acceptable things that can be demons for you that maybe we don't talk about them. But if you did, no one's really going to bat an eye. Like, it turns out I hate my job. And, you know, it turns out I don't love my partner, okay? These are bad things.
But they're things that if you brought them up, no one's going to question your manhood. They're not going to question, you know, things that society views as really important, right? It's the stuff that is super personal to you that could be potentially embarrassing. Those are the things that are your real demons. I'm not saying those other things aren't demons. They are. They are.
But if you can't talk about those things, they will dog you your whole life. They really will. And so I think it's not about you need to go sign up for therapy and go talk to a therapist. But I do think that, like you mentioned it yourself, you have to be able to sort of like unburden yourself. And part of that is simply talking about it.
Like I had one, this is not really a demon, but to give people a sense who are watching this of like how comfortable I am being forward about things that I struggle with. So. Oddly enough, one of the reasons that I was also drawn to the military, believe it or not, was I struggle mightily to urinate in front of other people, just publicly going to the bathroom in front of other people.
It's not like it's destroying my life, but it's uncomfortable. Like it's easier for me if I'm alone, right? I knew this about myself at a young age. Don't have a reason for it. But I knew when I was in high school or in college, I would go to a bathroom that was private because that was easier for me. And as I got older, I was like, that's not really that normal that this is happening to me.
And so part of the reason I was interested in the Navy is they drug test you and they do it really publicly. And it was like... In order to deal with this, I have to go into an organization that literally will force me to have to urinate in front of other people.
But for me, it's sort of like facing these things that are hyper-personal, like inability to pee in front of other people, which I've overcome. But you have to be willing to sort of identify those things. And in my case, I talked to my wife about it before I joined the Navy. And she's like, OK. I talked to my therapist about it recently as well.
But it's sort of like that's a really specific personal thing that if I brought that up in a casual conversation, I'm sure there are people that could actually relate to it. But most people would be like, that's a little uncomfortable that you brought that up. But like everybody's got stuff that falls into that category.
Maybe not specifically, but everybody's got weird insecurities and they've got things that drive their decisions that would be to them deeply embarrassing to bring up. That is the reason you have to bring them up because they will dog you and they will always be there until you deal with them. And for me, it's been helpful and cathartic to state them out loud and then do something about them.
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah. So I would say, obviously, the medium by which you're telling the story matters.
Showing 301–320 of 344 · page 16 of 18
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