Seth Gehle
Appearances
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. Right. Yeah. The one that's vibrating in my, well, anyways. What was the guy's name?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, you know, but that's who I was. And so, um, I was this guy, big dude, like strong fricking trying to be this man in the infantry and all the while I was dealing with this like massive insecurity and identity crisis, essentially.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. That's, that's the reason because of all of that. Right. Um, so we went to Afghanistan, um, man, I was struggling fucking bad. And, uh, um, right before we left, I read, uh, extreme ownership, which really helped me as a leader. Um, I read that and that's actually what kind of changed my mindset from being like, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
it's everybody else's fault to, you know, owning the fucking shit, you know, that you're going through or that you're dealing with. And so that did help me as a leader, but I only applied extreme ownership to my military, like service, like my, only my guys, nothing in my personal life.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So we got through Afghanistan and I always tell people like, if I would have experienced any kind of direct action, I would not be here. Like, I think everybody's got some bandwidth. They've only got so much, and I'm about out of it. And I tell people all the time, if I experience another traumatic event in my life, fucking check on me because I'm very low. And so I got back from Afghanistan.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
My son was born. And then we were living in a two bedroom apartment. I'm getting ready to get out of the military, which is stressful enough. I've got two kids and a wife to take care of. I'm trying to figure out my civilian transition. And then so that was when life had really, really taken a bad turn just because of all the stressors. My childhood trauma had come back in a really weird way.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Do you remember how you found him? I don't. I have no idea. It just, I mean, I might've been watching sport highlights.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I began to like. I really hate and resent my wife, like, deeply, deeply. Like I talked about when we first started, where it didn't matter what she did, I'd be pissed off at her for something. I didn't like the way she worked out. I didn't like the way she did this, raised the kids. I didn't like the way that she was a mother.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
She raised my kids with, like, love and affection and nurturing, where I had a fucking two-year-old and a newborn that I was trying to, like, toughen up, you know? How much did she know about your past? She knew all the... She knew all the basics of it, of everything that had happened to me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Quick. Really? Yeah. And this is... I give my wife so much credit because I told her... a month into our relationship. Um, do you think she understood? No. Yeah. I was going to say the depths of how much it impacted you.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
No, because dude, I could give my wife so much credit for this because when I met her, well, first off I did the typical thing of a first night, you know, first hot girl that I meet, I'm like, I'm going to marry you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And she's like, okay. So, you know. You're lucky you didn't see smoke coming out from her shoes as she went the other direction. Yeah, I am lucky. Because, you know, like a month later, I tell her like some of the shit that I had gone through as a kid and just the top waves. Like, I was sexually abused and mom and this, don't have a family.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Why'd you decide to bring it up with her? She's the first girl I ever dated. I'd never had a girlfriend before. And... Man, I don't know. There was something about her. I thought I was going to marry her. And that's probably because this is the first girl I ever dated. But I told her it was almost like it was almost like get away from me. It's like I told her, I said, I'm fucked up.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. You know, cause he does a lot of speaking for sports and things. And, and if you watch the video, like you can, you're like, Oh God, like you're ready to run through a damn wall.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Just so you know, I said, if you want to be with me, like I'm fucked up and I got a lot of fucked up shit. And she's like, what do you mean? And I told her, she's like, why would I give a fuck? She's like, what's that got to do with me?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, right. I give her so much respect for that because... She didn't, like, care. Like, she was just like, I love you. Yeah. Like, your past... It doesn't matter to me. Like, it is what it is. Like, I love you. I'm not so sure you were past it at that point. No. That's because that's what you're about to say. Like, you're past it. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah. No. Yeah. No. And I wasn't.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And that was my point was telling her was like, if you, you know, I got a lot of bags I'm bringing with me just so you know, that's kind of the point. And I, and it's a, a lot of people do that because it's a, it's a way of telling somebody to get away from me. You know, if I tell you all the problems that I have, it's like, you don't want these problems. Trust me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And she, she just didn't even care. Yeah. Or, you know, she's still with me now. Uh, so, um, Um, but we had our initial, like two years of puppy dog love kind of thing of marriage. Right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, but, but when I got back from Afghanistan, um, that's when everything started going kind of South in our marriage where, um, I became, I became the abuser that I had dealt with for so many years, the manipulative person that I, that I had dealt with for so many years via my mom or Mondo. Right. I, I was just super, um, manipulative towards my wife for the next, um,
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Oh, God, two years or so, two or three years. Just I would come home because once I got out of the army, I would come home from work, wouldn't talk to her for two, three, four days in a row. I mean, I'd come home and just not say a word to her, talk and play with my kids, hang out with my kids. But I just I would just treat my wife like shit. And, um, I tried to divorce her multiple times.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I mean, I literally told her like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like I want a divorce. I want to get out of this. I'm tired of this shit. Um, I couldn't love her. I couldn't touch her. I couldn't hold her hand. Couldn't give her a kiss. Couldn't give her a compliment.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
A lot of people don't recognize the name, but once you hear him, you're like, oh, I know this speech. I've seen this. I've heard this. But he's fucking incredible, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, she would get dressed and come out, you know, and staying in front of me, you know, in the way that women do where they're like, Hey, like I got dressed, like it's time to compliment me. And, uh, I knew that's what she was doing. Did she, did she give you the trick question?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. And I would just look at her like, you look good, whatever. I would just give her this like... Get the fuck out of my face, you know? And the reason I did is I knew what she wanted, you know, I knew she wanted to compliment. And so there's like the misery loves company kind of thing. Like it feels good to be like, yeah, now you're on my level.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Cause like if I treat you like shit, you're going to be miserable just like me. And now you know what it feels like. You know, I resented my wife because, you know, she's got a mom and a dad. Her dad's a very successful GC in the southeast. She's got brothers and brother and sisters and grandma and grandpa and family and love. And I don't have any of those things, you know.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and, and, and she stayed with me throughout the whole process. Right. So fix my, fix my finances, fix my leadership and the military and just as a, as a man and, uh, and work and stuff in general. Um, and then the personal healing came this year or, well, I guess 2024 about January, 2024. I had a conversation.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It was January, January or February who I had a conversation with a friend, um, And what was important about this now that I think about it is I reached out to him for help versus him just giving me unsolicited advice. Unsolicited advice likely will land you nowhere. Hence the unsolicited. Yeah. Right. But you, but you feel like, man, I got all this, I got all this stuff I want to give you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
People have to be ready to receive. Exactly. And so for me, um, people would give me advice my whole life. Right. And I would just be like, yeah, fuck you. You don't understand. Right. And I finally was like, you know what? I'm just going to ask this guy for some help. And so it was my buddy, his name's George.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, uh, what happened was I was actually bitching about my wife and I was like, you know, my wife does this and she, she does this and she, she's not like motivated. Cause I'm, I'm like super motivated, like want to whatever, um, crush everything, crush it at work, be the best performer at work, which I, which I was, um, you know, I wanted to just be the best everywhere in life.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I wanted to wake up at four in the morning and, and work until midnight. Cause that's what you have to do to be successful. You know, um, no, no.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. And I was fully into that. And I would get mad about my wife not staying up until 11 o'clock to do the laundry. And so I would do the chores. I would do the dishes and the house chores, not for her, but in spite of her, to say like, look, I'm working a full-time job. I work out in the morning. I do jujitsu. And I still have time to do this.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yes. Yeah. Yes. And when I approached my buddy about this, he basically reiterated that to me. He's like, cause I was fully expecting him to be like, damn, bro, your wife sucks. And he was like, bro, he's like, you married a fucking woman, man. Like back the fuck up. She's not a fucking soldier. She's not your fucking buddy. She's a fucking woman. And this is, and let me tell you something.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
This is what they want. Not, not this other bullshit that you're doing. And so when I had that conversation with George, I actually went home, like no shit, went home that weekend and I made the conscious, this is where people fuck up. I made the conscious decision to fucking be better and to do better. And it's a fucking decision, man. There's a process to it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yes. It takes repetition. It takes fucking, it's a skill. It's like this development that you go through, but it's a fucking decision that you make to wake up, to choose to be grateful, to choose to be positive, to choose to text your wife and tell you that you love her. And, you know, and he saved my marriage. I mean, he saved my marriage, saved my life earlier.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah, dude. Some more than others. And you know what's crazy is like my wife has no reason to tolerate my shit. She's fucking hot.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yes, she does. But I would always be so hateful towards her because like, especially when my son was born, I really was close to killing myself. And because I knew she had family and her family had money and they would be good without me, like they're going to be okay. So you justify it. You know, there's all these reasons why you justify a divorce or whatever it is. And
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You know, leaving somebody is so fucking easy, like a divorce. If my wife would have walked away from me, I probably would have taken my life. That's probably where my mind was going was like, if I get away, get alone, I can do this.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But because I would have dreams and visions of my wife and kids coming home and seeing me, you know, and I could hear them screaming and I could see the funeral and I could see what's so powerful about that vision is like. Now everybody knows, like now everybody knows that Seth was going through something, right? Because if you don't tell anybody, nobody knows.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then next thing you know, bam, you're fucking dead. And everybody's like, what the fuck happened? You know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. It's hard. And it's, man, it's so hard. It's just so hard. And, uh, Yeah. I, I just, I just pushed her away and pushed her away. And when I would tell her, like, I didn't want to be with her. I mean, she literally told me like, like, I'm not fucking leaving. Like, fuck you. Like, you know, I would tell her that I go to the gym for two hours. Like I just told her I wanted a divorce.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, well that was, I mean, that's 18 years ago. Yeah. So, um, probably as long as I've been alive, close to it. Cool. Yeah. I know he was like relatively new when that, when that happened. And one of the things he talks about, like, I don't know if it's in that speech or a different one. But he started talking about his life and how he was homeless. He didn't have a father.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'd go to the gym for two hours and then come back and have the conversation, like, which is really fucked up. Um, and then I'd get back and we'd talk it out. And, um, I told her a lot of times, like I have two people on my shoulders. Like I have a shoulder. I have this person that's like, when I get home, they're like, Hey man, walk in, hug your wife, tell her you love her.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then as soon as I walk in, this other guy's like, man, fuck her dude. And treat her like shit, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, that's a good point because, uh, when you're looking for help, you feel so alone and like, nobody knows what I'm going through. And so many times when I tell my story, people are like, Oh my God, that's a, you know, that's exactly what I was going through. And I've had all the worst feelings in the world of whether it was killing myself.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I mean, I've had dark thoughts holding my children, you know, I've had thoughts of holding my son thinking of just ending it all, you know, with him. Um, are you past those thoughts? Um, yeah, I don't have them like every single day.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, like during that time, that really, really heavy time in the, when I was getting out of the army, I would think about him like, Oh my God, it was, it was just like, I couldn't even breathe. It was crazy. Um, have you sought professional help as well? I've never been to therapy. Yeah. Well, as a child, I rejected it a little bit. There was no, like, push for it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They were like, my grandparents took me to see a psychologist, like, once or twice. When I reported my abuser, I should have gone through an entire crime victim services, like, rehab thing that they have now, and they likely had then, but it was never pursued or brought upon me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and I, I think that as a child, I wish somebody would have advocated it for me because I, I would have been able to unpack it, you know, um, and get through it. And part of it was, um, this is another beautiful thing that Tom Saturday talks about is I would look at a therapist and say, you don't know, fuck you. How are you going to tell me? Right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And your child, your, your therapist doesn't have to go through trauma. Your therapist doesn't have to see combat. They know how your brain works. Yeah. That's what they specialize. Exactly. So, so why don't you go talk to one? Well, now it's a time and money fucking... It's a time and money thing. And so it's expensive and it's time.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so what I did earlier this year, so after talking to George, I went and read a few books. So there's two books by Dr. Bruce Perry. He's like... In my opinion, the best child therapist guy out there. He's just got two incredible books. One of them is called What Happened to You? And the other one is The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And he just talks about childhood trauma, how it affects you and all these different things. Right. And those two books were 20 bucks a piece. I read $40 worth of knowledge and changed my life. Like it just it reframed the way that I looked at myself, that I looked at trauma. um, how, how much it affected me. And then I needed to admit that and acknowledge that. Um, but that's what I do now.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So I, I find myself, I think therapy would help. It's just expensive and time consuming. Um, so I enjoy reading the books. I when you're listening to somebody else's story, specifically speak, you don't have to think about your own shit. Um, you can just kind of process what they're saying. And that's what I found so powerful.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, like, he had all these things that were against him. But he wanted to be successful. And, like, he wouldn't go let anything stop him. And so when I saw him do that, I was like, oh, like, this guy fucking gets it. And then I was like, I'm going to be a motivational speaker one day. Like, I'm going to travel. I'm going to speak. I'm going to share my story.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There are so many people, uh, like I said, Tom Clark, um, uh, uh, Tom DeBloss actually is one of them, uh, who's got a really cool story. I listened to his as well. It really helped me. Um, When you're listening to somebody else's story, you don't have to process the logic and the emotions in your own head. You can just listen and they will likely say the words that you are missing.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Because when you're thinking about, if I ask you like, what happened to you, right? And then you say, well, how does that make you feel? Or how did you survive? That's why so many people can't come up with.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So part of the reason why people, in my opinion, can't come up with the answers of how they survived is because when you ask them what happened, they're thinking about like these these literal steps of what happened. And they there's so much emotion with it. They can't. they can't figure out like, how did I actually survive that? Um, or what did help me or how do I phrase this?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so when you listen to it for me, when I listened to somebody else's story, um, I'm like, damn, like that's exactly how I felt. That's exactly what I was doing or that's what I am doing. Um, so yeah, you know, I don't knock therapy, although there are a lot of bad therapists out there and all that shit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, you know, the obvious would be like a path to hope and healing and overcoming adversity for people. And hopefully my story starts that chain that somebody else's story started for me to help, you know, get people out there and understanding it's OK to, you know, go through all this and, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Part of my story is the fact that I've accomplished quite a bit of my life, despite only being 30. You know, I served in the military for nine years, run a bunch of ultra marathons, ran a 100-mile race in June, which... I don't know, just to say you've ran a hundred miles. I think it's cool.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But when people are like, they hear your story and, and, and there's a reason why I ran a hundred miles, you know, it's just, it's not like to run from my demons or whatever the fuck it's to show people like, dude, you can go and do incredible. You can do whatever the fuck you want to do. Like the shit doesn't define you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I'm going to change the fucking world. And sure as shit. 30 years later, you know, 2024 is the best year of my life. Wrote a fucking book. I have been all over the country sharing my story, speaking.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. I mean, you control what you can control. Correct. And the only thing you control is what you do, what your own actions, your own thoughts.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, so part of what I wanna do with my story, and you see this a lot with the victim and the survivor world, is you sit across from a victim or survivor of some sort of trauma or abuse, like I talked about earlier with the cancel culture. Um, when people come to me and they want help, I'm like, do you want help? Or do you want to like, say you want help?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and I'm not trying to be, I'm not, I'd look, man, like this is on you. Like, well, those are two very different things, right? I mean, it's fashionable to say, um, I want help or to message somebody or to say, uh, how do I, you know, how do I get better in life? It's like, uh, Okay, I can give you the answers, which there's really just one, which is just take action and start doing things.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But you have to be able to apply it, man. Like there's a lot of things you can do. There's a lot of methods of healing, but you have got to be willing to do it. And with so many victims and survivors, people tiptoe around them because of that term, of that survivor, that victim, I'm a victim of this. So I actually changed my book.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
The subtitle was initially Surviving a Childhood, and I actually changed it to Overcoming because of that. Because I was like, and that was actually- I think that's a good call. I think it was actually opposed by the editor initially, because she's like, well, survivor is a more fitting term. And I'm like, I'm trying to break the mold.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I understand if I call myself a survivor, I have a survivor story. Like, dude, my story, as much as it is about- childhood trauma and all that bullshit. It's about being a fucking warrior, man. Like that's the reason why I went and ran the ultra marathons with like no fucking training. That's the reason why I fucking do jujitsu. It's the, it's the reason why I crushed it at work.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it was the fucking number one guy in the country, uh, at this company. You know, there's a reason why I've done, there's a reason why I wrote a book. There's a reason why I do what I do, tell my story the way that I tell it. It's because I'm a fucking warrior, dude. I'm not like, I don't ever want to be looked at like I survived because I'm... Well, you did.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. You know, I don't walk around telling people that, you know, whatever, like... That's not my identity. You know, it's not my identity. My childhood is not my identity. Unfortunately, with the nature of my story, and maybe it's the way I tell it, it does come off as very much a survivor story, which is good and bad. It is a survivor story. It is. I just...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Survival is the foundation. I think the attitude of just overcoming adversity and overcoming just shit is what I want people to get out of it. I want people to understand that it don't matter what you go through, man. People are doing more with less. Yeah. You know, whether it was in your childhood or your adulthood, you are going to face some level of adversity or trauma at some point.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's up to you how you get through it and if you're going to get through it. You know, but there's a there's a decision point and then there's a process that you have to follow. There's no ozempic to like trauma. You're not going to pop a fucking needle in your arm and you're going to feel better. Well, depending on the needle and short term, better versus longer, better. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, you know, that's what I want people to get is like, you don't have to wear this label. I'll leave you, I guess, with like there's a I wrote a short poem inspired by one of my friends, because when I was in the military, I often looked at SEALs and especially in the 82nd, looking at the Rangers and Green Berets.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I would always be like, man, I wonder if they'd be able to make it through, like, my childhood. And then, inversely, I would look at, like, I wonder how bad Bud's is compared to, like, 16 years of hell, you know? It is a walk in the park. Potentially. Bud's is not that hard. Okay, so I say this. So I wrote this, like, short story, and it's called No Bell to Ring. And what it is is...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's a testament to like childhood trauma and the effects of it and how fucking hard it is because there's no bell. There's no cadre with a warm truck and a place where I can just step off and quit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, exactly. I was just about to get to that actually. There's nothing like that. There's no environment where I can just step off and quit, you know, ring the fucking bell. Yeah. In addition to that, if I survive my childhood, there's no accolade. I don't get to wear this trident. I don't get to wear a green beret. I'm not a Marine Raider or whatever the hell.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
In fact, oftentimes the accolades are addict, alcoholic, uh, abusive, homeless. These accolades are these, uh, negative connotations with life. Um, furthermore, the one title or two titles that you might get are survivor and victim. And, um, I want people to get away from that, man. I want people to break out of that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, uh, cause you have so many people that have like trauma anniversaries and it's like, this is my seventh, uh, seventh year of trauma, my traumatic event. And, um, I call that, uh,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's there's a, well, there's an addiction because it feeds because of the cancel culture. Like I've kind of said it multiple times, right? That person gets on a stage and says, uh, me too. Um, You know, it's dude, if I was 500 pounds, if I was sitting in front of you right now, when I was 500 pounds and I was a fat fucking miserable piece of shit, my story wouldn't be inspiring.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's heartbreaking, but it's not inspiring. And I don't, I don't want to be a heartbreaking story. I want people to like, when I get done fucking talking to somebody, I want them to realize like. all right, I got this shit. Like, fuck this, man. If this fucking guy can get through it and talk about it the way that he does and own it and say, you know what? I'm tired of the bullshit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm tired of my fucked up life. I'm tired of being who the fuck I am. I'm going to choose to wake up one day and be like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm happy. I don't give a fuck. I'm happy. There's bigger problems in the world. I'm fucking good. I'm going to go do hard shit. There's a quote in Breathe, Hicks and Gracie's book, and I fucking love it, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And jiu-jitsu, sometimes it's not about winning. Sometimes it's like slight adjustments when you're getting choked, just to breathe, just to survive just a little bit longer. And that's all you got to do sometimes, man. It's not about winning everything. Sometimes you just got to just make minor adjustments in life to keep fucking breathing. And if you can do that,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
If you can outlast the opponent or life or the will of the forces that be, you know, you can get through the shit, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. It's just about getting better. Yeah, and staying on top.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So the book is on Amazon. Um, strength beyond the shadows. It's on Amazon. Uh, it's on my website too. SethGale.com. My last name is G E H L E. Um, Yeah, man. Do you do all the socials? Yeah. I'm on all the socials. Seth Gale. Just your name. Okay. Yeah. Whatever. I mean, if you can't find me, it's 2025 now. Seth Gale, you should be able to find me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, man, just thank you. Thanks for listening. Um, Yeah, man. Thank you. If you want to sign copy of the book, I do those as well. Um, my email address, you can hit me up on the socials and just ask and I'll, I'll provide that. I'll sign and ship them. Um, there, yeah, but you know, I got nothing, man. I'm just so I'm, I'm thankful to be, I'm lucky. I say lucky.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I think it's the intersection between hard work and opportunity.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. I think I've worked my fucking ass off to be in the place that I'm at. Um, and when the opportunity has presented itself, uh, I was in the right place to capture the moment, you know, and get, and get shit done and You know, you're a loser every day, basically, until you win, you know, so get out there and fucking do the thing that you want to do in life.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
We're on this fucking floating rock and we're going to die soon.
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. In the grand scheme of things, you know, like we're only here for a limited amount of time, man. Like go and do your fucking thing, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, make the most out of it. And, you know, the only regret you're going to have is not. I mean, people fuck up all the time. And the regrets you're going to have the most is like, I wish I wish I would have done something. I wish I would have started something. I wish, you know, so get out there, go do the fucking thing. Start jujitsu. run an ultra marathon. Don't do that. Those things.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And that's what I did. I hated myself for a hundred fucking miles. Um, but no, man, I appreciate you guys having me on and, and, and listening. If anybody's got anything, reach out, hit me up, try to respond to everybody. Um, so thank you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Oh, shit. Let me tell you this. Okay. You just interviewed a mandatory fund guy.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, he was also only 5'8", and then he got the extension. Yeah, bionic leg.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, man. And you said something on there that I really liked. And it was you talked about, you know, all your buddies who come into the military with like a sea bag full of shit. Right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, man. And I'll tell you, you know, when I was in the military, I was so scared. I don't know if it's changed, but I was so fucking scared to say something because I processed and not process like literally, but I helped and expedited and
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
pushed for the chapter of several guys because they had mental health crisis and issues and I feel fucking horrible about it today because I was attacking guys that were suicidal and And I was going through the same fucking shit. And so for anybody who's in the military listening, like the broken toy just needs new batteries. Like we're punishing.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And in addition to that, if you didn't have to fucking, like, if I only had one leg, I would be significantly bigger everywhere else. Like, my muscle mass would just, you know...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't know if it's still happening because I'm not in anymore. But I know that when I was in, we're like throwing these toys away. And these guys are like kicked out of the military when they need fucking help. And they joined the military likely because maybe they needed some fucking help.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
structure and so for those that are serving or helping in that capacity in any way I would highly consider you know trying to get your guys to Get some help. You know, there is a time and a place, you know, get off the X and then do your processing. Right. But man, there just needs to be a there's a there's a big problem with it, obviously.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Well, I just wanted to thank you. I think the way you guys talked about that for the brief moment that you guys did, I think it was, it was very powerful and impactful. And so I just wanted to thank you for saying all that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right, right, right. Just... legends dude i give him so much freaking credit man um i did i'm not qualified to serve him breakfast i mean that's he is on a different level man yeah i did want to um talk a little shit about him um and we got that out of the way uh but i really dude he is um fucking incredible and i say that because so when i when i when i i started writing the book
Cleared Hot
Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Good question. So it's kind of funny. I started writing, I started writing it because I had won this like national award in construction. And so then when I won that award, I was like.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yep. Yep. I won the, I was the chairman award for the national association of home builders, which is their like biggest award or whatever. Went out to Vegas, got that shit. And when I got that, I was like, okay, I think it's time to write the book now. And so, because it's just, you, everybody goes through bullshit in life, but like,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
like the homeless guy underneath the bridge, he probably has some great advice of what to do or what not to do in life. But unfortunately he's not living a very inspiring life. Therefore people don't go to him for advice. Once I started to accomplish things, I was like, okay, like I think I can, I think I can, I can do this now. And so that's kind of what started it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But I sat down and I just started. I didn't have a word goal. I didn't have a page count because I had no idea. Like you can't Google like how many words go on a page. So I didn't.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Exactly. Right. You'll get everything from five to 500. Exactly. So I was just kind of like, fuck it. It's my story. I'm just going to tell it from start to finish and see what happens. And I sat down, pumped out like 20,000 words over the course of... a month or two. Um, did it come out of you pretty easy? Yeah. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
When you're telling your own story and I'm naturally, I'd say a good storyteller. Um, yeah, it just, I just, it just flowed. And then the hard part for me is I have so many fucking stories that are just crazy is you have to pick which ones you want to tell. And that's where even on a podcast or writing a book or even delivering a speech, um, when people hear my story, it's like truly unbelievable.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And that's just only what I can tell you in 200 pages, you know? So, um, nonetheless started writing the book, got 20,000 words in. And then I was like, what the fuck? I don't know what the fuck to do. I'm out of words. Like, I don't even know where to go with this. Like, does it matter? I wrote, I wrote it three times and deleted it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. I was like, I told myself, I was like, nobody gives a fuck. Like it's not going to matter. It's not gonna make a difference. That's really encouraging. Positive self-talk. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, I, I, uh, but that's what people do. You know, it's the same thing with, with, uh, maybe even you or any other, anybody else. Like we have these limiting thoughts or beliefs.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so that's just what I'm like, yeah, nobody gives a fuck about my story. And truth be told, nobody really does.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. And that's so that's funny you say that because I think it was talking to Nick where he had said, yeah, like your story is not. It's not about your story is not what's going to when you tell your story. It's not all about you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's putting that person inside your shoes or finding something like there's something in the crowd that somebody's going to pick up that you've said that they're gonna be like, damn, like, I get that. I relate to that. And that inspires me in some form or fashion. So nonetheless, I just deleted it, kept rewriting it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, I knew I was going to, I was like finally committed and I was like, all right, fuck it. I'm actually going to do it this time. Wrote it the third time, got 20,000 words in and started looking around like, how do I publish a book? And unfortunately when you Google that, there's like nothing but scams and bullshit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I was, and that's what I was. I almost bit on like six of them. Cause I'm, I'm, I'm like... I'm like borderline retarded. So like fucking I'm on these, I'm on these fucking things. And they're like, yeah, we'll help you get on Amazon publishing this. And it's this much money and you get these many sales and guaranteed this and that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I'm like, how the fuck are you guaranteeing any of this shit? Like it don't make any sense. So I ended up finding this lady. She, this is a great story for anybody who wants to write a book. Um, She's like, yeah, we can do this one of two ways. You know, I can either ghostwrite it for you or I can edit it and do all the proofreading and all that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I said, well, I can't come up with anything else. Well, how's the ghostwriting work? And I'm not a literary genius. So like, I don't even know how to fucking write. So like, why don't you just take this for me? And so she's like, okay. Um, she takes the first ghost writing bite and it was total dog shit. And, uh, because she's trying to write in my voice, you know, we should add to this.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I agree, but I'll put this on her and I mean, I'll own the fuck up, but she, she, cause I asked her that. I was like, how do you write, how do you ghost write a memoir? Like that doesn't make any sense to me. And she's like, well, you know, you just tell me your story and then I'll just put it into a story. And I was like, All right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so we tried it and it just, you know, she was trying to write in my voice. I cuss a lot. I have a very abrasive like approach to things. I'm very just like rough and tough and whatever. And it just didn't work. And, you know, she overcharged me a shit ton of money, like eight thousand dollars. Do you pay that up front? Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, you pay to get the receipt, right? So she does the work, you pay it, she sends it to you. So basically, yes. Do you get edits involved in that, AK? Or is this like, hey, finished product in... That was basically... From what she sent me, I could tell it wasn't gonna... I was like, no, this ain't it. Like, this... And it's funny.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's like a good little story I tell with that is, is don't let other people tell your story. Like go and tell your story. If you're going to write a book, write the fucking book. Like don't let somebody else put the pen on the paper. Cause you're, you, you're not going to appreciate it as much when you do the actual work.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like I can go buy my black belt on Amazon, uh, which I did and I have in my house.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Exactly. Yeah. Travel belt. Yeah. My, my kids, like all my fucking, like, gold trophies that are in there. Like they know that dad was a savage at one point and whether it's true or not, it's in there. So I say all that. Amazon is real. Exactly. So, so like people, anybody can publish a book. You can go on AI and say, create, pump this out.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I say all that to say, write your fucking story, um, be authentic and, and, and do the work because you're going to be so much more proud of it. And when I, and, and so after that lady, um, Offered me Chick-fil-A service and gave me Waffle House product. Well, not product. It was Waffle House service. I don't mean to talk shit about Waffle House in that way. We don't have them out here.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Okay, well, Waffle House is good. Service is shitty, but you go for the experience nonetheless.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's eggs and hash browns. That's all I eat. Whew. Okay. It's hard to fuck that up. Eggs?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Disregard. Bad example. Anyways, like a month or two later- Um, you know, whatever you want to call it, some sort of luck. Uh, I ended up at a brothers keepers veteran foundation, um, gala or yeah, gala. And Nick is speaking. Um, I had already read his book. But, uh, you know, didn't, didn't have any idea of who he was or really.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. So I, so I, uh, yeah, he's got a lot of good talking points in there. So I read his book, uh, objective secure, um, and fricking go to the gala, um, see him speak. He's doing a signing thing. And so at the end, uh, I got my five minutes to talk with Nick and I said, hey man, this is a story I love as well.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
As I said, I approach his big ass and I'm like, hey, I'm writing a book and I'm also trying to get into the public speaking room. Do you have any advice? How did you do your book? Because I knew... the book that I had at that moment, that lady was like, yeah, this is good to go. Um, the lady that I was working with. And I was just like, this ain't it. You know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, in fact, she told me to take out a lot of the shit that's in the book now. Really? Yeah. She said I was telling too many stories. Uh, it was too detailed, too graphic. Um, And when I tell my story, I tell it for a reason. It's very raw and forthcoming because of the nature. And it gets whitewashed so much that people don't realize like how bad it is and what people are going through.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's it's fucking horrendous. And my book is it is graphic. But it's – I mean I hold back. I still hold back.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Exactly. There is – so there's two ways you look at the – so some people – and it's the way you tell the story too, OK? If I sit here and I tell you this horrific childhood abuse story with a smile on my face, it's fucking weird and like comes off as like shock value. Like I want people to be shocked that I went through this shit versus –
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I want people to understand like, so when you tell it, and this is what, this is the art of storytelling. Uh, for example, I had a lady talking to me one time and she was telling me about all this shit she went through as a kid. And the whole time she's telling it, she's smiling. And so it's like off putting for the crowd. Cause it's like, are you like proud of this shit?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It makes it hard to relate to the story, you know? So when I tell my story, like there are parts where it's deep and it's heavy and there's a way to tell that part of the story. And then there are parts where maybe we can laugh or whatever the fuck, you know? And so anyways, I approached Nick and I said, hey man, you know, I'm writing a book and what do I do?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's funny, the first thing he said to me, which I love this about him, is because I think he took a step back and was like, okay, this guy's serious. He's not bullshitting me. And he said, uh, it's fucking hard. Like just, he said, it's fucking hard. I'm just going to tell you that it's, it's, it's a grind and it's hard. And I said, yeah, Roger that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I love that because so many people, you tell them you're going to go do something. They're like, yeah, man, that's amazing. Like it'd be the next big thing. And it's like, you go start a podcast, you go to write a book, you go, whatever, you can start a business and they're like, Hey man, good job. You got it. You're going to, you're going to crush it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And they don't realize like, no, no, it's fucking hard. Like you're going to be working your ass off if you want this thing to be successful. Um, and that's what Nick said to me. gives me his card and he's like, Hey, uh, shoot me an email. Let's get on a call. People do that all the time. You know, I mean, in the last year, the amount of people that have said, whatever you need, Seth, I got you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, uh, you know, you don't get a response whenever you reach out.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well – So I mean, I'm glad you said that. I never thought about that. And that really helps me process that now. But one of the things I started kind of reframing that approach or what people do is because I have so many people that say, hey, Seth, let's get on a call. I'm like, before I even get on a call with them, like, what do you have to offer? I'm just I'm just just let's just be up front.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Do you have anything to offer? Because people say that all the time. Whatever you need, I'm here for you. People tell me that all the time. I don't know what I need. Why don't you tell me what you offer? Andy, you offer a podcast with a big platform. That is something that I could use. And Michael. And Michael's services. Yeah, exactly. As he sits over there, he's like, yes, yes.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He shakes his head. Yeah, so there's a, you know, if somebody comes to me now, I'm just like, what are you offering? I understand that you, whatever I need, but what are you offering? And so that's kind of how I look at it now. Because I know with my story and, Support is great, but if you don't have anything legitimate, people just want to get on a call and just fucking talk.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. Yeah. That's kind of where I understand that too. And that's recently I've cut those conversations off. Cause I'm just like, I know it's not going to go anywhere. And that's why I'm just upfront on the email or the text. I'm like, what do you need? Like, what, what can we do? If there's an, if there's an end goal, then let's sure. Let's talk about it. But if there's not, I'm sorry.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like it's you're a time vampire. And I, right now I don't have the time.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
That, and you're so desperate for like- They don't know that though. They don't know that. Right, right, right. That was one of the things that Nick told me too. He's like, so Nick gives me his card. And like I said, you know, I've been to all these people. So I go home and I'm like, and I remember talking to my wife. I'm like- Holy fuck. Like he told me to give him a call, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I fucking emailed Nick and he fucking fires back. I'm like, okay, holy shit. And then, um, me and Nick go on a call for like an hour and I asked him all these questions about books and this and that and all the questions. Right. And one of the things Nick told me was, you know, don't be desperate. You know, your story doesn't apply to everybody.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't, he didn't even know who I am or what it was about yet, but he's just like, you know, you're going to want to take every opportunity that comes your way. And some of them are just not for you. So just be able to say, no, walk away from it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So, so in talking to Nick, I, you know, I just started playing follow a leader. I went, I mean, I literally went back, looked at his shit from two, three years ago and just everything he's doing. I just started plugging away. And, and it's just a, I just had a call with a buddy last week who's asking me all the same questions that I was asking Nick.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it felt so good to be in that position to be like, Oh, let me fucking tell you what you need to do. And it's going to be fucking hard. It's not like this, like fucking candy canes and fucking gumdrops everywhere. So, um, But it's awesome. And my buddy actually said something really powerful and profound. I was like, I'm going to steal this. I'm not going to give you any credit for it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But I loved it. He's like, everybody's quitting when shit gets hard. And when it gets hard, that's the reason you fucking quit. Are you serious? It just got hard. And so you just gave up. If it's hard... You're likely in the exact position that you need to be in or that you should be in to make progress, you know? And I was like, bro, that was incredible.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, if it's difficult, you're probably mining the right dirt. Exactly. Yeah, you know, so I... that was how I got, uh, Nick used a, like a consulting company essentially to help him with his book. Um, and that, and that's what I use. I reached out to those people and, um, that was February of last year. I only had 20,000 words at the time. And, uh,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I knew I needed to have a final manuscript to send to them. And so I sat down and like over the course of like three days, pumped out 40,000 more words. Is that what you landed at? About 60,000, 60,000 ish. Yeah. Um, what that net 200 pages, you said to 25 was like everything in there, acknowledgements and all that. But the full story is like 200. But, um, Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, um, long story short, started my book, pumped out 20,000 words. And then like a month later I sat down and over the course of like three days knocked out 60,000 words or, uh, 40,000 words. Um, and I, you know, that was easy because it's a memoir. I'm just telling my story.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
If you're writing some like developmental, like Jocko type shit, you know, where there's some maybe brainpower involved in that. Um, yeah, you might need a little bit of framework and, and, and things like that. But yeah, you know, when you're writing a book, just get it on paper first and sort out all the details and the bullshit on the back end.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And that's where so many people, you know, the, what do they call it? Paralysis or analysis paralysis, or they're got chapters and this and that. And then they're like, ah, fuck it. I give up, you know, just get it on the fucking paper and then, and then go from there. Um, and that's what I did. So, um, I met with that company in February. They told me I'd be lucky to get it done in 2024. Uh,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I was like, all right, let's go baby. It just takes a while.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. And I see, I did. Cause I'm so like, I'm, I'm so crazy. They would, you know, I'm like, what do you mean? Because they're like, well, you know, when we do our first edits, it'll come back to you and it'll take two weeks. And so I'm like... Well, it also has to physically be printed. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, you know, they would send me back my book and they'd say, hey, go over these edits, you know, read it all through and let us know what you think. And so they would say, get it back to us within two weeks. I'd return it in like two days. And I would just stay up until like three o'clock in the morning just because...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I had already invested so much money into it last year that I did not want it to carry into this year. I wanted to be, you know, benefiting off of the book instead of continuing. And I wanted to, you know, I wanted to push it. I wanted to push the date. I wanted to, you know, I didn't want to be like dragging it down the road, you know? And so that book that I had when I met Nick,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
which I thought was a fucking great book, even though I knew there was like something not right about it. Um, compared to what I have now, like the first draft versus the final, it's like, Oh my God, that book was dog shit. And now what I have, I'm actually very proud of. And my favorite compliments.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, I love when somebody tells me that my story has changed her life or it's helped them and all those things. Like those are incredible comments. I get those all the time. But when somebody tells me like, this is very well written, I'm like, Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yep. And dude, that dude, I was literally a fucking week away from publishing my book and I was like, I was like, hold on. I almost, I was about to reach out and be like, pause. I want to change a couple of things. Some point you got to put it in the oven, man. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let the motherfucker cook, dude. It's not going to be perfect.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, there's going to be stories that you put in and that you leave out and, uh, different examples here and there. And, uh, you know, my final draft. That's why you write a second book.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. I have the same thing. There's a different lesson. I've learned so much over this last year in regards to trauma and things like that, that I wish I would have known 12 months ago where I could have put it. And there's family members that I've reached out, that have reached out to me. There's people that have reached out to me about my book, about certain details of it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And they're like, Hey, did you know this happened? And I'm like, Oh, are you fucking serious?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. You know, so, um, yeah, man, it's, well, let's get into it where I'll let you enter into the story how you want.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, so a couple things before I get into the story. One, for the people that are listening, I hate the word triggered, you know, because it can be whatever. But if you are somebody who listens and you do get triggered or you do get emotional or whatever, this may be... uh, what's the word controversial, but I would encourage you to sit through it and sit in it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, dude, there's so much to that right there that I could talk about. And it's so frustrating because when I do deliver my speech or my story in an audience, there are so many people that don't want to hear it or they don't think my story is good to tell. I've been turned down many times for a lot of really stupid fucking reasons.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And one of them is because we don't appreciate the way you talk or the way you tell your story or the details or this or that, right? Because it's triggering. We don't want our audience to be upset. We can go back to Nick's advice on that one. It's not the story for everybody, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yes, but my argument to those people is like, no, these people need to hear this because they need to know that somebody else has gone through it, somebody else got through it, and they've done some cool shit with their life. But not only that... The only reason I'm able to tell my story the way that I am is because I have been, quote unquote, triggered by listening to somebody else's story.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's two people I'll give credit to as far as storytelling goes. And the way they tell their story and the way they explain trauma and the way they explain, like, just like you said... Like that, that pisses me off. That hurts me. Like, let me go into that water. Let me figure out what's in there and why this is so painful. Why can't I talk about this? Um, one of them was, uh, Tom Saturday.
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He's a Delta force guy. Yeah. Um, uh, so when he was on Sean Ryan show, he talks about the battle Mogadishu for like the last time in full detail. Right. Me and Tom have nothing in common other than the fact that, uh, you're both in the army. Yeah, I was in the army and he was- You're both dudes.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There you go. I have no nails. I have a bad habit of biting them. So I was trying to let them grow back. And then I went to jujitsu and I didn't want to be that guy. Yep.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I get what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. So when I listen to Tom tell a story, he starts off the podcast with explaining trauma and how when he got back from war,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
His whole family was walking on eggshells and, you know, the dishes weren't done and the fucking the laundry wasn't done and the house wasn't clean and the kids were doing this and the wife was doing this. And and he's like going fucking crazy. And everybody else is crazy because, you know, God forbid I like fucking I don't know, you know, move something the wrong way.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I mean, I was listening to that shit and I was like. I mean, I was at work getting emotional because I was like, oh, my God, dude, like this is exactly who I am right now. And in my own personal life with my. Just constantly on edge. putting everybody else on edge because, uh, you don't know what I've been through.
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And so, um, I can act however the fuck I want to act because you, you don't know what I've been through. So I can walk in here and I can say whatever the fuck I want. And if you try to press me, all I got to say is you don't know what I've been through.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then because of the cancel culture, if you try to say no, Seth, uh, if you try to hold me accountable, the people that are watching, they'll jump in the comments and they'll say, no, Hey, Andy, don't ask him that question. Why would you ask him that? That's No, man, like, let's fucking figure this out. Like, why are you hurting? Like, why are you acting like that?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Why are you doing that to the people in your life? And that's so Tom's talking about a lot of this and trauma and then like the secondhand effects of it, second order effects of it with your family and your friends. And, you know, when you're walking through hell. and you're on fire, everything around you burns and everything's gone, right? And when you put out the fire, everything's gone.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So don't be that person going around life like that. So hearing Tom talk about his story and tell his story in detail and the very vulnerable sides of his marriage and how he treated his family, that really helped me. And I've reached out to him and told him that, which he did respond. And so thank you to that. Secondly, you know, it was end of 2023. I saw a story, Clark Fredericks.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, never seen the channel before pops up on like a, a real or some shit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. Yeah. I get into all that shit too. Trust me. Social media is a, it's a blessing and a curse.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Unfortunately we could turn the title on that, but it's not going to happen anyways. Um, Clark, I saw him sitting, telling a story. I saw like a 90 second clip and that was all I needed. And, and, you know, in short, I'll sum up Clark's story. It's fucking incredible. But, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
When he was like 10 years old, 10, 12 years old, he was brutally raped by a man who was the police chief, Boy Scout leader, a man in the church of some former fashion hire, whatever. I don't know what the fuck they do. Multiple positions of authority. Yes. Community. Yeah. Rapes Clark.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And goes and gets his dog, brings it back in front of Clark and beats the shit out of the dog in front of Clark, kills the dog and says, you know, if you tell anybody, I'll fucking kill you. And so Clark shuts his mouth, goes home, lives out the rest of his life, becomes, you know, an addict, alcoholic, anger issues, all the problems. Right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
About 30 years later, Clark is at a deli up in New Jersey where he's from, Stillwater, New Jersey. And he's at the deli and that guy walks in the deli and he's with a little boy and he calls this little boy the same name that he used to call Clark when Clark was a kid and just fucking sets him off.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
About three days later, Clark and his business partner, he worked, I think, at a tire shop or some shit. They're at a bar. They're drunk. And they just had a bad business deal. And, you know, so they're drinking and they're pissed off about this guy who just screwed him over on some business deal. And his buddy goes, man, I bet you that guy's number one in your hit list right now.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Talking about the guy that screwed him over. And Clark says for the first time in his life out loud, he says, no, the motherfucker who raped me when I was 12 years old is. And his buddy looks at him. He's like, what the fuck are you talking about? And Clark tells him the story. And the guy's like, and his name is Dennis Pegg. And so everybody knows him. He's the police chief, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so the guy's like, well, what the fuck? Like, let's go get his ass. And so they're drunk. Dude. Classic. Yeah. Drunk.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So they pull up to the guy's house. They open up his front door. It's like 10 o'clock at night. The guy's sitting there in the living room watching TV and he turns and looks at Clark and he's like, Hey Clark, how you been? And Clark's like, how have I been you motherfucker? And he runs in there and he stabs him to death in his fucking living room and fucking murders him.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, yeah, there's a lot to that, right? And everybody applauds Clark for it. One of the things that I love about him that he does say is, you know, because that's what everybody's like, man, it must have been cool to kill Clark. a child fucking predator, right? And Clark's like, look, man, honestly, you don't battle trauma with trauma. He's like, it was a traumatizing event.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He tells the story, you know, before he cut his throat, he says, you know, how's it feel fucking little boys? And he cuts his fucking throat.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, it's fucked up, man. And, you know, I'll finish up his part of the story. He goes home, goes to sleep, wakes up next day, state police are outside of his house and he goes to jail. Um, there's a whole bunch of inner works that happened. That's really, how do they solve it so quickly?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. I get a lot of that in my face just from, I'm a pressure passer. And so all I do is just like head constantly. And so I just get a lot of the ghee rubbing on the face. How long have you been training?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I know. That's what's crazy. I can't remember. There's something where- They put the pieces there together pretty well. Yeah. I think he like- calls his mom or maybe, I mean, Dennis Pegg was a very known person.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Maybe. Clark does tell this part how they found him so quickly. Nonetheless, it's kind of funny. He puts on his state police shirt and walks out because he thinks that if he wears his state police shirt, they're going to fucking give him some leniency. Maybe they'll give him one click less on the cuffs. Yeah. So he goes to jail and he's fucking pissed, you know, because he just got arrested.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Exactly. So he's mad as fuck and he's in the prison and he's like, you motherfuckers are arresting me. And this guy was this and that and this. And lo and behold, it comes out like the next day or two. There's like rallies where they're like free Clark. And Clark's like, what the fuck? Come to find out, Dennis Peck had been doing this for 30-plus years.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There was no victims ever. Nobody would ever report him. Nobody would ever say anything, which I'll lead into another statistic, and then I'll get into the story. They find out that Dennis is basically accountable for hundreds of addiction cases, suicides, domestic violence cases because of all these people. He was taking boys that were in a juvenile detention center.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He would take them home at night to mentor them, and then he would just rape them and take them back. And, you know, people in power, that's what they do. And it's not the man in the van. It's the fucking people that anywhere there's a collection of kids, there's fucking weirdos there. That's where they go.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Online video games, churches, schools, anywhere there's kids, man, those are the people that you have to watch. Because if I go... If you go and touch my daughter, she's going to have some adverse reaction because she doesn't know you. Now, if mommy and daddy go and do it, she might be like, that's weird.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So so to so to speak on that, statistically speaking, it's roughly and, you know, people always going to bitch about statistics. But the point of it is it's fucking rampant. OK, one in three girls will be sexually abused before they're 18. One in four boys. Yeah. One in 10 will report. So for every one, there's nine others that haven't said anything in their entire lives.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So most people live their entire lives without telling a soul. And I've given so many speeches where men that are 40, 50, 60 years old come up to me and they're crying. Because they've lived their whole life in pain and suffering, embarrassment and resentment because they never told anybody what happened to them. And they're a man. I mean, look at, you know, I tell my story all the time.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
No. Fuck no. No. I was promoted way too soon. Did you have a wrestling background or a graphic? I mean, that's what's going to happen, man. I know. It's real. See, everybody says that. It's funny you say that because as soon as I start rolling with somebody, they're like, oh, you're a wrestler, aren't you? I'm like, yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like, look at me. I'm a fucking combat veteran, bearded, big guy, husband, father, freaking doing all this cool shit. Like, there's no way in hell this guy has gone through that, you know? And so a lot of these guys are carrying weight and women too. But... A lot of people are carrying weight that we just don't see, because they don't report it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's the effects of childhood trauma, neglect, and abuse. It's the leading public health cost in America. Over $14 trillion a year is being spent treating the effects of mental health diagnoses, ADD, ADHD, which the symptoms of ADD and ADHD are... so closely tied to PTSD responses, that's why we have an overdiagnosis of those things.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You see a child that can't pay attention, why can't he pay attention? So there leads to another whole thing of like, not what's wrong with this kid, but what's happening to this kid, what's happening to this person, the reason why they're acting a certain way, What happened to them that makes them act a way or what didn't happen for them? Were they not loved? Were they not treated?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Because even just neglect is just as detrimental as abuse and trauma. So it's deleting public health costs, treating all of that. When you put all the reason why people are getting all these treatments and now you're really – now you can lump in the sex changes that they're performing on kids. You can lump that right in there too.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And I'm glad you said that because the terminology does matter. A lot of people call it child porn as well. It's not porn. Porn implies consent. It's child sexual abuse material. What are you typing over there, Michael?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I know. Yeah. I know, but here's the thing is I was a fucking dog shit wrestler.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, there's a lot that you can get into with that. You know, the thing is, is you don't want we don't let kids get face tattoos. Why? Because it's a fucking life altering decision. OK, your kid like my son picks up a Barbie doll. I'm not like running to him and parading him like, oh, my son's fucking gay. Like, look, my son, he's gay.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You know, and there's so many I don't give a fuck if you feel like you're a man or a woman. There's so many other details I'm more concerned about with you personally. Yeah. Um, so, so I think we put it on a pedestal for some reason. Um, or well not, and this is like the, this is the minority to be clear.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's, you know, I think the average, you go door to door knocking on, you'll find out America's like still a good place. It's just the loud minority that gets crazy with it. Nonetheless, um, got down that rabbit hole statistics and shit. But yeah, the, the, the $14 trillion a year spent treating all of these effects, right. Of, of a bad childhood. Um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, uh, then you have trafficking, which I wasn't trafficked, but, um, very closely related, you know, story, very similar to a lot of those people, the same, same upbringing and trafficking is the world's leading industry over $850 billion a year. And America's the number one consumer.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, I don't know a whole lot about... I mean, I would love to get into the rescuing of people like that. I just have a burning desire for it. I don't have the years of like Intel and Green Beret and Navy SEAL type of knowledge that they recruit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will go to jail. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, I just, yeah, I think it definitely takes a certain type of person. From my experience, when I've reached out to help, they're looking for people that have that background of the, what do they call it? Like mapping out the human fucking profiling type of shit or whatever. I don't know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. So the time that basically they told me the time that it would take to train me, they just would rather hire somebody that's more and I get it. So nonetheless, I'll use my voice in another in another manner. But I I watched Tom tell his story, you know, and then Clark Fredericks. And then when Clark told his the thing about Clark that I love.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And just to wrap it up, too, he was he was sentenced to he was facing life. He was sentenced to five years in prison. He got out. Now he's a motivational speaker. He'll be an author next year as well. I got to meet him earlier this year, which was like, you know, I don't really put people on a pedestal anymore. Like football players, none of that shit used to when I was a kid.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Now, when I meet somebody like Nick. and truthfully meeting you, it's like really cool to be like, man, I'm fucking met Andy fucking stump or Nick Lavery.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. You know, you just grow up and you see people in that light. You put them on a pedestal. You put them on a pedestal, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And man, you base your whole life on what this person is doing, saying or believing or thinking. And it's I was thinking about this last night for some reason where. We look at people as objectively good or bad. And so when that person makes a mistake, it's like, oh, this person's a fucking cheater or a liar or whatever. It's like, the guy made a fucking mistake, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, definitely. And I, I, um, so, so I guess, uh, you know, the point of all that was, um, when I do meet people that I think are, um, like normal people. And I'm like, but this guy, I don't either. They're just, they're good people, but they're just fucking normal people just like me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And truthfully, I've had enough conversations with Nick now to where like, I look at Nick, like I call, I would call him a friend of mine. He probably wouldn't call me his friend. You'd be surprised.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, yeah, he would. I'm just, I'm just giving you shit. But Nick, I, you know, I, when I, my first initial, when he responded to an email, I was like, Oh my God, like this guy, you know, but, but honestly it speaks to his character of, of, of just acknowledging it, telling me he was going to do something and following through.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then when I got to go meet Clark earlier this year to the reason why meeting Clark and the reason why I put Nick on not a pedestal, but he's so high on my hierarchy of good people, um, is because Clark, um, he changed my life when he told his story and he gave me like a sense of permission, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And if it wasn't for him to, truthfully, if it wasn't for him to, if I wouldn't have seen his video, I don't know. I think I would have told my story eventually. I don't know if I would be telling it the way that I do and making the impact that I have made thus far in just a year. So when I meet somebody like that and I go and tell him, I'm like, man, you just, you've fucking changed my life. And
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like, there are not words that I can say to make you feel how important you are to me. So the only thing I can do now is action. The only thing I can do now is write the book and help and pay it forward and save others. Okay. And I say the same thing about Nick. Or I tell Nick, you know, he fucking put his name on the back of my book, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
and gave me all the guidance and mentorship and all of these things over this last year on a moment's notice. If I text him, he's got me. Like, hey, what you got? Boom, here we go. And to not know me from nothing and just for some fucking reason to pour into me like the way he has, that's the pedestal that I put people on, for lack of a better term, is they are so important to me because I...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I have changed the world at this point. I think I truly believe that I have made it a massive impact, um, that I just don't know when it's going to, I don't know when the, the, the fruits of my labor will be, will be, you know, there, uh, that's the unfortunate part of the impact business is you don't get to see the fruits of your labor.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, sometimes I feel like, not that it, I mean, you know, it's my fucking ego, but not that it matters. But like when you get that little win and maybe in practice or in competition, it's like, oh, he's a wrestler. And it's like, motherfucker, I fucking won because I trained you fucking asshole.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Most of the time it's your long and gone and my name will be forgotten and people will stop buying my book at some point, but this story will impact somebody who's going to tell their story. And so, you know, when you really dig into that, um, The impact you have just by sharing your story and helping somebody, it can go a long way.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's people that I've acknowledged in my book from my childhood who I always say I was running around with a cup that had a hole in the bottom of it, and I just didn't have it. And there were people that always at the right moment came by and just gave me a little bit of love, and I just remember them. And so I've gone back and I've thanked them. I've gone back to my hometown and thanked them.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so Nick is one of those people that, you know, I can't say enough. I can't say enough about the guy because there's so many people in the SEAL community, the SF community, the retired, you know, special operations community, essentially, that are using that brand and they're ripping people off.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I was almost one of them, you know, not going to name drop, but the guy fucking told me if I paid him like $5,000, he would coach me for the rest of the year, you know? Really? Yeah. Yeah, and I almost bit. I almost bit. Once we go off air, I'm going to get that name out of you. Fair.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, so then I reached, you know, but then I got connected with Nick and, you know, and Nick is, he's never, obviously he's never asked me for money. Um, and he is just, he was, he's one of those people you were talking about earlier that, um, uh, are trying to get something out of you. I think Nick is mutually beneficial. He wants, um, I think he sees the value in me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then obviously, um, he knows his own value, but I see the value in him. So anyways, all that fucking shit. So to get to the nuts and bolts of it all, uh, of the story, right. Um, Um, just to be clear, like I said earlier, there's, there's not enough stories I could tell you to really feel the gravity of the situation of what was going on.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's a few stories that I'll tell that kind of sum it up, but to understand that, um, 30 years of life told in a hour or two of platform is just not enough. And, um, I say that so that when people hear other people's stories, they understand that, uh, this person may tell you one story, but there's likely 10 others that they just don't have time to tell you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And there's just so much that goes into this shit. So I was born and raised in Lima, Ohio, Northwest Ohio. Lima? Lima, yeah. L-I-M-A? Yeah, we don't call it Lima. It's Lima.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Okay, just checking. Yeah, it's called the bean. Very creative name.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, it gets fucked up all the time. Nobody knows where it's at. Lima, lost in the middle of America. Anyways, it's two hours south of Detroit. It's on I-75. Maybe 34,000 people, just to paint the picture. It's...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It felt like a big city to me when I was growing up because in the 90s, you could actually like walk outside and I don't know, you could ride your bike, you know, across the city without being, I don't know, whatever. I think that was true in most cities. Right, right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so Lima was like one of those places and it just felt like a big city to me because I would ride my bike across the town, you know, whatever. Anyways, when I was about two years old, my father, he stabbed my mom behind the ear, almost killed her. And so my mom was raising me and my two sisters by herself. My father went to prison for that, obviously.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I don't know the full story of that to this day. It's a he said, she said between those two. And I don't know if I'll ever know the full details of what happened. I'd love to know it, but that'll likely never surface. So my mom raising three kids by herself, you're already statistically behind the fucking ball, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I mean, raising kids is arguably one of the... I don't truly think it's that difficult, but it is one of the most important things you can do, raising them right. And it takes a tribe. It just does. Kids need... They need the more positive influences the most as possible. We didn't have that. Like I said, I didn't have any positive role models. I had examples. And...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
you know, when I was about five years old, those are my earliest memories. And we lived in this apartment complex and my mom, I was in kindergarten. My mom would, my mom would work during the day so she could be with us at night. So we'd wake up in the morning, go to school, come home and she would be gone for two, three hours.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then she'd get home, you know, four or five, six o'clock or whatever. She'd be with us and put us to bed. Were you guys on your own during that time? Yeah. Yeah. We're running around by ourselves. Um, five, six, seven years old. Um, and, And the thing with that is we would come home and my mom would have a notepad. She would write out our chores.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So she would say, hey, you have this and this and this. Do all these things before you go outside. And we were sufficient. My mom was very disciplinarian of a mother. And she had to be. When you're raising three kids by yourself, they've got to be able to take care of themselves because you can't afford a babysitter, all of those things. And
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
we were in babysitters houses a lot of times, but that shit costs money. And so I imagine my mom took me out of it, uh, or took us, took us out of it. So we, we would go see a babysitter. Sometimes we wouldn't, you know, sometimes we'd live with a babysitter for two or three weeks. And at the time, I don't think we really understood what was happening.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
My mom was like, quote, quote, getting her shit together. You know, there would be periods of time where we would go live with somebody for two, three weeks. And, um, so since my mom wasn't there during the day, um, We, uh, we would get into shit. Unfortunately at five years old, I, we found her porn and we started watching like full blown, like VHS porn tapes.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and at five years old, uh, as you can imagine, it's rather like captivating, right? You're just kind of like. Captivating maybe, but zero context. Yes. Yeah. Maybe captivating is probably not the right word. I don't know. I don't know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And so you, so I remember watching it and being infatuated and that's actually probably a better word. Cause I was like, you're just like, Whoa, what the hell's going on here? You know? And, um, oddly enough, well, I mean, it makes sense, but you know, maybe a week or two later, I, end up trying to have sex with a girl who's like six years old. I'm five, five, six years old.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
She's my age, wearing a closet. And I remember being in that closet. She had sweatpants on and like making out with the girl and like attempting to have, trying to do something, recreate what I had seen, you know? And my mom busts open the door and yells at us and she ends up whipping my ass for it. And maybe rightfully so, but maybe not. Um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Nonetheless, this kind of sets you up for the rest of life. So I was desensitized to sex, essentially. Did you even know what it was at that age, really? No. You're just recreating what you see. So when you see kids do things, they're likely a mirror of their parents. If they're assholes, well, their parents are probably assholes. Sometimes they're just little shit. They are.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They are quite literally sociopaths until they're about eight years old, nonetheless.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I got seven more years. Enjoy the ride. Okay, cool. So a couple weeks. Actually, I don't know the timeline here at this point. I mean, my childhood's really cloudy as far as my frame of reference is school and figuring out what grade I was in and what neighborhood I lived in. But one of the babysitters that we would frequent, they had like four or five boys that lived there.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, no, the main reason. Okay. The main reason, because I go back and forth on this because I'm like, oh, I do. So I pull guard. I'll play guard against somebody that I can effectively play guard against where I'm like learning. But like when I go get these black, we have a lot of black belts in our gym and I love rolling with them because they just fuck me down. And yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They were all much older than me. The youngest one was at least five or six years older than me. The oldest one was a teenager, and unfortunately, he molested me. I was five years old. He was a teenager. He looked like a man. I did not. That's all I can remember. And, you know, he touched me. He made me touch him. He exposed himself. He looked at me, and that was, like, the extent of the abuse.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I actually did report that. I don't know when I did, but I ended up telling my grandparents around that time. We would go see my grandparents on the weekends every now and then. And my grandma, she was kind of reading the bad touch, good touch kind of books to us. And I was kind of like, oh, wait a second. And I told my grandma what had happened.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so they did, my grandma and my grandpa, as I tell the story, one of the questions I get all the time is why didn't they step in and save me? To be clear, they tried to save me from the time I was born. The system is just fucked up and it's almost impossible to take kids away from their parents. until they're dead, basically. That's what happens most of the time, or so it seems.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Nonetheless, we told my grandparents. My grandparents did try to fix the problem. It was swept under the rug, which is very common. You report it, and then they say that didn't happen here. My kid didn't do that or whatever. And I don't even blame that kid. I'm not mad at that kid for what happened.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's usually one reason why a kid is touching a kid, and it's probably because he was touched or he was exposed to it in some form or fashion. Turns out, you know, 20 years later, that kid went to prison for raping the girl next door, unfortunately, you know, and a whole lot to that too. But so yeah, I was molested by that kid at five years old. And then
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
When I reported, we were still sent back to that house to be babysat by them. Still lived with those people from time to time. The abuse I don't think continued. I don't have any memories. I think it only happened a few times. And I kind of just, I don't know, I think I just, as a kid, you're just surviving, you know, life was already rough as it was.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so then you go into this reptilian mindset of you're just food and water. And I talk about it in my book, I think of like what they talk about and buds, which is just segmentation. It's just get to the next objective, get to the next meal, get to the next day. And that's kind of what you're doing when you're living in a adverse childhood experience. And so, you know, seven, eight years old,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Somewhere around there, my mom brings up my father. She had always talked about my father and how big of a piece of shit he was because he was never involved. He wasn't paying child support. You know, all of the things negative. I never heard anything good about my father. How would he pay child support from prison? I don't know. And I don't... I have no idea.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
If I play guard against them, I mean, first off, my guard is fucking... It's so fucking bad, it's not even funny. Well, a really good way to keep it that way is to not practice it. I know, but... So let me answer your question. I played top because I was trying to do, like... I was trying to learn a bunch of shit at one time, and now all I do is the same shit until I get it down.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
All I can remember is the toxicity of the environment, right? When you grow up without a father, I don't think you realize you don't have a father. Maybe some people do. I don't think I really understood it. I just knew that my mom talked shit about him, you know? And so I didn't like him. I had this, like, ill opinion. And it's actually very...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's like poison to a child by telling them their parents are a piece of shit. It's very bad. It messes the child up. We call these father wounds or mother wounds. And so I dealt with that. And around seven or eight years old, my mom had finally...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
mentioned like going to meet him so my first memory of my father is meeting him in prison going to the jail or whatever and you know you walk in and there's a bunch of cubicles and plexiglass and phones and sit down and see my dad walk in he's six foot tall he's got all kinds of prison tats he's bald he's got a skull in the back of his head and pain tattooed across his throat and like big block graffiti letters he's got ozzy across his knuckles like
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
he's all his fingers look broken and nubbed up. And he, he looks like a man who's been through some shit, you know? And, um, the, that was my first time. That's my first memory of him. And I remember he sits down across me just like this. I pick up the phone and I can't fucking talk. I just break down and start crying. And, um, I just felt so bad.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, you know, it's like having a puzzle and there's like one piece in the middle and, uh, you finally find it and you're just like, God damn, like I got it, you know? And that's kind of how it was, uh, except I didn't have the piece. I just couldn't get to it, you know? Um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I think maybe in that moment I, you know, thought about like my friends and throwing football and playing baseball and whatever, you know, and I just never experienced that. Right. So it sucked, man. And I didn't talk to him. I couldn't talk. I just cried the whole time for 30 minutes. Did he talk to you? Yeah, he tried. Yeah, yeah. I gave the phone to my sisters. They talked to him.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They had conversation with him. I am a very emotional person and just naturally. My sister's not so much as I am. I'm a crier for sure. And so when those moments happen, I just cried. And it was tough, you know, so... we walked out. I think he got out of jail or prison or whatever shortly after that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Cause like I would see him occasionally, but like he lived in an apartment above a tattoo shop and was an alcoholic. And, um, that was that, you know, so, uh, would barely ever see him. Um, I don't have any memories of like participating in sports and like mom and dad are in the crowd and they're cheering you on. I was just out there. You know, I don't have any of those like happy memories.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
The happiest memory I have With like my mom, for some reason, I was five, six years old. I had chicken pox and I was staying home from school. And we were sitting on the couch sharing a bag of potato chips. And for some reason, I can feel her hand. I just remembered this like recently. I don't know what happened that popped in my head, but it did.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But I can just remember like her hand, feeling her hand in the bag. And there's just like really like... sentimental moments that you have with your parents that for some reason they just stand out, you know? And that's the one that stands out. And I think it was like, I was just alone with my mom and she was caring for me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I just felt so loved in that moment to be on the couch with her by myself, you know? Because even in those apartment complexes, we would come home and we would we would hear her arguing and fighting and bragging about how her current boyfriend was a piece of shit or come home and there's a hole in the wall and there's broken glass on the floor.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And she's talking about how she had gotten to a fight and her boyfriend swung on her and he missed her. But she did this and she's like talking about this like braggadociously about how her relationships are. You know, so when you're around like all that violence, when you feel like the warmth of a hug, I mean, it's like a big deal, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And once I get that down, then I'll start fucking around with other shit, you know? Like, over-under passing is, like, my thing. And so... That's all I do. And I'll just do it over and over and over again, no matter how many times I get stuffed or whatever. And firstly, when I go get somebody who's either my belt level, like I don't ever stand up with blue belt.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
People don't realize that people that grow up without parents or without that love and affection. Just a little bit of love. It means a lot.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So that goes two ways. We'll get into that here in a little bit. Um, but even as a, as an adult, um, when I hug my kids, I hug the fuck out of it. Oh yeah. It's real. I'm like, man, you little motherfucker. I get the underhooks.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm like, yeah. I'm like, man, I just love it. You know? Um, And so many people that I see who don't appreciate maybe their spouses or their kids or even just their family, just their mom and dad or their grandma and grandpa or their cousins or their fucking aunts and uncles. Like, you know, there's so much appreciation that I have for people, you know, like I talked about Nick and Clark.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like there's a reason why I am the way that I am. Right. So nonetheless, you know, maybe eight, nine years old. That's kind of when life really started to pick up and like shit, maybe, maybe that's just because I was old enough to start to see it and understand it more. I think maybe it could have been the whole time. I just eight, nine years old.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You really start to have some pretty vivid memories. And my mom had always smoked. She had always smoked cigarettes and smoked weed. So we were used to that. And this is back in the late 90s, early 2000s when if you were smoking weed, you were like a criminal. And so I just remember it being very secret. You weren't supposed to tell anybody and all that shit. And so...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Really, honestly, brown belts and below, I don't stand up with them because I'm going to take them down. I'm going to be on top and we're just going to I'm just going to fucking pressure this guy.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
she'd always smoked, always drank. There was always a bunch of people at our house smoking, you know, drinking, having a good time. And it was just, our house was like, for some reason, the place to be with everybody. And, um, and then she became, she started to become more violent.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't know if it was the stress of life, raising three kids, you know, I don't know what it was, but she started to become more violent, um, emotionally, physically, um, abusive. So I talked about earlier, coming home one day and seeing my sisters in there smoking weed with them, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, like a week or two after that, I'm sitting in my bedroom, and I'm on my bed playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, which is a fucking awesome game. It's a banger of a game. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, yeah. Badass game. So playing that game, right, for context, I'm 10 years old playing that game, and I knew how to do everything, which probably not the best. Maybe, I don't know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You know what? I'm glad you said that because this is something I always forget to tell people, which just further exasperates like just how fucked up shit was. At 10 years old, my mom knew that I was going into her room and taking her porn and watching it. She had like, we had like DVDs at this point, a little bit of an upgrade.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so, uh, instead of hiding it, she just gifted me the porn and said, you can just watch it whenever you want.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And I did not realize how bad that was until like just recently, like maybe within the year. Um, because I was just like, I didn't, I did not even realize like, I mean, I would watch that shit. Like it was fucking breaking bad. You know, I would just sit there and watch it. And I cannot fathom providing that to one of my children at 10 years old. Nonetheless, ever. Yeah. Yeah, true.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I do. I do. I do with with. How about with everybody? Because the black, being on the bottom of them, it's not fucking fun. It's not supposed to be fun, but that's where you learn. My guard is, it goes from open guard to bottom mount. Like that's, that's. Fuck yeah. Yeah. That's like, and people are like, oh yeah, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, imagine like your kid's like 21. You're like, here's your Pornhub subscription. Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. That's something I often forget to talk about, which I think is a key detail of a lot of what was going on. I mean, if that doesn't tell you what's happening, I mean, that's fucking crazy.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So nonetheless, I'm sitting here playing Grand Theft Auto, and I'm on my bed. My back's against the wall. TV's in front of me, right? My sister is off to the side over here. There's another wall. She's got her back against the wall. My door's right here. She had just gotten into a fight with my younger sister, and I heard her mouth there, so she came in there to vent to me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
My door's closed, and whatever. I'm playing a game. She's got a sucker in her mouth, and my door fucking swings open. Boom, fucking bounces off the wall. My mom walks in, unannounced or whatever provoked, hammer fist style, strikes my sister in the mouth probably three, four, five times, like vicious, like bouncing her head off the wall. I look over, and she's like, boom, boom, boom.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm like, you know— I jump on the other side of the bed and I'm crying immediately. I'm just hysterical. I remember like being at the mattress, you know, I level and looking up at my mom as she's punching my fucking sister. And, uh, she looks at me and she says, uh, what are you fucking crying about? Stop being a fucking bitch before I give you something to cry about. And, uh,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm like, this is my mom. This is my protector. This is the only person that I have. What the hell is going on? And this is when I began to realize this is not normal. This is not okay. And that's when I started to have the... I knew I was going to tell my story one day, right? And she walks out. My sister and I sat there and held each other and cried. And...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I often try to think about a way to tell these stories to get people to understand how severe they are. Because a lot of times when you hear these stories, you hear a lot of people, they'll say, you know, I got my ass whooped too. And occasionally a mom or dad does smack their kid or punch their kid out of frustration.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
The difference, I think, in most situations is that there is an apology or some level of affection or follow-up to that point. where this was purely like rage and anger and beating the fuck out of a kid and then walking away like nothing happened.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And maybe further to paint the picture, like to make it maybe have some sort of effect on you, is think about on the other side of this wall, if you heard some kid in there getting fucking punched and you heard him fucking screaming and crying.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Play guard? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to give you shit because I heard you say you're a guard puller.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, man. Um. So like for me, when I hear those, those phone calls, like those 911 recorded calls of like the kids calling and like my mommy, my mommy, or, you know, whatever, or you see those kids in court where their mom killed their fucking sibling or some shit. I mean,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Dude, that shit is like the recordings of that is so haunting because it makes me think about my childhood where I'm like, Jesus, dude, like that's that's kind of the environment we were living in. And so, you know, maybe a week or two later, I'm coming home or I rode the bus home from school. And this particular day, I didn't I didn't ride the bus. I walked home with my cousins and.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Here we go. Can I have, is there another one? Yeah, let me grab it for you. Okay. Hell yeah. Yeah, we're going to need that. I've been like, I've been pacing this one just to, just to, you know, not be rude. But since you fucking, since you. Problem with these though is you got to pee. I'm getting to that point. I got a diaper.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, we'll just take a break now. This is a good, good intermission. Yep.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, yeah, so I never walked home from school. I always rode the bus. And on this particular day, me and my cousins decided to walk home, me and a bunch of boys, two, three boys, doing typical boy shit, running around, doing bullshit before we go home, right? And ended up taking us, like, two, three hours to get home because we were just having fun.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I get home, and I didn't think anything of it. Obviously, as a parent, you'd be a little concerned. Your kid's three hours late getting home. And most parents would probably be like, where's my child? Like, what's going on? Oh, my God, you're finally home. Thank God, right? I get home, and my mom's like, where the fuck have you been? Go upstairs.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it was, like, really, like, you could tell you fucked up bad. And I would say in most situations – Kids could probably be like, okay, I fucked up. This is going to, you know, whatever, get a whoop and be over with. But when you're scared to come home in the first place, it's already just not good. So go upstairs.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Standard procedure for getting an ass whooping was like bending over the bed, grab the blankets, don't move. Because if you try to protect your ass with your hands, they're just going to get your hands hit, right? And so my mom had this board. that she would whoop us with. It was like a two by six handle carved in it, you know, a bunch of holes in there, drill for optimal ass whooping.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And the first time she hit me on that day, I realized like, okay, this is not good. Like literally the first crack, I rebound off the bed, fell to my knees and she kept swinging. And so she went from hitting my ass to, she struck me across the back three, four or five times, somewhere around there. And I can remember like
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't remember what it felt like, but I can remember being there on my knees, like fighting for my life to stand up, to try to like get the hell out of the way. And my mom just kept swinging and she just, she, she swung it and I'm like bouncing off the bed and. it almost feels like there's like a cloud of like anger. You can feel the emotion.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You can feel almost like the tension, I guess, in the air of just this like, you couldn't breathe. It's like, you couldn't breathe, you know? And I fell down and I'm laying there screaming and crying. And instead of, I'm sorry, I love you. And this is why I did this or whatever. She says, get the fuck out of here. Go to your fucking room.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I like low crawled in my room, probably being a little dramatic. But I just as far as like pain and the capability of standing goes. But I wanted to be loved. You know, every kid, especially when you upset your parents, what do you just want their approval? Right. You just want like, OK, I still love you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So. I crawled in my room and I lay in my room and I cry and cry and cry. And that's when I that's kind of one of those days where I was just kind of like, I'm going to do something special with my life. I'm going to get the hell out of here. I'm going to do like this is not normal. This is not OK. It's also I began to have like a lot of suicidal ideation.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
started thinking about killing myself a lot I would think about different ways I could do it which there's you know a few mechanisms as a child and shooting stabbing drowning jumping were like the things that I would think about I just, I was scared to feel pain. So that's like the thing that detracted me the most was I just didn't want to feel the pain.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So I would sit outside my window at night, like no shit staring down 25 feet below. Like if I land just right, I'll fucking break my neck and die. But if I don't, I'm just going to be this asshole who's crippled or tried to kill himself. You know? Um, I mean, that's, that's literally the, the, the process that was going through my brain at 10, 10 years old. And, uh,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
thought about stabbing myself, thought about shooting myself. I didn't have access to a weapon, had knives, but I was scared of that pain. So I never did anything, never attempted it. Nonetheless, those thoughts were probably nearly every day. Eventually they did become every day, but maybe in the early stages they weren't every day, but they were pretty frequent. And Ten years old.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
OK, so my mom, she starts to work at night. So she starts to work. We would go to bed at eight o'clock or so. She'd go to work and she worked a factory shift. So she'd work like nine to nine, you know, at night. And we lived in this neighborhood. One night, my sisters wake me up. And they say, Seth, somebody's trying to break in. And I'm like, what do you mean?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I think they're messing with me at first. And I wake up and my one sister has a knife and the other sister has an alarm clock. She has the cord wrapped around her hand so she can swing it around, right? I'm like, okay, they're serious. So we get downstairs and at... nine, 10, 11 years old, me and my sisters are standing in the kitchen.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
We're watching the back door that has the handle deadbolt and a two by four nailed across the door. And I'm just watching it just ripping from the frame. Like there's three men outside my back door. One of them's got a baseball bat. The one has sledgehammer and some other sort of blunt object.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And they're, I mean, literally just like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, just striking this door, trying to get in the house. And I don't remember if I grabbed anything or what I had done, but we're standing there and we didn't have anything. We didn't have like electronics. We didn't have money. We didn't have anything for these people to get.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I don't know what they would have done had they gotten in the house. I don't know if they were coming for me and my sisters. Like there's no telling what they were going to do. And. Neighbors come outside to scare them away, call the cops, cops show up, call mom home from work. Everybody gets there. And the conversation was quite literally these things happen.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
OK, go back inside, go to sleep, wake up the next day, go to school. And so that was it. Like there was no like, hey, we need to talk about this. Are you kids OK? Like whatever. There was nothing there. Like that, you know, um, wake up next day, go to school, like nothing, you know, and then, and then I go to school and I'm a, I'm a straight A student, but I was a troublemaker.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I was a class clown talking, fighting everybody. And so I was, uh, as smart as I was, I was that kid that all the teachers, I was a pain in their ass. And I was always the kid who was just like, why is this little kid being a fucking asshole? Right. For this is what I talked about earlier. Right. Where like, what happened? Like what's happening to that kid?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Why is he not paying attention when he comes to school or why is he being the way that he is? Um, And so those are the questions that we failed to ask is what happened. So nonetheless, a week or two later, the same thing happens. And this is kind of where we figured out that this was calculated. My mom left for work. Same thing happened. People come in to break into the house.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so somebody that we knew had to be because they knew her schedule or something. That time, though, I woke up in my neighbor's arms. I don't know if they got in the house, but I woke up in my neighbor's arms. He said, hey, somebody tried to break in again. Don't worry about it. I got you. Takes me over to their house. Same thing. Cops come, go back to sleep, wake up, go to school.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So my mom was crazy. She was getting crazier. And then our house is broken into several times, which just. I didn't realize how bad that affected me maybe at the time, but as an adult now, if I hear the refrigerator making ice at night, it's like, is my alarm set? Because if it's not, then I'm fucking freaking out. So it really does fuck with you pretty bad.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, your personal security is something that is very important to you, and you just don't realize it until it's been breached or whatever, compromised. So... Around that time, my mom gets a new boyfriend. This guy's name is Jamie. He's a fucking piece of shit. Light-skinned guy, 6' tall, 6'1", 6'2", very muscular build, you know, just looked like a naturally muscular guy.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Had cornrows, had a gold tooth, a couple missing teeth. And I talk about him in my book, and I say he had a crooked smile because he was very charismatic and just very – Everybody loved him. And as soon as I saw him, I knew he was a piece of shit. I mean, I just knew it. I just knew something was wrong.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And a lot of that comes from, like, I can read body language very well, almost to the point where I swear I can read people's minds. And I think if you understand human nature and body language and all those things, you likely can to some extent. But...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, when you grow up the way I grew up, you know, and you know, you're walking down the street and you see somebody 50 feet away, you have to know if that person's a threat or somebody comes in your house, you have to know if that person's a threat. So you're just constantly assessing people all day long, you know? And so that's what happened when I saw that guy. I just, I knew he's a threat.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, he was the, uh, pastor or preacher, whoever gets up there and speaks at a church. He was that guy. And, um, my mom met him. He was a man of God and he was a savior, you know? Um, So we go to this church and these are all people that are, this is my problem with churches. These are the people that need the most fucking help.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And they would never, these people that were in that church would never step into like your traditional church because they don't have their Sunday best and they don't have like all the nice shit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, there are people with smokers coughs and fucked up teeth and bad hair and they stink because most of them are homeless or eating at a shelter or they're, they're people that need fucking help and they can't even get it because society just deems them as we don't want to associate ourselves. Right. So I go into this church and that's all these people are.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I'm like, Jesus, you know, I'm like, you just have this uneasy feeling. He's leading the congregation or whatever. Everybody here loves him. My mom loves him. He starts selling her pipe dreams. Okay. The way I think of pipe dreams are you sit around, you're drinking or smoking, you're hitting the pipe maybe. And you start to have all these visions, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Of like, Hey, we're going to buy a house. We're going to live this great life. We're going to get out of this and we're going to do great things. And what happens when you're sober? It goes away. Okay. We end up – he starts dating – my mom starts dating this guy. And he has my mom and sister's, like, fucking hook, line, and sinker. Just he's got them. And I was always just uneasy about him.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And we end up moving to this other house that had no utilities. We lived in this house. We were moving in. The utilities weren't turned on. Living without utilities was something I was familiar with. There were often times where we had to boil the bath water or whatever, which sucks, but that's just being poor. Being poor is not that hard. Living without love is hard.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'll say that living without utilities was not a traumatic moment in my life, although to some people, they can't even begin to fathom what that's like. Nonetheless... We move into this house in the middle of winter in Ohio, okay? It's cold as fuck. And so cold in the house you can see your breath.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
We're running an extension cord through the shared basement of our neighbors to steal their power just to run a freaking space heater. And... So... The downstairs, there's no bedrooms. The upstairs has two bedrooms. So me and my sisters, we go upstairs. I always got the smaller room because it was me and those two shared a room, right? We go up, at the top of the stairs is my room.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I play the, I do play guard. I do, but I just, I don't want to get.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I walk in, it's got hardwood floors and they're buckled all the way across the floor. Like, cracked, split, damaged. The room smells like shit and piss. Just stunk really bad. The people that lived there before apparently had, like, two or three dogs that were locked up in the room. And, yeah, so... I mean, it was, like, fucking horrible. I just remember it being just disgusting. And, um...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I, you know, the floors are damaged and you might be wondering why I look up and in the corner of my bedroom, there's a fucking hole that's like three feet by four feet in the corner of my ceiling in my bedroom. Like everything's missing. You can see straight into the attic above. No insulation, like nothing, right? I mean, it's like I'm looking up, I'm like, and it's fucking freezing, obviously.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
The solution was to staple up some plastic and to stop the wind. So the elements were quite literally blowing into my room. Rain, snow, all of those things. It pulled up, you know, eventually there was like this big puddle in there. And, you know, unfortunately it actually ended up busting one night while I was sleeping and soaked my whole room. But I...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Moving to that room, I'm sleeping on like a four inch mattress. I have a thin little blanket. I'm pissing the bed every night, which is common with just trauma in general. Any kind of child who's stressed out, they usually wet the bed for a long time. And I was 10 years old and I was pissing the bed every night. So I'd wake up freezing cold in my own piss, get ready for school, and go to school.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Not be, be effective with, be effective. At least maintain some resemblance of like, I look like I know how to do jujitsu. You're a blue belt, man. Yeah. You're learning. Right. I know. I guess I just have a, you know, I want to play top against the people that I know I'm not going to be able to crush because I know I can make progress there.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
At this point, Jamie had gotten my mom addicted to crack and cocaine. So there's another layer of just trauma that gets added to the table, I guess. Yeah. With heavy drugs, there comes addicts and more people. And so in this new environment that we're in, this new house, I mean, every fucking day, there'd be like eight, nine, ten people that come through the house.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And we didn't know that my mom was addicted at that point. We had our suspicions because the house would stink really bad and there would be all these people. But then they would go to the bathroom and they would sit in the bathroom for four, five, six hours. And they would just sit in there and get high all day long. And it was...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
That's when we started to put two and two together that something was wrong.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, you know, and living in that house, that's when I, at 10, 11 years old or so, that's when I had started to lose respect for my mom and start to like have this hate towards her instead of loving her because of like going into that room and her just like putting her child in this room to sleep in versus like maybe sleep on the couch downstairs or like maybe somewhere where there's like warm, I don't know, you know, somewhere safe to sleep.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and she put me in there like no questions asked. Um, so I, that's when I kind of started to hate her for that. So around the same time of, uh, moving into that house, um, I meet this kid, his name is Jacob or a fake name for the story, um, to protect his identity, but call him Jacob and he's 15 years old. I'm 10 and, uh, start hanging out with him and.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Jacob knows that my life is fucked up at home. Uh, I don't know if I told him or if he'd been around enough to, you kind of just pick up on it maybe. And so he starts to protect me. I started hanging out with him and all of his friends. Um, you know, going over to his house, playing video games, he's feeding me. I always had friends that were bigger than me or older than me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And that's probably a father wound thing, looking for just somebody bigger to protect you, things like that. Um, But a lot of my friends, they would invite me over and feed me. I mean, they just knew that something was wrong, and I'd go over to their house and eat all their eggs. So Jacob was one of those kids who started to protect me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, one day after two or three months hanging out with Jacob, I started hanging out with him every single day. After a few months, I'm at his house and coming down the stairs and this guy walks in the front door. He's 6'5", 6'6", 380 pounds, built like a fucking left tackle, like just a massive guy. Very big, but does not look sloppy.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He looks like very imposing, like he could throw a hard punch. And, uh, you can tell he's Hispanic, but he's very pale, very pale skin. Um, he's got like big, like Dahmer style glasses on long black, slick back hair. He walks in, he's wearing his big plain red t-shirt and, um, He's like, hey, what's your name? I'm Seth. He's like, oh, do you like football? Love football. Like the Buckeyes?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Love the Buckeyes. Do you like video games? Yeah, I love video games. Oh, cool. Well, why don't you come up to my house this weekend with me and Jacob, and we'll play video games, eat pizza, and watch football all weekend. And I'm like, fuck yeah, bro. Let's do it. So I'm going to go home and ask my mom. So I go home and ask my mom. My mom says, hey, as long as you're with Jacob, you're good.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I don't want to like lose my top game in the midst of building.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Whatever, go. So I go back to Jacob's house. get in the guy's car. And for, uh, I didn't know this at the time, but the guy's like 30 ish. Um, which is really weird. Cause I'm 30. And so now even when I tell the story, it's like, what the fuck? So I get in his car, he's driving a white Honda civic. And, uh, I remember the AC being on like full blast.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And this was the first time I think I'd ever gotten to a car that had AC. So I was like, damn, this is fucking nice. And because it was like, like, these are the things that you appreciate as a kid, you know? And so there's trash all over his fucking car. But I didn't give a fuck because I was like, whatever, bro. Like, I'm a kid. You don't give a fuck, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
No, man, I'm just making fucking excuses. 100% correct. You're poking holes in it. And we can run in a circle all day long, but no, I'm just kidding.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So we go to this chicken place in my hometown before we hit the road to go to Bluffton, Ohio, which is about 30 minutes away. Um, he gets me a fricking meal, you know, sides, large drink. And I'm in the back seat. I'm like, dude, this is fucking awesome. Like I got a friend who can drive. He can buy me food. Uh, my buddy Jacob's riding shotgun. We're going up to Bluffton.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
We're listening to Metallica, ACDC. I'm eating all this fucking food. We're allowed to cuss. We can like, this is fucking awesome. I'm like, man, my life is going to turn around. Like, this is pretty cool. And so we get to his house and, uh, it's a studio apartment. So it's one big room.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You walk in, it's got low ceiling, acoustical ceiling tiles, and look off to the right, there's an entertainment center and like two or three TVs, couch, chair, back right corner's got two desktop computers. The middle of the room has a big glass table with a bunch of like Dungeons and Dragons shit all over it. We played that a lot.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
When we were over there, back right corner is like the kitchen and the bathroom. And then the back left corner, there's this black curtain that's hanging from the ceiling and it's cornering off. That's where his bed was. And my initial thoughts were, one, the apartment was cold because the AC was on and it was just full blast. Big ass dude. He ran hot.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
two was there was multiple TVs and multiple game systems, which meant you didn't have to take turns and you could play all night long. And so we sit down, we start playing video games, you know, uh, dinnertime runs around. He orders a bunch of pizza, get a bunch of pop energy drinks. And we're, and I, I mean, I didn't go to sleep like when I was at his house. Um, especially that first weekend.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I mean, I played video games for 36 straight fucking hours, like just having the time of my life, you know? And, uh, I remember like Jacob going back and sleeping in his bed with him. And I didn't think anything of it because as a boy, you're, you have sleepovers and you, you sleep with your friends and it's not a big deal, you know? And that's what I attributed it to.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I just was like, yeah, whatever, you know, not a big deal. Didn't think twice about it. Um, and so he drops me off, you know, Sunday, uh, that was like a Friday or Saturday. He drops me off Sunday, says, you know, Hey, when do you want to come back? And I'm like, I'll come back whenever, like, this is awesome.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So basically from that point forward, I start going to his house every single weekend. Um, 52 weekends in a year, I was at his house, no shit, 45 weekends, um, out of the year.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Most of the time. Yes. So Jacob was, uh, 15 going on 16. I was like 10, 11 years old at the time. And, uh, so, um, Jacob did start to go up there a lot or, uh, he did go with me a lot. Eventually I started going by myself and for probably several reasons, you know, Jacob didn't want to go. And then I would just go by myself.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then my mom either didn't care or just stopped asking if Jacob was going, you know? And, um, one of the, one of the weekends I was up there, um, maybe two or three months into knowing him. We're having conversation. I think we're probably driving up there and Jacob was with us. And I start to tell, so this guy's name is Mondo. Okay.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
His name is, real name's Armando Vasquez, but he's, we called him Mondo for short. And I started telling Mondo that, you know, I have this tough life and that my mom is very abusive. She's very mean. I mean, at this point she was like fucking us up pretty good.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And in addition with all the drugs in the house, I would tell him stories of where she would grab me by my, she always did this thing where she'd grab my face. She had long nails. And so she would grab my face and just like slam my head into the wall. And I can remember what it feels like to have her nails like digging, you know, digging the skin up kind of.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I can remember like looking into her mouth while she would yell at me. I never wanted to look her in the eyes. It's just kind of something looking at somebody in the eyes, you know. And so but I can remember seeing the spit in her teeth and her stained teeth and the bad breath and just like hitting me in the face while she would slam my head. I had long hair.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
like down to my shoulders, like looked like, really did look like a little girl. She would grab me by my hair and bounce my head off the refrigerator. And she was doing all the same things to my sisters, you know. And at this point, like my older sister, it was just, and my younger sister, they were just smoking weed together with all these adults at 10, 11, 12 years old.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I start telling all this to Mondo. I got a single mother, no father. I've got two sisters. Mom's abusive. I'm getting bullied at school. I was a really good student, straight-A student, but I got in a lot of trouble and got bullied. And Mondo basically reciprocates – not reciprocates, but –
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
repeats all the same information back to me where he grew up with a single mother who's abusive he's got several sisters he's a very smart kid he was bullied all the things that i had told him he mirrored he mirrored right back to me whether it was true or not um i do believe most of it is true with the knowledge that i know now but um it's a common tactic a lot of people i'll let that slide um
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I think it was true. I think most of the things that he told me was true. True or not, there's a reason why he mirrored it. Yes. And if you haven't picked up on it now, this road's going down a pretty dark path, right? So on this one particular weekend, me and Mondo had this really deep conversation.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And now at 10 years old, the only person in my life who even begins to understand who I am or why I am the way that I am or whatever is this man, right? He's the only person who understands me because he's been through exactly what I've been through. So you begin to have this deep level of trust and connection with that person, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I'm at his house Sunday, Sunday morning, we're getting ready to watch some, you know, football at noon or one o'clock. And Jacob left to go get tacos down the street. And I was sitting on the couch and, uh, I told Mondo I was cold, you know? And so he's like, well, why don't you sit on my lap? And he had a blanket. And so I get up in his lap and he's a big guy sit on his left leg.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He's got his left hand on my left hip. Um, big, big fucking hands and his very calloused hands. I'll never forget what his hands feel like. Um, big calloused hands and, uh, long nails. His knuckles were so like, like big and dry and calloused. Like he would take them and rub them together and it would sound like rocks.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And he would always, it was like, it was like one of these weird things he would always do. So I just, I just remember like hearing his knuckles. He'd always do that. Um, but anyways, I was sitting on his, on his lap and he's got his left hand on my left hip and we're, I'm laying there in his chest covered up in a blanket, nice and warm. And truth be told, I was so comfortable, man. I was like,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't know if you have a father in your life, but the love of a father or of another man is something essential to men. Like men need that. We need other men's love and affection and caring, especially young boys. And I'd never had that. I'd never in my life... been held by another man, you know, I'd never been held or cared for or loved for by another man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and so when I laid there, I just felt so fucking comfortable. And he was like a big dude. It was like a big pillow. And, um, you know, his left hand slips off my hip and hits me in the butt. And he says, I'm sorry. He says, my bad. I'm like, not a big deal. Like I figured like if me and you bump each other in the hallway, it's not a big deal. And this is just a tactic.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's just testing the water and figuring out when it gets too hot, you know? And so he puts his hand back on my butt and he says, so this is okay. And I just said, yeah, that's fine. You know, not a big deal. It's okay. And right at that moment, I knew what was happening, which sucks to admit, but I knew what was happening. Dude, you were 10. I know. Yeah. I know, but it still sucks.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's like being at the top of a roller coaster and you hear that last click and you're about to go down and like you're strapped in, though, like you can't get off this ride and you're about to. And that's kind of how it feels. You're just like, I can't move. Like, what am I going to do? Like, I can't move. And so there's there's like the flight or flight or freeze or whatever the hell. Right.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I froze up, which is very typical. Um, and then freezing is basically consent to, uh, those people, right? Um, because they know as soon as you freeze up or you don't reject or deny, uh, that approach that, um, you've got them essentially, you know, and so you just push the limits further, uh, as much as you can. Um, and the people that do this are very strategic. They're very manipulative.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They're very, uh, most of the time, very patient, very calm. I was going to say we're months in at this point. Yeah. Yeah. And we hear the gravel turning outside. Jacob pulls in and he moves his hand away. You know, we watch some football, eat some tacos, go home. And the very next thing that happens is very typical is I gaslight myself. That didn't just happen.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
That that wasn't supposed to happen or it's not going to happen again. You know, it's raining and you're telling yourself it's not raining. You know, that's that is gaslighting. And that's what you do. You know, if if if you slapped your wife right in front of me, it's like the bystander effect as well. It's almost like, well, what the hell? Like that didn't just that didn't just happen, did it?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So then you're you're just it's like this consent. You just let this thing just happen. So anyways, begin to gaslight myself with that. And then as the months go on from this point forward, the abuse just progressed every single weekend, you know, and it was it wasn't like first base, second base, third base. It was like one finger in the waistband, two fingers in the waistband.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Three, four, five. And it's just like inches. He's just like it's a game of inches that they play. There's no big moves. There's nothing big and drastic. It's a slow, steady burn that they use. OK. And when they're manipulating the child, they're not just getting that child. They're manipulating everybody around them, their family, friends, all those things.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So all that to say, as the abuse got worse, at some point I was basically trapped. It feels like, you know, it's like if you drink these waters every day and then you pick a different water to drink and somebody's like, well, what are you doing? Why are you not drinking that water? Is there something wrong with it? And then so for me, I was hanging out with him so much.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
If I stopped hanging out with him because he was doing weird shit, people start asking me questions, right? And you just don't want those questions. You're just scared of that. You don't want to explain yourself. You're just scared of that. So where was Jacob while this was escalating? So Jacob, um, he was on and off. He would be there some weekends, some weekends he wouldn't be there.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Uh, and that that's true, you know, after knowing him now, um, So I never tell the story this way, but I'll tell it now. He was sexually abused by the same man for several years prior to me. And I was not his escape, but when Jacob was older and got into high school and then started driving, He had friends that wanted to do shit on the weekends, and he had girls. And so he just, that was it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He just stopped going because he finally found an escape route, I guess. And college ultimately ended up being his big escape. But that was basically it. And I didn't have anybody to go to or to go to for anything, so I just kept going back to the guy's house. Are you still in contact with him? Jacob? Yeah. Okay. Yep.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'll touch base on him a little bit later, but so yeah, I keep going to his house and the abuse keeps getting worse. You know, there was another big moment that kind of happens that really breaks the mold or the barrier. Um, and it's really fucked up because it's, it's incredible what you can do to people. If you know how to manipulate people, it's just, it's insane.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I remember standing in front of him one day, uh, watching football. Well, he had called me, he'd called me over to him. He's like, Hey, why don't you come over here? You know, sit in my lap or whatever. And I go over to sit in his lap and he, he kind of leans forward in his chair and It was just me there. And he grabs my shorts and he rips my shorts down, shorts and underwear.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And he had not seen me naked at this point. This is the first time I've been down, pick up my shorts. And cover myself up, you know, and I'm crying. I immediately start crying because I'm embarrassed. Like, what the hell just happened? I'm scared. And so what he does is he pulls me and he hugs me and he holds me and says, hey, what's wrong? Like, what's going on? Like, I was just joking with you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm sorry if that made you upset. And I told him, I said, you know, that was embarrassing. And I don't know, you know, this and that. And so what he had done was... And knowing full and well that he was the only person that could protect me in that moment, he exposed me, right, and broke me down because he was the only person that I could turn to.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And it's a manipulative tactic that people will do. and that's what he, that's what he did. And so then he held me and he told me how important I was to him. You know, he told me that I was the most important thing in the world and that how much he loved me and how depressed he was and how he wanted to kill himself and that he wouldn't kill himself because I was in his life.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so at 10 years old, I have like all of this fucking like weight on my shoulders of like this, like emotional relationship that I have with this man, you know? And so now I have this pressure of like this, I'm the most important thing to this guy, you know? And, um, And so, that's a very, you know, I guess, detailed manipulative tactic. Another thing he would do is we had other adult friends.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He never met my mom. He never met any of my family. I knew his family. I met his mom, met his sisters. I would go to his holidays. I'd go to his Fourth of July, his Memorial Days, Thanksgivings, Christmases. I met his sisters, their kids. He was like the 30-year-old man showing up with a 10-year-old, 11-year-old kid at Christmas, and nobody fucking said anything.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And nobody talked to me. And I don't know that I would have said anything to tell him at the time, because you're scared of denial and rejection. And the guy was massive and imposing. And so what happens if they don't believe you? Is he going to kill you? There's a lot of fears of that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But when we would hang out with our other adult friends, like these just like random fucking people we knew, he would make comments towards me or about me. Like if we were sitting in a room just now and he would say, well, we got to go. You know, Seth's got to blow me tonight or. Yeah, they were OK with that. Yeah, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They didn't know. Really? I don't think so. There's. I don't think so. They either didn't know or they're just as fucked up. And because those people had kids, like I'm in a room with other kids. I could see that going both ways. Right. I'm in a room like other kids are with me watching football and like whatever, eating dinner and those kids' parents are there and like, and he would just say it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I'm going to go back and, you know, I got to go back and fuck Seth tonight. And I mean, no shit. Like he was like very, and the thing is, is imagine like the fucking balls it would take to say that in front of somebody. Let alone your family. Not that it's better to say it in front of strangers, but.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Well, so he wouldn't say it in front of his family, but just these other adult friends that we have. Okay. Gotcha. Right. So, but if you, if it's like, if I, yeah, if you said that. Um, there's no way in hell you're actually doing that. You know what I'm saying?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right. And, and that's part of the problem. Okay. Uh, with reporting is in regards to children. A lot of people don't want to say anything or report because Mondo was the best friend to everybody. He was funny. Everybody loved him. Um, I mean, that's how you hide and play. That's exactly what it is. It's a wolf in sheep clothing. That's exactly what it is. And it's what they do.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
It's what they do to hide. And that's the reason why anywhere there's kids, it's the little league coaches. It's the guy in the church. It's the person that you never fucking expect. We talked about statistics earlier. 78% of the time, it's somebody in your immediate household, mom, dad, brother, sister, over 90% of the time, it's somebody in your immediate circle of trust, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So like 98% of the time. So, um, like it's these people that are, that are closest to your kids because there's a level of trust and connection they have to the child. My, my, my daughter is going to, we talked about that earlier. You know, she's going to freak out if somebody else touches her, but if daddy does it,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
She's she's going to be a little confused, but like his daddy, like she can trust daddy. Right. So there's that there's that. And here lies the problem. OK. And so they do that with their friends as well. They manipulate everybody around them. They got everybody believe in this fucking facade that this guy's got on. And.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so, uh, at that point, like, what do you do when, when somebody is saying those comments about you in front of other people, like nobody's going to believe me if I report at this point, you know? And so at that point, you're the child in the room.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. And you're right. And you feel that as a kid, you feel like, you know, that your opinion doesn't matter, you know, when you come to the table and they're like, all right, all right, guys, get away, you know? So, um, Life goes on. So not only was I dealing with like Monday through Friday, basically the hell of being at home with abuse and drugs and violence.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Saturday, Sunday, I was getting sexually abused by this man. And it just, you know, like I said, it's a slow burn. He's slowly playing the game. Around 12 years old, I had basically experienced everything you can experience in the realm of sexual or sexual behavior, like everything.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yep. I've always known I was going to write a book. Okay. I've always known I was going to tell a story, tell my story, right? So, I mean, when I was... There's a specific day. There's two days. There's two moments in my life where... I knew I would do what I'm doing now. And one of them, I was 10 years old. One of them, I was about 12, 13 years old.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, you know, there's some fucking haunting stories that I, uh, tell, um, you know, the guy was watching me like go through puberty. And he would make comments about that. Like he was so proud to see growing and hair and those kind of things. Like he'd make those comments because eventually I start going back to his bed and sleeping with him. And in his bed, there was no clock.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There was no like alarm clock back there. And it was dark. It was all black. He had black blankets, black sheets, pillows. And so there was no frame of reference for time. It wasn't like I got 45 minutes and then I can be done. I got an hour or whatever. It's like I would be back there for fucking ever. And I felt every minute of it. Like it was no disassociation.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There was no like putting somebody else there. And it was a I can just remember like he would say weird shit to me. He was like telling me he loved me. I talk about it in the book of like the first moments of him, like kissing me and dude, it's fucked up. And, you know, he starts to perform oral sex on me and 12 years old. I, you know, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I ended up having an orgasm, my first orgasm at 12 years old. And this 30 year old man looks up at me and he's like, did you enjoy that? And I'm like, what am I supposed to say? I don't know. And I say, yes. And, uh, the shit just keeps going on. So because he was performing things for me, he wanted it reciprocated.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, so it happens and there's a lot of, a lot of, a lot of dark twisted shit that I could tell you. Um, nonetheless, or I keep, that word doesn't, I keep saying that word. I'm sorry. Um, I get what you're saying.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I wish that was the case. I'll wrap it up for you, and then we'll continue. A couple key elements here before we get to that. Well, big events, I guess. So 12 years old, I had experienced everything, right? And then one weekend, I go home from his house. It was on a Sunday. I go to my neighbor's house. My sisters are watching Intervention, the TV show about saving people from drugs, right?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And at the end of every show, there's contact information. And my sisters and I are looking at each other and we're like, oh, we know somebody, let's get mom on the show and see if we can help her. Um, no shit that day walk outside and there's a fire in my front yard. Um, me and my sisters are immediately hysterical cause we know something, something really fucked up is going on.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
There's a fire in your front yard. What was burning? Um, it's like a small fire, not, not massive, but it's like a, what it was was a collection of like clothes and, and just like miscellaneous items. Yeah. Yeah. My mom had gotten into a fight with her boyfriend in the bathroom over some drugs, ended up stabbing him and setting his shit on fire in the front yard. So the cops were called.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Look on the front porch, Jamie standing out there, like white tank top on, blood all over the front of his chest and torso. Um, cops pull up, they grab my mom, throw her in the back of the car. I'm 12 years old in the middle of the fucking street, looking at my mom in the back of this car. And despite all the bullshit that we've been through, like that's my mom and I need her.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
She's the only, once again, the only person that I have. And, um, I can't, I mean, I can't even talk to her. Like I'm trying, I'm just, I remember being at that car and like trying to get through the window to her and I'm just crying so hard, like this visceral freaking emotion. Just, it was so painful. That was one of the worst days of my life. And I'm just crying and crying and crying.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And then like the cop gets in the car and takes her away. We go in the house and this is a very long, very complicated and confusing situation. story, but, um, go in the house and like people from like, I don't even know how the fuck these people knew what was happening, but it seemed like everybody just showed up out of nowhere.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
My, my dad was there and my aunt and uncle were there and, um, just like random people started showing up and the cops were like, what are we going to do with the kids? So me and my sisters would go live with my dad for a little while. And while I was living out there, I got into a bunch of trouble, maybe because I was going through a bunch of crazy shit.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And the schools were threatening to arrest me. So I moved out of my dad's house. My sister stayed there. I moved back to the city, which is about 45 minutes away. And for the next about four to six months, I was like bouncing around different houses and just, you know, I'd live with one person and they'd say, hey, we can't take care of you anymore. You got to go somewhere else.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, basically at 12 years old, you know, and you're just surviving. That's all you're doing. You're just trying to make it to the next fucking day. Around Christmas time that year or just after Christmas, I get a phone call. I'm at these people's house and I get a phone call and it's my mom. And, um, I don't know if she ever went to prison or jail. I don't know if she ever got in trouble.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I have no idea what happened, but she was calling me and she said, Hey, uh, I'm going to come and get you. Where are you at? And, um, I was living with like a typical middle-class family at this point, mom and dad, kids, you know, whatever. And, um, they were taking care of me. And I told my mom another, one of the very hard moments of my life ended up telling her,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
uh, you know, I don't want to live with you anymore. And like, that's really fucking hard to say to your mother, um, at 12 years old. And especially when you don't have any options of where you're going to go. And so, uh, she freaks out on the other end of the phone and she's like, fuck you. Like, you're my fucking son. You're my responsibility. I'm going to come and get you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. That's awesome. I remember. And I was talking about this with, uh, with actually Nick the other day was, um, I didn't have a role models in my life. I had, uh, examples of what I didn't want to be. And so when I came home, I saw that and like no shit. Like this is like when D.A.R.E. program was like big, like the don't do drugs kind of shit. And really what happened was I came home.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like, how dare you say that to me? This and that I'm good now. I'm better now. Um, Somehow my grandparents finally catch wind of what's going on and they find me and they come and pick me up maybe a week or two later because they were the closest thing to me that could adopt me. And so they come and pick me up, get back to grandma and grandpa's house. My sister's there, I had no idea.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so I'm like, oh, like once again, like we finally made it out, right? We're like, we're finally fucking good. Uh, my grandma asked to adopt me and my sisters. I said, yes, my sisters initially did say yes. And then after about a two, three weeks of talking to my mom on the phone, pretty much every day, my mom manipulated them to go back and live with her. And, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You know, a lot of people ask me, like, how did Seth stay on this, like, straight and narrow path? There's a lot of answers I could probably give you. But truthfully, I think I have something in my body that is this level of resilience or grit or something in my character that some people just don't have. I think some people have, some people don't.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I think that's kind of what kept me from going down that path. On the same token with that, this guy Mondo, as bad as he was in my life, he was arguably the best thing, one of the best things that's ever happened to me. And it's really fucked up. And this is what's so fucked up about sexual trauma. Um, and also combat PTSD or first responder PTSD. They're very similar.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, and, and they're arguably two of the hardest to get over and understand and to process. Um, reason being is because the person that sexually abuses you is likely somebody who's very close to you. It's likely somebody who made you cereal, taught you how to throw a baseball, fucking did your homework with you. You know, somebody who's, you got these deep, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
positive connections with uh combat ptsd uh you know the buddy that was killed is the guy that you were playing spades with talking shit with beating the hell out of he's your best fucking friend and so when you're trying to talk about this guy that you've lost in combat or or even just you remember the good times you remember the good times like oh man that one time we're playing spades with so and so and then it's like fuck man that guy's fucking not here no more and it fucking hurts
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so sexual trauma and combat PTSD, they're very similar in that regard when you're trying to process it because your brain has one memory. It remembers this person like, you know, so you remember the good and the bad. And so it just fucks you up really good. So, yeah, my grandparents died. Uh, they, I said, yes, my, my sisters ended up leaving. They go back to my mom's house.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I found out recently that when they did go back, my mom was living in a house that had no utilities. Um, they eventually were bouncing around hotel to hotel homeless, essentially with two little girls and they would go to dealers houses and clean up the houses for either drugs or money. Um, you know, uh, I had no idea that was happening at the time and it just breaks my heart for my sisters.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, I was with my grandparents and I truthfully, like I stayed with my grandparents because they had money. Like my grandpa retired from Ford and my grandma was running her own business and I had warm fricking meals and a bed to sleep in and a big house, nice cars. I was like no longer this poor kid, you know? But, um, unfortunately, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So, um, to kind of, I guess I skipped over a small piece of what I was saying with, um, uh, with Mondo being one of the, maybe the best things that happened was he guided me through a lot of this, like maybe out of his own ill intent of being connected to me or I don't know. Um, But he was like, you know, stay with your grandparents, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And even about a year or so later, after the adoption went through, like I got visitation with my mom and I went and saw my mom for the first time in like a year. I went home that night and I cried because I felt like I betrayed my mom. You know, I needed to go back and live with her and I felt horrible and like I missed her and I loved her. And I cried all night long in my bed.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I was going upstairs. I turned to my right and in the living room, my mom was at least with my older sister. I don't remember if my younger sister was in there, but my older sister wouldn't have been older than 11. And she's in there with. maybe five, six, seven, eight guys, and they're all passing a blunt around the living room smoking weed.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I and I hated my grandparents. I hated I resented my grandparents so bad because of you. Once again, like I said earlier, I've had that victim mentality of like you don't know what I've been through kind of thing. And so you just you just fucking hate everybody, especially when people are happy. You just don't even understand like how you fucking happy. Like, fuck you, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Like, I mean, so you don't even know what that word means. And I remember my grandma made me a birthday cake when I was 13. I came home from school. She made me a birthday cake and sung happy birthday to me. And I remember coming home and being like, like, fuck you. Like, I'm not a fucking kid. Like, I'm not a kid. Like, you don't have to do it. Don't treat me like a kid.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Don't treat me like a baby. And I called Mondo and I said, like, man, my fucking grandma, man. Like, he's like, she did this and this. Like, I'm not a fucking kid. And he told me straight up. He's like, would you rather come home? And her beat the fuck out of you or care about you enough to make you a fucking cake. And so he changed my mindset a lot, you know, of treating my grandparents better.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He coached me a lot through school and bullying and like all these different things. For the good or the worse, I don't know. But it did help me. I mean, he did put me on that path. And that's why sexual trauma, like I said, is so fucked up. Because these people that have such good plans for you, they have just as bad likely, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, that's probably a better way to put it. Not good plans was a bad choice of words there.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. And there's like that level of like dependency that you have, you know, it's like a, like quid pro quo kind of thing where like, he did this for me, he did this for me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was. And so, you know, around 13 years old, go back to, you know, also back up here, my grandparents house. And when I first got there, I tell him, I said, well, I have this friend that I want to go hang out with, you know, and because I was still defending the guy. He was still calling me all the time. I was still calling him.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so he was kind of putting that in me like, hey, when are we going to hang out again? And so I tell my grandparents and my grandparents, they know what happened to me when I was five, when I was molested. And so, and they know my whole history of childhood. And so they're like, fuck no. And I tell them, like, he's not like that. I defend him. I do all the things.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so they say, well, we want to meet him. So he shows up at the house. He makes my grandparents laugh. And this is, like, the first time he'd ever met anybody from my family. So now it went from me going to his house all the time. Now he was at my house all the time for all of my holidays. Now Seth was the kid with the older friend versus the inverse, you know. So...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He made my grandparents laugh. You know, he came over and told him, I know Seth's had a hard life and, you know, I've just been trying to help him and hang out. And I know Jacob and my grandparents knew Jacob. And and and, you know, he he was in back in the saddle and. Shortly after that, unfortunately, you know, I won't get into the details of it, but he rapes me for the first time.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And when I saw that, I was like, okay, this is not going to be me. I will not take that path in life. I thought I would be an Ohio State running back. That did not pan out. But nonetheless, I remember going in my room and just being like, one of these days, I'm going to tell this fucking story, and I'm going to change the world. I just had this deep...
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I was 13 years old. He rapes me. I remember it all happening. And, you know, he gets done and I go back to his bathroom and I'm sitting on the toilet. and I'm just crying and I'm just thinking to myself, like my life is fucking over. Like I don't have a mother. I don't have a father. I just have now been raped.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, I can't say anything to anybody because many, many reasons, some of them being people are going to think I'm gay. They're going to think I'm weird. They're going to make fun of me. Um, what if I have AIDS or I didn't know how they need that shit work, but I was scared of having AIDS or HIV. Um, I was so fucking scared of so many things, man.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I was sitting there on that fucking toilet crying and crying and crying. And I get up. I take a shower. I walk back out and I put a smile on. And I keep playing the fucking game. And it goes on for... Almost three more years. I was up at his house one weekend. I was a month away from being 16. And I had a younger friend that would hang out with me and go to his house.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And this kid, now this kid, he was only allowed to go if I was there. His parents would not let him go alone. And so me and this kid are hanging out up there and he was having a bad day. And this was like a Friday night, I think. And he makes a comment to my friend. He says, hey, if you're having a bad day, I can take you back in the bed and blow you.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I'm playing a video game on the computer when he says this. And we laugh it off. We all laugh it off. And Mondo takes my friend back in his bed. And this is the first time in almost six years that I had ever seen anybody else go back there other than Jacob when we initially started hanging out.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, you know, just to be clear, too, like the audacity that these people have, I would go back in that guy's bed and we would have people over like in a studio, like where there's just a curtain separating us. We're 15 feet apart. And this guy's like molesting me in his bed with other people out in the other room playing video games, having a good time.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So there's so many nights where I spent back in that guy's fucking bed with my friends out in the living room, playing games, eating pizza, drinking pop. And I'm back here like fucking going through hell. And I saw my friend go back there, and I was like, we're not doing this. And I message, I'm playing a video game, and I message Jacob on the video game.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
This is, I usually don't tell the story the way that I will, but... I messaged Jacob on the video game. And on the video game, when you direct message somebody, it pops up in a different color chat. And it's very visible, like you know when you see it. So I messaged him. I said, hey, I need to talk to you Sunday when I get home. And all he says back to me is okay. And that was it.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
As soon as I say that, for some fucking weird reason, like Mondo comes out of the room and I didn't see him initially. I was looking at the computer screen. It's dark. So your peripheral is not there. And I see him like at the very last second. I scrolled up in the chat to try to hide the message. You know, I think Mondo saw it. because the whole mood changed that whole weekend.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And if he would have seen that I had messaged Jacob, he would have known like my cover is blown or something's wrong or something's off. You know what I'm saying? They're very, very smart. And I, I'll get back to why I think you saw it. The whole mood changed and, um, He was just like, I felt like he was going to kill me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
like belief in my bones that I was going to do something impressive. And I know that sounds maybe hokey, but like, that's really how I felt. A few years later, I came across a YouTube video of Eric Thomas. He's a motivational speaker. And one of his, if not the most famous speech he's ever given, he's like number one in the world right now.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I may have just been paranoid, you know, but I mean, the rest of the weekend that I was there, I was just like watching the door. Like, I'm like, do I run? What do I do? Like, you know, what am I going to do to get home? Because I was scared. I thought he was going to kill us. That was a Friday night. I don't think anything happened to my friend. They weren't back there for very long.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But then the next night, unfortunately, he ends up raping me again. And, you know, that had happened several times over the course of the years. But Saturday night, that happens. Wake up in the morning Sunday. We go home. I get to my house. Mondo drops me off. He's got my friend, so he takes my friend home.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
My friend lives in the city and, um, Jacob shows up at my house like an hour later, Jacob's in college at this point, you know? And so, um, we go to my bedroom and we're pacing back and forth in my bedroom. And I'm just telling Jacob like, Hey man, uh, I've been wanting to tell you this for a long time. I don't know how to say this and I'm just scared. And like, I just don't know what to say.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I'm, and that's all I keep repeating myself. I'm And, um, I cannot say it. I cannot admit anything. I can't, you know, get to the point. And Jacob's standing there quietly and he just says, uh, he breaks the silence and he's like, Mondo touched you, didn't he? And, uh, I fell apart. I fucking, you know, 16 years of like just pain had, it was leaving my body. I just fell to the floor.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, um, I remember just like laying there, like so cold. And like, I just felt like I was melting and like punching the floor and punching the floor and crying. And a few seconds later, Jacob's like, well, he did it to me too. And I had no idea, you know, I had no clue. And I turn and I look at him and I'm just like, Every bit of pain that I had felt, I was just like, what the fuck, man?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I felt horrible for him because Jacob was the closest thing that I had to a big brother, to any kind of father figure in my life. So that guy, whatever man that you look at, that guy's untouchable, whether it's your brother or your father. That just doesn't happen to him. That's your dad. Your dad didn't go through shit like that, right? And so that's how I looked at Jacob.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so to know that it happened to him, I was blown away. I had no fucking idea. And so Jacob says to me, what do you want to do about it? And I said, well, I said, fuck this guy. We have to report him because he's about to start doing it to my younger friend. You know, we go out in the living room. I got a flushed face. You know, my grandma knows something's wrong.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And we're sitting out there and Jacob or my grandma asked, like, what the hell's going on? And Jacob's kind of looking at me and I can't say it again. And my grandma or Jacob says, you know, it's Mondo. And as soon as he says that, they know. And my grandma, I could just see her like my baby, my baby, you know, like, oh my God, crying. And I go over to her to comfort her.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, uh, I'm holding her and she's crying and I'm crying and I'm just apologizing, you know, cause I'm like, I let this guy in the house. I told you nothing was wrong with him. I hid the secret. I, I lied for him. I protected him and I felt fucking horrible. I knew it wasn't my fault. Like I was a very smart kid. I knew it wasn't my fault, but like you've, you just, I don't know what you say.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't know what to say. You know? So, you know, so I'm just crying and holding my grandma and you know, that, that really hurts. Um, talking about her just because unfortunately she's not here anymore. And I just, I wish she was because she would see the things that I'm doing now with my story, you know, and see the impact that I'm making.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
But that really hurts to tell her or to be there in that moment with her. So my grandpa, my friend Jacob and I, we go down, we call the police and we go to the hospital to do the report. We get down there and, you know, we get set up in the nurse's office. This police officer walks in. His name's Chad Couples from Bluffton, Ohio. He walks in.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
One of the most famous speeches he's ever given was when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. And he talks about he had met this guru, and this guru was like, you know, if you want to be successful, meet me on the beach.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I see his last name and I'm like, Couples, is your wife so-and-so? And he's like, yeah, that's my wife. So his wife was actually my teacher like five years, six years prior. which is really crazy. Small towns, man. Yeah. Small. Yeah. I mean, I guess, yeah, I guess. And, and what's, you know, I hadn't met the guy before cause she would, he was a, he was a veteran. He was a Afghan and Iraq veteran.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so she would bring him in on like veterans there Memorial day, you know? And so, uh, she'd bring him in. So I'd already met the guy. So when I saw him, I recognized him and, uh, And it's hard to explain like the coincidence of all this, but two weeks prior, two or three weeks prior, he had graduated from the like sexual victim abuse course of reporting or whatever the fuck, you know.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So then he's sent to my case and he walks in. I just had this level of trust and confidence in him. Cause I, I guess maybe I knew him or whatever. Um, so then I have to sit down across from another man at 15 years old and tell him, he tells me, he says, Seth, you know, the more you tell me now, the less we're going to have to do later.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
You know, just, I know this is going to hurt, but like, let's tear this bandaid off and let's do this shit, you know? And, uh, not his exact words, but some summation of it all. And I, I pour it all out. I tell him the worst shit that ever happened to me and the fullest, the most descriptive detail, um, And so we get done with all that.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
We go back in the nurse's office and the nurses are saying like, hey, Seth, do you have any dirty clothes or do you have anything that you've worn to his house recently that we can get DNA off of or, you know, take or whatever? And I tell the nurses like, you know, this just happened 15 hours ago and I haven't changed my clothes and I haven't taken a shower because.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
When he took my friend back there that night, I did not know that... I didn't know what was going to happen to me the rest of the weekend. But I knew that I was going to report him. And so when I did go back there, and he did what he did to me that weekend, I knew, like, this is it. Like, I'm getting this motherfucker. And I'm like, this is it, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And when I said that I had not taken a shower and I had his clothes on, the silence in the room was, like, deafening. It was like... Everybody's like, what the fuck, you know? And they're like, take your clothes off. Like, let's get this shit and test me. And they swab me and they do all the things. They're really, really proud of me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so he meets him out there on the beach at 4am and he takes him out of the water and he holds him underwater, you know, and he, and he begins to tell him like, like, what are we doing out here? Like I'm swimming. Like I want to be, I want to be successful. I want to be a millionaire.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, you know, Chad ends up going back and going up to arrest Mondo. I go home that day. Didn't hear anything else. You know, maybe like a month later, two months later, I hear that Mondo accepts a plea deal. He was sentenced with 11 felony counts of childlike misconduct. and some other charges. Um, and he accepts a plea deal.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
He's charged with four counts who sentenced to 10 years in prison for 10 years, about 10 years of abuse between me and Jacob. Um, did Jacob report him as well? Yep. Jacob actually went to the hearing cause he was an adult and, uh, read a letter saying that this wasn't enough time and they didn't give a fuck. And, um, That was in 2011. So he'd be free today to do whatever the fuck he wants to do.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Fortunately enough, he died in 2019 in prison. He's about a year away from getting out, and he died. How did he die? Staph infection, they said. God, I hope it hurt. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So in March or April of 24, I ran an ultra marathon. It was one of my ultras that I ran. And Jacob drove down to crew me for it. He lives in North Carolina now. So he drove down to Georgia to crew me for it. And, um, I always thought that Jacob had like a normal life, like a very normal, like vanilla life. Um, before I knew him, I never knew about his childhood before I met him.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And the guy, that's when the guy tells him, you know, he's like, when you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, that's when you'll be successful. And he goes into this, like the way he tells the story is just fucking epic. And I remember being there like 13 years old. Cause then Eric goes on YouTube. Oh yeah. How old are you? Uh, 30.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, um, so he came down and like kind of told me his whole story and that's his story to tell. Um, and it's fucked up. It's very fucked up. And, um, we had that conversation. He didn't, he didn't know. You just, you just don't imagine it could happen to anybody else. Like you did. That's a fair point. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sucks, dude. It sucks. And, and There's it's happening right now. Like it's happening. It's happening here. It's happening two blocks away from here.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I don't think so because it happens more in the house and it happens more with people, you know, and That's just the people are fucked up. Some people are just fucked up and they get fucked up and then hurt people, hurt people. And it's just this perpetual cycle. And, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I think, you know, I want to stop it, but I think my effort, my focus is to help people get through it and get over it, you know, cause it's going to happen.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. So it came in stages. Okay. Everybody sees me for who I am now. And they're like, damn Seth, like, how do you do this without falling apart and whatever, you know? Um, it comes in stages and it takes a lot of fucking work. And, and what, like we talked about earlier, I ran from all of that shit for ever, like, um, 29 years. I ran, well, not 29, 15 years, I guess. Um, I ran from it, you know?
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Um, And I was fortunate enough that when I reported him, it was all under the table because I was a minor. So my name was never put in the releases or nothing. If it would have been, I would have killed myself. I would have 100% killed myself.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yes. There's no way in hell I could have survived. I give a lot of people credit for the strength and the brotherhood that I had of building that effort to report. I had a wrestling coach and a wrestling team to be a part of, and I give them a lot of credit for it. But anyways, the healing came in stages, okay? When I was... So I joined the army initially joined because I wanted girls.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And I thought that if I put on this uniform and dog tags, panty droppers. Yeah.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Yeah. Yeah. And a really different job. Um, but they're sharp. Yeah. And what's funny is I joined the reserves as a mechanic thinking that I was like an infantry killer because I thought that everybody was like, hey, you want to shoot shit and bullshit? I'm like, yeah. And so I was in the reserves from I joined when I was 17.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
and so I was in the reserves until I was like 19 or 18, 19, right after high school, I ended up going active duty, um, signed an 18 X contract. Um, so which is the special forces like recruit shit. Um, bunch of funny stories there getting kicked out of airborne school, uh, which is what nubbed my SF career, which I wouldn't have made it anyways.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Cause I was a fucking shit bag, but, uh, not with that attitude, sir. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I got kicked out of airborne school, went to Fort Stewart, Georgia. And when I was in the Army, especially when I joined the infantry, like I was full on like America mode. Like at that point, I was like very proud of serving my country. It wasn't like for anything other than to serve my country.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
I was very proud of what I was doing. But during that time, you know, I eventually became a team leader. Let's see, went to Fort Bragg. Well, so I met my wife. at Fort Stewart, knew her for six months, got married, didn't tell anybody for seven months, went to Fort Bragg. We got married just so she could come to Bragg with me. And, uh, um,
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
Right before my daughter was born, that's when I started going through my healing process. So I was 24 and my daughter was about to be born and I was about to go to Afghanistan. And at my daughter's baby shower, oddly enough, Jacob was there and Jacob approached me and he kind of asked me, because me and him were like two peas in a pod at this point. We're like just fucking super connected.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And, um, uh, he asked me about my finances and just to make sure everything was okay. And I was like a typical young, stupid soldier with like $60,000 of debt, all that shit, you know, new wife, new house, fucking all the fucking things. Right. And, and due to the nature of my childhood, I had no financial literacy. I was just fucking just, you know, whatever, everything's $15 a month.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
So you just finance everything. And so he asked me about that. So I kind of did all my healing backwards. I fixed my finances first, which is a big deal. It takes a lot of stress off of you. So I fixed that. We got out of debt. But then I went to Afghanistan and I went to Afghanistan with Fort Bragg deployed with 82nd and I was a team leader.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
And so that was really hard because our deployment was very easy. Fortunately enough, had no direct action. We took some rockets here and there, but nothing crazy. With that being said, my deployment like fucked me up because, man, I. with a combination of like leaving my wife and daughter, my newly born daughter at home, being a team leader in the 82nd, which is a massive ego fucking place.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
The, the Fort Bragg in general, just so clicky and ego driven. I was, or so it seemed, and that might've just been my own insecurities, but I was a man leading men, with all my shit, you know? And I just, I can't tell these guys this shit that I've been through. Like I'm their fucking team leader, you know? And they're gonna, these guys are gonna judge me.
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Episode 372 - Seth Gehle
They're gonna tell other people, they're gonna make fun of me. And so I was dealing with this like massive identity crisis. I was the Bulldog team leader. my, uh, my platoon sergeant was a former ranger guy for like 16 years. And so he told me fucking fuck these guys up and, and like, be that, be the bulldog and just, you know, do the right thing, but just be aggressive. And he loved me for it.