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Chapter 1: What personal challenges did Darren Waller face during his upbringing?
Kings Network.
Welcome again to South Beach Sessions. I'm genuinely enthused about this one. I do not say that just the way everyone says, hey, I'm excited about this guest. Darren Waller, I've admired, obviously, his physical skills for a while.
But what I've admired the most is that he is unusually comfortable being vulnerable in public because of whatever it is he's learned through what seems like from over here. a fascinating journey. So he's a pro bowler. He was obviously great with the Raiders, went to the Giants, and I thought he was going to be great there too.
And it seemed like a thousand things happened that made that very hard. Comes to Miami after a year off and reinvents himself here. It was a pleasure to watch you work. with the Dolphins.
But like I said, the most interesting part of you to me is like, man, this guy's really comfortable talking about tender things, about growth, about being lonely in a way that I'm simply not used to hearing come out of the huddle. And so I'm like, no wonder that guy feels alone.
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Chapter 2: How did addiction impact Darren Waller's football career?
My guess is he's walking in a locker room with a whole bunch of people who are looking at him and being like... What's he up in his feelings about? We're here to play football. Why does he care so much about getting his feelings heard about things? So anyways, I admire the way that you are and the parts of your story you've shared. And so thank you for being on with us.
Yeah, no, it's an honor to be here.
So take me through just chronologically what you would describe as sort of the landmark posts in your upbringing where if you were explaining to a stranger that you wanted to know you a little bit, what your upbringing was like and how you were beginning to be formed. What were your first 14, 15 years of life like?
First 14, 15 years?
Yeah.
I grew up 30 minutes north of Atlanta, Georgia. Uh, my parents, my dad's from Queens, New York. My mom is from, uh, Maryland area. Uh, and I was born in DC and we moved to Colorado when I was young and we moved to Georgia right before I turned five.
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Chapter 3: What role did therapy play in Darren Waller's recovery?
So that's pretty much all I remember. Uh, I had both parents in the home, parents still together. I had an older sister. Um, And, you know, on paper, it's great childhood, great area we grew up in, great schools. But, you know, learning more and looking back on my life as I've gone forward, you know, both my parents came from addictive households.
And so for them, I think they did a tremendous job with my sister and I. And I think they had experiences where they grew up where it was like, man, we want to do this.
give our kids the opposite of what we may have had to experience and uh in doing that i think they did a great job of like teaching us how to communicate and uh be good in school and present well and have manners and be respectful to other people but in some ways i don't think they anticipated um because i don't think they would have known either that it kind of turned us into uh
performers like it paid off like my football career and um and things like that but in a lot of ways it just uh made me um I don't know very like hyper vigilant of like wanting to please people and um not wanting to you know feel like rejection and things like that and I had some you know rejection kind of things going on early on like I remember being in social environments around
School, people my age, very early on, and it was always like I was a little bit more sensitive and a little, you know, I was black, but I didn't act black. And, you know, I was, I guess, like advanced as far as school comes, like gifted or whatever. And I was often one of the only black kids in my classes and things like that.
So everywhere I went, I kind of felt like I didn't necessarily fit in.
It's everywhere. So you like music.
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Chapter 4: How did Darren Waller reinvent himself after leaving the NFL?
You're a little bit of a nerd, but you're a great athlete. And you can hide in the confidence of everyone thinks the great athlete is popular. But is this really who I am? Aren't I more than this?
Yeah, yeah. Just kind of realizing I was very good at sports growing up and that kind of like, kind of gave me some inclusion into spaces. But a lot of times it was like, yeah, why do you listen to music like that? Why do you dress like that?
But it's not the real you that's getting the inclusion, right? It's just the football player. It's just the performer. It's not the things about you that you actually want seen. It's the things that people think you are, which is there's the football player guy and you want to be seen as something. You want the rest of you seen.
Chapter 5: What insights did Darren gain from his experiences with music?
Yeah, and it's like the representative of me that I want these people to see. And that's as early as elementary school, middle school, high school. And on into high school. And so I feel like in middle school was really rough for me because that's where I started to start to like act out and like, oh, I want to act out to like, you know, kind of gain attention.
But also it's like the dudes that get all the girls are, you know, acting bad and doing a bunch of stuff. And so like I kind of want to be like them because I don't really get much attention from girls. Like I want to be cool. And it's like that brought me out of really trying to figure out. who I am authentically as a kid.
There's so much pressure in those times on kids to be socially accepted, which I think is a basic human need. But at the same time, I felt like I went above and beyond to try to be accepted to the point where it was just like, I don't really know what I want to pursue because I want to pursue the things that get me validation in the eyes of other people.
Instead of yourself, right? So explain to me this. You're covering a lot of ground here.
Chapter 6: How does Darren Waller view vulnerability in professional sports?
So when you say that's a big umbrella. My parents both came from an addictive background. What does that mean?
So it means for them, they themselves didn't take on those addictive qualities, but they There's almost like a level of codependence because it's like in those households, you got to find ways to, you know, survive, to cope and to almost disassociate in ways from that.
And so does this mean that your grandparents have some addiction issues or does it?
Yes. On both sides. Both my dad's parents and my mom's dad. So my maternal grandfather.
And whatever it is they've learned in the patterns of their upbringing on how they keep it together and stay away from the addictive stuff, it's all part of their learning process. That's the environment you're growing up in.
Yeah. And so the main thing is, like I said, there's so many positive qualities that came from it. But one of the things I think lacked was like a place for like emotional understanding and acceptance.
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Chapter 7: What lessons has Darren learned about self-acceptance?
Because I never really felt like there was a ā in my home, it was like my emotions where I could be able to express them. I don't think they were ever, I mean, there were times where I was just like, you know, kind of like the, you know, like my dad one time was like, just like crying while you cry so much, like one, one experience like that.
And that kind of like made me be like, all right, well, all right. Like, I'm not going to cry and kind of, hold things in and just, just carry them to myself. So that just like, cause the households they grew up in, there probably wasn't space for them to necessarily.
So in this case, this doesn't have very much to do with addiction stuff, but your dad is just saying, be more masculine than that. Whatever it is that like, what, what are you doing? Why are you, why, why are you crying? Yeah. But push it down with just don't, don't,
Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like it was like a like an experience where, you know, I'm sure my dad had a bunch on his plate at the time.
Chapter 8: What are Darren Waller's plans for the future in football and beyond?
And it was probably a time where I was like crying a lot and just like very sensitive and just like in one moment you can be like, all right, like, what is this? Like, why are you doing this so much? But for me, that was like, oh, like I shouldn't. Be like this. And so from there, it was it turned into a lot of just like stuffing things down.
And, you know, by like 14, 15 was when I kind of got into drugs and stuff like that.
Well, so how does this happen? Because I've talked before on our show about I don't understand how, for example, Drew Barrymore, what would have to be happening in her life for her to have a cocaine dependency at 12 years old. Especially if you're coming from a household that otherwise has plenty of disciplines in it, right? So how does that happen? It's not an absence of supervision.
It's just... It happens.
How does it happen that you get to drug dependency by 15 when you've got caring parents who are trying to give a good environment for you and you feel like you're doing all the other things correctly, but there's a part of you that doesn't know at 15 that you're actually hiding and some of this feels inauthentic because you're not grown enough to understand what the hell is going on with all your feelings.
Right. Yeah, just ā
around that time just highly anxious from just trying to be so hyper vigilant like I was talking about and you know just depressed like not really feeling like a lot of things that I wanted to see go my way were going my way like football was one of the things that I leaned on as like okay I'm good at this but then freshman sophomore year of high school like everybody got bigger than me and I was like really small and hadn't really hit like the weight room or anything yet and so I was kind of like
and my freshman year rode the bench, and my sophomore year of high school, I was hurt most of the years. I had, like, this elbow surgery. And so I was like, dang, football's not working out either. And just, like, kind of in a low point of, like, I don't really enjoy life per se. And I never really was somebody that was, like, I wanted to get into drugs.
I kind of knew, like, okay, these aren't necessarily good from what my parents had told me. But it was presented to me in a way like my friends had ā gone to their parents' medicine cabinets and found like a, like hydrocodone pills and like painkillers. And for me, it was like, I don't feel good. And they presented to me in a way that it would make me feel good.
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