I stepped into Glenn’s little office in the winter of 2017. This stage of my life was the darkest place I had been in. Having the childhood, I had, coupled with one failed marriage and a slew of traumatic events, all led up to the moment I walked in there. On the surface, it was a last-ditch effort to save my current marriage…a marriage I had already written off because my past had me living what I thought I deserved in my life. I had a history of knowingly messing things up to make sure I controlled the end of the relationship because, in the end, everyone leaves. Now, in the depths of my mind, I knew I needed real help because I wasn’t just on the verge of losing my wife. I was toying with the idea of suicide.
You see, I had been struggling for years. Decades really. The early years of my life sucked but I don’t really remember all of the things that happened. The things I do remember have stuck with me forever and established my self-worth. The chaos in my mind was never ending. When I stepped into Glenn’s office, I hadn’t just given up on my marriage; I had given up on my life. I remember the night I told my wife that I didn’t think our relationship was going to work out. I also remember going to the guest room for the night and looking into the clauses of my life insurance to see if suicide would prevent her from receiving the payment. That’s when I knew that I had to change something, but I didn’t know what. I went on a late-night drive to try to clear my head. I felt numb. I had felt numb for years.
As a police officer in metro Atlanta and a Soldier in the Army, I had dealt with many things that put me in dangerous situations. It got to a point that I became more careless about the situations I was in because, what was the worst that could happen? I get hurt? At least I’d feel something again. I lose my life? I wasn’t enjoying it anyways. January, 2016, that almost became a reality for me. Even that situation didn’t faze me at the time. My supervisor at the police department had to make me see the circumstances of that night for me to even realize what happened and how close I had come to being killed.
I say all of this to make sure it’s clear, I was done with life. I didn’t go into Glenn’s office with motivation to get help. It was a “check the box” kind of thing for me. The only reason I went to see Glenn was to try to make my wife happy because she refused to give up on our marriage.
Immediately after meeting Glenn, I remember him sitting in his chair and just talking to me like a normal person. He didn’t treat me like I was damaged or broken. Every counselor I had been to treated me like I was broken. They always said they could fix me. Saying you can fix me just tells me I’m broken and you can see it. That doesn’t help. That only makes it worse. I already couldn’t stand who I was and now someone I don’t know wants to change me. Glenn connected with me almost immediately and, without me stating any of my feelings, told me that he wanted to help me discover who I was. That really hit my soul. I needed to find out who I was, not change into who someone thought I should be.
In regards to my marriage, I told myself that I would give him a shot unless he whipped out ole faithful…”the Bible says marriage is forever. You’re just going through a phase. You need to weather the storm and work it out” . I quit going to counseling because that is all I ever heard. Like I was just going through a phase and needed to get over myself. If it was that easy, I wouldn’t be looking for help.
Glenn made me laugh when I mentioned counseling. He immediately fired back that he was not a counselor, and this was not counseling. He said that he was there to help us discover ourselves individually. He explained that once we understand ourselves we would be able to fix our relationship on our own. He said he would give us the tools to do the work and we would determine the outcome of our relationship on our own.
We decided to hire him, obviously. At our first session, we went over our questionnaires together and he touched on a few things for each of us. We did a couple more sessions as a couple before Glenn knew us enough to recommend separate sessions with him. The individual sessions made me nervous at first. I didn’t like the feeling of not having an out when I didn’t feel open to talking. Those individual sessions, I’m confident, saved my marriage and my life.
Glenn has a unique way of doing things. I didn’t understand what we were doing in the moment we were doing it but when he brought each exercise full circle, and explained everything he had just learned about me, I was blown away. He was able to tell me a specific age range and event type he believed happened to me that led to me being wired to react a certain way. He was spot on every time. Things I have never told anyone, he picked out like he has known me my entire life. Once I was comfortable enough to really open myself up to change, we went to work. We dissected and rewired my mind to think differently in exact same situations. He helped me live the statement “I am not the product of my past”. I had always heard it. I have learned it. I never knew how to live that statement. I took all of this work with me when I deployed to Afghanistan. While deployed, I continued to work on myself using the tools Glenn gave me. I really found myself using the tools Glenn taught me. I released the anchors I was still holding onto with my mom, my biological dad, and the rest of my past. I finally stopped looking back on my life and started looking forward to the future and who I was going to be.
Now, 3 years later, I don’t even recognize the person I was back then. Social media memories come up from back then and I get emotional because I can now see the sheer misery, I was living in. I can feel that pain now when I couldn’t feel it then. My anxiety is still around, but now I am self-aware of my mind to the point that I can identify the anxiety coming and calm myself without it ever being present. I no longer have a constant sense of impending doom lingering. I don’t feel like I’m always struggling to be good enough for everyone. The biggest win for me is that I no longer look for the acceptance of others to feel self-worth. I have inner peace now that I’ve never felt before. The work is rough. You will leave some sessions sweating. Others, fighting back tears. You will be exhausted. You will dig up stuff you have suppressed for decades. You have to accept the pain to feel again. I owe my life to Glenn and his teaching/coaching. Thanks for everything Glenn!
John B.
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