Voices for Voices®

Finding Strength and Healing: The Intersection of Spiritual Leadership and Military Discipline | Episode 181

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 181

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Finding Strength and Healing: The Intersection of Spiritual Leadership and Military Discipline | Episode 181

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Chapter Markers
0:01 Self-Discovery and Acceptance in Faith

15:07 Finding Healing and Support Through Faith

23:18 Community Support in Mental Health

What happens when you combine spiritual leadership with military discipline? Journey with us as we welcome Chaplain Yancey, a licensed bishop and army chaplain, who brings a wealth of wisdom from both worlds. Our conversation explores the core elements of self-discovery and acceptance, grounded in the teachings of the 12-step program. Chaplain Yancey shares profound insights on the strength found in acknowledging what we cannot change, and the courage required to transform what we can. We touch on the intricacies of Type A personalities, celebrating both their strengths and challenges, and discuss how these traits can be harnessed for personal growth and improved relationships. Through our exchange, the message is clear: self-worth and compassion are vital as we navigate life's complexities, always holding onto our core values of love and respect.

As the dialogue unfolds, we reflect on the transformative power of shared experiences and storytelling. Personal narratives reveal that individual struggles, though unique, often echo universal themes that bind us in community support. A candid discussion on mental health sheds light on the role of social media in heightening anxiety, while also celebrating the bravery required to seek help. By sharing stories under a pseudonym, a healing platform emerges, underscoring the importance of privacy and acceptance. We further explore the significant role of community resources like 12-step programs and church outreach, especially when traditional mental health services aren't accessible. This episode is a heartfelt reminder of the power of connection, community, and shared purpose in finding peace and healing.

This episode emphasizes the importance of self-acceptance and community support in overcoming personal struggles. Chaplain Yancey shares insights from his journey, exploring themes of vulnerability, identity, and mental health recovery.

• Discussion of self-worth and the role of vulnerability
• Insights on Type A personalities and their complexities
• Reflection on intrusive thoughts and personal narrative
• The significance of community and support systems
• Resources for mental health assistance and support groups
• Emphasis on embracing one's journey and continuous self-improvement

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#spirituality #military #discipline #connection #mindfulness #meditation #selfImprovement #personalGrowth #mentalHealth #lifeLessons #philosophy #psychology #inspiration #lifestyle #motivation

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to this episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes. Thank you for tuning in. Whether by audio or by video, we are reaching 50 countries, 500 cities, as well as having our show broadcast right here in Northeast Ohio on Spectrum Channel 1021, hudson Community Television or you can check out the Hudson Community Television Facebook page or website to tune in as well. And with this episode, this is a continuation from last week's episode.

Speaker 1:

So we have part two of our conversation with Chaplain Yancey, who is a licensed bishop with the Church of God in Cleveland, tennessee. He served as minister since 2003. He is also an army chaplain and he brings that spiritual leadership and military service to his role. He has an undergraduate degree from Lee University and he has furthered his theological education at Pentecostal Theological Seminary. So we're going to see a continuation of part one of our conversation and we hope you enjoy.

Speaker 1:

Thanks again, everybody, for catching us on part two of our episode with Chaplain Yancey. Again, he is a licensed bishop with the Church of God in Cleveland, tennessee, has served as a minister since 2003. He's also an army chaplain, which again brings that really unique blend of spiritual leadership and military service to his role, his role. He holds an undergraduate degree from Lee University and has also furthered his theological education at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. So, chapel Nancy, thank you again for joining us.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, nice to be here. How that has impacted the role and the roles that you have as a chaplain in the military and how us as individuals, whether we're in the military or not, if we think of ourselves and give ourselves that similar self-worth that we may give to others, that that would be a good experience. Once I decided to open up and take kind of the dom decisions I made to be, I guess, volunteer myself and not be being slipped into one of the psych wards for five days at Akron General Hospital, and that day it was hard because I had thought that I knew all the answers, that I could handle everything.

Speaker 1:

I'm a guy, I can you know, I'm not supposed to cry, I'm not supposed to, yeah, just supposed to just power through things. Again to that higher power that we spoke of in the previous episode in part one whether we believe in God, the creator, or higher power, we, we, we need to understand that there is a higher something that is watching over. And when we get to that point where we understand a little bit better that as humans, we we can't control everything and we we really just need to, like I said, just have some of that compassion for ourselves, like it's okay to be stressed out, it's okay, I can work on this tomorrow, potentially, depending on what it is. So maybe you just pick the conversation up from there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, I think, falling back on 12 Steps, they do a lot of things right in that community except the things we cannot change the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. And I think when we're living life, there's a lot of things that we cannot change right. But how we respond, even situation in the middle of how we respond to the situation is one of the things we can change, right. Am I going to allow this to take me out of my core? Who I am, and the problem is, is that who are we at the core? And we have to be able to sit down with ourselves, allow, push out the conversations of everybody telling us who we are and we have to come to that idea of, or that acceptance of, who we are. So for many years, I'm a type A personality, right.

Speaker 2:

A lot of people have a lot of bad things to say about type A personalities, but there are some good things and I have to. I have to get them good things right. And for many years I would focus on some of the negative things that come with type A personalities, right. So we're quick. We're quick to react, we're quick to make decisions. That's just something we do. We get in the middle of it and we figure out the problems as we go. We don't really take a lot of time to evaluate the situation. We just jump in the middle of it and then we kind of work from there. We work in chaos fine, chaos doesn't bother us any as long as we're doing something. We'd rather be in the middle of a chaotic situation than sitting back and waiting to figure out when we can do it. We don't like complacency. We don't like any of that. So there could be bad things with that type of personality.

Speaker 2:

But for many years I focused on that and with the reality that I could change that and there's some things we could smooth out. But who you are at the core is who you are and that's who God made you to be. This doesn't give us permission to not love our neighbor. It doesn't give us permission to be rude. It doesn't give us permission to do all that. What I mean by who you are and you can't really change that at the core, that's as a genuine caring, loving individual. So that's not eliminating care and love and concern from a type, a personality and say you could be rude and you could be upfront and that's just your personality. No, that's not. That's an escape to letting you not love someone else and not respect other people around you and not respect other people around you. I'm just saying that the things I was trying to fix, apart from that is maybe would take away the benefit of my personality that if you're around a type A person they're not, they're always gonna be. They're gonna be trying to be productive, they're gonna be going forward, they're gonna move that ball forward, no matter if they know the right way or they think they know the right answer. They're going to move it forward.

Speaker 2:

And accepting that in me, but also knowing my shortcomings, allow me to just understand me a little bit more. And I think that self-journey is huge, like when we get to a place where them intrusive thoughts is telling us more about who we are. Then, um, we're telling ourselves who we are. We're in trouble, right. So, from a christian perspective, like jesus had to understand when he was in the desert with the devil that, um, god was going to apply his needs if the devil could convince him that turning these rocks into bread was the best situation for him and that God wasn't watching out for him no more and he had to feed himself and rely on himself, then that would completely destroy his ministry later on. Because in his ministry Jesus was always saying I only do what my father's told me to do. So if he took the power out of the father's hand, then he would continue to take it out of the father's hand through his ministry. So the same way in our lives if we let them intrusive thoughts come in and dictate to us who we are, then it's going to keep on telling us who we are. It's going to keep telling us we're a failure. It's going to keep telling us our shortcomings. It's going to keep telling us all that if we don't hold to the fact of who we are, you know, okay, yeah, you're right, I did mess up there. But I tell you what you know. These are the things I did do. Good, you know I'm a loving brother or I'm a loving father or I'm. You know I'm good at this in my job. I might be that, but what search for them? Good things, the things you could stand on it? No, even if you fail, even if the day don't go well, listen, I'm still going to care for others. You know I'm still not going to. I don't call names to people because I understand what it feels like to be called a name, so I don't, I don't. I don't call people names, I don't. I don't do things that are out and I know that I will never do that because I know how it makes me feel. So these things, search for these things, because that's who makes you up, who you are.

Speaker 2:

It's not that voice in your head telling you what you're not. It's you looking at yourself and telling yourself who you are, and that voice doesn't have power over you. You don't have to give it power. However you look at that voice, I look at it as the enemy. But however you look at that voice, it doesn't have to give it power. However you look at that voice, I look at it as the enemy. But however you look at that voice, it doesn't have power.

Speaker 2:

You know, even if you're going through addiction, right so addiction a lot of times is used, um, for coping skills, but it also could be. You know, you just experimented with it and you got addicted to a substance, but you're not the addiction. You're still somebody's son, you're somebody's daughter, you're dad. You know there's love and care and concern for you. You know you're not your failures you know.

Speaker 2:

And if we, I think the biggest thing is that if we allow our failures and intrusive thoughts, all this stuff, to pile up and tell us who we are, then we get in a place where it feels like we're in a hole and we're in there by ourselves and you don't deserve to be in a hole. God didn't create you to be in a hole. He didn't create you to beat yourself up all the time. God's not beating you up, right. He's not letting giving you hey, here's a bar. When you meet it, I love you. No, the Bible says that he loved us while we were still sinners. So there's no bar that you have to meet for the creator, god, to love you and care for you. And the same way, there's no bar If you have people in your life that's creating this bar that says, oh, once you get here, I'll love you, when they don't really love you anyways. Right, if you have family, that's saying, once you create, no, no, no, no. They can put boundaries. If somebody's dealing with addiction and maybe they don't want you to come into their house because you don't rob them five times, that's fine, but they can still love you and not want you to come into their house while you're alone and stuff. There are more boundaries and that's okay for people to have, but it doesn't mean they don't love you and care for you. So I don't know, I think all that, like the whole lot, right.

Speaker 2:

When we talk about destruction and we talk about the enemy, he comes at us to kill, steal and destroy a lot of different ways and, um, I don't know, I think it's going to take somebody's own personal narrative to speak in to what's trying to destroy you. Um, but grab hold of that narrative, pinpoint it, journal it, you know, get it in writing where you know what you're fighting against. You know, have ammunition, you know, to fight against these intrusion thoughts. You know, don't let, don't let this, this record player that seems broken, to keep on dictating to you how you should feel about yourself. It doesn't have power, it doesn't end from your army chaplain to not let these voices dictate to you who you are, because it's just not true.

Speaker 2:

Uh, if I believed everything I heard in my head, I'd never be here today, you know. Uh, you know, with somebody a dyslexic, going all the way through school teachers telling me the best they can do is try to get me past the third grade reading level. Um, like, if I believed all that, um, I definitely wouldn't be here today. Am I still nervous in classes? Yes, yes, all right. Did it take a lot for me to get through school? Yes, it did. That stuff didn't go away, guys, I didn't. I didn't miraculously not be dyslexic overnight.

Speaker 2:

Still here, 39 years old, still dyslexic, but that's okay, right. Have I beat it? No, right. And when we're talking about mental health, right, do I still have down days? Yeah, right. So if you're talking to somebody that deals with depression, do I still get depression? Yeah, but you came through it before, right, you come through it again, you know. Just hold on, make that commitment to yourself not to harm yourself and hold on, grab hold of the community around you. Support, knowing that there's better days to come. Your emotions will be better. Situation might not change, right. Tragedy, you can't undo. Tragedy can't undo loss. But, um, you'll get through it. And, uh, you'll do a lot better getting through it if you have a community to support around you and I think that's a key.

Speaker 1:

once we internalize and realize that there are the things that we need to talk about, that that thought it's scary. Wait a minute. I'm not going to share these personal thoughts, or what have you. That was one of the big things for me was my ego was in the way of not only why I can take care of this, but nobody's going to understand me. I'm the only one like this.

Speaker 1:

I'm the only one going through this. And that day I guess the following day that I voluntarily admitted myself I was sitting around 10 or 11 other people and we went around hey, what brings you here? And if you're there, good reason for you to be there. And when I heard each individual story, their stories were not all exactly like mine, but they were similar enough to go away than that just in a year. It's not. You're not the only one going going through this. You're maybe going through this piece and this piece. There's other individuals. There's an individual who tried to take his life and he had cast on both of his arms because he was trying to arm himself.

Speaker 1:

And I was like whoa, like this is serious. And here's me like thinking whoa, is me going into that situation? Like, oh, I need to fix myself and all those thoughts. And some of those thoughts were coming from and we can talk about social media and and those types of aspects, but some of those thoughts were coming from me just constantly being on my phone, like searching this, searching that, and and I was so far deep in my head that I was finding myself not eating meals and so my weight started to decrease. Then, once I started to realize that then, once I tried to eat, I was feeling like I was. The thing is, feel like I was allergic to everything, like, oh, I can't eat this, I can't eat this, I can't eat this.

Speaker 1:

I was down eating carrots and plain hummus because that's crazy and it was, it was out of control and uh. And so I would say to you know, anybody out out there that you know is kind of going through things like yeah, like it it's hard to you know kind of swallow, swallow the pride.

Speaker 1:

Uh, even when I my therapist recommended, uh, as I had written one, one book on career preparation, advancement for teaching, and he had asked me, he said, you know, do you want to write, maybe you should write one about you know, your mental health, on your mental health journey, and I was like, oh, I can't do that because there were family members that weren't privy to some of the information. We had to kind of move it over why justin was in the hospital for five days, uh, and I finally swallowed my pride on that too, like maybe I, maybe I should like, because I was at that point that, even though I was recovering, I was constantly asking myself what am I here for?

Speaker 1:

like what is there left for me to do? I always had goal after goal after goal and at that point I went through all the education that I could, got my MBA. I accomplished a lot, traveling, wise relationship and I was like, well, what else is there? And I decided, okay, well, let me, let me do this, but I'm gonna have a ghost writer name I not going to use my own name because I can't let people know that they don't know what's happened about letting me read this book and they're like my son-in-law.

Speaker 2:

And so that happened.

Speaker 1:

And so I just followed my pride and he said, Justin, how are you going to promote it, how are you going to talk about it? You know it's just John Smith instead of Justin Downey, and those pieces that I have experienced and I still experience time and time and time. It really makes a lot of sense with what you're saying. There's up days, there's down days. Just take it one minute, one instant at a time. One of my other therapists said I'm safe, I'm okay, right now.

Speaker 1:

Maybe not the next instant or the next minute, but right now I am safe and I'm okay. Right now Maybe not, maybe not next, the next instant or the next minute, but right now I am safe and I'm okay. And seven years later I've remembered that from from that, that that counselor and I I use that a little bit as a coping and like, okay, I'm safe, I'm okay. Like you said, I've gotten through things before. I'll continue to do the best I can, but to know that I do have worth. And there are things that, if I'm still on earth, there's still things that God wants me to do. I don't know what those are, but I wouldn't be here if there wasn't.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think yeah, and having that sense of purpose, even when you was going through them hard times. You know, in what you're doing now, reflecting back on the 12 steps, the 12 steps is about carrying that message on, and you know what you're doing now is creating. In the book you wrote, creating that space for people to be okay with themselves. And you know, setting around the 12 step table for the first time, I finally, like you said, we get into our heads about I'm the only one like this, I'm the only one that's dealing with this. And you know, coming to the reality that your experience is really not that unique and the enemy doesn't have any real new tactics, and you know he's just fighting with us in an isolated field which we were never meant to be on by ourselves. You know. So you know carrying this message to the people around us and the ones that are struggling that you're not alone. And so I sat around a 12-step table for the first time. I finally felt that I was accepted in the middle of my not alone. And so I sat around a 12-step table for the first time. I finally felt that I was accepted in the middle of my brokenness. And if we could bring that. People that maybe never even get to a 12-step table or maybe even never get to an evaluation mental health evaluation it doesn't mean they don't need it, it just means they never got there. But us being able to carry that message and be that support for healing can be there for people that maybe don't have access or are not in the mental health space to reach out for that access, reach out for that support. So you know, I think what you're doing here and what you're going to continue to do is going to provide a lot of healing and that's what.

Speaker 2:

What you know, all I could do as an army chaplain is come in with who God's made me to be. I can't be another chaplain, I can't be this chaplain or that chaplain and you can't be another. You, like, you know you are the gift that God has given the people that are in your spirit of influence, and I say to you and anyone else to be that gift, right, be that gift that God's created you, to be in the spirit of influence you have. It could be a gift for your family, it could be a gift for your local community, but just live in that and know that you are a gift and what you say is important.

Speaker 2:

How you treat others is important. You know, you don't always have to just wait for someone to reach out to you Be that bridge of help and support for someone else. And it's amazing how, when you become that bridge, you start, you start to it starts to be that bridge for yourself, because when you're helping it's hard to isolate. Bridge for yourself, because when you're helping it's hard to isolate, right? Yeah, you know, when you're giving back, it's hard to feel alone because you start getting in the fight with others.

Speaker 1:

You know right, yeah, as we uh wrap up the second episode, time just seems to go quick uh having having these good conversations. As far as resources, how how can individuals uh learn or they're ready to reach out? How, how and where would you recommend, recommend, knowing? That we don't have all the answers but, just if somebody's going through a rough patch and they're like, okay, I've had it. Yeah, I've had it with what? What's going on? I'm ready now yeah what?

Speaker 1:

what type of uh, you know recommendations or or pointing in the direction. What would you be able to help with?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I think. I think it all all depends on, um, what you're struggling with, right, but I'm a chaplain so I'm always going to uh, direct people to the local church. But I think the strongest community I've ever seen active which I haven't been exposed to all of them is the 12-step community. The thing with 12-step community is that you have alcohol, you have NA, you have SA with sexaholics, you have open groups. So any open group, even if it's AA and it's an open group, you could go in there if you don't even have an addiction and you just want to be around a supportive group. Your local hospitals usually have some kind of suicidal ideation group, support group, grief recovery groups. A lot of these groups meet online too. So a quick search in your local area for these groups can be beneficial.

Speaker 2:

But get plugged in Like when I talk about a local church I'm not throwing a dart at a wall. There's different. There's different types of churches. So there's churches that are community based and community focused, that will be integrated with your local support systems and your hospitals and stuff and they're they're really in Akron. I would say that you start looking at churches that have a lot of outreach programs and these are people that will know resources in the area.

Speaker 2:

But a quick Google search can find you the local 12 step and you're just looking for even if you're not an alcoholic, you're looking for that open, that open part where you're able to come in and facilitate or just sit there and listen, you don't have to say anything, and, especially if you're feeling lonely and you're feeling isolated, go to an open meeting. Like just go to an open meeting, listen to people tell their stories. And I think that because you could pretty much find an open meeting every day of the week, and I know so, if we got a counselor, we got this kind of resources, the medical, but they're a timeframe right. They're waiting for an appointment there and I think one of the things we don't have in mental health are like open meetings, you know find somewhere to go every night and in Akron I know you could basically you could find somewhere to go every night.

Speaker 2:

And the biggest thing when somebody is dealing with mentalron I know you could basically you could find somewhere to go every night. And the biggest thing when somebody is dealing with mental health, I think, is not letting yourself isolate. And that's the biggest thing with addiction too so there's a lot of connection between the two communities is not letting yourself isolate. So you might not be able to find a church that's open every night. You might not be able to find a mental health that's open every night, but I guarantee you can find a 12 step and they have virtual If you feel uncomfortable. They have virtual groups now that you can just join online just by going to aacom and getting a or aiorg or something like that. Just search up AA I'll call it synonymous and their main page will come up.

Speaker 2:

I think it's a dart org, but I think it is a real good place to start, even for non addicts. Celebrate recovery in your area too. But I know local churches have a lot of them. Has stopped, discontinued that because I think it's ran its course in some communities, because it doesn't have the same staying power as a 12 step, because everybody in 12 steps that it there's no end to it. And how celebrate recovery works on a certain week model. It almost felt like there was an end to it, but people that are in 12-step communities understand there's no period to the end of your recovery.

Speaker 1:

so right and I think they start there. Yeah, I think that's. That's a huge message is there, is it's not like you break a leg or you know something physical like that where your surgery or whatever you can. You can tell when that something is healed. Yes, these, you know the things we're talking about.

Speaker 1:

They come and they go, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter yeah you know we might be great, doing great for a month and then we have a couple days that we're really down and I think that's important, that I've even come across with family, friends, colleagues of like, oh oh, justin, you're doing great. I'm like, no, I'm kind of like you were mentioning, I like to stay busy. So it's like as long as I have something to do, then we're good. I'm moving the ball forward and I think just understand us being supportive, that if somebody is a family member or somebody knows somebody that is potentially going through something, just listen and you don't have to bring up you know exactly what. You know the verbage on mental health and all you should be diagnosed, all that, just listen like hey what?

Speaker 1:

are you up to? I'm watching the game.

Speaker 1:

Oh what just have a like a human interaction, human connection, yeah and like, like you had mentioned, with each night of the week potentially, or, yeah, finding who has what meeting when. That's something that I wish I would have done before I had the crash. But but I wasn't ready for it, like I, I wasn't, I wasn't past my ego, I wasn't past that. You know, I've had it. It wasn't until the hospital did and I was like all right, like I don't know if I'm going to make it, if I, if I don't do this, like I'm not dying right this minute. But maybe you know, I again, that whole waiting period, all I got to wait a month to see somebody. Yeah, the waiting period, it's real.

Speaker 2:

Overbooked in medical mental health is the same way as overbooked in a regular doctor appointment. Like it happens the same in the military. It's that I think community is where we're at right you said so. If we could have them and just be like listening here and not worry about if they gonna get diagnosed, let somebody else handle that. But I think that's sometime a cop out and you need to see somebody. But that might be true, but while you're telling them they need to go see somebody, you be that person they're seeing now, right?

Speaker 1:

yeah, absolutely well, we've, uh, unfortunately hit our mark for the two episodes. I can't thank you enough again to your service, the country and then the Army community as chaplain and even as being on our show. And sharing as transparent as can be is helpful to get other perspectives of like, wow, this stuff doesn't have to be scary, like we're just regular people. We're just going one moment at a time, one step at a time. One day it may look like we're doing good today but maybe tomorrow maybe not you just call me on a good day, right.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so. Chaplain and Yancey, thank you again for being on two episodes with us and we will definitely stay in touch and, uh, we will be, uh, putting this out to our, our audiences, uh, in february, so we'll we'll get that information to you the closer we get to that um, and until next time, thank you again for dealing with the calendar and the different systems. We got it together. That's all that matters.

Speaker 2:

That's all that matters.

Speaker 1:

All right, brother, thanks, take care you too.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for tuning in to our episode part two with Chaplain Yancey. We found both parts part one and part two of our conversations very eye-opening being able to get Chaplain Yancey's experience in the military and as being the you know the spiritual side as well, and then being able to just talk as a transparent individual, of challenges that he has been through as well as helping others, and how his interest came to be with now being that Army chaplain, that army chaplain. So if you are interested in learning more about that, we would refer you to the great internet of things, checking out Google. But more importantly, we're talking about the spiritual side, the Pentecostal Theological Seminary. So that would probably be where we'd point you first Check out that website, that program, and see if that might be something that is for you or for somebody that you may know. So until next time, I am your host, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, justin Allen Hayes, and until then, we hope that you are a voice for you or somebody in need.

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