It's an Inside Job
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It's an Inside Job
Losing the Uniform, Losing Yourself: Finding Identity, Purpose & Community Again After the Military with Lee James Hanna
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“What veterans need more than anything is a new mission. We’re built to serve others, to protect. Give us purpose again and incredible things happen.” - Lee James Hanna
In this episode, I sit down with Army veteran and Western Regional Veterans Program Manager, Lee James Hanna, to unpack the hidden struggles of transitioning from military to civilian life—addiction, PTSD, moral injury—and the practical tools of purpose, community, and self-compassion that support real recovery and resilience for veterans.
Bio
Lee James Hanna is the Western Regional Veterans Program Manager for New Dawn Treatment Centers, where he advocates for Veterans struggling with substance use disorders and the lingering impact of trauma. A 100% disabled U.S. Army Veteran and former Airborne Infantryman who served in OEF X–XII, Lee’s understanding of resilience is grounded in lived experience—both in combat and in the long road of recovery afterward.
Lee has navigated the lasting effects of PTSD and a traumatic brain injury caused by IED blasts, along with the difficult transition many Veterans face when returning to civilian life. For years, he felt unsupported by the very systems meant to help. Those challenges shaped his passion for ensuring Veterans are treated with urgency, dignity, and cultural understanding.
Today, Lee works closely with VA facilities across California and Nevada to break down barriers to care and make sure Veterans receive timely, appropriate treatment. He is known for his candid communication style, his deep grasp of military culture, and his commitment to helping Veterans rebuild stability and purpose.
Website: https://www.newdawntreatmentcenters.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lee-james-hanna-b031b3154/
Content Warning
This episode includes discussion of combat trauma, PTSD, traumatic brain injury, addiction, and a suicide attempt.
If this conversation made you think of a veteran—or anyone—who might be carrying more than they can say, share this episode with them or simply check in and ask how they’re really doing. And if you’d like more episodes on resilience, purpose, and the psychology of real change, follow or subscribe.
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This is It's an Inside Job, and I'm your host, Jason Lim. This is the show where we explore the stories, strategies, and science behind growing resilience, nurturing well-being, and leading with intent. Because when it comes down to it, it's all an inside job. Music. There's a moment most people never see in military life. The day the uniform comes off, the mission disappears, and the structure that held you together just, well, it just stops. For a lot of veterans, that's when things actually get the most chaotic on the inside. What do you do when your identity was built around the next mission, the next deployment, the next order? And suddenly there is no next, just silence, bills, and a brain that won't stand down. Today, I'm joined by someone who has lived that reality from the inside. Lee James Hanna, who's an Army veteran and a former Airborne Infantryman. He's now the Western Regional Veterans Program Manager for New Dawn Treatment Centers, where he works with veterans facing addiction, PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and the difficult transition back into civilian life. In this conversation, we get into what really happens when the military cuts you loose within a two-week briefing, and a stack of benefit forms, but no real roadmap. We talk about the drinking culture that can follow veterans home, and why so many feel defeated when disability claims and support systems move at a glacial pace, and why the invisible wounds of trauma and moral injury show up as anger, avoidance, or self-destruction long before they show up in a file. We'll also explore what actually helps, veteran-specific treatment, the power of being understood by people who've been in uniform, and how simple, compassionate self-talk can interrupt nightmares, suicidal ideation, and the years of self-blame in a way that white-knuckling sobriety never could. And if you listen through to the end you'll hear the single mindset shift that helped lee move from feeling broken and disposable to building a life anchored in purpose again a shift that might just change how you think about your own resilience whether you've served or not so now let's slip into the stream and meet lee james hannah, Lee, welcome to It's an Inside Job. Thanks for having me. Could we kick off by you introducing who you are and what you do? Yeah. So, my name's Lee. I'm a United States Army veteran from the Sacramento area of California. And I am the Western Regional Veterans Program Manager for New Danton Treatment Center. We are a substance abuse treatment center. And my main focus obviously with my title is our veteran and military population. And this is part of a series where i'm talking to ex-soldiers veterans about their transition from active duty back to civilian life back to the real world and how that transition can be very difficult for many because their sense of purpose brotherhood sense of meaning it's completely flipped per se when they get back to civilian life and for many of us who are civilians have never been in active duty per se it's something that we generally don't think of but can wrap and it's hard for us to wrap our head around and i think many of us can learn especially if we have veterans or soldiers that are in our lives per se how we can help and some of the tough challenges they have to face. Maybe we can begin. Could we do a little background or backstory of what brought you to this space presently? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I joined the military a little bit later. I was 21. I, you know, tried to call a drought, which really wasn't for me. And I was naive to anything to do with the armed forces. And so I initially tried to join the Air Force. And for various reasons, one being, you know, I had gotten into some trouble between the ages of 18 and 21 with just stupid, you know, marijuana and things like that. And so the Air Force actually turned me down. But the Army recruiter was waiting outside for me. And, you know, I signed up with the United States Army. I became an airborne infantryman and pretty much shipped out to basic training as quickly as I could. A lot of people thought, you know, that I wouldn't do very well. I was kind of a hothead, didn't really like being told what to do. But I actually thrived. You know, I really, really enjoyed my time in the military. It made me grow up very, very quickly. I was fortunate enough to have my first duty station was in Vicenza in Italy with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. And the 173rd, they're a storied and well-known brigade. And a lot of people really, you know, they try to get over to Italy because not only is it a unique place geographically, but the unit itself is very well-respected, very square away. And from there I deployed to Afghanistan we went to a region in Afghanistan in the northeast called Kunar pretty heavy combat area a lot of. A lot of bad guys, I'll put it that way, in that part of Afghanistan. We were there for most of the deployment, and then we transitioned over to a place called Ghazni in Paktika province. After I returned back from my first deployment, I went to Fort Lewis up in Washington state and deployed back to Afghanistan. Um and and uh my second deployment i deployed to um to draw a blank but you served two tours of duty in afghanistan yeah correct um and so and it was on that last deployment where um i was actually hurt a number of times and uh ultimately decided once i got back that i was going to get out of the military and transitioned from fort lewis washington back into the civilian world and i, perhaps we could if could we explore that you know so your military career in itself sense how many years was that approximately just five years five years and the majority of that was served in italy and afghanistan or in the theater of afghanistan in two deployments correct yeah and and so could you describe you know uh i had clay uh previously on as you know him too and he he spoke to his personal challenges making that transition how was it for you lee to make that transition from a uniform back to jeans and t-shirts kind of thing yeah yeah uh it's a. From my understanding, they do things a lot better now, but in 2013, when I was transitioning out of the military, it was about a two-week block of instruction. They go over your benefits. In the United States, we have the Veterans Affairs Administration. It's a branch of the federal government, and they're supposed to take care of veterans that have served the country. And there's different benefits that we earn, such as free education, help with purchasing houses or starting businesses. And then for some of us, we also get health care. And I say some of us, it all depends on your service-connected disability. And so when you're in the military, if you get injured, you submit a claim to this department within the federal government, and they give you a percentage of what your disability rating is. When I initially got out, I was at 70%. I had a traumatic brain injury and some other things from, uh, some, uh, a number of roadside bombs that my vehicles hit. And, um, And so that was, you know, they teach you all about that, to go back, excuse me. But it's very just kind of factory setting. They get you in, they get you out, you stamp your paper, and, you know, say thank you, and you're on your way. And so when I got back home, I moved back to California. You know, I stayed with my parents for a few weeks while I was figuring out where I was moving to and things like that. But I didn't have a job set up. I didn't really have a place to go. I had a great relationship with my parents, and they were gracious and let me come back for a short amount of time. But I really had nothing set up. I had this GI Bill benefit that was the education benefit that will pay veterans to go back to school. So my idea was, okay, well, I'll go back to school. Um i'll submit my disability claim and i'll live on the money from my disability claim and my school money um but what they don't tell you is at the time the disability claims were taken about two or three years to be processed wow um you know those payments were back paid um but it took a very long time um and a lot of veterans were you know just waiting for that to come in so they could get healthcare services so they could get, you know, address the things that were wrong with them. A lot of a lot of soldiers or Marines, Airmen are coming home with invisible wounds. You know, I mean, everybody has seen the veterans that, you know, unfortunately have lost a limb or, you know, physical scars, but it's the invisible scars that a lot of people don't see and don't really understand. And those are the ones that plague a lot of veterans. And, um. So I was scrambling, you know, when I, when I got home, I was scrambling and, um, I actually started working as a bartender and probably not the best job for me. Um, you know, I, I came from an environment where there was a lot of structure and I had a purpose every single day. And then I went into this world of, you know, staying up late and partying and, and, you know, really not having much structure at all. Um and that that carried on for a while until um it was no longer feasible and um you know i started to make some really poor decisions um at this point you know i pretty much become a full-blown alcoholic um amongst other things and um i think a lot of that was just you know and i own a lot of that too that was poor planning on my part when i left the military um but i think that at the time in the military really didn't help people with that transition much at all if i may ask you said you're you're kind of struggling and such an alcohol was the alcohol to sort of numb out some ptsd you may have or was it part of the lack of structure and you just found yourself in you know in in the world of partying and such or what was it that kind of spun you out per se Okay. Yeah. Well, the military, all branches of the military, there's a very robust drinking culture. You know, you get back from deployment, you drink, you're getting ready to deploy, you drink, you know, you, you know, I was airborne. So, yeah, a couple of nights before we would go jump out of airplanes, we would drink any excuse. You know, in Italy, a lot of the guys over there, they've never been able to illegally drink. And then they get to a European country where you can drink if you can see over the bar. And so, you know, they take full advantage of that. And so I was already a pretty heavy drinker when I left the military or before I joined the military, excuse me. And then so wanting to fit in, you know, and calm the nerves of deploying or celebrating because I got back from deployment, you know, and then once I had deployed, you know, there were... Issues that I came home with, you know, the PTSD from combat, from the roadside bombs that I spoke about earlier. I would have some pretty gnarly nightmares. And so in order not to have those nightmares or not remember them, I would drink myself to sleep. And so, you know, couple that in with me being a bartender, unlimited access to alcohol. It just continued to spiral. And, you know, alcoholism is a progressive disease, you know, and yes, it's hereditary, but it's also something that grows over time. People don't just start drinking and immediately become an alcoholic, you know, and my drinking wasn't always problematic. It wasn't towards the end. It wasn't until towards the end of my time in the military that I started to see some troubles with my drinking. So what do you feel was the sort of bottom point where in the transition that you kind of kind of picked yourself up or what was the wake up call for you? I had a couple. You know, I wish I could say that I figured it out the first time around. You know, I had a suicide attempt in 2015. You know, I intentionally overdosed on a number of different substances. You know, be it divine intervention or whatever it may be. But some things all fit for me not to perish on that evening. And, you know, I went into a substance abuse treatment center, much like the one I work in now, you know, and got out and stayed sober for a little bit, but just fell right back into it. I could always, you know, alcoholics are really good at lying to themselves and telling themselves that they can they can handle it this time around. And I thought, you know, I'm a soldier. I deployed a bunch of times. Alcohol is not going to have a stranglehold over me. But it did. um you know and i continued to do the same things over and over again um you know i'd go back to bartending and try and stay sober and it would never last long um but it was actually the birth of my first child um that was that was the beginning of the end of you know my my downward spiral uh it wasn't immediate unfortunately um you know the first year of my son's life i I struggled with my mental health. I struggled with relapsing and going in and out of treatment center. But none of the treatment centers were really designed to handle veterans. A lot of them were kind of some 12-step AA meetings and maybe like a workbook that, you know, how do you feel today type thing. But it was, The combination of, you know, my son being born, and I think I just got to a point where I just no longer wanted to be the person that I was. You know, I didn't have a relationship with my family. I had no career aspirations. I had nothing. I had no place of my own. I had a vehicle, but that was about it. And so I wanted more for my child. And at the time i didn't really have a very fond um view of myself you know a lot of people when you get a lot of people when you get sober they say well you've got to do it for yourself well, i thought i was a complete dirtbag um i didn't really feel like i deserved to be you know walking amongst regular people but i knew my son needed more from me um and so that was the catalyst to change was with my son being born. Well, thank you very much for sharing that because I would like to, you know, shift from your story to where it brings you now with the New Dawn Center. So, you know, as you've articulated right now, Lee, you've served on in combat and now you're helping veterans rebuild their lives. So before we get into the sort of the deeper layers of what you do now, can you share what your day-to-day looks like at New Dawn? And the kind of struggles veterans bring through the door? Yeah, so we're mostly in the Sacramento area, but we do have facilities in Central California. We have a facility in Reno, Nevada. And then we're opening up a really huge project in Alaska because there's actually more veterans per capita in Alaska than there is anywhere else in the country. And also Alaska has a huge substance abuse problem, a huge mental health and suicide problem. And so my CEO, you know, my boss saw that there was a need there. He's not a veteran himself, but he, you know, when they brought me on almost three years ago, he's been phenomenal. My director has been phenomenal with anything veteran related. They're like, yeah, let's do it. Let's get it done. And so they look to underserved communities where there's a lot of veterans. I mean, we serve everybody. We serve civilians. But my main focus, my lane is the veteran and military community. And so I don't see veterans at all of these programs. And my day-to-day is... I work with the local VA hospitals, and so there's, you know, VA hospitals dotted all around the country, and veterans can go there and get their, you know, their health care just like any other hospital for a civilian. You know, but veterans struggle. I think 14 or 18 percent of veterans last year were diagnosed with a substance abuse problem in the United States. And so it's a huge epidemic that we're dealing with in the veteran community. And so I work with the local veterans affairs. I work with the doctors and the social workers and the case managers. A veteran will come into them and they will, you know, the VA can't treat all of them. They don't have the infrastructure for it. So that's why they lean on companies like mine. We're called community care partners. And so they will send the veterans to us to get their substance abuse treatment. And so usually when a veteran is sent over to us, I will reach out to the veteran first. Being a veteran myself. I can usually get them to lower their walls a little bit and kind of lower their defenses and let them know, like, hey, look, you know, I'm a veteran. I'm in recovery. I've been in your shoes. I know how much it sucks. I know that you're scared right now, but you've done the hardest part. The hardest part for a lot of veterans is reaching out and asking for help because we're taught, you know, don't surrender, you know, hold the line, don't give up. And so reaching out and saying hey i need help i'm struggling is not something that's really ingrained in a veteran's dna and so when they've done that like they already feel defeated they already feel like they've failed and so my main focus in that first initial conversation with them is just to reassure them that that's not what's happened and that what they've done is actually a massive sign of bravery and courage, you know, and so just try to make them feel, uh comfortable and know that they have another veteran here that's going to be working with them um you know and some days i may bounce around between all the facilities and i go check with those veterans and i find out you know like is everything here going okay for you um are your medications because we do medication management but we get them still from the va um and so you know if their meds aren't where they need to be then i'll i'll work with the doctors that we have on staff, or I'll work with the VA pharmacists. I'll speak to their families, and I'll give their families some peace of mind. And then I also do outreach. I'll go out into the community. I go to various different veterans events, different nonprofits that work with veterans, charity events and stuff like that, and just get the word out there. A lot of people don't know that there are resources for veterans that are struggling with addiction um and so if they don't know to ask the va you know they're not really going to run out there and tell them because it's going to cost them money and at the end of the day you know the va has a bottom line and they have budgets and you know they it sucks to say but they don't want to treat every single veteran and so part of my job is to educate those veterans and let them know what's out there for them what patterns do you see more most often what do you think what tends to help people to, or help these veterans to start rebuilding stability and resilience in their lives? So the resilience is, I mean, for me, it's giving them a purpose again. Yesterday, I met with one of my veterans. Obviously, I won't share names. And she's a Naval Academy graduate. She was a female officer in the Marine Corps, which that in and of itself is rare. You don't really get females in the Marine Corps. But her and I were talking, and she said, I have no purpose. And for me and my experience for me personally and just in my career that is what veterans need more than anything is they need a new mission i mean well veterans that are struggling with you know mental health and addiction they need a new mission they need a new purpose and whether that's working with other veterans whether that's you know volunteering at a food bank or just we're built to serve others we're built to protect and so finding someone in your community that you can serve is a really good place to start you know veterans are tenacious and when they put their minds to it they can get anything done but it's giving them that purpose you know a lot of them don't know where to start so you know that is for me, that's the first place to start like what can your new mission be what can your new purpose be and you know maybe it's not helping veterans maybe it's helping older people in your community you know maybe maybe your kids special needs you know and go home go help the kids in the special needs community that are you know with your kid like something something to give you purpose every day where you wake up and you know that you're making a difference. So by serving others through volunteer, through some sort of community service, slowly you see that these veterans start to see that what they do has meaning for others, that it does help and support others. And then there's a feedback loop that gives them, as you said, the sense of meaning, sense of purpose. Do you find that to be a very strong common denominator with those individuals that you've worked with over the years? Yeah, absolutely. You know, veterans are all so incredibly different, but there are common threads that run through the veteran community. And, you know, veterans tend to connect best with other veterans who understand what, you know, maybe not a veteran who, they don't have to have been combat heavy or, you know, But you don't have to deploy or be a combat arms veteran to understand having a purpose and a mission because everybody in the military has that. And everybody in the military thrives when there is that, you know, that purpose and that mission to go off of. It's chaos when there's not. Nobody knows what to do, you know. And that rings true when we leave, when we take off our uniform for the last time. That rings true still, you know, and I mean, who better to help your community than somebody who has served in the military, you know, and people respect that, especially here in the United States, like people respect people, you know, they respect law enforcement, they respect military, they respect firefighters and first responders. And that you know i i've seen it time and time and time again where veterans that i've helped in this in this field they've taken their pain and they've used that as motivation to serve their communities and incredible things happen you know communities prosper the veteran thrives the veterans families thrive you know and it just it's all encompassing and once they're given that purpose again, beautiful things start to happen. In the military, you have the Band of Brothers. You have that sense of brotherhood, right? You may not be fighting for the country, but you're fighting for those around you, as I understand it. And so how important is this sense of connection, brotherhood, sense of community when helping a veteran to transition back to the civilian life to find the sense of purpose and meaning again? How is that built into what New Dawn does? Well, it's everything. You know, like me, one of the things that happens when you leave the service or when you dive deep into your addiction is you isolate, you know, and especially for the veterans coming home because now they're no longer surrounded by people who wear the same uniform as them. They have the same haircuts and same stupid tattoos you know like you're you're you're home and you may be around people that you grew up with and you spent 20 years of your life with before the military but they don't understand what the last five years or the last 22 years of your life were like and so you know with new dawn we we house all of our vet where we try to house all of our veterans together because, veterans have a dark humor that sometimes can offend some people and so to protect our veterans we try to house them together we have, actually a good friend of mine just got hired on he's a marine corps veteran but he's now one of our therapists. So who better to help with the therapy aspect of that than a veteran who's deployed himself and so we just try to, Just little things that really you wouldn't think would make a difference make the world a difference, you know, and furthermore, like tying them into the veteran community. You know, there's some areas aren't as robust as others, but especially like I spoke about our facilities in Reno, you know, Nevada has an incredible veteran community. You know, the local VA there is fantastic. The State Department of Veteran Services, there's a ton of nonprofits. You know, New Dawn has a facility there. And the veteran that I spoke about earlier, the Naval Academy graduate, she is from Reno. And she's down here in Sacramento in one of our women's facilities. But I told her, you know, when you're ready to go back home, I've got a huge community to tie you into with because you need that. You know, it's like when you talk about raising children like it takes a village. Well, you know, veterans need that village, too. You know, it's a village of other veterans and, you know, you don't have to be a global war on terror veteran. You know, you can be a Vietnam veteran or a Cold War era veteran or a peacetime veteran. It doesn't matter. When you've worn that uniform, you know what that means and you know the sacrifices that it's taken, the resilience needed to, you know, to prosper once you leave. And, you know, so for the veterans that are struggling and falling behind, having another brother or sister pick them up, you know, it's exactly what they need. I'd like to circle back to something you mentioned, sort of invisible injuries. You've been candid about the lasting effects of PTSD and the IED blast that you took in your second deployment. How have combat trauma or brain injury shaped your understanding of resilience and recovery? Um, it's taking patience, you know, for a long time. Um, I thought it was a moral defect in myself. You know, I was, I was quick to anger. Um, I was constantly forgetting everything. You know, my wife makes fun of me now because I never know where my keys are. Um, but you know, I would prior to my relationship with my wife, you know, like my, the PTSD and the traumatic brain injuries would have impacts on my relationships that I didn't understand, you know, and how I dealt with stress and all of these different things, you know, it all tied back into these invisible injuries. And that's another thing that, you know, on top of what we do as far as treating the addiction part with New Dawn, We also treat the mental health side of things, you know, and I completely lost track of where I was going there. No, no, I was just wondering, you know, how yourself, because you said it takes a lot of patience, you know, and it's to understand that, you know, we might think, oh, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken or what have you. But a lot of us sometimes... Find it difficult because when we can't see an actual physical injury and as you said an invisible injury you know if someone's not as some visible injury or have lost a limb and such then we can say okay he or she has seen combat but sometimes we don't register that so much when you know it's it's it's an injury that's a mental or an emotional injury and i guess my question to you is what did you learn about yourself transitioning from i don't know maybe self-flagellation or being self-critical about yourself to showing more self-compassion for yourself to help in your recovery in your resilience in this transition yeah i just hope my uh i had a really great therapist he was again another veteran um you know and he he kind of put it to me this way he He said, you know, when you when your soldiers would come to you or even when they come to you now, years removed from the military and they say, hey, you know, sorry, Hannah, like I'm really struggling, suicidal on this. I'm not, you know, what do you do? I'm like, well, I try and help him out. I try and talk him through it. He said, so then why is it that when you're struggling, you beat yourself down and you talk down to yourself and you view yourself as being weak or less than? And he said, you know, you... Your inner voice, your inner, you know, motivator is a drill sergeant, but it needs to be somebody with compassion and understanding. And that really stuck with me. You know, I took a step back and I noticed how I would talk to myself. And, you know, positive self-talk is something that I started using, you know, like when I would get stressed out or when I would wake up with a nightmare. Or when I would start having suicidal ideations, or I would forget my keys, or I would make a mistake, you know, with a temper flare or something like that. Instead of beating myself up with it, I would just try and talk myself through it. And that has been, it's been a big shift for me. You know, it's not, I'm not perfect. I still will talk down to myself and get frustrated with myself. you know but it's. I know that it's a work in progress, and that's something I try to share with the other veterans as well. It's like this is, you know, for years we were on edge because we were in combat or we were ingrained to react to certain things this way or this way or this way. So you're not going to switch everything over at the drop of a dime. You know, it's going to take practice just like in the military. We trained and trained and trained and trained. well we have to train and train and train our brains now to do things differently yeah train the brain so lee to shift your mind talk to shift your self-talk from one that's destructive to one that's more constructive it sounds like obviously you needed to be self-aware you had to be in the moment listening to the unhelpful narrative that your brain was spitting out but then you'd have to step back and become the author of that narrative what would you say to yourself i mean you you talk about self-compassion and such you know let's say you had a flare-up you forgot your keys you you wake up from a horrible nightmare and such how did you become the what what would you say to yourself as an example to shift to a more constructive mind talk, To be honest, just talking to myself like I would talk to my kids. Not babying myself, because I don't baby my children, but I'm not harsh with them. If they spill the milk, I'm not chopping their head off. Hey man, it's no big deal. Let's grab some napkins, let's clean it up. That's how I try to approach things now, because beating myself up serves nobody any good. Especially not me. And so, honestly, I just try to talk to myself like I talk to my kids. You know, if I make a mistake, all right, man, you made a mistake. What do we got to do to fix it? You know, this is, we got a couple options here, a couple options there. What do you think we should do? Let's do it. You know, and, and I will audibly talk to myself out loud. You know, I'm sure some people driving by me think I'm crazy. Um, but sometimes that helps when I verbalize it out loud. Yeah. When I used to work with trauma, like a lot of what you say is so salient and astute that I think it's, it sounds very basic, but these simple techniques of talking to yourself, talking out loud, verbalizing or giving tangible words to your thoughts and emotions actually helps you process thoughts and emotions much at a faster rate. And as you said, also, it's like I talk to myself as I would talk to my kids, you know, and that moves us from a subjective state to a more of an objective state. We find some sort of emotional dissociation a little, so we're not so entangled with the emotions and we can see things much more with greater perspective. And I think also, what I've also found helpful is that we don't use personal pronouns, but we can use third person pronouns. Like you would, I would say to myself, Jason, you know, just calm down. You spilt the milk. There's nothing to do. Let's pick it up. By using third person pronouns or using my own name when I'm talking to myself, that also gives me distance. That also gives me an objective perspective out of the subjective of storm. So I think everything you're saying, I just wanted to dive into that, Lee, because I think it's so important. We don't have to be veterans. A lot of us are so self-critical. We use self-flagellation all the time. We pour compassion on everyone else except ourselves. So the points you speak to are super relevant for any of us, you know, how we can shift the mind talk, what we tell ourselves. Absolutely. Absolutely. And like you said, it works for everybody. In my career, like I don't just work with the veterans in the military. I work with everybody in my treatment centers and they're all down on their luck. And so, treating somebody less than or talking down to somebody, like I said before, it helps nobody. And so, lift yourself up and remind yourself that, hey, people make mistakes. I make mistakes. You make mistakes. But all we got to do is just pick it up and keep moving. Part of New Dawn's service, do you sometimes get veterans to sit in a group and talk about their challenges, or is it more of a one-to-one type of service? No. We use a number of different modalities. We use evidence-based, so like ACT, EMDR, brain spotting, all different types of modalities. But we also do one-on-one therapies. We do, you know, group therapies. You know, we do most of our homes, with the exception of our facility in Reno. And I say homes because they're in residential type settings. Like they're not sterile hospital type settings, but they are gender specific. And we found that to be most beneficial, most therapeutic, you know, for for some when you're first getting sober, you know, like you can latch on to the opposite sex as a means of comfort or something like that so to avoid that distraction you know we we separate the the genders and so we will have um groups that are very specific to men in recovery and we'll have groups that are very specific to women in recovery you know and then for our veterans we have ptsd specific groups you know and um and And we'll talk about, we encourage them to talk about their traumatic events, their PTSD, their combat situations, because they've got to get it out and they have to feel safe in talking about it. Because often when veterans get home too, like... They won't really talk about those things because they don't want to scare anybody. They don't want to be viewed as violent or crazy or anything like that. And so when they're in a safe and therapeutic environment and they can get that off their chest, you know, like, yeah, like we were in an ambush or a firefight and my friend got shot. And, you know, this is how I was feeling in that moment. And they can process that with other veterans or, you know, our therapist who is a veteran. It's it helps take the pain out it helps them process through you know maybe they've got survivor's guilt or um you know they felt like they should have done something in this combat situation and it didn't happen and somebody got hurt and they they carry guilt or anger for that and we help them process with that and when they're sitting around the group i guess logically they know what their reactions are normal reactions to abnormal situations but when they sit around talking about their each of their experiences and they hear each of their own each everybody's sort of war story or experience does this help to sort of normalize that what i'm going through this is a normal thing because i'm not abnormal i'm not broken i'm not. Messed up i don't need to be fixed but these are normal human reactions to the craziness that we've experienced oh absolutely and you know like for me for example i started doing ptsd therapy at one of our local vet centers and i for the first two months i sat in the back of the room i really didn't say a whole lot of anything um and we get veterans like that that are very cautious um you You know, they don't like reliving their trauma and we don't force them to. But once they feel comfortable, you know, and they see other men opening up about their trauma, opening up about, you know, it's not just combat trauma. There's military sexual trauma that impacts male veterans at a much higher rate than a lot of people would know. You know, female veterans, I think it's one in three female veterans suffered from military sexual trauma. Uh male veterans i believe it's one in ten and that's what's reported um and so seeing other men or women open up about combat trauma or you know sexual trauma empowers them and shows them like this is a safe place nobody is jumping on social media and saying hey you know john said this and it's everything's protected under you know privacy laws and it empowers the veteran And it makes them feel safe and allows them to start working through and peeling back the layers of the onion so they can get to the core of what's really going on. Thank you for that. Yeah. As you've said, you've worked closely with a lot of VA facilities in California and Nevada. What do you find are the biggest barriers you see veterans running into? And if you could, Ali, what would you change if you had the power to fix this system tomorrow? Um, I mean, yeah, there's so many, um, I mean, uh, there's a long wait times. Um, you know, unfortunately a veteran can't just show up to the VA and say, Hey, I'm struggling. Let me give you a urine example, you know, a urine sample to prove that I'm struggling and then send me to treatment. Um, you know, there's assessments that the VA needs to do and they're backlogged and they're understaffed. Staffed um and so a lot of the times the veterans will go there thinking okay i'm ready for help i'm gonna get that help today but then they get sent home and told we'll get back to you well in that time between the day they show up to the va and the day they actually get back to the veteran that veteran has now gone on and continued to use you know maybe there's legal issues maybe there's overdoses there's more physical damage to their bodies um and also they may get to a point where they're like you know what i asked for help and nobody helped me so i don't want the help anymore a lot of veterans that happens to and then i will end up running back into them six months later you know i'll keep trying to call them or text them a lot of them i lose track of for a short while over a long while. And by the time I get back in touch with them, they've done untold amounts of damage to their lives, to their bodies, to their families. So I think the biggest one for me would just be how quick we are giving these services to these men and women. You know, I spoke about it earlier that veterans, We're not built to give up. We're not built to ask for help. And so when a veteran finally says, hey, I'm licked, like I need help, it has taken so much for them to get to that point. It has taken so much inner strength, and there's been such an inner battle because they're not built to give up that when they do that and they're told, okay we'll help you but just not right now or we can't help you right now we're too busy it's completely defeating for them and so that is to me one of the biggest ones um and unfortunately. Not everybody in the va is you know super compassionate and and uh shows a whole lot of empathy to some of these veterans which is unfortunate um and that's a very broad stroke you know there there are so many da's out there and so many of them are fantastic um but you know there are those out there that it's just a paycheck and when you're serving with people who have sacrificed so much it should be about more than just a paycheck i i i completely concur Sure. And, you know, sometimes in facilities that I've worked and I've felt it myself where, you know, you just see patient after patient after patient, it can sit on the therapist or the person trying to help. And you there's you reach a certain compassion fatigue. And I think it's so important to be able to cycle professionals through these facilities, bringing on fresh people who are willing. Because once you hit that compassion fatigue, you either need to take a sabbatical or time off because all of a sudden that human being who has served in whatever capacity and you just treat them as the problem needing to be fixed. I truly believe, and again, this is my opinion, you do more damage. You think you're fixing something, but you're not. You've just lost. It's just another nuts and bolts problem. And it's not nuts and bolts. It's a messy, complex thing. And you need to have your full faculties with you when you're helping someone moving from a distressed state to a more buoyant state. So I completely concur with what you're saying there. they're when i i i mean i've i've suffered from it myself the first year working for new dawn you know my company they were fantastic i i took three months off because i had never worked in this field before and i got a lot of secondhand trauma from working with my veterans you know hearing about their their combat trauma day in day out hearing about sexual trauma or you know the impact on their kids and their wives and and it took a lot out of me um and it was impacting my home life and and my mental health and so i i did i had to take a couple months off um you know and again my company they were phenomenal you know they told me to take as much time off as i want because they understood that i was of no use to anybody if i wasn't operating at a hundred percent you know and if if i'm like you said like if i've reached compassion fatigue what you know you you're just at that point you're just going through the motions there's no human element to what you're doing and you're just it's just like clockwork you know and and this this field and this specific demographic of the population that we're working with they deserve more than just you know factory setting they need that human touch they need. The empathy and the compassion and you know they need somebody to hear them and see them. You said before that resilience isn't about being unbreakable. How would you describe resilience to a veteran who might be listening right now, who may be carrying more weight than they can manage? Well, just like when we were in the military, you know, there's so many obstacles that were incredibly difficult to overcome. We didn't do it alone. You know, we had squads, we had teams, we had platoons, we had companies. And so you know resilience is something that you build with other people you build with other veterans and so you know if you don't have a local community of veterans reach out to the brothers and sisters that you serve with start there you know or start your own grassroots movement in your community to help other veterans there's like you know iron shines are iron sharpens iron they talk about that all the time but i also believe that you can build resilience off of other resilient people and and veterans you know we we thrive in the herd and so find your tribe again find your your veteran community and build resilience together we are coming close to the top of the hour uh lee and i'm very respectful of your time is there any last idea or thoughts that you would like to leave with our listeners today? Just, you know, for the veteran community out there, statistically speaking, you know, there's a large portion of us out there that are struggling with substance abuse or suicidal thoughts, mental health issues. And, you know, I mentioned it earlier, but it couldn't be more true that the bravest thing you can do is reach out and ask for help. Um you know whether you're like me and and you felt like you really didn't deserve to be around but you've got kids they need you around right and every time my phone rings and it's a number i don't recognize i worry that it's somebody you know it's a phone call that somebody i served with committed suicide because suicide rates are through the roof for the veteran community, you know we can break that statistic as a community you know there's all these different movements and non-profits and everything like that which are great but it starts with the individual veteran calling and checking on your buds um so you know if you're struggling, reach out that's you know that's what veterans or service members active duty we all know how to be there for the person our left and our right and that doesn't stop when you take off the uniform, lee lee hannah thank you very much for sharing your experience your vulnerability and you know and kudos super kudos for the service you and your colleagues at new dawn serve i think i think there there needs to be more services such as that you know if the va can't handle it all at all. Places like new dawn are a godsend for sure i appreciate that jason thank you and i appreciate your time and the platform to get the word out there um you know if one veteran hears this today and decides to go into treatment, then we did right. I agree. Thanks, Lee. Thanks for your time, man. Thanks, brother. If there's one thing I hope you carry with you from this conversation with Lee, it's this. The mission after the military is learning to give yourself the same loyalty and patience and compassion you would once reserve for everyone else. That inner shift from I'm broken to I'm worth treating like someone I care about is what made change possible for him. It matters because structure, treatment plans and community are all powerful. But if your inner voice is still talking to you like you're a failed soldier. They'll never fully land. When you start speaking to yourself the way you speak to your kids, your partner, or a brother, or sister-in-arms, especially on the bad days, you create enough psychological safety inside to actually use the tools you're given. So whether you're a veteran, a first responder, a leader, or just someone trying to hold it together under the surface, try this. The next time you catch yourself signaling in self-criticism, ask, would I say this to someone I'm responsible for? If the answer is no, then change the tone. The small act of self-respect, repeated often, is how resilience gets built in real life, not in slogans, but in quiet, consistent practice. Lee, thank you for your honesty, your service, and your willingness to talk about the parts of transition and recovery that most people never see. Your work with veterans through New Done and community care partners is more than a job. It's a new mission and it came through clearly in everything you shared today, so thanks for that. If this episode made you think of someone, especially a veteran, consider sharing it with them or simply checking in. Those small gestures can matter more than we realize. And if you like more conversations like this about resilience, purpose, leadership, and the psychology behind how we actually change, well, make sure to follow or subscribe to It's an Inside Job so you don't miss what's coming next. Well, thank you for allowing me to be part of your week and joining me for another episode. This is your host, Jason Lim, signing out. And until next time, keep well, keep strong, and we'll speak soon.
