Clear The Beds: Moral Injury And impact on Veterans
In this episode, we have the privilege of hosting a distinguished guest, an Air Force veteran, Ret. CMSgt Dave Nordel, who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the podcast to talk about his transition and moral injury.
One of the most profound topics we delve into is the concept of moral injury. Our guest sheds light on what moral injury is, how to recognize it, and the importance of addressing this often-hidden aspect of veterans' mental and emotional well-being. Among the powerful stories our guest shares is the "Clear the Beds" story that you don't want to miss!
Dave is also helping companies and organizations work better with veteran employees by training them on how to interact and support veterans in the workforce. The VET Ready program is a valuable resource for companies looking to enhance their skills and readiness for providing veterans great employment options. We learn about the program's offerings and how it plays a crucial role in supporting veterans' independence and life after service.
In This Episode We Cover:
Dave's transition
What is moral injury and how to recognize it.
"Clear the beds" story.
Veterans in the workplace.
VET Ready training program.
Battle Buddy Podcast Guest Links:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-kangaroo-leadership-by-118196974/
Transcript from Episode 112 with Dave Nordel:
Keith McKeever 0:02
Hey, welcome back to another episode of battle buddy podcast. I've got a tremendous guest for you today, fellow Air Force vet. And we're going to talk about a lot of things, you know, like moral injury transitions, some deep stuff. So, you know, first and foremost, just want to say, you know, that if you're struggling with anything, remember the number to call is 988. Right? I just want to throw that out there right away, just in case anything gets heavy. But we're gonna talk about transition and a lot of those things. And like I said, moral injury, workplace and a lot of other things. So without further ado, we'll bring my guest in. Welcome to the battle buddy podcast with Keith McKeever. So today I've got Dave, Nortel. So Dave, welcome to the show. Hey, kid, thanks. Yeah. Well, welcome to the show. So glad to have you on here. And I always love talking about all these topics, especially when we first talked and talked about moral injury. We'll get to that here in a minute. But before we do, tell us a little bit about yourself. hear your story.
Dave Nordel 1:05
Yeah, well, first of all, man for two Air Force guys on a podcast called battle buddy. I love because, you know, my, my time in the Air Force was pretty joint. So I was around a lot of soldiers and Marines and that type of stuff. But we all kind of battle buddies. Right? I mean, you know, life is a battle no matter where you come from. And then you come from the DOD. So, yeah, I was looking at that. And I thought it's pretty, this is pretty appropriate, at least for what we're talking about today. So it's awesome and good. Good on you for doing this and make on the platform. Yeah, so hey, 30 years, six months, 24 days in the airforce culminating as the you know, the Comanche for 23rd force the number of Air Force so you know, in the other services terms, Sergeant Major Command Master Chief or, or Command, Command Sergeant Major, and the army at the battalion force level. So just just for everybody to reference but, you know, in there, you know, I grew up as a medic, and you know, when you grow up as a medic, it's, it's a pretty interesting, interesting endeavor, which, which is going to be kind of the crux of all the things that we talked about today. I grew up in a small town in northern California, very rural, very conservative, and very, not very diverse. Milking cows, so I live 10 miles outside of town, my small town had one stoplight, it was in the wrong place. So they you know, it's just, it's just one of those places that you know, out of a movie, they get Blinky kind of miss it. The only thing that I really had that was close was the Interstate runs right next door. But other than that, you can just kind of blow right through it and not not really pay attention. And so in 1984, I packed up and went to basic training down in, in lovely San Antonio, Texas, in 1984. When I was down there from November into January of 85. It snowed in San Antonio, shut everything down, man. Snow, I mean, it's the whole. In fact, we were told not to march, our orders for the day, we're not to slip and fall. That's and we just walked, we walked everywhere. And that was fairly along in training where we were getting pretty, pretty good at marching and that kind of thing. Now, though, March just do not fall down. So That
Keith McKeever 3:29
totally looks like an Air Force knee jerk reaction. Oh, gosh, there's nobody knows what to do. Well,
Dave Nordel 3:35
nobody, nobody could get to work on the base to include the training instructors because there was like 90,000 Motor vehicle accidents in the middle of San Antonio. Now, I'm up here in Montana. I'm up here in Montana. And I did a lot of Northern Territory. So it makes me laugh that, you know that that amount of snow can shut places down, but it is what it is. So yeah. So you know, as I went into the Air Force to be right, I was wanting to go in the Navy and be a plumber. The Navy recruiter on the day that they were all in my high school was an absolute jerk. And the Air Force guy put his arm around and it started my journey and a whole different directions. I still told him I wanted to be a plumber. They did my aptitude tests, oh man that needed to be a medic, best decision that ever happened. You know, my education all lean towards putting myself through nursing school during shock trauma, being an ER nurse, you know, I moonlighted even on my off time to do those kinds of things. Moving on to disaster management, I got a grad degree in disaster management. And along the way, and I'll give you a good anecdote. Here's a here's a hot off the press kind of cool story. I went to independent duty school. So in the Air Force and the Navy people understand that, you know, we're medics, but we're kind of like the doc I mean, we just go more than only medical person for hundreds of miles around and they train us to do that. So see your own patients, do your own pharmacy, do your labs, everything that goes along with kind of going to see the doctor and we did it all on our own. One of The jobs that that took me to was being one of the first 100 guys in the UAV program, the predator program out in Indian Springs, in Nevada outside of Vegas. So when I got in that unit, we didn't even have airplanes. So I had to open a brand new squadron bringing the airplanes, right the T O's do all the things that go along with running out flying unit with an aircraft. So it's kind of, you know, Christopher Columbus, or, you know, Neil Armstrong kind of stuff. And, and so in a in about three weeks, my kid is going overseas to augment because he's in the prep, he's in the prep program, they know what's going on National Guard, he's going almost to the same spot that we initially deployed that aircraft all those years ago. So there's some legacy, some generational legacy attached to the UAV. So yeah, that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. But yeah, I mean, that's kind of me in a nutshell. You know, I retired in 2014, I've been out here swimming around in this big civilian space. Now for nine years. There's been up the ups and downs, the downs in there, and I'm sure we'll get to all that. And, and, of course, you know, I'm on I'm on a bit of a mission here, you know, through my consulting company, which, obviously, we'll fill in the blanks as we go. I'm on a mission here. So I hope I can spend some time sharing today. Yeah, well,
Keith McKeever 6:19
I'll go ahead and throw that across the scroll across the bottom. But as always, for the viewers up in the YouTube description, and in the show notes and everything, but Max fab consulting.com. Just go ahead and tell us a little bit about your, your company, since you mentioned it.
Dave Nordel 6:33
Sure. Well, Max, bam, everybody goes, well, what's Max, bam, you know, and you want this catchy thing that's supposed to drive into something. My last combat tour and Oh, eight in Iraq, I was the senior medic for the whole country for the whole operation, you know, everything, everything, they were funneled through the trauma center in Milan, good, bad or indifferent, sometimes stabilized, sometimes fresh off the battlefield, sometimes civilians, sometimes young children, and to include the enemy. And when you're leading people in that situation, you know, the top priorities are everybody gets home, you know, physically, mentally and emotionally safe. And so on the way over, you kind of collect your leadership thoughts when you're going to do that. And that's a joint job, and you got to work with people all over the country, but you got to take care of your your, your internal folks first. I mean, that's where the rubber meets the road, you know, taking care of Airmen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, and Coast Guard men even, we had some Coasties over there. And so I decided that we needed to have a rallying cry, something to try and get to every day, or at least try to achieve. And that was a set attitude and expectation, and the organization has an additive. So I won't belabor you with a whole long story, because it's a keynote speech, but I hate push ups. So I said, we're going to do a lot of push ups. So we did push ups together. And inevitably, when you start to do that with a bunch of people that are either coming on shift going off shifting to the traditional thing, catch everybody. When we'd stand up from doing push ups, people would ask the very innocuous question, Chief, how you doing? And that's an easy answer. And I'm good, I'm fine. Living the dream, there's 1000 answer. And I would say I'm maximum fabulous. And then I would get this inquisitive look like what in the heck is that? Yeah, never dealt with before. Right. Right, right. And especially, especially for an E nine, have you run around going, hey, it's maximum. Fabulous, right. And I said, That's the highest of the hierarchy and the attitude scale. And no matter what happens to us today, tomorrow, the next day, or whatever, it's the one thing that we control. And so if you're not max fab, you need to get to max Fabin of the person next to you is not max fab, you need to figure out how to make them, make them Max fab. And if we're always working towards that, we'll be on the right attitude, and we'll stay to carry out the mission. Well, if you got to our trauma center, and you're alive enough to see the flag and heroes highway 99.5% of you went home alone. And I attribute that survival rate to this to this attitudinal thing. You can't see it very well on the video. But in the back is the Red Cross Red Crescent Geneva Convention compliance flag that has to fly over every medical facility in a combat zone? Well, there's not very many of those, there's probably half a dozen or more, just a few more. And they pulled that one off after the end of my tour. And it's still got the dust and grime on it from being over there. And they embroidered it with the traditional dates and times and that type of thing. But on the bottom of it, it says maximum fabulous. And so if you're going to have a have a consulting company, and you're going to work on people's culture, it starts with attitude. And so why not max out?
Keith McKeever 9:48
Yeah, makes a lot of sense.
Dave Nordel 9:49
So long answer. No.
Keith McKeever 9:51
It's a good one, though. I mean, I like it. And like I said, I would give you the same look maximum fabulous I would have, like a deer in a headlight. It's like what? Never heard that answer before, probably take a take a few seconds to try and process that
Dave Nordel 10:06
truck, you know, the next time you go to a coffee shop and you order coffee? And she says, How are you doing? Say it with a little bit of authority a little bit loud? And say I'm maximum fabulous. It'll freeze the whole coffee shop. And people will start giggling. Yeah, that's fun. Just try it.
Keith McKeever 10:22
Yeah, I will definitely do that. I could definitely do that. So I'm assuming then, with that kind of attitude, you know, think think in that in that mindset and attitude, you probably approached transition, would you find today uniform offer last time it stepped into the civilian world, you probably approach that transition, kind of the same way of like, look, I'm going to go out here and I'm going to dominate this, I'm gonna have the right attitude. Was Was transition difficult for you did you have, what kind of struggles did you have are,
Dave Nordel 10:51
you know, after 30 years, and you're achieved, and you're really on the top of your game, and you've got all this education and leadership experience, and the lead teams and all that stuff. And in the transition space to the civilian world, I've failed miserably, big, fat, F. Terrible. It's because I didn't know what I didn't know. And I didn't have employers and people in my space that knew who I was. I didn't even understand what institutionalization meant. And what it means to leave one institution and be in be re inculcated into a new culture didn't realize that there is a there is a literal gap between being a civilian or being a military person, veteran or otherwise. And made a lot of assumptions about the fact that people would actually understand or all I had to do was say, Well, I did 30 years in the military, and that actually was tied to some level of credibility, respect and inclusion. When you're dealing with leaders that come from non military leadership backgrounds, all phallus, all things that I wish that I could go back to my chief and, you know, eaae, nine, each seven days, when airmen or young NCOs Smith would say, Hey, Chief, I'm getting out. I've been in for six years, what kind of advice do you have? I used to say brilliant things, like, well get a nice tie, sit up straight at your interview, make your resume look, look kinda like this, you know, make sure you tell them and give them out, you know, because because you got to first thing that I would tell them, Keith, if I don't, if I could go back, knowing what I know, tonight, the first thing that I would tell them is schedule an appointment with a real No kidding. Mental health professional for at least two or three visits, even if you think you don't need it. Because Because because if you do, and then you go out into this big, scary, savage world, undisciplined civilians, I'm using these words, rhetorically, and put some some tongue in cheek, you may find that you're going to need that kind of help after you meet this new environment. So that would be number one. Number two is I would tell people take every second of time off, that you can take off. And really, really, really decide what you want to do, who you want to do it for what kind of environment you need. And then once that's defined, go find that environment, that kind of boss, that kind of organization and those type of things, do not jump into the first thing, that's, that's smoking and do not say, well, I'll double dip, I'll take three weeks leave, and then I'll be back on a job. But um, no, I've got four months of terminal leave. So I'm getting paid and paid, and you think you're getting a big leg up, damaging, take the time, save the time, take the time. The next thing, the next thing would be is to identify with some sort of community, either in your workspace or in your community, that you're at some sort of community and align with them, that satisfies a couple of needs that you won't know you have until you get out. The first one is is a sense of camaraderie, this this team thing, right, where you're around people, and you can say just about anything and people will rally to your cause. Or in our case, you know, we'll pick on you to the point where we make it right, you know, we know, you know, it's like, it's like, you know, you ever seen the picture, you know, the veterans laying in bed in the hospital and the other veteran comes to visit him and, you know, you pants you get out of bed, what's wrong with you, it's only a broken leg, you know, you know, we got we got stuff to do, you know, it's kind of how we treat each other, but there's a healing to that right. And we kind of work with them. That doesn't exist on on, on on average, and you're not going to find that in, in the civilian sector. So you need to you need to have that. The next thing is that you're going to need a sense of purpose, something that fills the void from All this responsibility that you've been given no matter how old you are, it's the it's the All right, you guys are, are guarding this area today go. And that's an e4 and TV threes and they're in a in a Humvee and off, they go on, they're doing their thing and they, they're making it happen, they're doing it right. And they're making it happen. You come back in the civilian world, nobody knows what security is. At that extent, nobody understands what operating on v is or the 1000s millions of dollars of equipment that you're around. And nobody understands the leadership and the training that you have to be able to operate. The only thing that they understand this is that your military, and they're 24. That's all they know.
Keith McKeever 15:40
And they also don't understand what it means to have those deep connections to the person next to you. Right, because there's, there's others, there might be friends in the workplace. But there's, there's not connections, like we build with our battle buddies, wingman, whatever, right? They just don't have connections like that. Right?
Dave Nordel 15:58
And, and we need that. And we expect that so we make the mistake, here's the mistake we make. You go into work and you think, Oh, well, that guy's got me right, that guy's got my left and all sudden, you find out that that's not the case. So now, you're not, you're not all in on the organization, you're not wearing the brand, you know your name, your name tapes are not on your shirt, even if you know it's Chevron or AT and T or whatever it is, you're those name tapes are not there. When you start to lose that and things start to wane, then this is what I hear. And I you know, the good news, in the end of this Keith is I've run all the trap lines, I've been through the wash, rinse, spin dry fold cycle, I've run all the trap lines that go with this, and I'm on the back end of this. And we're going to talk about my PTSD and my moral injury, we're going to talk about that and how I know how I continue to identify with that, that's just the new pimple on my nose. And so I chose to, I choose to show it off and give it a name and bring it to the party instead of trying to hide from it. Um, but what happens is, is that we start to doubt ourselves, and then we start to doubt our purpose. Because there's no doubt when you get up in the morning, and you put the uniform on, you know exactly what your purpose is in life. And that there's a lot of comfort in that. There's a lot of goodness in that. And I think, you know, a lot of people in life tend to struggle with this in this this purpose thing, especially younger people, non military, younger people struggle with this purpose thing, to the point that it really causes a variances. And unfortunately, Keith, as you know, and you know, the VA is now admitted that the number 22 is low, because of the way the cost by suicides. I mean, we're probably at a 4444 rate
Keith McKeever 17:48
with veterans from few different sources. Some are in that range. Yeah.
Dave Nordel 17:53
And so when that's happened, and that's the end game to all of this, this little crescendo, this little waterfall, that that, um, describe
Keith McKeever 18:02
ad or homelessness or substance abuse on that path, right? That laundry problems,
Dave Nordel 18:09
right. And substance is if I have 50 veterans in a room right now, and I was talking to them, I'd say whether or not you want to admit it, whether or not you've had a true like legal problem or financial problem or a marital problem and relationship problem. You've got 100 veterans in the room, I would bet every single pension check that I have, that 50% of them have some sort of unhealthy relationship with substance. Here's what I mean.
Keith McKeever 18:41
If not substances, some sort of unhealthy relationship with something I guess you could also throw gambling or or game addictions, or some sort of some sort of other addiction. That's, that's really unhealthy.
Dave Nordel 18:53
And yeah, and, and we do that, because that's a numbing thing, right? It takes away the pain of all these other things. So how do you fix that? Right? How do you how do you do that? Because you asked about transition? Well, we'll talk a little bit about that. Ready? Right. And that's, that's my program. And you know, red is an acronym, I can share with you, the one pager will tell people how to get there. Our country anytime that they've faced crisis, has solved those crises, almost almost 100% of the time through public private partnerships. So I'm here in Montana, and we're number one we 12% of Montana's veterans. That's number one or number two in the nation per capita. We're number one or number two, and veteran suicide are number one and number two, in veteran substance abuse. We're number one, number two, and in drinking and driving rates, and we're number 44 in services. So how do you curb that? Right because you're not going to fix the services problem overnight.
Keith McKeever 19:57
Because it takes a lot of time and and finances, and people
Dave Nordel 20:01
that have the intellectual capital to help us are not moving to Montana. For a variety of reasons. So, yeah, so how do you fix that? Well, we spent 1/3 of our lives at work. And, and, Keith, we've, you've walked this walk, we all you know, anybody that's listening to this, as a veterans walk this far. I have to forgive every civilian institution that ever put me in a situation where I felt disrespected, or why I had a loss of sense of purpose or didn't identify or delete, or had to go away. I forgive them all. For one, one reason one reason only. When we have failure, Keith, you know, in our, in our airmen days, when there was failing, crash, or vehicle bump, and airplane, drop a bomb, whatever it is, we asked two questions right off the bat, who and where they trained. So, so namely, namely a program, there's a lot of programs out there, there's a lot of places that will take 100 veterans get 95 of them jobs and say, We're winning, we got 95 job placements were 95% effective. But what if I told you that 50% of those 95 will quit their job in the first year because of this phenomenon I described? Because that's, that's the stat 43 out of 143% of them will fail in their first job because of this phenomenon that I just described. Why? Because their bosses have no training. Keep their bosses know exactly how to take care of somebody in a wheelchair. If they hire, they know exactly how to do all the ADA stuff they know exactly. They're better at bringing on ex cons, prisoners than they are at UPS. And then and then what prisoners are institutionalized no different than we are. It's very, very similar. Except when you come out of prison, there's programs, there's pre releasing to halfway houses and you've got to see a parole officer and people baby veterans. They don't 1300 of us a day out on the streets of America. And all the people that are there that supposedly have open arms wars, aren't trained on how to just be clean off. Because we're we've been speaking clean on forever. And we're now Orlando on Mars.
Keith McKeever 22:16
There is a lot of eerie similarities there. Between prisoners getting out and service members getting as it said, the difference is, most veterans getting out at least have clean records and job skills and technical skills and things like that, that make you marketable, to get into employment.
Dave Nordel 22:36
But the employers don't even know we have half of the stuff that we come. Leadership, problem solving, critical thinking team building, I can keep going Yankee volunteer volunteers loyalty, right writing for the brand, right? All of those things. They don't even take that into consideration when they hire. And they doesn't even compete with them when you go to them and say, Hey, I'm struggling a little bit here. You know, I'm feeling a little disrespected. They say, I don't understand. Well, the vet Ready program teaches us civilian employers and their HR departments, how to bring us on how to build the social capital on to help the human capital. So that that 43 out of 100 number goes down to four. That's where we need to be because you know, what if we got out, we had healthy work environments where we were respected people understood what we brought to the game, and actually let us do it. I'll give me an example. My first job out of the Air Force was managing 13 Subway sandwich shops in three cities in Montana. I thought that would be a piece of cake, but 100 people it's like 100 Airmen, right? Not so much. It's not so much out of those employees that we had a lot of them were pre released from some sort of jail time, misdemeanors, even some minor, some minor, some felonies, but they are lower level felonies. We had to give them an hour off at any point in time to go take the pee test to make sure that they were free of drugs because that was part of their their condition of prereqs tell me an organization out there the United States of America that gives veterans an hour off to go to a mental health
Keith McKeever 24:23
target point
Dave Nordel 24:24
we need to change that we're gonna
Keith McKeever 24:26
or just even medical appointments in general right for all jobs, physical checkups, whatever for disabilities.
Dave Nordel 24:34
So as as my as my dear friend, Lieutenant Colonel retired Kathy Gallo, it's, I would say I have a different way of saying it, but hers is more eloquent. What comes after thank you for your service. Because if you're truly thankful for something that somebody's done for you, you want to give back in some way shape or form and this is this is truly the way to get back to work on your culture that builds space for us. That actually keeps The camaraderie that keeps the purpose that keeps the the value and the respect that that we need. And until most of us deserve unless we've done something crazy. And so that's what we're working towards, and, and, quite frankly, Keith, the people that I've chosen to work with to make this move forward, which it's moving forward to make this move forward. It's not the Department of Defense, and it's not Veterans Affairs. And it's not the big nonprofits like the wounded warriors of the world that are out there doing good work. No, it needs to be grassroots Chamber of Commerce, large local corporations, that each one community at a time, we will make them that ready. And you know what we're going to put it, we're going to put a sign at the entrance to the city that says, veteran ready community. Now you told me when you're getting out, and you're looking for a job, and there's a job in Billings, Montana, and it says veteran ready, and it outlines all of the things that community has done to become veteran ready. Where are you going to lean to? Where are you going to take your leadership, your problem solving your critical thinking, your loyalty, and your timeliness, your discipline, your volunteerism, your community belt? Where are you going to take all of those skills and time enough, you're gonna take them to a community that's put time and effort into becoming that ready?
Keith McKeever 26:21
That's right, someplace where you know, or you at least have a good feeling where you're going to be supported and have a chance to succeed. Because there's always a fear of the unknown, right? You're getting out, you don't know for sure what's going to happen to you. But
Dave Nordel 26:36
so what happens to our suicide rates, what happens to our substance abuse rates, what happens to our mental health, access and continuum of care? What happens to those things when we have veterinary communities
Keith McKeever 26:48
should go drastically down?
Dave Nordel 26:51
Absolutely. And that's public private partnership. And there is some really good public companies that are big, that get this, JP, Morgan, Deloitte, they get it, they got it, but they, they need to talk to me too, because this is, this is the next, this is the next universe.
Keith McKeever 27:10
I'm sure there's a lot of companies out there that, you know, that get it and there's some of them out there and you'd be slapped upside the head? Well, I need to see
Dave Nordel 27:19
somebody that a dear friend who I really respect, and he looked at the stuff in the US board, they because you're talking about culture change, and a lot of companies will run away, when you're talking about, you know, a change in culture, because they don't want to tinker with that. And I said, then I don't want to work with that company. I'll move on to the next company. You know, if I, if I've got, if I've got so many companies coming to me that they want this, and it becomes a problem, I've got to hire a guy like you to go teach it because we gotta be in five places at once, then, then, then that's what we do. And that's a good problem. If I've got 10 companies that want to do this, and 50 that say they don't have time, I don't care about 50. We'll get 10. Because 10 will bring 50 Eventually,
Keith McKeever 28:03
yeah, it's hard to teach somebody something that doesn't want to be taught. You know, if somebody's like, look, we are ready, we're open to a change. We know we want to change, we see what the impact is to, to our culture to organization or bottom dollar companies. It's all about the revenue, that we see what all the impacts are all these positive impacts. We're ready. Yeah, good teachers.
Dave Nordel 28:26
If you can go through the vet reading program, take those 43 veterans that are going to leave your organization in the first year, get the majority of them to stay for at least a one more here. And some display that. You say per veteran, you save about $30,000 Just in turnover and training. By losing those people. I've got a value, I have a value proposition that attaches to that. It talks us because you have to write I mean, people like to do things to feel good about it. But they also want the bottom line. I mean,
Keith McKeever 28:59
absolutely. Especially when it comes to business, revenue, revenue, it's about the numbers. You know, I mean, there's there is an element of the feel good side of like, hey, we want to help veterans, we want to do this, but it all has to make financial sense to I mean,
Dave Nordel 29:14
you know, 1300 veterans and their families about 5000 people a day that just dumped into our, into our society. So there's really not a really good bridge there. And you know, when you got out, you went through tap and all the other things that went along with that. It's pretty unsatisfying.
Keith McKeever 29:28
Yeah. Yeah. That's, I've talked about that a few times. And when I tell people that that that's not a Department of Defense ran program is Department of Labor. You know, it's kind of really what's in it and I don't know what they're doing exactly today, because I've been out for gosh, what 12 years now, but it's a it's eye opening. A lot of people are like wait and Department of Labor rooms and I was like, Why do you think it's all about Get out Get a job. Here's how you interview get a LinkedIn profile. Why do you think they don't really talk VA, VA medical and getting you know, they hit least when I got out, they talked about those things, but it was like a 20 minute presentation. Here's a menu
Dave Nordel 30:09
and a manual. You got papers and manuals that's that high when you walk out, like, Yeah, I'm getting out of the I'm getting out of the Air Force, I'm gonna go home and read every word on
Keith McKeever 30:19
this exactly. Last thing I want to do is go through another set of checklists, because you know,
Dave Nordel 30:23
you use it to make sure you're fine. China doesn't break when you're packing
Keith McKeever 30:26
something like it's still in most people's folders wherever they put all that stuff when I got out. So it's, it's a shame not, there's good intentions there. Right? Because it is important to lie think LinkedIn is a powerful platform. And it is important to have a good resume and it is important to not have it be. So roastery focused, right, you need to civilian eyes it right, you need to brush up on your interview skills and all that those are important things. But it's not everything, you need to realize what your budget is going to be, where you're going to live and what the financial impact is, and all the insurance and all the other civilian things, like you said counseling, you're just leaving for the first three months or six months or first year. Even if you go just once a month just to talk to him and be like, Hey, Doc, or castling, whatever. Here's what I'm experiencing. I'm struggling with finding a job, or I've struggled with civilian interviews, it doesn't have to be all about like, Hey, I'm struggling with PTSD up here. I'm just struggling with the transition.
Dave Nordel 31:25
I'm that close to being homeless. Right? Think about what that means when you say that out loud before you're homeless.
Keith McKeever 31:37
Especially to somebody who can be like, okay, all right, let's pause for a second. I worked for the VA. Now, you know what? hypothetical, I work for the VA. Now let's go see what resources are out here. Let's start getting into these things. So you we can be proactive instead of reactive?
Dave Nordel 31:53
If you fill out a VA disability claim. One of the questions on this, or you're homeless? Or almost almost?
Keith McKeever 32:03
I'll just leave it on there. Oh, I guess it's been a while for me. So
Dave Nordel 32:09
I mean, maybe I should go fill one out and click Yes. And see what happens to my wife. And I don't want to be a waste of their time. But
Keith McKeever 32:17
yeah, you know, it's a very good question. I don't know what happens. I have to do some.
Dave Nordel 32:22
I'm just gonna say you might want to take and
Keith McKeever 32:25
put on like an investigative journalist hat now and and see what happens there. So I just need to talk to you
Dave Nordel 32:31
just get a guest on your show. That's working in the it's working in a system that probably looks like me, but it's got a job to do.
Keith McKeever 32:40
Martha Well, I have to scour LinkedIn, I'm sure there's somebody out there who's got a job title or something like that.
Dave Nordel 32:44
So no better.
Keith McKeever 32:47
Yeah, there's got to be somebody there somewhere.
Dave Nordel 32:51
So So yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's, that's the mission. That's kind of my, my road. My first nine years out and boy made a lot of made a lot of bad decisions, got in the ditch, gotten a bottle, started thinking about killing myself, I walked on and almost died from, you know, health related thing that was self induced that I didn't, that I didn't necessarily need to go through. And that's always a wake up, call and got out of the booze and been out for about five years. And we're more than five. And there's clarity that comes along with that. There's also a conversation, there's that feeling lucky. And you start to say, Okay, if I can't fully reintegrate into whatever it is get up and work for somebody every day. What's the mission next? This is the mission next. So
Keith McKeever 33:49
what was the lightbulb moment for you then? That made you put down the bottle?
Dave Nordel 33:53
Oh, a blood clot from my groin to my ankle that broke loose on the on my lungs. That should have killed me.
Keith McKeever 34:01
That's understandable. Yeah, that will make your face I was faced a lot of
Dave Nordel 34:04
I was I was fat. I was 25 pounds heavier and I've ever been in my life. I was getting sedentary. This man was mad at a lot of things. So it's getting sedentary was just living for the next hunting season or whatever it was come around. And and instead of you know, I had a bad attitude. And I wasn't MAXpider goes a long ways for Max Badman said a bad attitude because I felt like nobody valued and when you feel it not valued then all the really bad stuff creeps in your head. So yeah, so there's a wake up call. There's a moment. I mean, I'm a I'm a shock trauma ER nurse, and I'm sitting in an ER and I know exactly what's wrong with me. I know exactly how lucky I am and I know exactly what I need to do. And you know you have a conversation with yourself and kind of look around and you go, boy, I, problem number one, I've been trying to do this all by myself, I guess I better stick my traditional man card in my pocket, and act like and demonstrate to bravery and go get some help. And so I started building a lifetime. And sort of create my own community build a life team hanging out with people that that were more aligned with where I needed to be, that I enjoyed their company. That's, that's drinking coffee in the morning with people that don't drink normally didn't. And that means that I had to exclude some people from my life, that I really enjoyed their company doing certain things, but it wasn't conducive to where I needed to be. And so I had to cut those ties, I had to get a therapist, a real no kidding therapist, I needed a chiropractic for all my physical things. I had to do that piece, I needed to have a relationship with a physical therapist that can help me sort out some things that work. And I just started building my team, just like I built Max fab. And just like we build that Ready, and, you know, you just you put your sweat equity.
Keith McKeever 36:10
Yeah, you know, you can't be extra trying to read what the what the thing was, you know, the guy is holding up the globe, right? You can't. Hercules Hercules says, right, you can't be Hercules and hold up the whole world on your shoulders. You can't do it alone, you have to have a whole team. And that's a hard thing. I think for a lot of us. Even though we were used to having a whole team around us, and it was a team effort, we knew as a team effort, that's all part of the culture. Would you get out? You know, it's usually just you. So that's, I don't know, I think for a lot of people, you just kind of get stuck in the well, it's all on me, I'll take care of it. I'll handle you know, but you do have to. And I think once you do get a team around you, you do start seeing a quality of life improve.
Dave Nordel 36:54
I still I still make the mistake every once in a while putting too much on my shoulders. The magic is, is that I recognize it. And then I'm like, okay, timeout, and I'll look around, right, can you do this? Yep, I got. So
Keith McKeever 37:07
I had to learn to say no, a couple of years ago, I was really guilty of doing that I would really stress myself out, put a lot of stuff on my on my plate. And then I was just like, No, you know, I just can't do this, like, this just isn't important to my life, I'm not going to do it. Or I, you know, just whatever the case may be, you know, I'm not going to take on this role or not going to do that role, or somebody would offer me something like, Look, I'm not, I'm not interested in I'll stay on the role that I'm doing. Or I've got to pull back from this or that. It is what it is I hate to do that to the organization. But I have to take care of myself first. Because if I don't take care of myself, and I'm not around, I'm not good to anybody. Right? I learned it. Well, the security forces in the Air Force, I had a supervisor, I don't know if it was my flight chief or supervisor. But somebody told me once I was probably driving too fast, I probably got to the call way too fast. But somebody told me to decide once they said, Look, you got to slow down and get into these calls. Which was confusing to me. And they're like, slow down. So you actually get to the call. Because if you don't get to the call, you're not good. You're no good to anybody at the call. You know, and it's that's resonated me with with me all these years later, you have to be able to get there. Because if you don't get there, you're not good to anybody.
Dave Nordel 38:22
I haven't sent you a copy of my first book.
Keith McKeever 38:26
I've got a copy of giving back. That's all
Dave Nordel 38:29
yeah, there's there's a, there's a chapter that's titled, slow down to go faster. That's all about what you describe.
Keith McKeever 38:37
Yeah, it's I mean, now if you don't, you're not gonna get there, you know, nothing like a security forces like slow, smooth, smooth as fast like you. Just weird, like, you just have to do this, this kind of things. But everybody. You have to build a team around. Yeah, I've done it. You've done a Dave like, you know, I've got my medical team. You know, I've had community care. I've had mental health providers, I've gone to physical therapy at the VA for things. I mean, you have to build the team. Whole Health of the VA. That's another good that's a good one. I don't know anybody's familiar with that. Well, that's a great resource. I did that one for a little while. They think it was my doctor approached me about it. I was like, I don't know. But then I was like, Well, I have this podcast, I might as well do it, see what it's about. I was in the program for I don't know, six, seven months. And I thought it was great. I had a great health coach, that eventually transitioned to me going into nutritionalist. And then meeting with a nutritionist kind of put me more on the path of losing weight. I'm down like 60 pounds since last November. So that's all part of the team right now. A lot of my success to those people, accountability and the team. And it's all VA resources. Absolutely. So you have to have a team. So
Dave Nordel 39:49
you did a great job of describing boundaries and how to live within the things you can control and not letting those exterior things bother you or you're talking about saying no and just Move on staying focused on what you can control? That's, that's usually important in a lot of ways. Yeah,
Keith McKeever 40:05
it is. But it's not, it's not an easy thing to know, recognize it's, it takes a long time. And it's gonna take a lot of pain sometimes for some people to get to that point of like, Okay, enough is enough. I, I can't do XYZ anymore. Like, sorry. But you know, is what it is. But I do want to jump into the topic that you've mentioned, cuz you talked about it. That's moral injury. So, you know, you wanted to bring that up. I know, it's been talked about a couple times on my podcast, but you know, in your own words, because because you're the medical professional here shows moral injury, and how can we kind of recognize that in ourselves or what it is?
Dave Nordel 40:48
All right, I knew I'm the I'm the proud owner of both. So PTSD has a lot to do with like combat trauma care, type thing on see on here on smell, right. That's just the stuff that will never go away. So that's word number one that I own, it's good, I gave it a name and own it and consigned the product or that moral injury is that thing that is counterintuitive to how we're programmed. This is our inner child, this is the stuff that your mom and your dad told you that your priest in your baseball coach told you and everybody else write these things that ground you know, you don't, you don't harm things, you don't kill things, you don't hit women, and whatever, whatever, whatever your foundationally is set forth. And then we get into an environment where we have doctrine and direct orders. military doctrine is very specific on how you do things, especially in preparing for about, I mean, it's, it is, I mean, it's, that's where I find to constantly write the next time you know, we we go into battle, we come out, we say, we're going to change the doctrine, you know, we're going to put in tanks before we put in airplanes or whatever, whatever the doctrine is,
Keith McKeever 41:59
right? This didn't work that didn't work. We're going to try to do it this way.
Dave Nordel 42:03
And so the doctrine drives the direct orders, right? The ATO the tasking order, right? And when the tasking order comes out, you do it your toll. Whatever it is, 15 man team go guard X y&z engagement, never Oh, right. Right. So that's it. Some of those things that exist, it's just like sending missile leaders to the field every day. And they understand if they turn the keys, that, you know, they may be responsible for millions of lives going away. Well, that's pretty counterintuitive to some people's morality right? Now, they're not turning the keys every day, thank God. But if they had to what, because there's a decision point. And that and it's not, it's not that the fact that bad officers, bad people, bad Americans, not patriotic, it's the fact that a lot of the things that we're asked to do in the hide than our high critical situations in the United States military, are flawed fly in the face of our foundational morality, or morals,
Keith McKeever 43:06
right. So I'm gonna tell you, regardless of whether or not you were born and raised, you know, religiously or not, but a lot of people kind of have that. Like, you shouldn't hurt people. You shouldn't kill people, right? You know, 10 commandments, we'll just use Christianity 10 commandments, like absolutely, but just being in the military, what do you do you carry weapons, and you're prepared to support defend the Constitution, and you're willing to fight anybody for that? Based on the rules of engagement, everything we are talking about? itself is like you are prepared to do unimaginable things.
Dave Nordel 43:42
And you have rules that if you follow them to a tee, it's legal for you to take somebody else's life
Keith McKeever 43:48
after 18 years of hearing Oh, no, you shouldn't hurt people. You shouldn't steal you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that or
Dave Nordel 43:53
or you turn on the TV and another guy in handcuffs has gone off to jail because he killed somebody. I mean, just our laws, right? Which they're all different. So yeah, I will tell you the story. I think I've shared it with you at some level but you know people ask me Tell me about moral injury and the difference between that and PTSD because and I've had family members call me because they don't understand it. So in oh eight Iraq, same thing we talked about a little bit earlier with maximum doctrine met morality. And at that time in solder city, the bad guys were hammering the Green Zone, pretty bad solar city suburb of Baghdad. So I don't want to talk down to everybody but I'll make the assumption nobody knows where that's at. So the bad guys are pounding on the green zone with indirect fire pretty bad to the point that it's getting well, it's getting annoying and it's getting Devon so the battle plans drawn up to take solder city well, that's going to look like the loser Romani. Sure Your district house to house Marines and soldiers, right? foot foot soldiers going slow, lots of casualties. When you do medicine in a combat zone, the doctrine dictates that before the operation starts, you clear the bed. This is the title of the chapter in the second book. It's the title of the chapter that's going into a book that I'm co authoring with 11 other veterans. And it's a keynote speech. It's taking me forever to have to write it, it's taking me forever to tell it. So this is fairly fresh. So the order comes to clear the beds. Well, what was going on inside of our facility was and people don't realize this. We weren't just taking care of military members. We were taking care of civilians, some of them young kids. And we had about a dozen of them that were in our intensive care unit. And we had had them there so long, it looked like a civilian hospital, we knew their families, we had visitation, we bring them in from mock base. We knew all of their names all these people on ventilators and really, really critical care. And at that time in Iraq, our hospital was the only hospital that can provide that level one talk. Well, the order came to clear the beds, which means we have to move these people, we had one option to move them. And that was to fly him to Baghdad, put on helicopters with all their stuff with the right team, and fly him to Baghdad and drop them at a Iraqi hospital, about the best boss but what they had in the country, but definitely not up to our standards, nor did they have the capabilities. We knew that the process was just once the patients came off the all helicopters, they pulled out all the tubes and all the wires and everything. And if you lived you lived and if you didn't do that. So we knew that if we flew these 12 people up to Baghdad that we were gonna kill him. We were going to euthanize these two old people to make room to make an empty bed for the next soldier or marine that was going to fight in the streets of solder city. Well, can you imagine in a hospital full of medical professionals that have all taken oaths to do no harm and the Hippocratic oath and those type of things, and they've been through medical school, and they're surgeons, and they're saving lives, are they? Can you imagine what that is the organizational dynamic and a leadership position trying to manage that with people?
Keith McKeever 47:27
Sure to get pretty, pretty heated,
Dave Nordel 47:30
almost to the point of fistfights. I'm talking about Lieutenant Colonel's wanting to punch master sergeants and airmen Juanda punch neurosurgeons because the sides were split. And and you know, what do you do? That's my commander at the time, or you know, we're the team and we're the command team. Unbelievable human being, and the grace that He led with through this, which there was no easy way out. I think it's phenomenal, but in perfect, drove a lot of congressional inquiries and stuff like that after this happened. So what we did Keith was we flew them all out, we put them all back then we euthanize told people to clear the beds to get the hospital back to a steady state where there wasn't a single person in the bed. And we never did the operation.
Keith McKeever 48:19
Oh, no.
Dave Nordel 48:23
That's more lengthy. And that's something that we all have to live with forever. And I'll tell you, when you're on the wrong side of things, if you transition into the civilian world, and you don't have the right help, and you're not saying the right things, and you think you can handle it by yourself. And you turn to the three easy cheap counselors in the world, John, Jimmy and Jack it can go downhill pretty quick. So for those out there listening right now that that maybe you're tuning into the battle buddy podcast, because they want to know about something military that they don't because they're not this slippery slope ends in suicide from 44 on Saturday. And I'm not saying every although the 44. Everybody has moral injury, everybody has PTSD. Sometimes it's just as loss of sense of purpose loss will help awesome being able to fit in. That's moral injury. And that flies totally in the face of what we as counterintuitive expecially our culture, especially Western United States culture, it flies in the face of that. And so that's a story amongst probably a half dozen that I can tell you where morality met, doctrine and orders. And that didn't marry up. And I can take it all the way back to the to the airfield in Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. And walk you all the way forward to 2008. And probably every three or four years give you an example of something someone's
Keith McKeever 49:56
house sure you got quite a few of them over over that many years.
Dave Nordel 50:00
So, and that's not that's not about my moral moral injuries versus their moral injury. It's not that
Keith McKeever 50:06
I'm a moral moral injury is a moral injury and you
Dave Nordel 50:09
can be moral injury injured. It's Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and you can be moral injured at Fort Drum, New York and you can be moral injured at candlish. Or, you know, maybe Miramar? Yeah.
Keith McKeever 50:22
And you never know how it's going to affect you or how long it's going to affect you. I mean, I had one incident when I was in at Bilad. You know, that really messed me up for years, it took a long time for me to realize that none of what happened was my fault. I just happened to be the one who scans guys whose retinal scan, he popped into system. It wasn't on me. It was on the intelligence guys. And they said, Yeah, he's wanted, but we don't want to talk to him cut him loose. Was it my fault that he was found dead in a ditch the next day, outside the base. But for years, I took that, as I was the one was all on me. For for more than 10 years. You know, I would think about that guy. Multiple times a weak, like, it was my fault. You know, but it took a lot, a lot of time and a lot of counseling to be like, none of that was really my fault. Like, I don't know, luck, whatever. Like, I guess it was just his day. I didn't I didn't have any direct. You know, I wasn't gonna pull the trigger. But just there's, there's all kinds of things that can happen. Like I said, it can happen to Seymour Johnson, it can happen to Scott Air Force Base, it could happen in Montana could happen to Korea, anywhere in the world. You know, it could, it could happen on the streets in New York City, if somebody gets hit by a car and you decide not to go give aid even though you know how to, you know, put somebody out to do some basic first aid and you decide not to do something to somebody gets hurt, right? It anything can happen. And you don't know how it's going to affect you long term. So
Dave Nordel 52:01
no, I agree, man, if your story is powerful, we talked a little bit about that. And then, you know, look at the counseling you went through?
Keith McKeever 52:08
Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's, well, it's the power of counseling. So and, you know, PTSD, moral injury, a lot of those things, it's, you have to get, you have to get to hell for it. Build a team, right? Well,
Dave Nordel 52:24
and here's the thing that we need to understand, here's the thing that we need to remember is that the people that we need to get help from, do not have to be veterans do not have to, quote unquote, been in this stuff. Right? They don't, they don't actually look
Keith McKeever 52:40
specifically for somebody who has, because that's gonna be searching for a needle in a haystack.
Dave Nordel 52:46
My therapist is, she's Armenian, she came from war torn Armenia, and immigrated here, she still has broken English, every once a while have to all say a word. And she was able to explain it to me. So I do, I do. And she works with a pile of military people. And actually, her life experience really marries up well, with kind of what we went through. And while we're still here, I'm going to reverse the charges on her because she has other military people that come in, and I ended up drawing these Napoleonic charts on our whiteboard, because she wants to understand how supervision works in the military, because people are complaining about their boss or their you know, so I have to explain how the chain of command works. And she goes, Okay, I'm reversing the charges on you, you're gonna have to pay me for this. Now, we have a tremendous relationship. And she's, she's very patient with me, but she gives me an actually a different perspective to make me understand. One is, this is not a military specific thing. You know, think about, think about all the things that you know, that are right and good. And then if you're a female, you get raped. That puts everything in doubt. That's the ultimate injury. That's the Oh, and you got to you know, you have to recover for that you got to get to a point where you can recover from that you're going to have to adopt it. So it's not just a military thing. I mean, it's it's a thing, and we just need to talk more about it so that people understand what it is and then they can go get
Keith McKeever 54:07
absolutely. Yeah, everybody. I'm a firm believer and everybody in this country, military or not, everybody should have a counselor and everybody should see you on at least a couple of times a year. Get the help you need it. You should treat it almost like your tax professional, your medical doctor, your dentist visits, at least like you know, just those things that you just do checkups. Well,
Dave Nordel 54:33
like opening packages during Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever religious celebrations you have the Fourth of July, anything. We do think so routinely based on what time of year it is. Throw your mental health thing in there.
Keith McKeever 54:48
Do it once a quarter just for scheduling. I can be like yeah, well good. Here's what's happened in the
Dave Nordel 54:53
last quarter. The dentist does not let you leave until they schedule your next appointment. That This doesn't make sure your mental health,
Keith McKeever 55:02
absolutely same thing with your eye doctor and your scheduled appointment for the next year, whatever it is So, absolutely. So it's important to, to do that, which I think is a key lesson here out of this conversation is you have to build a team, you have to get the care you need, you have to build a team.
Dave Nordel 55:20
Alright. And it's, you know, look at the name of your podcast. And then think about that, what that really means when we're serving that I one of the one of the things that I opened that ready with this is the Creed's of each of the institutions. You know, the airman's creed answer was, you know, I'll never leave an errand behind will not falter will not fail. That's heavy. That's us. That we get out in the world, and then we lose our we don't find a new battle buddy. We think people aren't worthy, because they haven't. They're not sure if they haven't done it. And that's, that's not true. They're actually sitting there ready, willing and able to help. You just got a lot of man.
Keith McKeever 56:05
You got to let him in. And you have to ask, you have to ask for help. Because people just don't know you need help unless you tell him to help or you ask that you need help. You have to ask.
Dave Nordel 56:16
And even if they think you need help, it's a big scary place. That's a big step to take them again, at that level to say, I think you know,
Keith McKeever 56:23
yeah, that's yes, I gotta ask, you got to build. Almost like a muscle memory, I guess. In a way. When it comes to asking for help, you have to get in the habit of asking for help on little things before it gets to this big, monumental thing that's just going to
Dave Nordel 56:43
force a blood clot,
Keith McKeever 56:45
like a blood clot like, yeah, you have to be like, Look, I'm kind of struggling. Gosh, it could be with anything, right? It could be with finances, or it could be handling struggling with childcare, I whatever. Reach out to friends, family, neighbors, connections, whatever, and be like, hey, look, I'm really struggling with something I can really use some help. I have a really hard time letting my dog out. Right? When maybe your neighbor works from home be like, if I give you know, if you trust your neighbor, I just hypothetical situation. If I give you access to my house, or if I unlock it remotely, can you come over? Let my dog out, right? Maybe that just takes enough stress off of you to just let you live a little bit better of a life? Or maybe it's getting your mail or I don't know, just I mean, there's all kinds of little, sometimes it's just little things in life that can add up. And it's just, it's the accumulation of all the little things. That's the straw that broke the camel's back. So, you know, sometimes you have to build that team and be like, hey, I need to, I need you to take care of this. Maybe it's cooking dinner for your spouse, like maybe you're the one who does all that. Like could you cook dinner twice this week? Could you do the groceries? Could you do the laundry this week? Like I just need a mental break?
Dave Nordel 57:54
I do that. I did that. I do that for my wife. I do that. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm in.
Keith McKeever 58:04
Totally agree. Yeah. Well, comes down to communication. Right. Right. Absolutely. Well, that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother day. Yeah, we'll talk
Dave Nordel 58:15
we'll talk about there's only two kinds of communication. non verbal, no, not enough and too much.
Keith McKeever 58:21
Oh, that's a neat twist on it. When you're a
Dave Nordel 58:24
Comanche, there's only two types of communication. Not enough or too much, either. You didn't tell me or you're driving me crazy. Nobody's ever complete. Nobody ever says boy, you communicate exactly the right amount at the right time with the right information. So
Keith McKeever 58:41
that's a that's an interesting perspective. I never really thought about but yes, it makes a lot of sense.
Dave Nordel 58:46
I just felt that band so yep, that
Keith McKeever 58:48
explains like, how I can tell my wife all the time when it comes to the news and stuff. I don't really pay attention to the news. But like when the news is on, I'm like, why are they keep talking about this so many hours later? Maybe she says a military guy like I just need short, simple, I just like the basic deep all the extra information, or oversharing.
Dave Nordel 59:10
We will adjust fire as needed. But I don't need I don't need the old playbook right now. Just getting me going. So yeah,
Keith McKeever 59:17
but there's some things like you got to pound that in, right? Like this mental health right? We're gonna pound that in. So but anyway, Dave, I do appreciate you coming on here, Sharon. I'll throw that Max five consulting up there. I'll have a link to your book in the show notes as well giving back I'll throw that back up there. Get
Dave Nordel 59:36
your books common that you can you can you can you can preorder the new book, author Seidel, when the cows lie down. Now that's about the subtle it's about the subtle signs in life that can point us to danger and give us the ability to act before it's a problem and and why people quit you the leader.
Keith McKeever 59:58
Oh, that'd be a good one. Okay. And we'd see I tend to read that one too. So that's all good. Sounds good. So everybody got to check it out. Links are down below. And Dave once again, I appreciate you stopping by and share with us.
Dave Nordel 1:00:10
God bless you and thanks for doing what you do, man. Good stuff
Keith McKeever 1:00:18
there you have it folks, I hope you enjoyed. Remember, as always, go check out the website battle buddy podcast.net Remember if there's a resource not on there you think should be please let me know. And remember to hit the like and subscribe button and follow the podcast and share it with your battle buddies. And if you're struggling for any reason, remember to call 988 press one or you can text 838255
