2012-03-09-PTSD
Seminars@Hadley
PTSD, Depression and Success
Presented by
Chuck Young
Urban Miyares
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
March 9, 2012
Dawn Turco
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. Today we present PTSD, Depression and Success. I’m Dawn Turco. I will be moderating today’s seminar.
PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder and depression are among the so-called hidden disabilities that can hold people back from realizing their full potential. We welcome today Urban Miyares, a successful entrepreneur and blinded Vietnam veteran, as he shares his personal experiences and how he manages and copes with both.
Urban credits his coping skills with his many business successes. Urban is also Hadley’s new veterans’ outreach specialist and he is joining me today in my office, which is a rare opportunity for us at Seminars. We’re generally spread pretty far and wide, but Urban is with me today along with Hadley president Chuck Young and these two gentlemen are going to get us underway. I’m handing the microphone to you.
Chuck Young
Thank you, Dawn. This is Chuck Young, the president of Hadley School for the Blind, and I’m very proud today to bring on our newest contractor, Urban Miyares, spelled M-Y-I-A-R-E-S, and Urban is a Vietnam veteran and he has been a very successful businessperson and entrepreneur. We originally brought him on to help with our Forsythe Center for Entrepreneurship in what I call our business school here at Hadley.
In addition to being a content expert for our business school, Urban is also the face of the blinded veterans initiative on behalf of Hadley to our blinded veterans, be they service connected or age related. So with that, I’m going to ask Urban to give us a little bit of his background and how he became blind and possibly how he’s become qualified to address the issue of post-traumatic stress. Urban?
Urban Miyares
Well, thank you, Chuck. Pleasure to be here.
My story begins in 1968 where, in Vietnam as an infantry platoon sergeant, my platoon got into a firefight. I was unconscious for a couple of days and found out that they thought I was dead and put me in a body bag where an alert medic—his name is Brian Leet. He lives in Cambridge, Minnesota, for those of you out there who might be from Minnesota and possibly even know Brian—he was un-zippering body bags and saw that I was a different color, felt for pulse and saved my life.
I came back from Vietnam with telling me that I had, at the most, 20 years left to live and a number of medical issues. It was quite depressing then, but at 20 years of age, you think you’re going to get over it all. I was married just before going to Vietnam, so my wife and I were there and that’s when post-traumatic stress hit me, yet it wasn’t readily diagnosed back then in 1968. As a matter of fact, they diagnosed me, and I’m sure many other veterans with PTSD, as being bipolar or manic depressive and they put you on lithium, which, in my case, sure didn’t help things. It made things worse.
So the early years were quite difficult and my coming back from Vietnam and marriage, I had seriously thought about committing suicide. As a matter of fact, if my wife didn’t become pregnant right away, I probably wouldn’t be talking to you today. That was the salvation. I could not see myself killing myself and leaving that legacy behind for my son to carry on as a young man and then into life.
That sort of turned things around and had me fight it. I never told anybody about my PTSD, which, of course, years later I found out was a mistake. I kept it quiet. I even kept quiet about being a veteran and with being total blind, people would ask, “Were you born blind?” I’d always say yes so I didn’t have to get into a story about it. I just kept it to myself and it added to the depression and all.
Before I get into different things of PTSD, I’ll turn it over back to Chuck, but basically, that’s my story about how it all started with me and the serious sides that later affected me in life and how I turned them around.
Chuck Young
Thank you, Urban. When you first came home from Vietnam, there was no such thing as PTSD. I think that kind of evolved. That diagnosis, if you will, kind of grew afterwards. Before that, in earlier wars they had things like shell shock and, “Uncle Henry isn’t the same person he used to be,” and other descriptions, but there was no diagnosis or prescription of PTSD when you first came home.
When did you first hear that term and when did you begin to suspect or come to grips with the fact that that may describe you and what you were experiencing?
Urban Miyares
Well, while in Vietnam, I was going to sick call and they did say I had battle fatigue a couple of times, but they say, “Just take twelve or 24 hours off and you’ll be okay,” but I didn’t really realize what was happening to me until many years later in the late 1970s, before I first heard about PTSD.
I started going to the Veterans Administration around 1979 because of an incident that happened. I, all of a sudden, didn’t realize where I was. I live in San Diego and I was on a street corner that I knew very well and I didn’t know whether to go left, right. Not because I got confused; I didn’t even know what city I was in, and all of a sudden I started crying. Someone came over and said, “What’s the matter?” and I said, “I’m okay.” I didn’t even know why I was crying.
Everything just hit me at once. At that time, I was already successful in business. You would think I had the world on a string, but boy, it really hit me hard then and that’s when I started going to therapy for the first time.
Chuck Young
Well, speaking of that, then, obviously, you’ve managed to control or manage your PTS and depression. What techniques or what processes do you use to manage it and, for lack of a better term, make it work for you rather than perhaps against you?
Urban Miyares
Well, I did the self-analysis of myself. The person I criticize the most is myself. I always want to know how I did in a speech, how I did in a business deal. I’m very concerned that my performance has always been as best as possible or top-notch.
Later, I found out that’s a trait of PTSD, the perfectionist in you. We tend to be workaholics, as an example. Whether we get paid for it or not, we’ll work. To this day, I work 80 to 90 hours a week. That’s a typical work week for me, and when I take vacation, I can vacation well, but if it’s a long extended vacation of relaxation, I get back into depression, so work is one of the symptoms I get. Understanding what it is.
One thing I was shocked to find, everybody gets depressed. It’s part of the human trait. There’s nobody that doesn’t get depressed and it’s just that some of us, it seems that we have difficulty getting out of the depression and the depression sometimes even gets worse. To me, it’s the worst feeling when you’re so seriously depressed you can’t figure a way out and nobody else understands. It’s easy for them, but when you really dig that hole in depression, it’s a battle.
But understanding the different traits and all of anger, paranoia, anxiety. A lot of traits, like someone who is manic depressive or bipolar, we parallel each other in a lot of ways. There’s a bubble curve known in people who are bipolar and we are sort of in that bubble thing, too, where the top is the grandiose and the bottom of the bubble is the depression state and we try to stay somewhere in between that.
But it’s an issue of understanding yourself and what you can correct. I later learned that or started using it if I can’t sleep. I get flashback from Vietnam, things that still trouble me to this day of things that happened in Vietnam, and I wake up in dreams and I can’t go back to sleep. It gets to the point that you don’t want to go to sleep and sometimes I’ll go two and three days with no sleep before I finally crash.
I’ve learned to turn that around. It’s an energy that we have and it’s a negative energy with PTSD and depression. Imagine if we could take that energy and turn it into something positive what it would be like. First of all, we’d feel better about it, so that’s what it took me years to figure out in my case how to turn this negative energy around because it’s energy. It’s either going to go up or it’s going to go down and I needed to turn the direction of it so it went up, so that’s what I do.
With all the traits of these disorders, PTSD as well as depression, I figured a way into how I could turn them around.
Chuck Young
So then you would contribute your PTS and/or depression to your success in your many business ventures?
Urban Miyares
Yeah, a couple years ago I was doing a radio show in Boston, a business radio call-in show and they said, “With all your success in business, Ink magazine’s entrepreneur of the year, the SBA’s businessperson of the year, presidents of the United States invite you over to have lunch with them at the White House and all. What’s the secret to your success?” and I say, “PTSD.”
You can bet that radio show went in a completely different direction, but thinking about it, it really is. Why do I do what I do? People say, “Where do you get all this energy from? How come you keep on going? How come you never stop? You’re so persistent. You hit one road block and you get around it. All these businesses you’ve started and all the businesses you’re planning on, all the things you’re planning on doing. How do you do all this?” “PTSD.”
Chuck Young
Tell us about Thursday at two. I’ve heard this story. I find it fascinating and I want you to share that with the listeners—Thursday at two.
Urban Miyares
With depression, it comes, and in most cases, depression is a wasted energy. You’re worried about something that you have no control over, you didn’t cause and you can’t solve the problem either. You get worried about it. It might be a family member that’s sick or someone that you love dearly has lost everything they have financially. You might even be having financial situations. You can’t find employment, you’re not happy and you get depressed over it because everybody around you is doing well.
So I just said I’ve got to focus this. This is such a negative energy. It’s an energy I can’t get rid of, so I’m going to focus all this energy all at once—Thursday at 2:00. So if I’m depressed on Monday and today is what? Friday?
Chuck Young
Yes.
Urban Miyares
Yesterday we were at a meeting, Chuck, right?
Chuck Young
Right.
Urban Miyares
And Thursday at 2:00, I thought for a second. I said, “You know, I have nothing to be depressed about. Okay, let’s get back to the meeting. It’s over with.” So what I do is try to channel it Thursday at 2:00.
Now, in business, I even use this. I had a company with over 100 employees and we had an open door policy with the president, me, Thursday at 2:00. So if you had any problems, you didn’t like working here, you didn’t like your coworkers or you had any complaints, you could talk to me at Thursday at 2:00, and at 2:30 we’d have Happy Hour, so you better get done quick with your problems.
It’s worked successfully for me. It’s a way for me to divert that negative energy, put it on another tangent and nine out of ten issues I have that I’m depressed about are forgotten by Thursday at 2:00.
Chuck Young
Well, then, if I understood that, you schedule your depression, then, for Thursday at two and that’s followed by Happy Hour at 3:30. Is that correct?
Urban Miyares
Or as soon as the depression’s over, yes. I don’t advocate alcohol at all, especially when you’re depressed, but it’s sort of a joke type thing and I turned it into a joke. Sometimes there are issues that I do tackle Thursday at 2:00. It might be a phone call to that one person that’s done something I think was wrong that really upset me. I’ll call them Thursday at 2:00.
Chuck Young
Yesterday you and I were at a Veterans Conference and there was a lot of discussion about taking the D out of PTSD, and the idea being that it’s not a disorder. It’s a natural reaction to stress and it’s a part of the human experience, especially in the stressful situations in combat.
Do you have any sense of we ought to take the D out of PTSD and make it post-traumatic stress and consider it more of a natural reaction and not refer to it as a disorder? Or is that just word games and semantics?
Urban Miyares
Personally, I think it’s word games and semantics. There’s basically three types of PTSD. There’s the type of PTSD where you’ve been exposed or involved in an incident that’s quite traumatic and you’re not affected by it, at least you think you’re not affected by it.
Chuck Young
At that time.
Urban Miyares
At that time, and it comes up weeks, months, years later before it hits you. And then there’s the traumatic experience where instantly you’re affected by it from day one on. And then you have the experience where you’re completely numb to it and all of a sudden flashbacks come years later. And, of course, you have those traumatic experiences that either you’ve seen, you’ve personally experienced, or you were involved with.
They’re now learning so much more about this condition. I personally think it’s biological, PTSD. I think it’s a shock to the brain that does something in our brain’s wiring. With depression, it’s a wiring issue in our brain. Why do we continue to worry about things and get depressed to the point of hurting ourselves with depression when other people, given the same experience or somewhat same circumstances, can get over it quickly? I think it’s definitely a biological issue in our case.