Holistic mental wellness is more than just physical health; it requires balancing your physiology, psychology, and spirit to truly thrive. In this episode, we are joined by Matt Domyancic, a former police officer, strength coach, and wellness coordinator, to discuss his journey of resilience and his mission to support first responders and veterans. Host Marc explores with Matt why slowing down and prioritizing your inner self is essential in our fast-paced culture. We discuss the importance of self-love, the power of safe relationships in healing from trauma, and how we can all foster meaning and purpose even during our most uncomfortable times.
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Mastering Holistic Mental Wellness From The Frontlines With Matt Domyancic
Defining Holistic Mental Wellness
Welcome to the show. I am here to talk openly about mental health and wellness. I am super excited to be joined by Matt Domyancic. Matt, how are you?
I am doing great, thank you so much.
Thanks for being here. I really appreciate it. Matt is a former police officer, wellness coordinator, strength coach, and advocate for the mental health and well-being of first responders and veterans. Matt may actually do more than I do in his day. I am reading through this and thinking, “He is busy.” During his law enforcement career, he served in patrol, SWAT, peer support, and as a full-time academy instructor specializing in fitness and officer survival.
He later became the wellness coordinator for the Fairfax County Police Department, where he helped pioneer programs focused on strength and conditioning, performance psychology, nutrition, breath work, and stress physiology long before officer wellness became part of the national conversation. At the same time, Matt also worked as a strength coach at Yale and Georgetown universities and served in campus ministry for student athletes.
After a serious medical journey forced his retirement from policing, Matt moved to LA to pursue functional and integrative healthcare, an experience that deepened his commitment to holistic healing and resilience. Today, he provides confidential support and mentorship for veterans and first responders, facilitates outdoor retreats, and leads workshops on mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellness. His work also focuses on helping bridge the understanding between the civilian community and those who serve. Matt holds master’s degrees in forensic science, sports psychology, and pastoral theology. Once again, Matt, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much, Marc. I really appreciate it.
I am not sure where to start, Matt. You have done a lot, and you continue to do a lot. As we shared a few moments ago, my audience is made up of mostly young adults. Many of them are in college and their parents. For me, when I am reading through your bio and thinking about all the things that you have done, wellness keeps jumping out, the word wellness, and really being able to promote that as you have over the years to so many different people. Matt, big question, but what does wellness mean to you?
Wellness, to me, is very holistic, and I will try to make it concise. I do care about mental, emotional, and spiritual health. However, if you do not take care of your physiology, then you cannot be in touch with your head and your heart, your thoughts and your feelings. You can be on social media, you can be drinking alcohol, caffeine, junk food, listening to podcasts, staying on the surface. Often, you are not very much in touch with your thoughts and feelings, and then being able to identify the difference between thoughts and feelings, and then sort out which patterns may or may not be serving you well.
If you do not take care of your physiology, then you cannot be in touch with your head and your heart, your thoughts and your feelings. Share on XWe need to calm down our physiology, take our foot off the gas, as I say, and then look at how to self-reflect on our thoughts and feelings, and then hopefully have some values defined so we can reflect on our interactions during the day. What people, places, things, and activities are perhaps moving me more towards the best version of myself, or what things might be distracting me from being in touch with my true self and my heart and my emotions, which we do not talk about a lot in this society, because that is woo woo or whatever.
Many people are online acting like it is about being happy all the time, and everybody’s lives are so perfect when the reality is we need to seek to find meaning and purpose even in our adversity and our struggles, because it is coming to everyone. Wellness to me is taking care of your physiology, so then you can be in touch with your psychology, which I am saying generically is your thoughts and your feelings, your head and your heart, and then being in touch with your spirituality, which does not necessarily mean religion. In a nutshell, spirituality is demonstrated by how you are living your life out.
What are the most important values in your life, and are you living them out? What do your relationships look like? We first start with the relationship with ourselves. Do we have self-love, self-care? We can only see others as deeply as we see ourselves, and we cannot give away that which we do not possess for ourselves. What is your inner critic like, and can you still love yourself despite your struggles and your faults? What is your relationship with your family of origin and your closest 3 to 5 friends?
Are those relationships helping you level up to be the best version of yourself, or do you have to do some hard work of creating boundaries around them? What is your relationship like in the community you live in, the school you go to, and then your relationship with the greater good in your life, whether that is a higher power or God, or what are you living for beyond your own needs and desires? Finally, spirituality is what is the framework for you to continue to find meaning and purpose through adversity, through loss, and through suffering.
We need to seek to find meaning and purpose even in our adversity and our struggles, because it is coming to everyone. Share on XInteresting and wow. You said so much. My brain is going in ten different directions, Matt. I took a few notes, though, because of some amazing nuggets. My audiences know this because they have listened to other shows, but they have heard the phrase slow down that somehow comes up in so many of my conversations with people. I have interviewed directors, I have interviewed athletes, musicians, therapists, you name it.
Somehow, the phrase slow down comes up. Maybe that is because we are just in a super fast-paced world. We are always running a million miles an hour. Those of us like you and me who have lived a few years more than young adults, we have figured out that we do not have to be fast-paced 24/7. As a matter of fact, it really helps our wellness and our health to slow down. It looked like that resonated back to you.
The Power Of Slowing Down And Biofeedback
You had a couple of things. Silence, solitude, immersion in nature, and fasting from technology can be the healthiest things. In our culture, initially, that is going to feel uncomfortable. There are a lot of people out there saying to do hard things. The other ex-SWAT and Navy Seals doing hard things is not doing the workout and the cold plunge, even though I am a strength coach guy with D1 and professional athletes, and I love working out myself. Doing hard things is slowing down. I do not know if people could afford it or if their parents think about an Oura Ring. Are you familiar?
It looks at your heart rate variability. There is a chart for your daytime stress that says restored, relaxed, engaged, or stressed, and it looks at the quality of your sleep as well. A lot of us will go through a day and say, “I am good. I am cool as a cucumber.” The HRV will show that you are really stressed. That also affects your sleep. If you are familiar with EEG, growth feedback, imagine if somebody out there, their parents have the money, you can say that I am calm and I am good. Do not bother me. We ask people, “How are you doing?” “I am okay.”
“Let us look at your heart rate variability.” An even more accurate version is HeartMath. We can look in real time at your HeartMath, HRV, and your brain waves. We can see if your brain is super active and not able to calm down. What you will see is when your HRV, your physiology, has calmed down, you can have more alpha and theta crossover, which is processing unconscious material. A lot of people, if they say, “I am good,” we could go look at your HRV and your EEG and be like, “No, you are not.”
It is a great point. On a really simplistic level, I had the thought just now as you were talking, when did we decide that we had to be comfortable all the time? I feel like, for my patients and me over the years, most of the progress they make is when they are uncomfortable.
The two greatest teachers in life are great love and great suffering. We all need unconditional love with no strings attached or an agenda, wherever we may get that from, and it can be difficult. We also know that suffering and adversity and things that are uncomfortable come along, and we need to work through them. It is almost like emotional, spiritual, and psychological weightlifting. You do not get stronger unless you do more reps, more weight, or less rest in between sets. You cannot get a faster runtime if you just jog at the same pace every day at the same distance.
With life, we do not often choose those things. It is nice when we can set goals to work through things, but the things that maybe mom and dad did or did not do that hurt us, or the things that happened to us in our peer groups that did not serve us well in elementary, middle, high school, or college, those are the uncomfortable things to try to recognize, have an awareness of, and find a safe person. At least one safe relationship, which often can be a therapist, and I am all about therapy.
I put it out there, I have been going to therapy for twenty years and spiritual direction for 30. In my world, I find priests who are also mental health professionals. I will talk about my life and the difficult things. I have people that care about me, that hold me accountable to feeling my feelings around the things that are uncomfortable and then asking what lesson I can learn from this, even though it is uncomfortable and painful, and then integrate this story into my life in a manner that I can move forward?
That is true growth, that is true growth. I just want to highlight something you said. I have been in and out of counseling my whole life. I feel like for young adults, there is still this message of like, “I will be good, I am good.” That is not self-love. That is not uncomfortable. That is in the middle, and that is stagnation. I love what you said, find a trusted adult. It could not be a better message to me for young adults out there who are struggling.
Find somebody that you trust and find somebody that you connect with, could be a therapist, could be a coach, could be a teacher, could be an RA, could be an RD, could be lots of different people. The one no-no is nothing, not doing anything. Just keeping that all in because we know by statistics that it just makes things worse. Can I ask you? You were touching on it before, and I want to shoot into it for a minute? You were touching on the topic of fitness. How does fitness fit in, in your opinion, to wellness?
Fitness, Self-Love, And Internal Validation
Everything works together, as I said, the physiology and the psychology. There is more information out there than there has ever been on fitness, nutrition, and taking care of ourselves. However, we are more obese than ever, and we have more mental health problems than ever. I would say that fitness is important. Whatever you are doing today is a little bit more than yesterday, but not looking for perfection because this is another problem. I need to do this or that perfectly, and then seeking perfection causes procrastination.
What little goals can you implement in your life to move more, even if it is walking three times, ten-minute walks a day, anything will lower your blood sugar, calm down your amygdala. There are so many benefits, even now they are calling it exercise snacks. Just like if you are on a 10-minute break, do 20 air squats and 10 pushups, but also do not get hung up. This is where there are a lot of these athletes in the SWAT and the Navy SEALs out there that are saying, do hard things and crush it and work out so hard. You can cover up emotional reactivity.
I have done that, as to where I will lift weights with NFL guys, do Krav Maga, Muay Thai, go to a bunch of yoga classes, and even go to too many Bible studies where things look healthy on the surface that we can obsess over, but we are still avoiding dealing with the demons in the mirror and the skeletons in the closet. We can cover up emotional reactivity with things that even look healthy on the surface. That is my caveat with the fitness out there of everybody emphasizing, “doing hard things all the time” and getting in the cold plunge, which I do, and getting in the sauna, which I believe in.
If you are doing these things for external validation, versus my intention is to grow mind, body, and soul, and take care of myself, and I am not doing this for other people to see me on Instagram or TikTok working out or cold plunging, I am doing this to invest in myself. It is part of my self-love, and everyone out there, you are loved, you are sacred and precious, and deserving of all the love in the world.
We are in a very difficult culture to get that unconditional love because so much of it comes from wanting it from external sources and living from the outside in, versus living from the inside out. I do not want to go too far, but to throw out, a lot of people have what is called a father hunger or father wound, and it is really bad for males. I am not blaming any dads out there. They do the best they can with what they’ve got.
If a man or a young man does not get the nourishment, and I know we just jumped from exercise, but the nourishment and the affirmation to be what is cool is to be who you are and follow your heart and your passions, then they end up seeking it in ways like trying to get jacked or buff or bragging about how much you drank or manipulating and using and conquering women. These are the unhealthy things that happen when you do not have a healthy father, mentor, or elder. I threw a lot out there, but hopefully it makes sense.
That is okay, it is a great point. In a former life, I suppose I could say I coached my son’s baseball team. I counted nineteen seasons, a long time. I would see dads on a regular basis. It did not matter how old the kid was, doing these things. It always bothered me because to me, the question I tried really hard as a dad to ask when a game was over is, “How did it feel? How did it go? Did you have fun? Did you enjoy yourself?”
I honestly did not care who won, who lost, because to me, the memories I got from having those conversations were so much more memorable. Your point is excellent. As dads, I do want to call out dads. I do think it is important that we do that and that we do get parents to recognize that your job is to help nurture your kids. If your kids are being pushed, pushed, and there is very little of that nurturing, they are going to find, to your point, lots of other unhealthy ways to feel good about themselves.
That phrase self-love is so huge because, as you said, I see it all the time in my office. If someone is not loving themselves, it is literally impossible for them to have good relationships. Fitness, just to bring it back, fitness is certainly one really good way. You are really in touch with lots of different wellness things for people to do. I am curious if you were to go back and talk to your college-aged self and give yourself some advice to say, “Let us focus on some self-love. Let us do some things for you.” What would you tell yourself to do?
Train smarter, not harder.
Matt’s Journey: Overtraining And Hitting Rock Bottom
That is a big one. I see that all the time in the gym.
I have had overuse injuries. I started working out hard in sixth grade, started eating strictly in seventh grade, and even though I had a mullet, I was just this big in high school, 5’10”, 230 jacked with a mullet. I journaled, and I meditated on and off in high school. Faith was a big part of my life because of my father, but not an overt faith. I lived an internal faith life, a prayer life, and spend time in nature. I wanted to crush it for football. I got to play college football, but I trained so hard, I did not focus on sleep, staying up late studying, doing three different workouts, thinking that more was better.
I would have trained smarter, not harder. Even though I did contrast therapy in college, cold showers, sauna, I did everything. I had a problem with moderation, and I wish I had invested more in some other relationships. Mentors, elders, and my college football buddies were very important. I reached out to professors whom I wanted to have discussions with about how to grow as a person. I was into that stuff because of the way my dad set things up. I could talk about my dad forever. When I was young, if I wanted to get good at something, there was a mentor. In seventh and eighth grade, he had me working out with the high school football team.
In seventh and eighth grade, he signed me up for high school baseball camps. You are good enough to compete with kids your age. The only way to get better is to compete with people who are better than you. He would send me to a Coast Guard station in Pittsburgh on a weekend, and this guy interviewed me, and then I got home. My dad is like, “You did not shake his hand hard enough, you did not make eye contact here.” My dad taught me a lot of things when I was young, so I naturally tried to work to get better at a lot of things, and not just sports, but I overemphasized football, and I trained way too hard.
In my senior year, I ripped the medial head of my calf in half after I had 21 tackles in three quarters in the opening season game as a middle linebacker. I missed that whole season. Part of it was my calf for sure. I had torn fascia, my quad was pulling the groin off the bone, all from overtraining. I will admit, and maybe I am blessed that this happened at a younger age, I had quit drinking for a year because I wanted to focus on trying to get to the NFL. I had always gone to church and prayed and thought I was doing the right thing, but it was a very immature faith to make me better at football, get me through this hangover, I will never drink again, and help me get a good grade on this test.
I made out with two different girls in one week, which might be common, but it was not based on how my dad raised me. I also used testosterone to try to heal my calf for two weeks. A long story short, I realized I had started drinking with a friend of mine who also got suspended that year for testing positive for steroids. We were drinking out of depression, not to have fun. I would not have known the language back then. Even fooling around with two different girls was like self-medicating pain.
Train smarter, not harder. Share on XI had never smoked weed, I did not use drugs, and was a very rigid straight arrow guy. I am like, I am using testosterone. I had powerlifting and high school awards for football, and was great at my level of college football. I am like, “If I get caught, people are going to think in part it is because I have been doing testosterone the whole time.” Also, “I had appropriate guilt for the values my dad and my faith background raised me, and you should not be making out with two different girls and drinking just to mask pain.”
At twenty years old, and the injuries were from overtraining, training way too hard, I realized I had made football my god. I woke up, I threw away the testosterone, quit drinking, quit chewing tobacco. I said, “What is it like to really give your life to God?” It does not have to be for God, for people out there. What is the greater good? What is the greater purpose of your life? What is the greater love that you have to offer yourself and everyone else for the rest of your life?
My injuries and my pain, and then I self-medicating my pain with fooling around, drinking, and then trying to heal myself with testosterone, turned into me hitting my rock bottom and being like, something has got to change, and life is not about doing everything to the extreme. How can I have more balance in my life with my head, my heart, and my service to others?
It is an amazing story, and I think lots of young adults can relate. There will be details in that story that resonate. There are a lot of kids out there who do that, and they just avoid. They know on some level that things are not going well, or they are depressed, or they are super anxious. They could use some help, and they just do not know where to go for it, or they are not looking for it. To your point, perhaps they make the weightlifting room or a sport their main focus.
I try to get kids that I work with to understand, look, no matter how good you are, I have worked with college and pro athletes over the years, that is going to end. At some point, that is going to end, and hopefully, your life will continue many, many more years afterward. The focus on figuring out how to love yourself is huge. Honestly, I think everybody defines that a little bit differently, whether it involves religion or spirituality or fitness or some other type of wellness, you are certainly a person who can speak to a lot of different types of ways in which people have assisted themselves and gotten there.
I am curious to pivot, though, because you have done so much work with first responders, and I think I would be upset if we finished and I did not ask you more about it. I guess I just want to understand some of what, one, they go through, because not being a first responder, I can try to understand that, but certainly very cursory. Two, I really would love for the general public to listen to understand some of the emotional ramifications that first responders endure. Can you speak to that a bit, Matt?
The Emotional Reality Of First Responders
The first responders are immersed in the suffering of humanity in their communities every day. In the police and fire academies and in boot camp for the military, we do not talk about post-traumatic growth. We do not talk about it. You might have some childhood wounds. For people out there who have not heard of ACE, adverse childhood experiences, veterans, and first responders often come from a background of a lot of childhood suffering. For different reasons, they hypothesize that because I suffered, I want to do good for others, or because I suffered, I know how to deal with pain, or because I suffered, I am used to being around suffering, and it is my comfort zone.
Just like a lot of unhealthy friendships and romantic relationships, people form trauma bonds. They are not good for you, but that is what your comfort is because that is what you came from. When you go to war, and I know you asked about first responders, but our combat vets, much like our first responders, very often are getting their unconscious wounds scratched by being around all of this other suffering. What is a role model is to go drink some beer and sleep with somebody you should not sleep with, or buy a new toy, a new motorcycle, a new truck, a new car, and drive hard and ride fast and live very, it is very ego-oriented. It is a ton of self-medicating, numbing, and distracting ourselves from the pain that we are seeing in other people.
When you are a cop or a firefighter in the middle of a scene, you cannot be in touch with your emotions because you are trying to just get the facts. Got to try to save their life or resolve this problem, and I have five more calls pending, so you stuff it. If we were looking at HRV or EEG all day long, the cops or firefighters would get really good at dealing with chaos. That does not mean that your cortisol and adrenaline are not through the roof. It is just suppressing your other hormones. If somebody is interested, operator syndrome is a new phrase that they are using for the totality of all the stressors and how they are affecting your physiology.
These cops and firefighters do not understand how the stress, trauma, and suffering are affecting their physiology, their psychology, or their emotions. They will say, as soon as somebody starts sharing a story with me, first responders and vets, but also civilians to some degree is as soon as I share my feelings or some vulnerability, as long as I am not having a victim mindset where I am not being accountable and responsible to wanting to heal and grow, people will be like, “I am so sorry,” “I am being weak,” “I am being soft,” “That is crazy,” or “I am broken,” or some other derogatory inner critic thing.
Many people suffer in silence when they are dealing with the suffering of others or themselves, and they feel like I do not want to burden other people, or this is my fault, and I am not worthy. This is from Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Division I athletes, and NFL athletes, who also feel that they are unworthy or that they are weak for feeling their feelings. This is really a universal theme in humanity. There is no training for how to deal with your suffering, and you cannot even tell people you love them. I wear a shirt that says, “Love heals,” and there is a longer story behind it, and I sign things off, stay humble, love heals.
I tell people I love them and hug them, and I have since high school because of my father. I have been able to do that, but a lot of other guys, especially people, are awkward with hugs or saying “I love you.” The reality is that the more suffering you have, the more support you are going to need in safe relationships. I do not know if you have read Judith Herman, but I really liked her. Trauma and recovery, healing cannot happen outside of a safe relationship. We cannot heal in the same environments that hurt us.
For the cops and firefighters in your town or your city, they often do not have any training on mental health or understanding of the physiology of stress and trauma. If they do have psychologists, they are contract, they are never around, their chaplains are volunteers, they are never around. They show up after a horrible incident and say, “Are you okay?” Or “Can I pray for you?” The cops and firefighters are like, “I do not know you, and I do not know if you really care about me.” That is like waiting until we have a mouth full of cavities before we go to the dentist as well, wait until you have PTSD, addictions, or you are suicidal, and on your third marriage, and can we help you?
Also, there is something called cultural competency. They will not trust a lot of therapists or the clergy or the peer support people because they are like, “You do not know what it is like to be a real cop or a real firefighter.” Sometimes that may be true. You come in, and you are humble, like whatever your role is, and how can I support you?
Tell me about your life, where our culture is filled with mental health professionals, clergy, spiritual coaches, and influencers who have a solution for everybody’s problem before they even hear their life story. Every one of us is going to have different things that work. There is no one-size-fits-all for how we heal, and we grow, and we do the journey of self-discovery. People who do a lot of talking and tell you how to fix your life or that this is the right way to work out, the only right way to eat, the only right way to approach mental health, that is a red flag.
There is no one-size-fits-all for how we heal. Share on XThat is often, the people who show up to help the cops or firefighters do not have good mental health resources. It is so stigmatizing for them to ask for help, and then even if they ask for help, it is often jumping through hurdles, or it could take 3 or 6 months or even a year for a work comp case to be like, “We really should be responsible for your mental health.” Do you know what happens in 3, 6 months, or a year when somebody is struggling with mental health issues, and they cannot get help?
It is not good.
In that 3 months or a year, it could have started five years ago. This year is the only year-long period when they finally were hurting so badly or got the courage to ask for help, and then it is not even easy to get it. Some places will say you get 3 or 5 therapy sessions. There is no trust in rapport, as you know, which is the most important thing with the therapist allergy. A lot of us humans, in general, when I first meet you, I am not going to spill my guts to you about all the most vulnerable things in my life. I do not know if I can trust you yet. When I hear therapists or somebody say I can do 5 or 10 sessions with you and we will be good, it is “That is not a lot of time to unpack somebody’s life story.”
Navigating Stigma And Finding Trustworthy Help
Their entire life. It is a great point. I appreciate you going through that. I guess I had two thoughts. I wanted to run at you. One is I think one of the things I quickly assessed when you and I began talking today is that we definitely have in common is that we both see life as a journey, and it is an opportunity to continue to learn. We look back on a year ago, but 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and we think, what were we doing then? We are growing, we are open to growth. I have to point out, not everybody is.
To me, I think for young adults to hear that, “You have got two people that have been in their chosen fields for a while, and we are still growing, we are still learning, we are still enhancing, and that is because we have got unique experiences as does every person out there.” The second thing I just wanted to reflect on is that it is funny. I was thinking about, as you were talking, first responders, whether we are talking military, fire, police, and then we have got outside of that. We have got athletes.
We have individuals who get into the working world, corporate America, you name it. To me, when I start working with a young adult, and they are eighteen plus, their journey as an adult, at least, is just beginning. There is so much in front of them that they do not know is coming. The one thing that I found, I guess as a therapist, I am biased to this, but the one thing I have found that is just normalizing, I guess, and stabilizing in everybody’s world is that we are all built very similarly. As human beings, if we take in stress, we have to let it out somehow.
If we have been through traumas or we have been through scenarios, but the vast majority of young people convince themselves. Similar to some of the first responder scenarios you were talking about, I will take it in, and I will be this super compartmentalizer, I will just keep taking it in. At some point, they just hit a wall. The major takeaway, Matt, and I want my audience to really hear this clearly, is that you learn things in life as you continue to grow, and there are certain things you learn and refine and change.
For me, and I think for you too, because I heard it through your words, one thing we both learned is that we all have a capacity and do not run ourselves to the very end, right? Sometimes it is too late at that point. Taking good care of wellness and mental health means finding that resource and finding that opportunity, which could be a group that you are running, Matt, could be a good friend, could be a therapist, but it has to be somebody. These days, we are just taking in too much, and we are not slowing down enough.
Man, can I say a couple of things about that?
Yes, please.
There are a couple of quotes I always use. This is Richard Rohr, a famous spirituality author. Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
I like that.
The next one I use is, if you do not heal what hurts you, you will bleed on people who did not cut you. If it does not happen now, it will end up being your spouse and your children later in life. I use the terms right of bang and left of bang. Right of bang is waiting until you are overwhelmed by compartmentalizing it until you cannot take it anymore, and that is usually when there is collateral damage, you hurt yourself and other people, or your career. It is like, “Am I going to try to learn how to eat healthy, meditate, work out, find a therapist, trust a therapist, and open up after I blew up my life?” or “Can we do this left of bang?” This is like, brush and floss.
The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be and the more damage you are going to cause to your life. Share on XIf you are eating Snickers and drinking pop soda Coke, depending on where you are in the country, and you do not brush your teeth and floss, you are going to end up with cavities. Whatever life’s challenge is, can we learn to brush and floss? I am somebody who has been eating healthy since seventh grade, working out since sixth grade. I have had mentors and elders, a healthy father. I reached out to clergy who were mental health professionals, and I have been seeing mental health professionals myself for twenty years. Still, when suffering comes, it is so hard.
The things that I have done for performance enhancement, Matt Domyancic knows how to work out hard, he knows how to pray, he knows how to meditate, he knows how to journal, and he knows how to eat healthy. Yet, once suffering, loss, and adversity hit my life that is out of my control, circle of control, if people look at that, that is another good concept. I have still suffered and struggled. I am not somebody who is scared of being sentimental or tapping into my emotions or sharing my story, and it is still not easy.
The longer you wait, the harder it is going to be and the more damage you are going to cause to your life, but that is often what happens as we wait until we just cannot take the suffering anymore. Often, people are so vulnerable that they are desperate for relief, and then they will buy into whatever the magic bullet or the short, quick answer is out there.
Transforming Pain And Trusted Connections
Simply put, though, they do not have to wait. The concept of there being that option early on is really a good takeaway from our conversation. Maybe that is a good stopping point. I would love to put you on the spot, and part of the show is I asked my guests to nominate a friend, a coworker, or a relative, and you had mentioned before the show, Dr. Lusk. Tell us a little bit about Dr. Lusk.
Dr. Jaimie Lusk, part of my Inner Circle crew. She is a military psychologist for the VA. Naval Academy graduate, which, for people out there that do not know, unless you played sports like I did to get into the Air Force Academy, I was really good at football, so my grades probably were not as good as the other people. Jamie got into the Naval Academy legitimately, was really smart, spent time as a Marine officer in the Iraq war, and dealt with some serious challenges there. She got out and did some soul searching, and is an extreme endurance athlete, does hardcore mountain biking, and did bike delivery world championships during the soul searching period of her life.
Went and got a master’s of Divinity with an emphasis in counseling. She has her unique journey, exploring religiosity, Christianity, and spirituality in ways that were not always pleasant. A lot of people have what we would consider religious experiences, where there was maybe hypocrisy, where we were judged or alienated, or do not feel like we were really loved in a belief system that is supposed to be about love and non-judgment. That allows you to grow deeper, and she has used it to get deeper and then became a psychologist.
She understands alpha males in my world. I use her to talk about the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, the SWAT guys, the ex-Division I and pro athletes. She is also like a heart wide open, a deep lover, humble, and an expert on PTSD and moral injury. Even though she has got this big heart, she also knows research, and if you bring up a topic, she will drop all these different research articles. By the way, she writes a ton of good articles on Psychology Today.
Dr. Jamie Lusk. She is somebody out there in this world of influencers with even mental health professionals and spiritual-type people or mental health advocates acting like gurus and experts and very prideful and egotistical, I believe. You have somebody like her who is not on Joe Rogan or front and center on Instagram doing selfies that I trust more than almost anyone. I need to lean on somebody personally to hold me accountable or to talk about a situation with somebody who is in need.
That is great.
She is awesome.
I will get her contact info offline from you. I look forward to having her on the show. It sounds like she will be an amazing guest. I just want to say, Matt, I know you are super busy, I really thank you so much for your time, your energy, and just your viewpoint. Your viewpoint is really healthy, and you have clearly done a lot of your own work. You have helped a lot of people. You are also from back our way when you were at Yale, so next time you are out this way, call me, we will get a pizza in New Haven, and we will chop it up a little bit, okay?
Excellent.
Thanks again, Matt. Have a great day.
You, too, Marc, appreciate it.
Bye-bye.
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About Matt Domyancic
Matt Domyancic is a one man nonprofit primarily supporting the mental health, wellness and spirituality of first responders and veterans. He also does men’s work and enjoys building bridges with the civilian community to better understand the mental health challenges of first responders and veterans who often do not have sufficient preparation or resources to deal with the suffering they are immersed in while serving our country and communities.
Matt is a former police officer that worked patrol, Peer Support, SWAT, full-time Academy instructor for fitness and Officer survival, and was the wellness coordinator for Fairfax County Police Department implementing cutting edge strength and conditioning, performance psychology, nutrition, breath work utilizing early HRV devices, as well as doing research on the physiology of stress during martial arts, firearms, and scenarios two decades ago before most of these issues were brought into mainstream awareness. While a police officer, he was also concurrently a strength coach at Yale and Georgetown universities, where he also did campus ministry for the athletes.
After a serious medical journey, he was forced to retire and moved to Los Angeles to seek functional and integrative medicine. That in it itself was a journey to recover and then have to go through legal battles to justify a more holistic approach to managing his disabilities versus just taking a bunch of pharmaceuticals.
In Los Angeles, Matt was a strength coach and sports psychology consultant at Velocity sports performance working with Elite athletes, as well as a police Chaplain and Peer Support for multiple agencies. Matt confidentially supports veterans and first responders one on one at no cost to them, facilitates outdoor recreation retreats, as well as gives presentations and workshops on mental, emotional, physical and spiritual self-care and well-being. Matt has masters degrees in forensic science, sport psychology, and Pastoral theology.
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