Part 2 of 2: We continue the foundational conversation that provides an overview for this first season.

Goodpain’s first season explores the complex landscape of trauma, grief, and healing through deeply personal conversations between two friends who have experienced profound loss. The central thesis challenges Western perceptions of trauma and suffering, proposing that pain can be a powerful teacher that fosters clarity, connection, and authentic growth.

Core Philosophy

The podcast reframes trauma not as something to overcome but as something to move through with intention. It suggests that conventional approaches to grief and trauma often fall short because they seek to “fix” rather than accompany, to provide answers rather than presence, and to rush healing rather than honor the necessary time it takes.

Goodpain S01E002 Transcript

Tyler

For some individuals seeing their loved ones in pain, it is intolerable for them. And if they can somehow convince that other person to see the positive, I want to challenge all of us to qualify that as a form of violence.

 

Intro & Outro

I’m Jeremy. And I’m Tyler. Welcome to Goodpain, where we talk about life’s true intensities without pretending they’re easy to solve. What if the things we’re told to fix, optimize, or get over are actually where the real wisdom lives? Each week we gather for the kind of honest conversations you desire to be a part of more often about the relentless demands, the unexpected grief, the quiet victories, and everything in between. Because maybe, just maybe, the answer isn’t to limit the hard stuff, it’s to find the good in it. Welcome to the conversation.

 

Tyler

We are continuing our conversation this week, part two of the overview of season one. As a reminder, there is sensitive material that will be discussed involving trauma and a child. Please listen and take the necessary steps for your own self-care. You are stronger than you know.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

Part of our answer with that is you are strong enough to carry the weight of your decisions.

 

Jeremy

It’s interesting because I guess there’s two ways to impact that statement about, I don’t know how you guys do it, or some variation of that. One of which is what you just illustrated about the weight of those thoughts rattling around your head for the rest of your days. But I thought the other way as well, to me, that’s a bigger issue. The other one to interpret with that statement was just, I don’t know how you go through the logistics day after day after day, and of which there are many. So I think those are the two things I’m hearing with that statement. Is there a third?

 

Tyler

I think those are the two big ones. And I would say the second one being probably the easier one to answer. I think intuitively we compare, we forget that we were all at a point five, six, and seven years old, and we looked up to adults and we’re like, how are you doing this? Yeah, and that I have an oldest that has long looked at the world around her and had anxiety around how she’s going to survive in this world as it is constructed. And yet she gets there and she finds reserves she didn’t know she had.

 

Jeremy

Because in her experience, the world is scarier than her peers might not recognize.

 

Tyler

That’s right.

 

Jeremy

Is that right?

 

Tyler

That’s right. And so for me, that secondary concern is one that’s, that answer is, you are stronger than you think you know, is sufficient for answering that second one because the routine becomes the routine. The same way all of us, once we dip into this is what normal is, this is what life looks like. We learn the mechanisms and the ways of carrying ourselves through that. And that’s just musculature. That’s just building up the musculature to deal with something.

 

Jeremy

Developing a routine, those types of things. Those are things that are tenable.

 

Tyler

Yes, and all of us know that.

 

Jeremy

It’s exhausting, I’m sure. But there is kind of a playbook on that aspect of things.

 

Tyler

And I say that with an awareness that the privilege that I have in the world that Tiffany and I have created with the social standing that we have is different than someone else who is absent of those. And that I can say that you’ll adapt to it.

 

Jeremy

Right.

 

Tyler

And that doesn’t mean that my adaptation is the same as the family that faces divorce after a tragedy.

 

Jeremy

Which is not uncommon, is it?

 

Tyler

It’s not uncommon.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

And what they’re going to have to carry is going to be different than what we carry. And even within the patient itself, one of the things that is markedly different is that in our care of Claire, we don’t have– she doesn’t have a tracheotomy. And that has very real emotional burden attached to it that’s different. Pediatric patients, adult patients that have a tracheotomy have a much foreshortened lifespan versus Claire.

 

Jeremy

I didn’t know that.

 

Tyler

Much more susceptible to ongoing infection besides just the routine things that we talked about, which is care of a tracheotomy has a whole different level of care requirements associated with it that further fatigue, that is heavier. And yet it becomes a part of– well, this is now part of our new normal.

 

Jeremy

Right.

 

Tyler

And I think that’s the thing is that it’s indicative of the fact that we’re constantly looking, whether it’s in a– keeping up with the Jones’s mentality or whether it’s in a– are you more entitled to your fatigue than I am? And I think–

 

Jeremy

It’s kind of an absurd statement, but I totally hear that there’s validity in why– where it’s coming from.

 

Tyler

Yes.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

And that’s why I think we’re going to talk about this in depth as we go on. Because those are the things that keep us from seeing what’s going on, holding space for what’s going on, holding space for differences, and then showing up in a way that is back in line with who we want to be. Sure.

 

Jeremy

And then there’s the patients phase two coming out of the hospital initially.

 

Tyler

In the next episode, we are going to talk about moving from the trauma, particularly the acute phase of the trauma. And what we haven’t really talked about is the microtramas that start coming on after that. But we’re going to talk about now moving into the what does grief look like? And then what comes after that, I think, is there’s one question for all of us that unites us, which is, what do we do with the fact that our time here is limited? You know, Parker Palmer is an author that speaks my language. He’s been someone who has given voice to a lot of things I’ve felt inside that I stumbled through developing language in very clunky ways and in ways that took many more words. And I, you know, he’s found ways for taking something that I will take five minutes to explain and summarizing it up in one line. My most quoted line with him is in response to this question around death, we have a choice. We can live in denial of defiance or collaboration with the fact that we will die. That’s what we’re starting to move towards is as we get farther and farther away from the event, the catalyst, that catalyst, the event of what happened sits with us for a long time. And I think it needs to because it is what becomes the teacher for actually moving through grief, moving, answering that questions of are we going to live in denial defiance or collaboration. And that’s those are the pictures that we had as we even the conversation around making decisions for whether we’re going to put her onto that cooling pad or not. In retrospect, we look at, well, what were we doing then? You know, it’s, are we denying the severity of the injury? Like, it’s, are we operating from a position of defiance where we’re going to beat this? We’re just going, you know, it’s a lot of that denial and defiance piece for me points to our grasping after control for a situation. That that largely is outside of our control. And as we got out of the PICU and moved to the subacute setting, that’s where we started to wrestle with some of those things in really unique ways. As I look back on it, you know, some of the things that we did, some of the ways we behave, some of the things we believe during that period, we wanted to get out of that subacute setting as quickly as possible.

 

Jeremy

Because of what? Why?

 

Tyler

I would argue that a big part of it was defiance at that point. And it served its purpose. It was time for us to get out, but there was a belief that we are fully prepared at this point to take care of her at home. And the funny part about that is when we were in that subacute care, the step down care for two months, it was supposed to be a three month stay. And the first day that we were back, we were calling the fire department again and we had them back at the house because there was something new that came up. So it’s this triumph of defiance that we’re going to beat the hell out of this, followed up immediately by a new re-traumatizing of like now. I mean, we were across the street from where the initial event happened. Oh, wow. And the same fire department that was called then are now called the first moment we’re back in the house.

 

Jeremy

I’m taking a minute to just wrap my head around what that must have been like for a parent and seeing this day after day after day where it happened.

 

Tyler

Yes.

 

Jeremy

I’m guessing you guys wanted to get out of that place, move as quickly as possible, but…

 

Tyler

We did.

 

Jeremy

You’re not always realistic. You did.

 

Tyler

We did. It was, I mean, we ended up staying there, I think, for two months.

 

Jeremy

Okay.

 

Tyler

And then we were out. Can’t do it anymore.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

Yeah. We got, we were in a new home at that point, setting up a new set of routines and getting established. But I think that’s where I feel a lot of what I was writing about and blogging about in order to keep people updated while we were in the acute setting, the ICU setting. It was very cerebral at that point. It was just about like relaying information, trying to come down a learning curve for how we make decisions. But when we went down to that subacute setting, there was, we started to see a shift in terms of the things that were coming up. Like we started coming out a little bit for ourselves out of this cloud of surrealism and things started feeling a little bit more of this doesn’t feel like a dream state anymore. Or this doesn’t feel like a fever dream.

 

Jeremy

It’s interesting. I was thinking as you were speaking that you’re becoming less confused about the big picture or the system or whatever. Is that fair? It seems like it became more, I don’t even know the word, I guess it became more real in a weird way.

 

Tyler

Yeah. It did become more real. Okay. And there were a number of things that were a part of that. When you’re in acute care setting, there are things that are going on with all players that are involved. And we’re not giving space because we don’t know what is happening. After 72 hours in the acute care setting, it was time to see if Claire would wake up. And the reason for that is because up until that time, our predominant focus is making sure no secondary injuries occur to her brain. So we’re actually, we had introduced medicines into her body to keep her in coma. And now we’re taking her off of those medicines. We’re going to see if she’s going to wake up.

 

Jeremy

Wow. Again, a very exciting moment as a parent, but also terrifying.

 

Tyler

Terrifying.

 

Jeremy

Because what if?

 

Tyler

You don’t know what’s happening. And you have all the hope in the world at this point.

 

Jeremy

Yeah, of course you do.

 

Tyler

That it goes swimmingly.

 

Jeremy

Things go back to normal or whatever.

 

Tyler

They’re going now and they’re going to take the meds off of her. I remember when, you know, we’re probably somewhere between 80 and 96 hours into post-event. And I’m standing at the foot of the bed with this doctor I mentioned earlier. And Claire is moaning. And that is a good sign. And it is, it’s not indicative of how far she’s going to get, but it’s a sign.

 

Jeremy

It’s a sign.

 

Tyler

It’s a good thing. And we had, through that acute, those first three weeks, that’s really what’s going on is you’re trying to assess what is going to be the ongoing clinical requirements. And you’re kind of clearing those through small tests. So the first one is, is she going to come out of the medical induced coma, which doesn’t necessarily mean that she comes out of what’s called technical coma. And we have Hollywood to thank for giving us this picture of coma that is not spectral. It’s not on a spectrum. It’s your eyes are open and you’re talking or you’re not.

 

Jeremy

It’s so disappointing because Hollywood up to this point had 100% accuracy with everything.

 

Tyler

That’s right. The next one after that is she’s off the meds. She is having responses. Can she breathe on her own? And this is the, this is typically the tipping point for the tracheotomy question and the decision around that. At this point, we are, this was one of my nights where they have, modern medicine has the ability to, before they remove, they ex-debates before they take the tube out. They have the machine able to actually come down on its support and see if her breathing takes over. And it’s never perfect because you can, before you ex-debate, you can get to a point where it looks like she’s breathing. You ex-debate and she’s not and you have to re-intubate.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

And I’m up all night watching her, I’m watching the breaths on the monitor and seeing what’s the distance between them, how long they are. And there’s a certain point where the, finally it’s, it’s close to seven o’clock in the morning, nursing change is coming and Tiffany comes down and says, you know, it’s time for you to go up to the room, sleep. We do, we trade. We do our own shift change.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

At that point, I had, I was very skeptical that she was going to get off of the ventilator. And two hours later, Tiffany comes, it’s nine o’clock and I’m half asleep. She comes and she tells me she is off the ventilator and she’s breathing on her own. It’s those things that sustain you until the next one.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

You know, whether it’s decisions now on whether you’re going to, to put her through surgery to have a permanent Baclofen pump that’s installed. That’s something that manages the, how much she’s, what’s called posturing where, you know, the, the tension in the hands that are held close up, you know, with a brain injury, you know, there’s a tremendous amount of tightness and tone in the body. And these are difficult things to describe, you know, through audio without demonstrating it, but it’s, it’s the, the tensing, a clenching.

 

Jeremy

Of the extremities.

 

Tyler

Of the extremities, which is all part and parcel with what the brain is doing at this time as it’s coming back online. Is it sending out a lot of signals throughout the body, trying to figure out what can it connect to? What, what’s, what’s going, and we call this period of tremendous neurological activity, brainstorming. And it’s, it’s in an anoxic brain injury where oxygen is a hundred percent shut off. And the, the brain is now having to rationalize what systems it keeps on. It abandoned certain connections in the brain.

 

Jeremy

This really does sound like a computer starting up.

 

Tyler

Absolutely.

 

Jeremy

It’s amazing.

 

Tyler

Absolutely. And when that computer is started, it booted back up again. It’s saying like, what do I still have control of? What do I, you know, what’s working? What are the priorities?

 

Jeremy

What’s not.

 

Tyler

And yeah, and it’s, yeah, absolutely. Reprioritizing, seeing what’s coming back online. And that storming period can last for a short amount of time. And last for a long amount of time. And Claire’s, it lasted for quite a long time.

 

Jeremy

Okay.

 

Tyler

We went, you know, even when we went home from the subacute setting, it was 18 months of lots of neurological activity, lots of us needing to try and, and help assuage that activity and the, just the, the frenzy that was occurring in her body.

 

Jeremy

You said 18 months. I had no idea. You said long, right?

 

Tyler

I mean, yeah.

 

Jeremy

Wow.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And, and, and this is where more experimentation came in for us of trying to figure out what are the, what are the care modalities that are going to work the best at, at, at bringing that a little bit of calm to her. And we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit more about some of the things that we did as we, as we went down that path. But that’s that acute setting of just learning these things and figuring out how you’re going to do this, then gave way to now she’s off the, the meds that we’re keeping her in coma. She’s, she’s extubated. She is awake a lot of the time. We’re now managing trying to keep her, we’re trying to manage other things from happening that would be detrimental to her longterm outcomes. Like as she’s posturing, as she’s tensing in the body, you don’t want those muscles to contract and for them to be foreshortened. And so you’ve got to go through the exercise while she’s her brain is storming. You’ve got to go through the exercise of stretching her out.

 

Jeremy

So manually kind of flexing, stretching, not staying under tension.

 

Tyler

That’s right. You know, you know, physical therapy, occupational therapy at this point, speech therapy isn’t in, in the picture, but those are the things verbal at this in any capacity. She’s vocalizing. But but at this point also is this reconciliation with, and I bring up the coma because on the scale technically to be out of coma, it’s almost like when you have a new baby and you do the apgar tests, okay, and you’re testing for, you know, balance here. Yeah. And you’re you have a similar framework for figuring out is she still technically in coma or not. And it’s not perfect. And we as parents want to see things at the same times that that we’re not seeing things and you’ve got confirmation bias that’s coming in as a parent and sure and also inherently knowing that the degree of access to care, the degree of opportunities that are going to come forward on on on what clinical or therapeutic things are going to be made available to her are based on a standardized test and you’re being an advocate learning how to be an advocate as a parent. And all of these things include smaller bits of trauma. One of the big pieces that’s associated with with the traumas that continue beyond just the mechanics of what happens, which is inclusive of whenever there’s a child that’s something like this happens. There’s a social services investigation that occurs there.

 

Jeremy

There are saw that coming.

 

Tyler

Yeah, of course. Where Ottoman Heidi were interviewed.

 

Jeremy

How soon after the day so this is social services involved.

 

Tyler

It was during the subacute setting and this is partially why with that during that acute setting there’s this awareness that nobody is prepared for this and we’ve just got to figure out what’s the what’s the potential long term outcome for this. But once you went down to sub you know to the subacute level, okay, there’s now a new set of things that come along, which is social services investigation was one of those where you know in the division of responsibilities between Tiffany and I, a lot of the administration of some of these things I took on those things so that she could focus on Claire. I led that and took that on as well as the other the loveliest of lovely aspects, which is managing of the insurance and health plan side of things and case management and what what are you you know what what’s happening there the other micro traumas that are starting to come online is I think everybody understands when you’re going through a social services investigation there’s your retraumatizing.

 

Jeremy

You really have each one of those steps in great detail and then if not also the now

 

Tyler

the scrutiny of who you are as parents.

 

Jeremy

Exactly right.

 

Tyler

Which you’re already scrutinizing yourself.

 

Jeremy

You’re already at that place.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And well also so so that’s going on I think the navigating our our our model our payment model is even even if there’s not something like this is in and of itself a traumatizing activity.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

And you know those things start to to pile up.

 

Jeremy

It really does pull you back into the real world in a hurry.

 

Tyler

Yes.

 

Jeremy

Taking you away from where every fiber in your being wants to be and as far as a place of emotional stability possibly healing or stages towards healing you don’t have the space for because you’re going to pull into this real world stuff which totally sucks.

 

Tyler

Going back to something we talked about earlier is that these are these micro traumas have a role. It’s to teach the lessons that are that need to be taught. There’s opportunity within each of these other micro traumas for starting to reflect on on who we have to be. And when you’re in the middle of it there’s very little cognitive conscious activity of what’s going on.

 

Jeremy

Right. Right.

 

Tyler

Which is again goes back to why I I’m very thankful for the kindness that trauma has in

 

Jeremy

teaching me these things that I was in no condition for learning them consciously. Sure.

 

Jeremy

I didn’t have the space for that. Sure.

 

Tyler

And as much as we talk about how big those feel then I reflect back to the point where we go back on the initial trauma and go back and point to the trauma that occurred there brought clarity and drew our family together created more cohesiveness.

 

Jeremy

It does seem like you are a very tight group.

 

Tyler

Yes.

 

Jeremy

And I can only imagine that this is a huge piece of this.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And that investigation drew us further together. Wow. Wow. The dealing with insurance all of us deal with with health insurance and and and.

 

Jeremy

Not Europeans.

 

Tyler

Not Europeans.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

But even that has drawn us together. You know when we reflect on sometimes you know Tiffany and I when we got married the things that brought us to being together as two independent people we had different experiences. Part of the message here I think is is is less to people who are experiencing these things and more to communities is because when we as communities look at people who are in the midst of these things going through these traumas we have we have an oftentimes a desire to take away the pain that we have a desire to to alleviate them from it. My message at least in our situation is there’s nothing you can do to take away the pain. It’s just not going to happen.

 

Jeremy

It’s not an option on the list.

 

Tyler

Yeah.

 

The cautionary tale to this is our anger or or disenfranchisement sometimes that you know insurances the way it is or that that that how dare they investigate or put a family

through this.

 

Jeremy

I think those are all valid. Everybody would feel that right.

 

Tyler

They are they are valid to to a degree. I also want to challenge us is that sometimes those are the better teachers for developing the musculature for what the next thing is going to be. And for us after subacute the next thing was taking your home and there’s always been a next thing. The story here is not for those who are going through trauma to figure out how to see the silver lining that is never going.

 

Jeremy

It’s disrespectful.

 

Tyler

It is disrespectful.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

It’s not the experience of the emotional violence of people seeking to get us to see the silver lining in the middle of it because they wanted that for some individuals seeing their loved ones in pain. It is intolerable for them. And if they can somehow convince that other person to see the positive, I want to challenge all of us to qualify that as a form of violence. What we need to do is look at ourselves and how we’re inserting our suffering, the things we’re trying to avoid and inflicting that upon somebody else so that we don’t have to to suffer and instead ask ourselves, how do we sit with suffering in a more effective way? And I think that a little bit this is I think a forecasting of a very deep conversation that we are going to have around this topic.

 

Jeremy

I think that one I’m really more intrigued about a lot of these things because we have really spoken about that in the ways that we have some of these other topics. I think also I’m intrigued by it because I think it’s one of the hardest things for a lot of people to do and recognize. I recognize that was not helpful.

 

Midroll

Sit tight and we will be right back after this short break. In a world where no one listens anymore. Where authentic connection is humanity’s last hope. She is the final guardian of what makes us human. I hear you all of you. When words fail, she listens deeper. Your pain has purpose. Let’s find it together. When masks become armor, she shows her true face. I don’t have all the answers, but I’ll sit with your questions. When hope seems lost, she finds the humor in the darkness. Well if we’re going down, we might as well laugh at them. She fights not with force, but with presence. Community isn’t dead. It’s just waiting for someone to care. Join her mission at goodpainco.com. Subscribe to the newsletter. Stream the podcast on Apple and Spotify. Like, share, review, and send your voice to the fight. I am the last listener and I’m not giving up. Goodpain because isolation ends here. Welcome back to the rest of the episode.

 

Tyler

We’re turning back to a life where the peaks and valleys are less spiky. Nothing can really ever compare to that first initial spike. Everything else is a smaller version of that. I think Tiffany and I both anticipate that we don’t know if there will be anything that ever compares to that. Everything else is lesser. They all bundle up to this larger one. I find a beauty in that as the trauma’s got smaller in comparison, it brings us into a closer shared experience back with the communities in which we operate who are still continuing themselves to have smaller daily, weekly, monthly traumas surrounding themselves. Surrounding themselves.

 

Jeremy

Everything.

 

Tyler

All of their living. I see that a little bit as a reintegration back to the community, back into the shared experience is that part of what we just said was the aspect of navigating insurance, that’s a shared experience. That’s not just me and Tiffany having to deal with that. That’s all of us having to navigate at least a payer system for healthcare that people understand we might have to do in greater quantity, greater volume, but they understand it. There’s something about —

 

Jeremy

Connection at that point because everybody recognizes the pain of that.

 

Tyler

I think that the other traumas that come along with this, though, still ladder back to the initial big traumas is that there’s a bookend effect to this where because now Claire is wheelchair bound, everybody sees the product of the initial event, not the intervening stuff and now there’s this othering aspect to it. The othering aspect to it was a different type of trauma that came along with learning how to be a family that is parents, sisters, aunts, uncles, grandparents to a child with special needs. And this is where I think it starts switching from an identification with the trauma itself to grief, to grieving and learning more and more, what is it that we are grieving? We’re not grieving the trauma. We are grieving a whole lot of other things and every morning I do some journaling and exercises and the one this morning was teed up just about perfect for this and for this morning the prompt essentially was around the cyclical nature of living, the ups and downs. And one of the examples for this was that life is full of being seed, growing, flowering, the flower disappears and then you return to your root. And I think one of the big pieces that we have grieved with Claire for ourselves, for her, is our expectations on what that flowering was going to look like for her. We never got to pay witness to. So what if that’s where for us, the trauma starts pointing more and more towards the grief that we know and that we have felt belongs to us, that we carry with honor on her behalf. And at times being living in defiance for we’re not going to look at the flowering that has come in the ways that we never wanted it to come and actually being defiant that that’s a flowering that is worthwhile because who are we to look at positives that came out when there’s a victim in our minds that is in front of us every day. You know, the flowering of walking her down the aisle and never getting to do that. Of not realizing that I will never come home from work again and have her cling, rush and cling to my leg, that those things aren’t going to happen. It put a lot of things over time into perspective for me that were planted very early.

 

Jeremy

At your own hands, planting or other external voices?

 

Tyler

Both is the short answer. Yes.

 

Jeremy

It drives me.

 

Tyler

Yeah. When I was 11, I knew what I wanted.

 

Jeremy

This was not part of the vision.

 

Tyler

Yeah, of course. So my favorite movie when I was 11 was Father of the Bride.

 

Jeremy

I’ve talked about this.

 

Tyler

Yes. And that movie has one part in it, in particular that pointed to what my values are. What I’m willing to fight for. It is the wedding ceremony itself when George Banks is a part of the ceremony and is asked the question, “Who gives this woman cracks out? I do.” And then takes a seat and then his mental top track and he starts to reflect and starts to realize what it is, what this means. He says he was realizing that he wouldn’t be coming home and seeing her at the top of the stairs or at the breakfast table in her socks and that something was changing and she was leaving us. Something inside started to hurt.

 

Jeremy

For everybody who’s ever seen that movie, yeah. At any age, there’s recognition that that loss is painful and powerful and big and also very beautiful in that scene.

 

Tyler

Yes. Something deep inside of me at that moment resonated with recognizing this is what’s worth fighting for. What he experiences, that pain that he’s experiencing, he would never give up that pain because seeing his daughter coming into her own, making her decisions for herself as an autonomous individual and honoring that. The pain he was experiencing, if he was given the choice in order to be rid of this pain, would you-

 

Jeremy

You don’t sacrifice all the years leading up to it. I’m jumping on your-

 

Tyler

I have no- Sorry, but yeah, that’s- The answer is unequivocally no.

 

Jeremy

A crazy person would say, “Yes, I will give up all that other stuff.”

 

Tyler

That’s right.

 

Jeremy

That’s right.

 

Tyler

And in those moments of celebration, it makes sense to us, but there is a form of trauma that is happening in that moment. And I am more and more having a difficult time separating between moments of celebration and moments of suffering. Is that that same clarity shows up as a good pain. That good pain is worth fighting for, whether that is seeing my family come together, brought together by trauma and clinging to one another and knowing that Claire, come back to us. We love you, Claire. You can do this. And saying the same thing had I actually been able to walk her to the aisle and be a witness to saying, “We love you.” You are strong enough to do this and to carry yourself on your own.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

I don’t know.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

I don’t know.

 

Jeremy

That’s a beautiful statement. Well, no good sequitur to transition out of that. That was lovely.

 

Tyler

I don’t know. It’s- yeah, I don’t know. In terms of trauma.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

Yeah, I don’t know how much more unless you have thoughts on trauma itself.

 

Jeremy

Well, I’ve had questions about your process with this and two questions that come up is how often do you think about that day? And it’s a loaded question. I imagine the number is huge.

 

Tyler

The day itself, it’s far less frequent.

 

Jeremy

Okay.

 

Tyler

You know, when we were in Dallas, which is where the accident occurred, there were plenty of triggers that prompted it.

 

Jeremy

When you were living there, being surrounded by physical environment space. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tyler

Yeah. Whether it was the location itself where it happened, and as we mentioned earlier, we vacated that premises within two months. But even then, there were drives that I had to make and passed the acute care facility, the hospital. And part of that also is those were the predictable ones. And the predictable ones, you could prepare yourself.

 

Jeremy

Or possibly avoid. There’s another route.

 

Tyler

Absolutely.

 

Jeremy

I’ll take 20 more minutes to avoid driving by these places.

 

Tyler

Which was almost comical because even the recognition that I have to come up with a different route is enough to be like, oh, here they come.

 

Jeremy

Yeah. Yeah, sure. Okay.

 

Tyler

So, when you started to get farther and farther apart or distance, time and distance started to occur, it started showing up in surprising ways. Then you start getting these, you know, just, I mean, the best way to describe it is getting blindsided.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

They would just show up in ways that you didn’t know.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

You didn’t anticipate. And around 10 years, the 10-year marker, that became unmanageable for me. It started intruding on just being able to function at points.

 

Jeremy

This is surprising to hear you say. I didn’t know this. But this is around the time that you and I started becoming friends.

 

Tyler

It is. And the acute phase for that actually happened right before we met. Is that things that were really challenging for me, you know, at the time professionally, I was close to when Claire was injured. Two years after I was in a role that required me to travel pretty heavily. That was very, that was a form of re-traumatizing myself, separation anxiety, stepped in. And then you got, you know, we got that managed. We relocated back closer to home here in the Rocky Mountains. And then around the 10-year mark, which was interesting because I had been warned about five years prior.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

That for a lot of people that have significant traumatic events, there’s something about the 10-year mark.

 

Jeremy

That number has power.

 

Tyler

Yeah. It really does. And whether that was planted in my mind or whether, you know, who cares. It happens.

 

Jeremy

It happens regardless.

 

Tyler

And then I was back to, I was still traveling for, you know, for professional reasons. And I started experiencing panic attacks. And it was very reminiscent of that early separation anxiety. But this one was, it was different. This goes back to that cerebral aspect. I had slipped largely back into a mode where we had our routine. The new normal was there. And there was no catalyst this time. There was no driving past the place where it occurred. There was nothing that prompted an acknowledgement within myself that my brain had taken over again. The clarity that I had in what was important in confronting and carrying, I now, or was in the process of trying to reassert the power of my mind for, and there are some things that, you know, definitely could be seen as that maybe were self-inflicted that brought this about. I hesitate to use the word inflicted because this was the right moment for them to come about. It was what was-

 

Jeremy

There was no choice in the matter. Your body is calling you to respond to this.

 

Tyler

Yes. Yeah. Very much so.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

And I think that day, going back to the original question, is- And it was more starting to feel the accumulation of what was lost. At that point, we ended up going down a different path, which I think we’ll talk about in future episodes. Particularly for me, we took that less as a something to be suppressed and more as a friendly hand waving that attending to self.

 

Jeremy

Okay.

 

Tyler

It’s important now.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

And so, we got down to the business of attending to self.

 

Jeremy

Was that a priority in your life’s prior to all of this, or was that something that was new in your life?

 

Tyler

I would say that prior to this, it was familiar from a cerebral perspective. If you go back and read what I wrote early on in the blog, I think it’s one of the most honest times in my life because-

 

Jeremy

Yeah. Why would you filter anything?

 

Tyler

Yeah.

 

Jeremy

Yeah. Nothing was filtered.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And my writing, writing bedside from Claire on an iPhone full of all the typos was the most heart driven. My heart was cracked open.

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

It needs to be. And I think over those 10 years, my mind had done the work of trying to stitch my heart back up. And it basically told me that’s not what it was supposed to be. It needs to stay cracked open. And that’s, going back to what we talked about earlier about this aspect of being outsmarted, being surprised, being outmaneuvered, that resurgence of panic attacks, anxiety attacks in 2019, 2020 was the mechanism for cracking my heart open again.

 

Jeremy

Wide open again.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And that came with more trauma.

 

Jeremy

Yeah. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Why wouldn’t it? I know your wife as well. And I’ve had the pleasure of talking to both of you guys about these things. How often do the two of you talk about this together in passing or like a real knee to knee? So we have to sit down and talk about this. And in what is, what shape is that taken now versus what it used to be maybe?

 

Tyler

The shape it’s taken, I’ll start there, is that it’s not a, there are not specific topics we have to address around this. It is now the context of our lives. And so the things that we are, where it comes up is in the vulnerable conversations that we as a couple have embraced. For Tiffany and I, we’ve gotten to a point where our mutual admiration, our kindness, our care, our concern, our delight in one another, how much we love each other is contingent on our individual commitment to continuing to change and fall in love again with the new person that’s in front of us. And this event put us on a path that is a massive shared experience and significantly individual to each of us. Our paths were very different. And that might, you know, maybe in the future, that’s something of just going through and having a conversation where she might be involved of sharing that and showing that there’s, the voice you’re hearing right now is a singular perspective of what went on.

 

Jeremy

Of course.

 

Tyler

And there’s a lot of overlap with Tiffany’s, but there’s also things that are uniquely hers. And that’s how this shows up is that reconciliation between her version of what happened to her through her lens.

 

Jeremy

Right, of course.

 

Tyler

And mine. And not competing for whose version is right, but learning how to see the other person without projecting what they should be seeing based on what I saw.

 

Jeremy

Right.

 

Tyler

And that’s, I think, that’s predominantly at this point how it shows up. Early on, I would say, you know, in our trajectory for the first five to six years, it was very clear when we were having bad clear days in each one and that, you know, the other would, we would just signal. It’s a, it’s a day where we’re, I was surprised by something and it took me down to path. I can’t say when, when I, when the last time I had one of those days was partially just because for me, the interaction itself with that is very different. It is, it has moved away from being a hot plate that I can’t touch and that I have to, to being one that is a tool for, for reflection, for, for, for going in inward and, and, and evaluating and, and so our conversations around that have turned away from the support that’s needed for surviving to now conversations around what about it is humbling us. And I think that’s the, the, the arc that we’re both on right now in is whether it’s due to age, whether it’s due to all the, the mix of things is just more and more being humbled by what’s being presented to us. And I would say that, you know, without her, she would probably compete with me and, and say that, you know, she’s felt more humbled. I, I, my question to her at this point would be to what degree did I inflict violence on her?

 

Jeremy

As far as her healing.

 

Tyler

Yeah. And the acknowledgement of the violence that I impacted on her is what continues to humble me and being more and more aware of the retraumatization or microtramas that I inflicted on her is continuing to propel me down a path that says, how do I stop striving? And this is a paradoxical question. How do I strive to stop striving?

 

Jeremy

Sure.

 

Tyler

And how do I, how do I start in more consistently embracing silence and quietness so that I can observe and see the beauty that’s unfolding in front of me, including my wife, who it’s not my job to fix. It’s not my job to correct. It’s not my job to set her straight. And that where she is is exactly where she’s supposed to be. And where I think she should be is reflective of me.

 

Jeremy

Yeah.

 

Tyler

And, and now that’s an opportunity for me to ask the question, like, where did that come from? And I think that’s the role that it’s, it has played at least probably for the last three to four years.

 

Jeremy

Okay.

 

Tyler

Plus is that’s the mechanism that it shows up in our relationship.

 

Jeremy

Wow. It’s kind of a beautiful philosophy surrounding all of this is growth. And I want to hear more about lessons at some point. This is a lot to back and thank you for maybe part of this conversation and this journey.

 

Tyler

Very few people that I want to, that I’d feel comfortable doing this with.

 

Jeremy

I totally see why.

 

Tyler

Yeah.

 

Jeremy

Very vulnerable, very exposed.

 

Intro & Outro

Thank you for sitting with us in this conversation for bringing your own story, your own questions and your own hard won wisdom to what we’re building together. If you want to keep this going, subscribe to Goodpain on Apple podcasts or Spotify, where you can also leave us a review that helps others find their way to these conversations. And for weekly doses of conversations that go beyond quick fixes or surface level advice, subscribe to our Kindling newsletter at goodpainco.com. Goodpain is recorded in Colorado on Arapaho, Ute, and Cheyenne ancestral lands. And let’s remember, we are not alone in this. Our struggle is not our shame. Whatever we are carrying today, we don’t have to carry it alone. We will see you next time.