078. I Carved My Name On A Bullet [Part 1]

I carved my name on a bullet...

...because a thousand paper cuts had me bleeding out: no sleep at a busy house, a crumbling relationship, financial troubles, a body and mind breaking down, and losing a brother. In this raw conversation with Sammy Freyta (LPC, ATR, First Responder Counselor & firefighter spouse), we break down how that slow grind happens and how to start climbing back... one honest step at a time.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why it’s not “one bad call.” How years of small hits—sleep loss, a dying home life, finances, grief—pile up until you can’t think straight.
• Moral injury in plain talk. Sammy’s “torn bicep” analogy for your brain: ignore small strains and it tears.
• Self-care vs. soul care. Daily basics (sleep, food, movement, sunlight, connection) vs. deeper resets that actually refill you.
• Sleep that fights back. Blackout the room, keep it cold, phone off at night—why stimulation wrecks your recovery.
• Alcohol isn’t a fix. It numbs now, wrecks sleep and anxiety later. Why it made things worse.
• Control vs. relief. The bullet as a symbol of control—and the truth that most of us want relief, not death.

 If you’re a firefighter who feels eroded—tired, foggy, angry, and carrying more than you say—this one’s for you.

Transcript

TJ: Let's not waste time sugarcoating it. I was at a point in my life where I had a bullet with my name on it. Today I'm here though, and it's not because everything is perfect, but because something inside me refused to give up. What we're gonna do here today is we're going to have a raw and vulnerable conversation about what happens a firefighter's mind when it feels like there is no way out. And while I can sit here and talk about the reasons I ended up there and the feelings and how I got, got myself out of that very dangerous rut, it's important to have somebody who actually understands this and who has dealt with this stuff. And that's why I have my good friend, Sammy, back on the podcast, who has been a previous guest for, I think you were in the thirties, in the 30 some episodes ago, to kind of go back and forth.

We're not gonna do the typical. Question, answer type podcast. We are just going to sit here and riff and see where the conversation roughly takes us. But instead of me sitting here being like, guys, I was gonna off myself, we actually have a mental health professional who is going to help us unravel some of these thoughts. Sammy, thank you so much for being here again and for agreeing to this sort of almost free therapy session, but also this, this very raw and real conversation we're about to have.

Sammy: Yeah, I feel very honored to kind of be a part of this with you because I think it's a very important conversation and sometimes when we have a script to follow or we have ideas to follow, we might miss what we really need to say. Um, and I think that this kind of platform of just being honest and talking through this with each other could be potentially a really impactful for hopefully the community.

TJ: I hope so, because you know, and a lot of listeners know that I would rather be the host rather than the guest. So it's taking quite a bit.

Sammy: Oh, so I am the host today. 

TJ: You're the hostess with the mostest. Yeah. It's by all means, but not quite yet. Because before we dive into you being the host, why don't you tell us a little bit about you?

Sammy: Oh, geez. Um. Well, I am a Chicago native. I live now in Colorado, so I grew up in Chicago, moved to Colorado a couple years before COVID, and I started my therapy practice about, gosh, I don't know how old I am, 15 years ago. Um, and I now work primarily with first responders and I'm also married to a firefighter.

And we run a company called Elevate Coaching. And we go around and we support peer support teams and with clinical leadership, but what we also call our platform mental fitness, because we are trying to change the game, we're trying to help responders understand that they can stay fit in their brains and that can save a lot of lives.

It can enhance a lot of lives, and we love what we do. So we are coaches for about 12 departments right now, and then I work full time at a department up here as the sole clinician of. At the Fire Firehouse Fire Stations, it's about six stations right now, so we're busy.

TJ: You're always busy. Every time that I

talk to you, you're, you're running around doing a gajillion things. But all that to say that you understand our culture, you understand who we are on a very, very intimate level. And, um, you can, you have always been that person that can bridge the gap between the like psychotherapy world and the

fire service world.

You are the much needed sort of liaison between the two worlds because you've, you've been in both and, um. That's why I could think of nobody else that I would rather go through this event with. So,

Sammy: I'm happy to be here.

TJ: she said right before I talk about blowing my head off,

Sammy: Let's do it.

TJ: okay. So like I said, we're joking about it now because we all have

that dark humor and it's, I, I think humor and discussion kind of take away the claws and like the fangs from the dangerous, scary things. But it's important to realize how I got to that point. And it wasn't just one day I woke up and I said, oh, I am going to end it all. This was a steady eroding of literally my will to live it. It was not

one event, it was not a bad call, it was not a breakup. It was nothing of the sort. It was. A thousand little cuts that one by one were bleeding me out until the point that I don't even know what took over me.

I just went upstairs to where I have a couple of handguns and I'm like, you know what? This is gonna be the bullet symbolically that I end this all with.

And before getting to that point, it was, I was sitting there and I was watching a long-term relationship crumble. Like it was, it, it went from, from living with a partner to living with a roommate,

arguing over everything.

There was no intimacy. There was no dialogue. There was no communication. And it was, again, one of those things that slowly it happened until we were at that red line point that it's like, fuck, what am I doing here? The job didn't help because I was just getting crushed. I, I was, you know. At the busiest company in, in the department running 4,000 engine runs a year. So sleep was non existent. Sleep was non existent. At home, my body was just beaten. I was, my mind was just in that constant state of brain fog. physically, I was just done. I was, I was exhausted. I was, I, my health was declining and so, you know, we're talking about relationship, we're talking about

sleep, we're talking about the physical fitness side of things being a complete disaster, and the financial stress, it's always that good icing on the cake that just exacerbates everything because it's a blue collar profession and one or two financial mistakes, and you are in a really, really shitty spot. Those were the things I was looking at, and I think at the same time, I still had that looming. Tragedy from when we lost Nate, where the entirety of the fire service changed for me because at that point we stopped being heroes and we just became mortals like everybody else. So all of those things combined over the span of many years to get me to a point where I started taking those first steps and I said, this is the gun I'm gonna use.

This is the bullet I'm gonna use. I don't even know why I care about the single bullet itself. I don't know, maybe symbolism or something.

Um, 

Sammy: Control.

TJ: I guess.

Sammy: Mm-hmm.

TJ: And uh, so that sets the stage

Sammy: Mm-hmm.

TJ: and I think a lot of it comes from a culture that we have slowly tried to change, but the fire service culture has always been one of, I. Suck it up and you have to be the strong one,

right? We are the ones called upon to fix people's problems, and we're just supposed to deal with them on our own. Everything else that comes, you know, then we'll talk about later how it, but that became almost like a, like a lifeline for me. But let's talk about that, that culture, the, the suck it up culture.

The, the, what were we talking? The, the moral injury, the trauma and what it means for firefighters as we're always called to be the strong ones.

Sammy: Hmm. Well, I mean there's a couple things you said in there. I wanna go back to, to you saying that it wasn't just one thing, it was a thousand paper cuts. I think that's a really important thing for our community to understand is that we, the job does not kill you. Right. I mean, it could potentially be unsafe.

Right. We know that. We always say, don't, it's not about being safe on the job 'cause you're intentionally not. But the job itself does not make you kill your want to kill yourself. And there are a lot of layers as you described, that impact the way that. Responders show up in their lives and what is, what is going on simultaneously as humans then trying to balance this, the hero complex, trying to balance the trauma that they're experiencing at work, the shift schedule, sleep, right, food, working out, financial issues, like all of those things combined are the thousand paper cuts that we're talking about.

So I really wanna make that clear because, you know, I, over the last, um, four months, I would say maybe five are around our area. There's been a multitude of suicides. Like we've had a, a bunch kind of popping up around us and a lot of, you know, chiefs, and not only chiefs, but leadership are talking to me about, you know, how do we talk about this with our, with our people, and how do we have the, the right conversations 'cause they're feeling, um, I, I would say.

They're struggling with the idea that it feels as though we're talking about suicide being a result of being a firefighter or a first responder. And it's not, but it can be. So we have to make the distinction that moral injury, which I can talk about in a second, is an injury, post-traumatic injury is happening for firefighters.

Now that's a lot of like therapy words, so I'm gonna make it easy to understand. Your brain is not supposed to see and experience the things that you do. It's just, it's not, it's trauma, right? One in, uh, what, what is it? The statistic. It's like, most people in a lifetime will experience five traumatic, four to five traumatic.

Things over their lifetime. First responders, that's like a day, right? So when I say you're not supposed to see that, it doesn't mean that people are avoid trauma and everybody, civilians avoid trauma. It's just to understand that the, the, um, exposure that you have to trauma is not normal. And so because of that, your brain becomes injured.

That's what we call post-traumatic injury. Running calls, multitudes of calls. Your brain goes through a process. Now the process, I don't need to get into it 'cause it's very brain neurosciencey, but basically it gets tired from getting into the amygdala all the time in order to go and do the job. That's a fight.

Fight or freeze mode. Everybody's heard that before you guys go in and fight. So over time, the front part of the brain is like me, I'm kind of tired of doing this 'cause every time I'm on shift, I'm just gonna get back here. So it basically starts to come offline and that's your logical part of your brain prefrontal cortex.

So we have started to call that post-traumatic injury. Now the firefighter way of explaining it, or first responder way is that if you TJ start exercising and doing some kind of new exercise and maybe you hurt your bicep, like let's say you pull, can you pull it? Oh no, I'm not a body doctor. Can you pull your bicep?

I feel like you can. So let's say, let's say you strain your bicep. What are you gonna do? Strained bicep.

TJ: I will keep working out because, you know, push through

the suffering. 

Sammy: so great. I'm glad that you said that because let's say that you hurt your, you strain your bicep and you keep working out. You don't rest it, you don't take care of it. You don't really acknowledge. You're like, ah, this hurts, but whatever. I don't give a fuck. I'm gonna do what I wanna do. Now it starts hurting more.

Now you're kind of like, I can't really pull the weights that I normally do. Like I'm, I'm starting to, it's starting to hurt when I'm sleeping. Like I can't really get comfortable. I'm taking Advil a lot or I'm taking ibuprofen to kind of, to, to taper down the pain so that I can keep going.

TJ: for the autism,

Sammy: Tylenol.

Tylenol, right? Then, then what happens to your bicep that is now hurt and being overworked?

TJ: it's not gonna heal.

Sammy: No. What if then. Now overworked biceps. It's not getting better, it's not getting healed, and you keep pushing it. You might, I was gonna say break it, but I'm not that dumb. You might tear it, right? You are gonna tear your bicep if you do not see the signs, acknowledge the signs and start treating the hurt bicep, right?

So we get to this point where now our bicep is torn. What has, what happens when you're, you have a torn bicep, you gotta go to the doctor, you have to schedule surgery, you can't work anymore. All this stuff starts to compile. That's when we get into more of a post-traumatic stress disorder place where all of that overworking of our brain and injury to our brain becomes an issue.

It becomes a torn bicep that we can't fix. Now. We literally have to pause and do the work because it is. It, your bicep is not functioning anymore. And so when we talk about suicide and how that relates, that can be a place where suicide starts to feel like an answer because you are in more of a disorder in your brain where you're not thinking clearly, right?

You're not sleeping. Other signs and symptoms start to happen, and you have just completely overworked this injury in your brain so far to the place where you feel helpless and there's a lot of pain going on, and then you're experiencing normal human humanity, right? All the things that you talked about earlier.

How do you deal with that? Right? This helpless feeling is, and we people want to escape that pain, and sometimes it feels like death is the answer to that, right? Because there's no more pain. Also, there are a lot of statistics. I don't know them off the top of my head about the more suicides that you see, the higher your risk for suicide is.

TJ: Interesting.

Sammy: Yeah. Um, one of the guys at my, at the fire department, the paramedic, his wife is a doctor and she did a whole study about this. Um, she knows a ton about it. She's really cool. But yeah, there, I didn't know that. Like I had no idea. So think about that now. A compounded, another paper cut. Right? Is exposure to suicide actually increases your risk.

So here's your perfect storm torn bicep, right? That's the injury. Untreated.

TJ: I hadn't considered the fact that witnessing those suicides would. Sort almost normalize it. And

Sammy: 100%. It makes it a part of life. When we go back to the statistic that I was just talking about, the one in four or whatever the actual science is, I'm not a science doctor. Um, about how many you, you know, how many traumatic events that a first responder experiences, that's the thing, right? It's exposure.

We're talking about exposure on top of normal humanity in life. That's hard.

TJ: yeah, I, I mean, I always hesitate to say that life is hard because it could be a lot worse

at the time, it just felt inescapable and I hate feeling like I'm in a corner. I, I think that's an like an animal reaction. You put a scared animal, which we as humans are scared animals. You put us in a corner. There's going to be a lash out and it could be at the person that's putting 'em in the corner, or if it's life you lash out at life. The only way, you know how, which is ending things on your term, like the most violent, I'm doing this myself way possible,

Sammy: Mm-hmm.

TJ: and uh, I do like the analogy of the, of the, the strain and then the torn bicep. It's not, yeah, it's not a way that I, that I looked at it. I, it, it wasn't until later that I realized, like, like I said, the, those paper cuts, that things were just kind of compounding

and that I was not giving myself that time because it might take a day or two off and, you know, be off for like a week from, from the job, but that's not enough to catch up on my sleep.

That's not enough to get back into normal healthy routine. That's

not enough to fix a relationship. It's just enough to just kinda. Like pull

my head above the water. Yeah, 

Sammy: yeah. yeah. Well, and that you're bringing up a whole other tangent, but that we could go down or not, but it, you're bringing up a, um, a skill about learning between doing your basic shit, which is self-care. That's what we, me and Dave call it basic shit, but it's, you know, Maslow's hierarchy, it's, you know, food, water, sleep, support, um, exercise, sunshine, that, that is daily.

That should be things you do on a daily basis. But we say self-care now 'cause it's a cool thing to say, you know, like it's the buzz word, but what self-care is, is basic shit. Soul care. Is when you find ways to reengage in humanity and things that bring you joy, like true joy. And those should be, those are things that you should be doing on a monthly basis.

So to stay kind of balanced and healthy and what that refers to as more, um, you know, like bigger things. We always say self-care in relationship to soul care. Like we're inter, we're in using the, the words incorrectly. So soul care is like going on vacations, going to the mountains, going to the beach, um, you know, taking, taking a break, like getting massage or body work done or some stuff that actually resets you and gets your, fixes, your alpha and beta waves, you know, back into a healthy place.

And in order to do that, you have to start with the self-care, right? And a day off doesn't give you the time because you have to start with basics first. So if we are not talking about this. In general all the time with first responders. They don't know that, like they don't know that they need to be doing extra, like they need to be doing self care and soul care more than the normies do.

Right? Like because they have more injury.

TJ: Okay, so self-care,

sleep, right? We've, we, we harp on that a lot. Get a nice solid sleep routine and a sleep set up at home. I cover that in the sleep guide that comes with fit for service.

But it's things like the blackout blinds, the making sure

the room is comfortably cold to whatever you can get it till you, uh, turn your fucking phone off.

Like

Sammy: Yeah. By seven. Did you know that 7:00 PM is when you are supposed to 

TJ: I mean, I'm a night owl, like, I

Sammy: Well, I'm just saying 7:00 PM is what 

TJ: like Is that because of the sun and everything? Because here soon when we head into

Sammy: Well, it's stimulation. Right? You know, it's like how much you're, it's stimulating your brain. I mean, we, we know this, like we're addicted to our phones.

It's the whole point of the phone, right? So you're engaging in an addictive behavior before bed. It's going to overstimulate your brain, it's going to diminish the quality of sleep that you get.

TJ: Yes. So, black eye, blind, cold, no phone. I always plug John from rescue and CBD because his out outta service formula helps out a ton. That's just

talking about sleep. And we're going down, we're going to go look at mass hierarchy of needs, the,

the pyramid. 'cause I think self-care right is the bottom. And then soul care is

the 

Sammy: Kind of, yeah. Yeah. I would say that's a good way of describing 

TJ: I can't, I can't go into self-actualization if I'm running on no sleep or I'm starving.

Sammy: Well, yeah, like I always say that to people when they come into my office, especially like right in the beginning, if we come, they come to me for coaching or therapy. I'm like, okay, we gotta start with your basics because if you wanna deal with depression right now, even though they usually don't have those words, but I'm, you know, reading between the lines or anxiety or trauma or injury, you know, PTSI, I need you to be doing basic shit because you can't skip steps.

I can't talk about high level things with you if you are not eating well. Like it's not gonna work. You know, if you're not working out, moving your body like that is anti, that's an antidepressant. Like, if you're not doing that, popping some pills and you know, us talking about your depression is not gonna change anything.

TJ: Neither is alcohol. And that's the thing that I

am glad that was not a factor at the time when we lost Nate,

I kinda made a promise to myself that I was going to stop drinking. Because up until that point, I drank heavily every shift off. I would close down my favorite bar, shadow pub dog, um,

you know, and like. Eight or 10 beers, I mean, tidy beers, but still like eight or 10 a night

was normal and, um, makes you feel good at the time, except after the fact you, the anxiety skyrockets. Your body is in shambles, the sleep is rock. So now we're going back

to eroding that, that pyramid. And that's my, that's my soapbox against excessive alcohol.

I'm not

saying cut it out. 

Sammy: Yeah. Anything in, in access that's a negative coping skill. Right? And it, uh, and negative coping doesn't mean maladaptive is a better word. That's a fancy therapy word, but it just means bad adapting. Right? Mal is bad, but it's anything that's an excess to shut your amygdala down. That's literally what.

Alcohol does, is going to lead into other problems because you could potentially get addicted or it's disrupting your sleep pattern. It's disrupting the next day of the exercise or all the basic shit we just talked about. It's impacting what you're eating and you're digesting all this stuff later on at night, typically.

Right? There's so many other things that alcohol does. Um, and it's not just, oh, you know, don't drink alcohol. It's, are you drinking in excess? Because if you are, that is a way that you are, you are trying to self-medicate from the injury.

TJ: Yeah.

Sammy: You're trying to shut it 

TJ: Self medication never works. It never, it never works. It, it's always go, it goes back to the basics. We talk about that a lot in the fire

department. It's back to basics. There's a lot of

folks out there teaching those courses. Hey, how do you, what is the best way to pull a line to get it to the door?

We, what

is the best way to throw a ladder? We're not going fancy schmancy karate moves. Get the line to the door. Get the ladder to the window.

Basics, right, 

Sammy: and over until you get it right. Then you can graduate to the higher level stuff, the soul care, the big 

TJ: the soul care, the big stuff. When I sort of made that decision, and I was shocked at how easy it was to eng to engrave something on

an actual bullet, and I'm not talking like lately in the news where people put their names and fucking sharpie on the casing, like this was straight up on the lead.

I was like,

huh, this is surprisingly soft and surprisingly easy. It, um, after I did it, I'm like, what the fuck does this mean? Like, I know that this is gonna be my end, but why? Like, why do this? Why not just go upstairs and just put the barrel to my mouth and pull the trigger? And I think in a way I was still trying to retain that control of saying, I'm done, but I'm done on my terms.

I'm in the corner, I'm gonna lash out, but I'm going to do it the way that I want to because even if it's my last act of defiance on this earth, I am going to do things my way. And that feels empowering to say kind of in a fucked

up way, but it's also like I still didn't go through with it. Right. I'm here.

So

kind of feels, it a cry for help? Is it like, what is, what does that mean? Like the, the planning. When I heard about planning for suicide, I figure people had all of these ideas of, you know, like when you think about plans, something that takes a long time to come up with. me, the buildup took a long time, but the making a plan took seconds.

Like everything was just instant. This is what I'm gonna do, this is how I'm gonna do it, this is where I'm gonna do it, this is when I'm gonna do it. This is the bullet that I'm gonna use. Done. I'm just like, that's terrifying how quickly I can come up with it.

Sammy: Mm-hmm. But you didn't. 

TJ: But I didn't. So what does that say about me?

Like, am I a coward?

Am I like, what is it

Sammy: well, that makes me wanna punch you in the 

TJ: you fucking coward. You couldn't go through with it.

Sammy: but I wanna, you know, I think it, you said a cry for help. No, it's a cry for relief, right? You want it to feel relief and you didn't know where to turn, potentially. Right. You didn't know how to find relief. And sometimes.

Our thought goes to because of the injury, because of the overwhelming feelings we have and the hopeless hopelessness that we're feeling that death is an answer to that. But you knew some part of you knew that it wasn't so it wasn't necessarily that you wanted death, it was that you wanted relief, 

TJ: I, yeah, I just wanted, I wanted to rest

and to be, to be clear, it's not like I went around and like posted it on Instagram. I was like, this is what I did.

I, it happened and I just sat there. I'm like. Okay.

All right. This, um, we have reached a new level of what the fuck am I doing with my life? But this is the first time that I'm, I mean, I talked to my therapist about it,

and you and everybody else listening now are the, the

first ones after my therapist to hear about it.

So it wasn't

your typical Look at me. I need attention. It was just, I was beat. I just wanted rest.

Sammy: Yeah, I mean, I, this is not like a funny thing, but sometimes like I joke, I'm like, I just wanna go to impatient just 'cause I could rest for a little bit, like just commit me right now because, but I mean, it, it's funny, but it's, sometimes it's true. Like when we're carrying weight, we wanna put it down. And sometimes when it's internal, we don't know how.

I think, you know, there's, there's a couple things that we can acknowledge about what you went through and what some people do when they get to that point. But don't, quote, unquote pull the trigger. There's pain, right? They're, they, it's not necessarily a desire to die, but it's a desire to escape. Whatever pain it is they're feeling and they don't know how to do that.

It also says a lot about, like, we, we can talk about people who have thought about suicide or potentially got to a plan, plan part. They hold two truths. Like part of them wants to die, but there's another part that wants to live so they're in, you know, conflict with each other. Right. Um, and that is, that's where some of that strength can be built is by acknowledging the part that wants to live.

Not saying, oh, you need to live for me or your family, or for, no, it's, there is a part of you that wants to live. What do we do with that? Um, and then there's something, a lot of times there's still protective factors going on. Like you still want to be alive for some reasons. What are those reasons? Is it loyalty to people?

Is it love that you have? Is it, um, your views? Is it, you know, things you like to do? Is it your dog? I don't know. But there's, there's protective factors that are keeping you alive, and then that's your entry point for healing. All of those things is how can, now what can I do and how can I work on that part that wants to live and then get to know that part more.

Instead of, I think, and this is just my personal opinion, tackling the part that wants to die, because I think that's what we do in like a lot of times in therapy and, and I'm not saying that that's wrong, but we're preoccupied on the dark part instead of trying to balance out the light part. Because I think, and maybe this is just my cynical view now, working with you all, is that you will always have a dark part.

Like you can't see all the shit that you see and expect to be normal. Like that doesn't, that's not real. So why aren't we talking about, let's build the light side up.

TJ: Okay. So it's, we're, we're almost back to that yin and yang, right? There's darkness and

there's light, and for us it's very. Well-defined. We see darkness and we see

light. And it's a matter of making sure that light is turned up as bright as possible to kind of drown out the dark, which is always going to be there.

And you, you, we do joke about it, the, the amount of times that we, we had a frequent flight, not even frequent flight, we rarely took him to the hospital, but my man would fall off the bed all the time. The floor was, the hardwood floor was covered in piss, great guy. But every time that we would leave his apartment, somebody would crack a joke.

It's like, Hey man, if I get to the point, I can't fucking kill myself. One of you guys need to put me outta my misery. And you know,

multiple people would say that sort of stuff. And I,

that's to your point of, we always have that in our mind. Whether we mean it or not, that's different. But I think,

Sammy: Mm-hmm.

TJ: think if you take these, these type A personalities and you're like, Hey, uh. You're gonna be a quadriplegic and you're gonna be leaving two inches of piss on the floor every day. They're like, nah,

dog, just kill me

right here, right now. 

Sammy: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

TJ: And, uh, we're talking about the jokes and that disconnect. The it, that was the part where I, where I did feel kind of, yeah, disconnected from the world. Not I wanna say a

fake or a fraud, but I could sit there and go through the motions at the kitchen table and joke with the guys, joke with the shift, make them laugh, have fun. But deep down inside, I was not feeling it. You know what I mean? Like, it

was, I just knew it was my job to show up, drive the fire engine, make the

crew laugh, yada, yada, yada. And then I'm going home and I'm like, I. I can't do this anymore. Like I,

I, I, I can't, is it, and you know, do we look at it like, you can look at Robin Williams now, right? It's like someone

I don't wanna, I mean, I think I'm funny as fuck, but a lot of people are gonna disagree. But you look at somebody like him who was making others laugh and feel good and nobody knew

his inner struggle. All of these celebrities that we've known that have taken their own lives, and some of the people that we know who have taken their own lives, they're like, wow, they made everybody feel amazing,