Mental health: it’s ok to talk.

Probably this belongs in the mental health thread...
I've been having a general feeling of anxiety lately. Couldn't put a finger on it. Just kinda walking around a little ticked off... Definitely not my way.
I figured it out.
I was overdoing it on caffeine... for a while.
I was a cycle. I was annoyed by my kids' big energy this summer, so I was running to the Mav and getting a little soda for a break. The extra caffeine was making me on edge. Rinse Repeat.


Made an active goal to track my actual mg caffeine intake and it was alarming. Two Maverik sodas a day is too much.

So I've been tracking my numbers to cut down 80%. Started on vacation (figured it would be a better chance of success since I wouldn't be around society for a week) and after week 3 maybe: no more caffeine headaches and better sleep/ quicker to sleep= less grumpy to my people and less snappy.

I usually quit soda during the race season but I easily forget the benefits.
My cheap side made me think I was getting my money's worth with a soda that comes with the meal. Switching to water seemed stupid. So I tried to think about the folks that would kill to get a 32oz ice water with every meal.
I really think overdoing caffeine and simple sugars is causing us anxiety and weight gain.
(2- 32oz was almost 1/4 on my total daily intake goal!)
I still love a cold cold glass bottle of coke once and a while. But those giant dews or energy drinks weren't doing me any favors now my 30's are behind me.

I'm easily 4-5 16.9oz bottles of dew a day. 76mg x 4-5 = 304-380. Is that a lot??

I try and limit my black coffee intake to 1 gallon a day. I would say most days I meet my goal. It may be a lot of caffeine but not much sugar.

Gravy said:

Probably this belongs in the mental health thread...
I've been having a general feeling of anxiety lately. Couldn't put a finger on it. Just kinda walking around a little ticked off... Definitely not my way.
I figured it out.
I was overdoing it on caffeine... for a while.
I was a cycle. I was annoyed by my kids' big energy this summer, so I was running to the Mav and getting a little soda for a break. The extra caffeine was making me on edge. Rinse Repeat.


Made an active goal to track my actual mg caffeine intake and it was alarming. Two Maverik sodas a day is too much.

So I've been tracking my numbers to cut down 80%. Started on vacation (figured it would be a better chance of success since I wouldn't be around society for a week) and after week 3 maybe: no more caffeine headaches and better sleep/ quicker to sleep= less grumpy to my people and less snappy.

I usually quit soda during the race season but I easily forget the benefits.
My cheap side made me think I was getting my money's worth with a soda that comes with the meal. Switching to water seemed stupid. So I tried to think about the folks that would kill to get a 32oz ice water with every meal.
I really think overdoing caffeine and simple sugars is causing us anxiety and weight gain.
(2- 32oz was almost 1/4 on my total daily intake goal!)
I still love a cold cold glass bottle of coke once and a while. But those giant dews or energy drinks weren't doing me any favors now my 30's are behind me.

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I get this, I've fallen as far as 3 energy drinks a day. Sometimes 4..... I know my caffeine intake is affecting my mood and sleep... but life has been very frustrating the last 6 months and many days the only joy I get out of a day is every sip of that Rockstar... It's been very hard to convince myself to reign it back.

I worked graveyard for ten years. I cannot function anymore without truly obscene amounts of caffeine. I never picked up the taste for coffee, so soda is my vice. Trying real hard to dial it back, but it's so tough...

The three pillars of my personality are Jeeps, Baja Blast and Taylor Swift. Try and take one from me mmmkay I’ll kill you.

Really though I’ve done a year where I only drink water and milk (at least 2x) and I’m fine with it. I can definitely do without but I also don’t see any negative effects from the amount of caffeine I consume. I do understand that’s not the same for everyone. So we have a fancy water dispenser at work that adds caffeine and I did that once and it was around 100 mg which is supposedly pretty close to a cup of coffee. I was WIRED! I’ll stick to 55 mg at a time.

It’s ok for a man to cry. It’s not okay to quit caffeine. Really, you should keep adding caffeine until you start to cry. Then, maybe pull it back a half-coke.

SoopaHick said:

I get this, I've fallen as far as 3 energy drinks a day. Sometimes 4..... I know my caffeine intake is affecting my mood and sleep... but life has been very frustrating the last 6 months and many days the only joy I get out of a day is every sip of that Rockstar... It's been very hard to convince myself to reign it back.

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I hear you. That IS so hard feeling that kind of frustration lately. Being a new dad has got some serious new challenges; so is providing for a family. I don't know what else you're wrestling with, but hang in there. 💪
Give yourself every advantage to succeed.
You got this.

This post is an excellent summary of a conversation Chad and I had a while back.


I believe in many points our lives are so physically easy and safe that our minds create problems to keep ourselves on your toes. Work, hardship and service are good for us.
I truly believe many of our societal issues are based on a lack of reality and an excess of "empty time."
We've been lied to that we must be overly busy or do "every good thing" and we fill our lives with work or drink or pursuit of someTHING to make us whole. (My house is full of crap I don't need and some of my unhappiness is being forced to be the steward of all this CRAP!) When really if we look at people who live truly fulfilling happy lives they do "everything good" and they avoid unimportant things allowing them no place in their mental energy.

This is part of the reason I still am pursuing racing at a higher level. When you do things that approach that fine line and your safety relies on your complete concentration, the storm inside my mind is commanded to be still.
Mental toughness is exersiced and grit is the reward.
Afterwards problems diminish and inconveniences real or imagined fade away.
It's the contrast that provides humility.and gratitude.

Gravy said:

This post is an excellent summary of a conversation Chad and I had a while back.

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I believe in many points our lives are so physically easy and safe that our minds create problems to keep ourselves on your toes. Work, hardship and service are good for us.
I truly believe many of our societal issues are based on a lack of reality and an excess of "empty time."
We've been lied to that we must be overly busy or do "every good thing" and we fill our lives with work or drink or pursuit of someTHING to make us whole. (My house is full of crap I don't need and some of my unhappiness is being forced to be the steward of all this CRAP!) When really if we look at people who live truly fulfilling happy lives they do "everything good" and they avoid unimportant things allowing them no place in their mental energy.

This is part of the reason I still am pursuing racing at a higher level. When you do things that approach that fine line and your safety relies on your complete concentration, the storm inside my mind is commanded to be still.
Mental toughness is exersiced and grit is the reward.
Afterwards problems diminish and inconveniences real or imagined fade away.
It's the contrast that provides humility.and gratitude.

Click to expand...

This is really good. My dad has had to deal with depression his whole life. But he grew up on a dairy farm, and he knew those cows didn’t give a rip about his feelings, they needed to be milked twice a day. He learned that hard work and looking outside yourself can be some of the best therapy for some of these internal storms. His commitment to his family, work, and church has been his path to mental health; and his ability to truly empathize and minister to others who struggle with darkness has given his own depression a greater meaning. He has a hard time with some of my siblings who want to sit in a dark room as a way of dealing with depression; he thinks they need to engage with hard things, not sit and stew on their feelings.

Good stuff Stratton. I don't have time for people with "trauma". The people I admire the most have faced truly hard things both by choice and by necessity and I never hear the word trauma cross their lips. We are the softest humans to ever walk the earth and we constantly hear complaints. One of the best things about RME dudes is they all do hard things. Build cool things, crawls dangerous trails and race dangerous vehicles. I think that's why you are all my people, you pull me up to be my best just by the examples you all set. I can't hang with the cool kids if I'm licking my imaginary wounds.

Ok, I'll be that guy.

I had to give myself permission to be hurt. I had to allow myself to acknowledge that I was struggling. I had to recognize that I was traumatized, to use Chad's words, and I had to lean into it. When I tried to be the hardass and my love for myself was tough love, I was the most miserable SOB and I brought everybody around me down. I didn't start achieving anything like a healthy self respect (not that I have, yet) until I stood back and acknowledged my reality and started working with it instead of against it. Sometimes that means I have to lick wounds. Sometimes that means that I have to recognize that I'm over my head with something and drop it. Sometimes that means I'll go a day or two getting nothing done because I literally lack the energy to tackle those chores, and sometimes it means I hide in the house and cancel plans and stare at Youtube all day, and when that happens I have to give myself permission for that mood to move through me, I have to force myself to accept it, and then dissipate it, and THEN I can get on with being "manly" or whatever.

Which is not to say that Chad or John's dad or anybody else is doing it wrong. Just... we're all fighting our own battles, and we're all doing the best we can with whatever tools we have, and it's always going to look different from the outside. From the outside I'm pretty sure I look soft and squishy, unskilled and ineffectual and lazy, but I'm doing everything in my power with every weapon I have to be the guy I think I should be. I'm making difficult choices every day about when to attack and when to retreat, what to go after aggressively and what to let slide. I'm still not "together" - I never will be. That's one of the things I've had to acknowledge, is that I will never be THAT guy. But allowing myself to not be that guy gives me room to at least be the best guy I can, and that's good enough for today. We'll see what kind of guy I am tomorrow.

glockman said:

I can't hang with the cool kids if I'm licking my imaginary wounds.

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Just because they are not seen does not make wounds imaginary and insinuating that they are undermines the point of this thread that it is okay to admit to struggles and show what some would call weakness.

I have three brothers that from an outside view are like what Glockman describes. Great people and always seem to rise up out of any hard situation successfully without complaint. It's hard to see that growing up as the youngest, and to feel like I don't measure up to their example. To live in their shadow. I hear all the great stories about them from my parents and others, but never any about myself. I've had conversations with them about what I struggle with, and they always seem to end with them having a bewildered and confused look as to why I feel the way I do. As a result, I don't talk about it much. That's not to say they don't care, just that they don't get it.

Some people's brain chemistry has them seeing a pebble as a mountain, and that may be confusing to some. I don't respond to failure very well, and as a result I don't take great chances. I just try to stay afloat with the small victories. Everyone is different.

I think there's more people out there that struggle in silence than people realize. Maybe they've reached out before and felt marginalized, and that's why they stopped talking about it. A common theme with suicides is that everyone says they wished they'd known the person felt so down, or that they'd reached out. Maybe the person tried.

We have a saying at our house, ‘clean slate’. Just as Kevin said, some days just suck. Sometimes we just don’t have the motivation or energy to be who we want to be.
We will go to bed that night and clean slate ourselves for tomorrow, where we can hit it hard and try again. No anger for today. No regerts. Just allow it to be and move on.

I think to Chads point, RME really is a higher class of men. Our standards for success and failure are above the general population.
I doubt anyone of us can spend days on end behind a video game and call that acceptable behavior.

Just the fact that this thread exists and is popular says that we are all trying to be better people on a regular basis. I think that is much more rare than we realize.

Tebbsjeep said:

I have three brothers that from an outside view are like what Glockman describes. Great people and always seem to rise up out of any hard situation successfully without complaint. It's hard to see that growing up as the youngest, and to feel like I don't measure up to their example. To live in their shadow. I hear all the great stories about them from my parents and others, but never any about myself. I've had conversations with them about what I struggle with, and they always seem to end with them having a bewildered and confused look as to why I feel the way I do. As a result, I don't talk about it much. That's not to say they don't care, just that they don't get it.

Some people's brain chemistry has them seeing a pebble as a mountain, and that may be confusing to some. I don't respond to failure very well, and as a result I don't take great chances. I just try to stay afloat with the small victories. Everyone is different.

I think there's more people out there that struggle in silence than people realize. Maybe they've reached out before and felt marginalized, and that's why they stopped talking about it. A common theme with suicides is that everyone says they wished they'd known the person felt so down, or that they'd reached out. Maybe the person tried.

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This board needs a "manly hug" emoji, or maybe a "punch on the shoulder" smiley. I feel this so much. You're not alone, brother.

jeeper said:

I doubt anyone of us can spend days on end behind a video game and call that acceptable behavior.

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Not gonna lie, it happens. And it's certainly not the goal, but some days brushing my teeth and making it to the couch to play Gran Turismo is a victory. They're not common, and I certainly don't let it happen, but it happens.

jeeper said:

We have a saying at our house, ‘clean slate’. Just as Kevin said, some days just suck. Sometimes we just don’t have the motivation or energy to be who we want to be.
We will go to bed that night and clean slate ourselves for tomorrow, where we can hit it hard and try again. No anger for today. No regerts. Just allow it to be and move on.

Click to expand...

You’re a better man than I am. I just can’t do this. So often I'm filled with so much hate it consumes me. Honestly I miss the old days when I would just go get in a brawl with the first sucker that looked at me wrong. I hate ending my day with all this pent up rage and nobody to hit.

Tonkaman said:

You’re a better man than I am. I just can’t do this. So often I'm filled with so much hate it consumes me. Honestly I miss the old days when I would just go get in a brawl with the first sucker that looked at me wrong. I hate ending my day with all this pent up rage and nobody to hit.

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I need a wood stove. Sounds like you do too. Splitting wood is amazingly therapeutic.

Tonkaman said:

You’re a better man than I am. I just can’t do this. So often I'm filled with so much hate it consumes me. Honestly I miss the old days when I would just go get in a brawl with the first sucker that looked at me wrong. I hate ending my day with all this pent up rage and nobody to hit.

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I’ve been going to a boxing gym for about a year and a half now. I won’t spare because I’m 42 and don’t need any additional head trauma but, the people there are just amazing and supportive and getting some good work in on a heavy bag does wonders.