Will Chesney learned to get into flow under extreme pressure by breathing, staying calm, keeping his heart rate low. But after losing many friends in combat, hate consumed him — and that hate directly impaired his ability to function. As he puts it: “You only have so much mental bandwidth, and if 50% of that is taken up by rage, you’re not going to function nearly as well.”
The hate also produced physical symptoms: his hair fell out twice from stress-related alopecia, once after the Extortion 17 helicopter loss and again after his best friend Nick Checque died on a hostage rescue mission. Unprocessed grief and anger literally manifested in his body.
Brett points out that some of that unowned, unprocessed rage was itself a source of the tension and violence they were trying to address — a cycle where pain creates hate which creates more pain.
“If I’m just stuck in a thing of rage and hate and anger, I’m not going to function nearly as well as not having to deal with any of that.”
Related Concepts
- Unfelt emotions create physical stress
- Anger backlog must clear
- Flow state is embodiment applied to life
- A hardened heart comes from unprocessed loss
- Identity collapse follows peak achievement
- Empathy makes warriors more effective, not weaker