Jon Rose: Healing From 16 Years of Disaster Relief

The woman could see him. He was real. But it made Rose realize that he had been running wide open from one disaster to another for 16 years, without taking stock of himself. “I mean, it allowed me to keep performing at a high level. But slowly, a crack started to show in my psyche. The stress started to affect my day-to-day life, and I hit a breaking point.”

This was about seven years ago. Rose was completely burned out, as much emotionally as physically. “I was just pulling levers to try to maintain, drinking to unwind, caffeine to stay awake, and sleeping pills to rest. I wasn’t balanced; I was pulling one level to correct the other. I had pretty bad hallmark PTSD symptoms.”

Rose was working with a lot of vets at the time and decided to confide in them. They introduced him MDMA therapy for PTSD. He began exploring breath work, talking to a therapist, transcendental meditation, as well as EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)

“It sort of catapulted me into a 7-year healing pursuit that has consisted of every type of modality you can think of from breathwork to traditional therapy and transcendental meditation to.”

There were dozens of traumas he had been through as a first responder. “Attending to those was the goal at that point in time, but I don’t know that I had enough self-awareness to understand that I was not really balanced in any aspect of my life. I started to become super numb and dissociated.”

That was when he had the incident in Manhattan. Shortly after he moved into the mountains. He slowed life down.

“They say your body knows it needs to heal before your mind does. Something in my body knew it needed to be back to nature. I was doing all this exploring and each modality would uncover some new truth. And then I'd be able to take that and get to the next one, then the next thing or next epiphany.”

Just as Rose has taught so many of us to aid in recovery, he is teaching those who need it to aid themselves. “I've done tons of presentations over the years through Waves 4 Water. But this past summer I was compelled to put together a talk around this topic. It’s something I'm very passionate about.”

Rose gave the closing keynote speech at Coast Summit, part of Coast Film Festival in Laguna Beach called ‘Healing the Helper,” last year.

“It's about the whole path that I've been on and experienced. I mean, it's really good for first responders and high-performer type individuals that are under a lot of pressure. But it’s good for a 12-year-old kid as well because it's a lot of stories.  It was really well received and just made me think that this is a really important topic right now. We're all talking about mental health, right? I have spent a life collecting experiences, like Indiana Jones style.  It's time to like share it now.

The program is part of JonRoseSpeaks.com. He is also working on a series called “Unpacking,” that will document this next act. It’s not attached but it’s in parallel to engaging with people.

“This is what feels authentic. I feel like normalizing the conversation. Destigmatizing mental health is a noble pursuit.”

He wants to expand the experience he is offering to more than a talk. “I’d like to get to a point where I can go into a corporate environment or a fire house, a military unit and give the keynote to help people understand their own story.”

 He says that’s the starting point. Then he will move straight into breathwork modules or another basic therapy. “I also realized that one of my gifts is being able to communicate this type of subject matter to men – men who are traditionalists, or religious, or skeptics. I’m them. I’ve had a gnarly life. And they can look at that and say, ‘Oh, well, he’s a regular masculine dude.’ That’s a really cool demographic to target because they’re the ones that need it the most.”

He wants to connect with people by sharing stories and starting to change perspectives with an actionable process beyond that. “You’re giving people something to try. And if it resonates, they leave with the tools they need to move forward.”

Leave it to Rose to blaze a trail for humanity for surfers to follow, once again.