They are elite soldiers.īut they know mental health is as valuable as physical health, and the two are a natural fit.Īfter a couple of years training in his gym, Mahurin started to customize workouts. Tom and Mahurin are physically imposing, intense, tough, strong. “My goal with this is just to make sure that somebody has a place to go and that they know they have a place to go,” he says. We’ve spent more time with us than we have our own family.” “This is how we have spent our military career. “Groups like this, this is what helps us,” he says of Mahurin’s gatherings. ”Here’s some breathing techniques,” he adds in mock tone, having been given that advice too many times. “That’s fine that you want to help but how are you going to sympathize with me? How are you going to help me out if you can’t understand where I’m coming from?” he says. That person’s never taken a life,” he says. That person’s never seen their buddy die. “They want to help, but that person has never stepped in Iraq. Therapists, psychiatrists never broke through. It became where I wanted to be, where I was more comfortable. “For a couple of years, I was gone two hundred and some odd days with training and everything,” Tom says. He doesn’t know the exact amount of combat deployments he’s had, but it’s somewhere between 17 and 19. I would do anything to stay at work as long as I could because that’s where my friends were.” “I would go weekends without speaking to anybody. I’m an extrovert but I became an introvert. “When everything stopped, I was like, I need help. It took that for us to realize something is going on, something is wrong. “I think it took the war to slow down for everyone to realize the effects it really had on us. “You can be in a room of 100 guys that are going through it and think you’re the only one.” “I don’t want anybody in the SF community or in the Fort Bragg community to think that they’re alone in this,” Marhurin says. The group ultimately made its way to Silverback. The no-man-left-behind mentality kicked in hard, and he organized local peer meetings. The group was effective, but during a span of nine months in 2018, nine of Mahurin’s veteran friends committed suicide. Marhurin was introduced to peer-to-peer groups in 2011 while in treatment for post-traumatic stress. “It’s comforting to know that you have somebody like that in your corner.” It’s not patient-client, it’s not in a timeframe. He (Mahurin) understands me as a brother. They don’t know what we go through mentally, physically, the struggles we have,” Tom says. “I’ve tried a number of things - going through therapists and psychiatrists - they haven’t been where I have been, they haven’t done what we have done. “It’s a way for them to let things out and not necessarily be in everyone else’s face.” Never miss a story: Subscribe to The Fayetteville ObserverĪ veteran who asked to be referred to only as Tom frequents the meetings even though injuries keep him from working out. “Guys have been able to get things off of their chest talking to a teammate while they’re working out or while they’re doing stuff in here because we spend so much time in the gym working out. “Right now it’s SF guys that were either in 3rd (Special Forces) Group with me or coming from the SF community,” Mahurin says. The Mahurins’ gym has become the site of peer-to-peer meetings in which veterans counsel each other from an empathetic standpoint that isn’t available anywhere else. They offer everything from functional training to Krav Maga self defense to Jiu Jitsu to meditation. in downtown Fayetteville, with his wife Jill. He owns Silverback Fitness, a gym on 443 Franklin St. Once on patrol in a village in Afghanistan, when he squatted with his fists on the ground and launched himself through a barricade, a Special Forces teammate said he looked just like a silverback. James Mahurin resembles a Viking, or maybe Tormund Giantsbane of “Game of Thrones” fame.
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