For anyone who has ever crashed hard after a high and wondered what is wrong with them, Ryan Reichert has some answers and a lot of honesty. If you are tired of white-knuckling your way through the hard seasons and want real tools from someone who has actually been there, this one is worth your time.

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Ryan Reichert has lived a life of extremes. Military veteran, Fortune 500 executive, recovering alcoholic, divorced dad rebuilding his relationship with his kids. He has been at the top and at the bottom, sometimes within the same year. That kind of experience doesn't make you an expert by default, but it can if you're willing to do the work and tell the truth about all of it. Ryan has done both.

On this episode of Even Tacos Fall Apart, Ryan joins us to talk about the emotional cycles we all go through and why so many of us are completely unprepared for them. His book, The Icarus Effect, takes its name from the myth of a guy who flew too high and paid for it, and Ryan argues that most of us are doing exactly that, without even realizing it.

The conversation goes a lot of places. We talk about what it actually means to regulate your emotions versus just suppressing them, and why age alone doesn't make you better at it. Ryan is very clear on this point: he has seen people with decades of life experience who still blow up at the smallest things, because emotional intelligence is a skill you have to build, not something that just arrives one day.

We also get into his sobriety, which hit the two-year mark right around the time we recorded this. He is honest about what drove the drinking and what finally made him stop, and it has nothing to do with willpower. The alcohol was never really the problem. It was the shame, the secrecy and the lifetime of carrying things he never told anyone.

Ryan talks about what it looks like to actually start managing your emotional responses in real time, including some practical tools from his book. Box breathing for anger. Grounding your senses when anxiety takes over. Letting yourself feel joy without immediately overindulging in it. None of it is complicated, but all of it takes practice and most people never start.

His closing message for anyone in a low point right now is simple: you are not alone, and you almost certainly have someone you can reach out to, even if it doesn't feel that way. He also said something that stuck with me, which is that people are probably already judging you, so you might as well just tell the truth. It was funnier in context but also completely correct.

Ryan is a speaker, mindset coach and the author of The Icarus Effect. You can find him at ourprotectordevelopment.com and across all the major social platforms. Give this episode a listen and then go find someone to have an honest conversation with.

Understanding Emotional Highs and Lows with Ryan Reichert