Every day, 17.5 veterans die by suicide in the United States. Not in combat. At home. In the silence that follows service. That number has not moved in fifteen years.
The U.S. military builds exceptional soldiers. It does not build men who can talk about what happened after the uniform came off. Veterans return home with PTSD, anxiety, chronic pain, and emotional patterns forged in environments where vulnerability was a liability. The tools to navigate civilian emotional life were never issued.
60% of veterans who die by suicide had no VA contact in the two years prior.
VA National Veteran Suicide Prevention Annual Report, 2024Richard A. Rodgers is a United States Army Gulf War Veteran. He has PTSD, anxiety, chronic pain, and has fought alcoholism. He built Don't F*ck My Feelings — Veteran Edition because he needed it and it didn't exist.
He is not writing from the outside looking in. He is not a clinician. He is a veteran who went through the fire, found his way back, and is reaching a hand to the next man. Every tool in this system is one he had to develop himself. That is why veterans trust it.
His son is currently serving in the United States Navy. His grandson is too. He built this program so they never have to be a statistic.
DFMF Veteran Edition is a non-clinical, peer-delivered emotional intelligence course built specifically for U.S. military veterans. It is not therapy. It is one veteran talking straight to another about what the wall costs, what the silence does to a body, and how to start telling the truth.
The program delivers through three integrated components: a published book, a companion workbook, and a six-week online course. No bureaucratic softening. No clinical detachment. Just the language veterans actually use, about the things they actually carry.
Veterans respond to peer credibility. They will pick up a book that speaks their language before they will ever walk into a clinic. DFMF reaches the 60% — the veterans with no VA contact — precisely because it does not ask them to trust a system they have already decided not to trust.
It asks them to trust one veteran who has been where they are and made it back.