JASON FOX
Special Forces operative turned SAS: Who Dares Wins mainstay Jason Fox’s guide to building mental and physical resilience
Brought up in a military family in the Bedfordshire town of Luton, Jason Fox joined the Royal Marines at the age of 16, first becoming a Commando and then joining the Special Boat Service.
‘In the Special Forces I learned to manage fear, emotional breakdown, pain in hostile environments and the horrors of war,’ he wrote in his biography Life Under Fire. ‘I thrived in events that would have crushed most people, and work was a ten-year rollercoaster of physical and mental extremes.’
Fox operated ‘at the military’s sharpest point’ in some of the world’s most perilous war zones. His missions included hostage rescue, counter-terrorism, counternarcotics and counter-insurgencies. But years of intense battle and the witnessing of the horrors of conflict took its toll on his mental health. Diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he was eventually discharged from the army.
Which is when things took a turn for the worse. Cast adrift from his former life, he fell into depression and very nearly ended it all. Fortunately, therapy saved him. “If you want to talk about hitting rock bottom and surviving, I’ve got all the experience in the world,” he says.
Fox managed to build a new career for himself, writing books and working on TV shows such as SAS: Who Dares Wins and Inside the Real Narcos. Now 47-years-old and living in London, his latest venture [at time of writing] is a live tour called Life At The Limit, which visits 25 venues across the UK in January and February 2024. Here he discusses some of the key issues from the show.
Examine emotions closely
Ten years ago, Fox came very close to taking his own life. At one point he drove to a cliff edge in Devon and almost leapt to his death. He managed to pull back from the brink at the last moment. Fox understands that everyone feels down at some point in their lives. For some it might simply be the blues, while for others it could be serious depression.
“The first thing that sorted me out was to admit my depression to myself and to explore the condition of feeling down,” he says. “A lot of times, we will feel depressed but we won’t look into it; we’ll just try to crack on. But if you actively and consciously explore your emotions – what they mean and why you feel like you do – you’re then better placed to nip them in the bud. I’m positively encouraging people to be more emotionally aware.”
Fox points out how, in the early part of the year, many of us suffer from the winter blues. “We can all get it but we must realise the bad weather is completely out of our control. You can all
