Redefining Normal: Healing PTSD with John and Melissa King

In this powerful episode of The Psychedelic Report, Dr. Dave Rabin sits down with John and Melissa King to explore the deeply personal and transformative journey of recovering from complex PTSD. John shares his path from uncovering repressed memories of childhood sexual trauma to rebuilding his identity, one hard-won insight at a time, with Melissa by his side as partner, advocate, and witness. As psychedelic medicines have demonstrated more promise to successfully address the burden of trauma than any other therapies discovered to date, John’s story emphasizes the tremendous potential of all those who could be supported by these powerful tools.

Together, they open up about what it really means to recover from trauma: the loss of a former self, the courage to embrace vulnerability, and the importance of self-awareness and community support. From the tools that helped John—like bodybuilding, daily structure, and redefining internal narratives—to the moment he chose to live, this episode offers raw honesty and hope for anyone navigating the long road to healing.

John’s story is one of pain, transformation, and ultimately empowerment. As he puts it: “This trauma doesn’t define me—it refines me.” Whether you're supporting someone with PTSD or walking your own healing path, this conversation reminds us that we all deserve the tools and the community to recover. And there are a whole lot more tools than you know about, Apollo Neuro being a primary one.

Sponsor: Apolloneuro.com

Deal With It: Living Well With PTSD by John King
📖 Learn more: https://drjohnaking.com/

Web: https://thepsychedelic.report
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdavidrabin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrDavidRabin
More from Dr. Dave: https://www.drdave.io/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Psychedelic Reports. Psychedelic drugs have played their part in
America's long strange trip toward an understanding of mind.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
All during drugs The Psychedelic News, leading physicians, scientists, and
experts share their wisdom about psychedelic medicines and healing. Fifty
years ago, psychedelic drugs were at the center of America's counterculture.
The brightest minds in psychedelic medicine the Psychedelic Report.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
We use the kedemy assisted psychotherapy model that happens to
have psychedelic effects that were not predicted when the drug
was first developed.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
From researchers to investors.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I think the biggest mistake we pat as the culture
is the war of drugs.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
So physicians to shamans and non private pioneers psychedelic drugs.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Recent research suggests some of them could have legitimate uses.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
The Psychedelic Needs bring you diverse perspectives from the front
lines of this exciting movement, The Psychedelic Report.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
The Psychedelic Report was brought to you by Apoll Neuroscience
and produced by Future Medicine Media. Welcome to the Psychedelic Report,
your single source of truth for the Psychedelic News. I'm
your host, doctor Dave Raven I'm a neuroscientist and psychiatrist
trained in ketemine assisted psychotherapy as well as MBMA assisted therapy.

(01:21):
Today we're diving into one of the most pressing and
complex issues at the frontier of mental health. Can psychedelics
like soul cybon truly help veterans heal from PTSD and trauma?
And if so, why are so many still unable to
access his care. This episode takes inspiration from a recent

(01:43):
CPR News article highlighting the growing disconnect between scientific promise
and institutional policy. Early research, as well as powerful personal accounts,
suggest that psl cybin assisted therapy can offer meaningful relief
to veterans suffering from PTSD, especially those who haven't found
success with conventional treatments. Veterans describe their experiences with psilocybon

(02:07):
as life changing, allowing them to confront trauma, reconnect with
loved ones, and rediscover a sense of purpose. These are
not isolated cases. Small clinical trials are beginning to validate
these outcomes, showing significant reductions in PTSD symptoms after just
a few guided sessions, similar in some ways to the

(02:28):
effects of MDMA assisted therapy, and yet the Department of
Veterans' Affairs, bound by federal regulations and cautious bureaucracy, continues
to prohibit psilosibon's use. This leaves many veterans to seek
out costly treatments through private clinics or to travel abroad,
placing a life saving therapy out of reach for the

(02:49):
very people it could help most, and increasing their risk
when they work with untrained and uncertified providers. Ultimately, this
conversation is about action. The science is advancing. The voices
of veterans and those suffering from trauma are clear. The
question is will we listen and will we respond? And

(03:10):
veterans are not the only group struggling. There's also been
a substantial increase in news about human trafficking lately. This
recently surprised me and it led me to investigate this
situation and how we can do more for victims of
human trafficking, something we talk quite a bit about preventing,
but rarely about its aftermath. To elaborate on the subject,

(03:33):
I'm joined by John King. John King is an Australian
aboriginal trauma recovery expert, speaker and author internationally recognized as
a top thought leader in the fight against human trafficking,
a survivor of prolonged childhood sexual abuse who was involved
in the Epstein and Niguard trafficking investigations, King has transformed

(03:56):
personal tragedy into a global mission. Drawing from his lived
experience and grounded in neuroscience and real world resilience, he
founded the Phoenix Collective, a trauma recovery platform that offers
practical evidence and formed tools for survivors, especially men, navigating
PTSD and complex trauma. As a brief disclaimer to our listeners,

(04:19):
this episode delves in depth into John's experiences with trauma
that through his work he is comfortable discussing with us.
Please be advised that this episode may not be suitable
for children. Today we are joined by John and his
wife Melissa. Thank you both so much for joining us.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Thank you for having us.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Mike, it's my pleasure. You know, you have accomplished so
much in your lives around educating people around PTSD, recovery
from PTSD, and really destigmatizing trauma for the community, which
is something that is so important right now with so
many people struggling with traumatic events and highly stressful, overwhelming

(05:03):
events and not really knowing how to how to deal
with it. Could you tell us a little bit about
what your journey, what led you up to writing writing
your book Deal with It, living Well with PTSD, and
starting all of these online educational resources around PTSD and recovery, Sure.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
You Love To and chipping we you Want. So I was,
I was sexually abused. Some would call it traffic. We
defined it as traffic now by my mother and a friends.
And I had full recall of that when I was
forty five, which a lot of that happens a lot.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
In men who have been sexually abused. They lock it
down and shut it away.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
And it was a Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock, and
I remember it vividly, and it's like all these little
frames came together, these little incidences that I'd filed away
as a normal childhood because it was the only childhood
I knew, and they came together and I realized, you know,
this isn't normal, this is having raised three kids, this

(06:05):
is not how this thing goes normal.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
So so that was, you know a little bit of
a that's my John Apocalypse, you know, it was John Ageddon.
It tried to turned up and there it.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
Was, you know, the onset of complex post traumatic stress
and went from flying around the world one hundred and
fifty thousand miles a year doing corporate training and talking
public speaking to being a complete blocking and an.

Speaker 2 (06:29):
Enclosion of a life. And that was really the event
that kicked it off.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
And so from there this this this time since then,
which was when two thousand and eight to now, so
it's been twelve years, has been this fourteenth thank you.
I was going to say this steady climb up, but
it really was. It was more like a nose dive
into the depths of some abyss and then decided to

(06:58):
stop digging, throw the shovel out, and this tenacious clawn
out the other side of it, which is really how
recovery gos right.

Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's like a bowl of strength. It's not a steady
cove out in any way. Check with form.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
That is true.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
So really that's how it started for us.

Speaker 4 (07:17):
And John approached PTSD and all of his symptoms that
he was having the way he approachased any problem and
has always. He started to a mass information and put
it all together and see take the twenty percent of
symptoms that he was having, which you know he had depression,
he had anxiety, could go out in public, and he

(07:40):
tried to find the overlap between those things and approach
it so he could take the twenty percent of symptoms
where he could get the eighty percent of the results.
So he could start to sort of redefine what a
normal life would look like for him, and he broke
it down piece by piece, line up online. That's typically

(08:02):
how he had approached problems in the past, and so
he applied his sort of executive coaching background to himself,
became kind of.

Speaker 3 (08:13):
His own colas quiet. I think the biggest I stayed
is the redefining of normal, understanding that normal is subjective,
it's not objective, it's it's it's a very personal thing.
And then realizing that John one point oh and John

(08:33):
two point oh were two totally different men, and John
one point oh had a set of desires, skills, and
abilities that John two point oho had had no desire.
One point oh was very gold driven, very focused, very
anally were attending in a lot of ways. John two
point zero wanted to sit under a tree, smoke cigars

(08:54):
and write poetry. And sometimes these people had a challenge coexisting.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
It's like, dude, assure me, you just want to sit
around the true all right, quadrede, dude, what's that? It's okay.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
It's like for years a battle and John two point
oh would look back at John one point oh and
see what an achiever he was and feel really small
because he just didn't want to do those things anymore.
And then cognitively, John two point zero literally couldn't do.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Some things that John one point oh could.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
So coming to a stage of loving and accepting John
two point zero and being very comfortable, and probably the
biggest tipping point in all of that was coming to
peace with my past was either going to define me
or refine me. I was either going to be bitter

(09:49):
because of the things that were done to me, or
I was going to be able to turn those around.

Speaker 2 (09:56):
And I had to come to peace with my past.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Not necessarily the activities, but the acceptance of these things.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Have made me who I am, and I like who
I am.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
And I think that was That's been one of the
biggest turns in my journey, and I think it's also
some of the biggest we've seen some of our clients,
the people we try to help, is where they can
come to terms with this physical manifestation of a neurological
state and understanding that they just are a different person.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
That's a great way to describe it. And you know,
I think it was Carl Rogers, who was one of
the mean psychotherapists who discovered motivational or developed motivational interviewing,
who said something to the effect of it is only
after we accept ourselves for who we are that we
can actually be capable of making all the change that

(10:52):
we want to make in our lives into the world.

Speaker 3 (10:55):
It's one of the things I came up with in
the process was a very information revelation application transformation. Is
that I would read a lot of things and I
would amass this information about how to get out of
my hole. But it wasn't until I understood that I

(11:15):
saw myself in those things and then took those things
and apply it that I would start to see.

Speaker 2 (11:21):
My life change.

Speaker 3 (11:22):
And the amassing of information, but taking personal responsibility of
this is my information, not just general information, is.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
A very quick part. That's the quickest part in the
whole journey.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
Because now I could say that I did that for
say two years out of the last fourteen, and then
the application has taken ten years out of the last
fourteen and twelve fifth twelve years on. Now I'm finally
starting to feel like I'm transformed.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
That recovery has stuck, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean you didn't get here over night,
So so you're you're it's going to take. It takes time,
right to get to where you want to go and
to undergo that transformation and to put in that effort
and to see the results until you retrain. You know,
you're reautomating right the things that are meaningful to you

(12:22):
now based on that new information.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
You said something interesting there is you said you talked
about re automating it into who you want to be
and an understanding of where you wanted to go.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And I think that's very hard because you don't know
what that looks like. You knew what one point O
looked like. And like when you start off as a kid,
you're growing up in all.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
These constructs which are firm where you're supposed to go
and who you're supposed to be, even the school, educational path, marriage, borgage, whatever.
But now here you are in the middle of your
life and you're a toddler. It's like oh, am, I
supposed to like this, Am I.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
Supposed to do this.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
I've never really had a desire to do this, but
now this is all I want to do.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
And this thing that I couldn't do, I can't do anymore.
And is that okay? And getting that sense of peace
around those things, as you said, I think that's that's major, and.

Speaker 4 (13:20):
Finding that new identity of how you see yourself, because
you know, before John had seen himself as a businessman.
He was an executive coach, he was a consultant, and
suddenly now he didn't want to do when he does
things anymore, and he was writing poetry and very successfully

(13:43):
writing poetry and now a series of novels. And he
was probably six or seven years into writing before he
ever introduced himself to anyone as an author. And I
was like, oh, yeah, you're an author a poet. That
was totally how I saw him. But it took some

(14:04):
time for him to see himself that way.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
And that's that's interesting because Melan never knew me before
mail Zannie even known two point zero. She never knew
one point And it was interesting. I remember that conversation.
It was like, what are your money like?

Speaker 4 (14:23):
I made him a business card and I put you know, author,
poet speaker on it. He was like, who is this God?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
It's a really interesting point that you bring up, right,
because it's almost like, and I think you know, we
see this all the time in the clients that we
work with. Is it's almost like there's an identity crisis
or a crisis of identity where you have We've been
taught to see ourselves in a certain way for our
entire lives, and we spend a lot of time practicing

(14:52):
seeing ourselves in that way, and then all of a
sudden a series of events or realizations happened or realized
that per perhaps we are not that person, that those
things are a description of parts of ourselves that we prioritized.
At the same time, there are all these other parts
of ourselves that maybe are more important to us now

(15:14):
that we have not prioritized. You're listening to the Psychedelic Report,
But I'm really curious when you talk about these two
different parts or versions of yourself that you identify it
at that time, how did you bring these together into
your oneself? How did these two one point zero and
two point zero kind of reconcile with each other?

Speaker 2 (15:36):
They didn't.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
They didn't reconcile, and that was the interesting thing. Trying
to fuls them to reconcile was the problem. Tell me
to accepting that they would now was where growth started
to happen.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
And it actually started with a knap. I didn't sleep.
I trying myself not to sleep because I would get
not maze.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
In the ratfull and once I nightmanes and recall and
roll into daymares and I'd end up in days of
reliving my past.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
So I set my watch or an alarm clock and
I would wake every ninety minutes soon night to keep
me out, and I would get up at three am
in the morning and go to the gym and try
and just survive on a very shallow slip. So I
wasn't getting anything, you know, and your gadget to your
point has.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Been incredible and finally reversing some of that stuff on
the Apollo tapet. So I was having a nap in
my office afternoon, and I would get up every morning
and I would work out because working out was part
of my process. I kept tired, I kept my brain
in the endorphins that was good for me.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
I was doing bodybuilding at the time, because my therapist
said that, she said that you don't want to be
in your head, your hand's an angly places you need
to get So I took out bodybuilding because every meal,
every mouthful, every time, it's the most intense thing I've
ever done. So I was totally preoccupied with that, totally
preoccupied with leading well and totally getting up in the.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Morning and doing all that, and I'd get exhausted and
I'd sneak in and have a nap in my office,
and I'd feel bad and guilty about it because.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
I was lazy, and my script round like this. I
work out at three in the morning because I have
to get up because I've been sexually abused, because I
have nightmares. I work up. I go to the gym
at five in the morning because I've got to get
my body fill of endorphins because I've got PTSD and
I'm mentally ill. I have a Latin nap in the
afternoon because I had to get up early because I'm

(17:29):
mentally ill, and I've got to be doing this and
this and this and this, and one day I stopped
and I thought, hang on, hang on, this is my
new normal. I get up and exercise because I enjoyed it.
I eat right because I like the impact of good
food on my body.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
I sleep in the afternoon at three far half an
hour because I get up at three am and I.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Start my day. Then this is my normal.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
And I had to accept that because John one point
I didn't.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
I gess. I was prepared to let John one point
oh go. I was never going to inhabit with joy
John two point zero.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
And it really started with this map. It's like, it's
okay to have a nap because I've been up at
three am, and no one else in my office has
been up at three And I do that because I
want to, not because I'm ill, but because I'm different now.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
And now it's because you're lazy. No more self indulgent.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
No, Like the reason I'd get up is because I
loved my family. The reason I got up is because
it was good for me. And I didn't change the
inner script. The script was running very positively. It was
accepting that was that was a positive script and a
positive voice over the negative voice. And I was like, hey,

(18:54):
there was two those two sets of scripts were running
and I was like, no, no, that's that's not true.
This is true of this is my new truth.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I love the way that you use the word script
in this context because you know, it goes back and
reminds me of a book, a very famous book by
Claude Steiner called Scripts People Live, which is about this
exact thing, and that we create these narratives around around
the way we understand ourselves, in the way that we

(19:26):
know ourselves to be, in the way that we make
meaning about things in the world, and why we do
certain things and why we don't do other things. And
you very clearly got to a point where you were
able to through prioritizing recovery, through allowing yourself to nap
in that moment, it's almost like you're giving yourself the

(19:48):
opportunity to revise that script, or to even recognize that
you can revise that script.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
You know, and it all happened automatically. I evenoid in more.

Speaker 4 (19:57):
Lat I will say, I will say in the context
of this discussion that bodybuilding, the sort of discipline that
comes with that sport, was so good for John because,
like you said, the application of the principles that he

(20:17):
was using requires tremendous discipline, and so he was sort
of flexing that discipline muscle in his entire life right then.
It was jim, it was food, it was having the nap,
it was reading the books, finding all the principles to
apply to go through the recovery. And he had this

(20:39):
sort of militant self awareness when it came to those
internal scripts. He would say, hang on, why am I
thinking this right now? And he literally examined every thought.

Speaker 3 (20:52):
You know, for a long time, you lift heavy and
focused and be negative about it.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
You have to in a very positive mind to be
pushing your body to the extremes of what it's done,
so you have to. It really sharpens that edge.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
And it flowed over, as Mel said, it flowed over
into everything else.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
So it wasn't that I started to huh, here is
how I'm going to recover. It was like all I
know is I'm going to get out of here because
this is a dangerous space. So I'm going to fill
this every fifteen minutes with.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
Something, which is really odd because John two point zeric
bro he just seriously wanted to smoke.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Stars and white poltry and to work out a fifteen
minute schedule was like I did, come on, man.

Speaker 4 (21:39):
There was a lot of discipline in application.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah, and everything was decisional and self awareness.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
And I think for anyone facing trauma, Okay, so I
defined it for myself. There's there's an incident and there's
an episode. An incident is where I'm having a challenge
with a situation and it only affects me owners when
I'm having a challenge of a situation and it floods
over and hurts those people that I love, and I

(22:06):
have to become very self aware about when I.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Was having an incident so it wouldn't manifest into an episode,
and becoming self aware about being disciplined on time and
where I'm going and what I have to do and
what I have to lift, and I'm going to do
this on Monday. Tuesday went and.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
Then I brought that over into the other side of things,
and I have to be very self aware about what
I was thinking. I've come to believe that in overcoming trauma,
self awareness is a fundamental key self awareness and resilience.
The fact that you every day have to be aware
of why you're feeling, what you're feeling when you're feeling it,

(22:47):
and you have to be prepared to be encouraged and
disappointed simultaneously.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
The part that you mentioned that was really interesting is
this simultaneous experience of self awareness and recognizing that in
that self awareness there is disappointment and there is accomplishment.
And to use this maybe a slightly different word than
you use, but there is a dichotomy of experiences. It's
not just disappointment and judgment, and it's not just accomplishment

(23:16):
and joy and victory or gratitude. It's really all of it. Right,
Everything that comes with that self awareness is there, and
then it's up to you to choose what are the
next steps you're going to take to navigate what you
now are aware of.

Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, Melissa taught me that. It was one of the
many things you taught me very early on. So with
and you know, you know this.

Speaker 3 (23:38):
Dog, when you've got PDMC, like normal people, they have
this series of buckets. They've got to work bucket, a
home bucket, a relationship bucket, a dog bucket, of lawn bucket.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
So you can go to work and have a good day,
come home and the dog poop in your shoes, your
lawn's not mowing, and your kids still love you. And
they're all different buckets and you do it.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
But when you've got PSD one bucket starts to slash,
and it slashes into everything else, and there's no more
compartmentalization or emotional compartmentalization.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
So I would have a.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
Moment in one twenty four hour period that would last
fifteen minutes, and it would ruin that day.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
Then I would go into introspection the next day, depression
the third day, accusation the fourth day, and try to
get out of it on day five and six. And
what what Melissa taught me? What's that I'd only had
fifteen minutes, a bad fifteen.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Minutes in a twenty four hour period, and that very
simple lesser freed me, and just freed me to go okay,
to stream good days together. In some days, I would
have a good fifteen minutes out of a twenty four
hour period, and then I I would just focus on

(25:01):
stringing my fifteen minutes together, and if I could get
two or three fifteen minutes, dude, that was an hour.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
I'm talking, you know, like we're cracking out the champagne
and running lats, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
And then all of a sudden, those twenty four hours
stung together, and then the week's gone together, and now
we're in a phase where it's the months that are
strung together. It's now three and four months before there's
an incident or an episode.

Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, do you think that your judgment of yourself played
a role in extending those fifteen minute incidents into these
five day long episodes?

Speaker 4 (25:41):
Absolutely? There is no harsher critic of John than John himself.
And I think we spent a lot of time, you know,
sort of talking him through. You know, would you speak
to your son that way, or would you speak to
a friend of yours that way? Then why are you
letting that voice.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Go on in your head?

Speaker 4 (26:00):
You know? We got to stop that, We got to
like retool this and rewire a little bit. And I
would need to remind him that, remember we had a
difficult fifteen minutes that we apologized. You know, he would
say I'm sorry, and I would say I forgive you,
and then I could reminded, remember, you already apologize for that,

(26:24):
and we already everything's fine now, And so the next
day when he would need to bring it up again,
I'd be like, no, remember we apologize for that. So
there was a lot of that early on, trying to
sort of silence that inner critic that really sort of
judge e voice.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
Because I think that's part of the self awareness stuff.
Dave is, I am very harsh like that. My first
marriage felt a bit because my first wife just couldn't cope.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
With the impact of you know, the racle of events,
and that impacted and I was very sick trying to
three children, and I was.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
Very unstable in a lot of ways, and I could
I couldn't be around allowed noises.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
I found it very difficult to be around people. So
when I look back.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
And I catalog who I was compared to who I'd
want to be for those people, and then realizing that
who I was being to those people is based upon
what people did to me, not choose to be, and
that gets into a bitterness. And really it can't put
your hands around that. And I don't like the term victim.

(27:31):
I've used it once in my life. But these things
that were done to me manifested and that impacted this
group of people.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Now, if you just look at that, there is all
the validation in the world to judge yourself harshly and
to say that's not and it's not acceptable. It is
not acceptable. But over here is this other voice that
says you did the best you could with the information
you had at the time.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
And even though it doesn't reconcile this series of behavior,
it brings a sense of peace.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
It's like I'm taking full responsibility.

Speaker 3 (28:10):
For everything, yet I can't take responsibility for what I
couldn't control.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
And you cannot control a manifestation of trauma to an extent.
There comes a point where you can and you have
to take responsibility, but in the initial stages, I'm just
looking at my case when I wasn't aware of what
was going on. It's very difficult to be living in
an environment which is not compassionate or geared up to

(28:38):
be able to cope to the onset of a manifestation
of an awareness of a traumatic event, and the supportive
relationship and an affirmative environment is absolutely vital in people
recovering from prolonged trauma.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
I couldn't agree more. And it's very well said that
you know, all you can do is your best with
what you knew at the time. Right most of us
aren't taught that from a young age. We don't necessarily
recognize it or realize it, and therefore we judge ourselves
because we constantly think we should have been or could
have been doing better when you know, hindsight is always

(29:18):
twenty twenty, right, as the saying goes, we can only
do our best in the moment. And I think you know,
a big part of recovering and healing from traumatic events
is recognizing that that fact, which is the way we
respond as a result of these situations, is not our fault,
because there's obviously some responsibility that we must take. We

(29:40):
have to be accountable to ourselves, and especially once we
start to develop and cultivate self awareness at the same time,
it's that self awareness without judgment that allows us to
remind ourselves that it's not our fault because we were
only doing the best we could at the time with
what we knew. And I think one of the things
that has always stood out to me about this process

(30:01):
of healing and recovery that you so eloquently described, and
this sort of recognition of this doing your best at
the time and in a lot of ways, forgiving yourself
for what you might have felt you did not do
as well as you would have liked in retrospect, I
think comes down to this idea of something you mentioned

(30:23):
just a minute ago, which is support and how critical
it is to have support around you, even now and
even later in life during the healing and recovery process.

Speaker 2 (30:33):
You know.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
I think this goes back to what we think about, like,
what is trauma? Right? Is trauma just one or multiple negative, intense,
meaningful events over time? It could be, But many people
who are well prepared for negative or uncomfortable events and
supported afterwards can actually experience incredibly difficult, negative or destructive

(30:59):
experiences and make it through on the other side recognizing
that they were doing the best they can and it's
not their fault because they had the adequate support afterwards
to help them understand that. And I'm wondering from your experience,
how much do you think the support in the immediate
phase afterwards is critical to the experiences you had becoming

(31:20):
something that you grow from kind of right away and
you start out that healing process right away versus what
happens to I think most people, where they have a
negative or challenging experience, or many challenging experiences, they don't
have the support afterwards, which leads sort of people into
the victim complex, which is where none of us would

(31:42):
ever like to be. But when you don't have the support.
There's a natural part of our minds that kicks in
that says, what did I do to deserve this right?
Was there something that happened that is wrong with me
that led me to have these things happen to me,
which then of course can be perpetuated over time and
result in more things we don't want to happen happening

(32:03):
to us. You know, you said you don't like the
word victim, which I think is really important because a
big part of healing is getting especially from PTSD, is
getting out of the victim mindset. You're listening to the
Psychedelic Report, how critical and how much do you think
PTSD from your experience is related to that lack of

(32:25):
support and navigating that that victim mindset.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
I think that just a couple of thoughts. We'll just
have a ramble, dude. So someone I might so a
very high military guys, you know, Team one guys, and
there's a range of people around that some of them
don't excipt effect that they signed up to join the military,
and as part of that there was going to be
the series of possible traumatic commands and it's like, well,
this was what the government did to me, Well, hang

(32:51):
on you. You signed up for this scene.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
So there has to be a sense of you were
getting into a possibly hostile situation and that's okay, but
it didn't go quite the way how I thought it was.
No one does. It's a natural war, So there has
to be that sense of, Okay, I'll put myself in
this position, and there's going to be consequences accordingly for that.
How I when I talk to these guys, I often

(33:14):
contrast my own thing.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
I never signed up for this, a fool, So these
series of events. I wasn't complicit in making these happen.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
So there's two there's two parallel, separate tracks that are
running here, but the outcome is exactly the same regardless
of what was either done to you. And why I
use that contrast is because they'll often say, well, this
was done to me and I didn't see it. So
I say, okay, well let's map it out. You signed
up for this. I did not sign up for this.
But they get us to the same end. I'm traveling

(33:47):
down this track by what was done for me from
an external force. You're traveling down this track because you
signed up to go into this particular creed, and here
we are having a traumatic event. Only by accepting that
this is a peace and the space in time, accepting
that and then putting parameters about that, can we then

(34:09):
move on from that and not allowing ourselves to be
defined by that.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
And I think that's part of the challenge in the
narrative in both some military situations.

Speaker 2 (34:20):
But also in the sexual abuse there is a narrative
where people define themselves by their pasts instead of refine
themselves by their past. I am a victim of sexual abuse.
I am a war fighter. I experienced battle trauma, and.

Speaker 3 (34:37):
That becomes the whole identity that's associated with that. You
see it in the Facebook groups, the comments, the posts,
the t shirts. That wears the attitudes, the attitudes instead
of it. And then I meet my other guys, And
I've got some tremendous friends who've spent thirty odd years
in blood and sand, seeing all that as all, and
it's a part of who they are now.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Are the things they struggle with, Yes, but they'll also sit.

Speaker 3 (35:01):
Around and tell the funny stories because it was part
of a life experience.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Is it traumatic trauma that sits around those things?

Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yet?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
But those trauma events were just that events, and so
when I look at my life, I see it the
same way. This was an event, it is not who
I am, and I have to draw a box around
that and remove myself from it. And if I don't
do that, then I'm always going to be a victim

(35:30):
of that event, as opposed to someone who passed through that.
You know, walk through the value of the shadow of death.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
You know, don't buy bloody timeshed keep walking through the
value of the shadow of death because.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
On the other side there's hope and possibility. But if
you camp in the value of the shadow of death, dude,
life sucks and it's always going to be suck until
you die. And that's that's the commonality I've seen on
both of these parallel sort of tracks.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Yeah, that's very well said, and I love that analogy.
And you know, thinking about the victim mindset that you
describe and why it's so important to step away from it,
it's it really sounds like what you're describing is that
by accepting the victim definition mindset, and therefore that you

(36:17):
know the definition of victim to yourself, we know that
certain things have happened to you that are unpleasant or undesirable.
These things have happened, doesn't take them away. But by
defining yourself as a victim, you actually are disempowering yourself
to heal. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, it is.

Speaker 3 (36:36):
And if I define myself via victim, then every event
going forward, my identity is tied up in a victim
mentality and attitude. So it doesn't matter if a new
thing happens, I'm going to instantly come back and say, well,
this is.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
Just traumatize me. It well, this is what happens to victims,
and this always happens to me. Instead of being a
building book that I can learn on from moved forward.
It was a part of my life, a phase in
my life. It's not my entire life.

Speaker 1 (37:07):
And it's almost like separating you and who you are
from which is constantly changing as you grow and live
your life, from what happened to you, and what happened
to you or what happened in your life is an experience,
as one of millions of experiences that you remember throughout

(37:29):
your entire life, and yet it is not who you are.
It is only an experience that you've learned from and
it has shaped in some ways the way that we
see ourselves. That shapes our perception, but it is not
our identity. It's actually separate from that.

Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, And just a reflection on what you said separating
myself from that experience, I've actually done it the other way.
I've actually fully embraced that I was trafficked as a
young boy, fully embrace how that they maybe do man movies,
fully embraced how I was raped. I didn't because I
found when I tried to separate myself from it, it

(38:10):
was impossible. I couldn't pull myself apart from it because
this event was touching every.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Aspect of my life, my view of myself, my self esteem,
my sexuality, every part of me. It was like the
tanny cause of of a tumor. If I saw it
as that, But if I embraced it and accepted it
and said this made me who I am today, then

(38:40):
the focus became am I comfortable with who I am today?

Speaker 3 (38:44):
And if I'm not, then all I got is who
I am today? So what do I have to change
in my mindset to get comfortable with me?

Speaker 2 (38:52):
And if I can do that, then this is part
of who I am. It's part of everything, which then
what I found is that actually and becomes a thing
I can use to enrich the life of another person.

Speaker 4 (39:06):
An experience that you have, like you said, they like
a part of the sum total of the experiences that
we have in our life is who we are, and
it's only one small part of them. So then I think,
with the affirmative environment, I think so important just coming
back to that for a second, is to have people

(39:28):
around you who can see the best in you and
speak to the best part of you, and who won't
let you slip into that victim definition of myself. I'm
going to define myself as a victim, and therefore the
rest of my life, all the experiences are just going
to add up to victim because I'm just going to
attract those things to myself and I'm going to see

(39:50):
everything through that lens. Whereas if I have that person
who will lovingly say, no, no, that's not who you are.
The good parts of you, I see them, This is
who you are, and this is what we're building on,
sort of going for.

Speaker 2 (40:06):
I mentioned it and deal with it.

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Turning scars of shame into medals of honor because we
always played our scars, whereas we wear our medals of
honor and the reason you hide your scars is because
you're embarrassed from them.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
It's a deformity.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
I feel less of myself and that's a very deliberate thing.
And dealing with healthcare professionals is a challenge if you've
got post traumatic stress.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
So I was eleven at the time and I was
taken to a dentist and he was a statist.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
I didn't know this, so he removed my wisdom teeth.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
With the parapliers without any otherthetic and when I woke up,
I had seen it all over my face, and which is,
you know, not what you go to the dentist for.
And consequently I had a little bit of a hesitation
about going to the dentist. And when I'm going through
this process, and I would bury that hesitation.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
I would just suck it up and go to the dentist.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
And especially in early stages of recovery, when I had
a recall of this stuff that had happened.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
And then there became one time and I thought, no, no,
I own what happened to me. But what I need
now is a little bit of help with how that
manifests and how that looks to everybody. Else.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
So I'm going to share this and if they don't
accept it, then I'll find a new.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Bloody dentist because it's not my problem. My problem is.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Recognizing the fact that I have a challenge going to
the dentist because I think that they're going to put
me on my back, dope me out, and then masturbate
all over my face.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
That's my problem. So going into this dead and you know,
a hi, doctor, how you going good?

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Mister king?

Speaker 3 (41:44):
This is my wife who listen, nice to meet you.
I need her to be in the room with me.
Well that's not practice. Well, doc, let me explain something.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
When I was eleven, a guy pulled the teeth out
and masturbated all my face.

Speaker 3 (41:54):
My immediate fear as I stand here before me is
that you'll do that to me. And if you even
try to do that to me, I will probably kill
you when come out.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Of my chair. So it'd be really nice if I
had my wife here. Are we comfortable with this now?
And I was telling you this guy looks like everyone's
grand and he.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Was I don't think he ever heard the word messing up,
but it was okay, I'm going to turn this around.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
Okay, here is the need I have to operate in
the world normally.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
If i'm if I give you honestry, vulnerability and transparency
and I don't get that back, then these are not
the people that I need to work with. And I
was in I had a critical situation two years ago
when I was taken to a hospital and I did
the same thing.

Speaker 5 (42:37):
They wheeled me into the and I said, I need
to tell you I had a challenge being touched. I
had a challenge being naked around people. I need you
to understand these are my things.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Now.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
I'm not trying to be difficult, but I need to
tell you this, and in a system that is.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
Not geared to take those pieces of information and accept
them in system and have that changed the way your
patient is treated. I stuck right by his side. I
had to advocate for him, to repeat what John was
needing to every person who came in the room. And
so I think there's a when you have the support

(43:17):
that you need, I think there's more of a willingness
on your part on John's part to know he can
be vulnerable and he can tell his story and he
can ask for the things that he needs because I'm
there just sort of advocate for him and help him.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
And there's a difference between being a victim and being vulnerable,
and it is attitudeinal.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
It's the essence of who you are. The victim is, well,
you don't understand these.

Speaker 3 (43:44):
Happened too, And as a vulnerable it's like, I'm going
to help you understand the challenge I'm having with this.
And I think that attitude is really the core of
the thing. And I feel like people pick up on
that because every time that we've done that.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
We were at one case I'd sliced my finger off
and we told them, don't give this guy more feine,
but he'll lead it for paint and said, she said, don't.

Speaker 3 (44:08):
Give him more feet because if he gets any opioids,
he gets instant recall of what happens to his kid
and he wakes up trashing and violent.

Speaker 2 (44:16):
And they gave me more feend.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
So Mel's sitting waiting in the fire of the hospital
and this nurse rushed up, woofed.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
Up her all her bags, so purse a computer and
ran off down the come with me, and they've given
me more feine. And I was sad.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
Now he's wreaking up, and.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
I was waking up swimming because in my head I
was naked.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
In a bed surrounded by people as a kid who
were going to rape me and hurt me. But when
she explained, did you yes, we did, I asked you
not to. There they go, oh, Mia Cooper, we get
it now. We understand that this isn't a difficult patient.
This is a patient having a difficult time. And for

(44:55):
me that vulnerability of scars and and being proud is
the wrong word, being comfortable that I've come so fast
that I'm okay talking about an incredibly distressing and dysfunctional childhood,
not only to myself but to many people to hear

(45:17):
and understanding that they're going to have to be comfortable
with their uncomfortability, if that's the praise, Gettable with being uncomfortable,
because I'm going to get comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Sharing about it because I need to meet on a
level of humanity and I need to engage only with
people who can walk with us together like this.

Speaker 4 (45:39):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
First off, thank you for sharing that with us. You know,
it is clear how much work you've done personally and
together when you can talk about vulnerability in this way, right,
which is just such a powerful communication of humanity as

(46:02):
you said, and I think that as it is tragic
in the healthcare system today where you know, we are
at a point where we oftentimes as healthcare providers are
put at odds with our with our patients because of
the preconceived notions that people have coming in to see
their doctors and the preconceived notions that doctors and clinicians

(46:23):
and nurses have of their patients that have resulted in
in us and forgetting that the whole point of what
we're doing is to help you help the client, the
patient feel safe enough to be vulnerable, because it is
that vulnerability that is the source of healing. Right. It
creates that you either the client or the patient feeling

(46:44):
safe enough to be vulnerable, hopefully facilitated by us and
or by the healthcare provider, is what allows It creates
like almost that fertile soil for the healing to take root.
And without that, it's like, you know, it's like trying
to like plant or seeds for your food in an
empty bed, right, there's nothing for it to take root in.

(47:05):
There's no nourishment and hearing your journey and your path
that you've taken around you know, specifically, I think this emphasizes,
I think, for a lot of people, a learning opportunity
towards self acceptance and the power, the sheer power of
self acceptance and the recognition that you have cultivated through

(47:25):
discipline of just accepting your self for who you are
and what you are and knowing that. I think a
lot of it stems from gratitude for just being who
you are, and that nobody's excited about these things that
have happened to us, but they've happened to us nonetheless,
and it's resulted in who we are. And so you
being able to accept yourself and accept your life as

(47:49):
it is kind of brings you up to the present moment,
which allows you to step out of that victim mindset
and communicate your needs clearly to the people who you're
interacting with, which is so important and I think it's
a lesson that all of us.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
Could learn from it. Well, thanks, mate.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
You're listening to the Psychedelic Report.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
I didn't like who what it was, and I didn't
like my background. There was on several occasions I was
told very clearly that I should end my life, that
I was never going to get better, that I'd never
be any good to matildren All and.

Speaker 3 (48:25):
Melissa on two occasions. I was sitting in the backroud
contemplating suicide. And I've come to believe that people who
commit suicide aren't as emotional as made out. I think
they're actually very logical. I ronly swear analysis strength wes
the opportunities to threat on why committing suicide was going
to be beneficial for everybody that I loved because I

(48:48):
didn't have a problem with my internal decision making process
to be able to follow through with this app It
was going to be the better for everyone else because
I was told I would never get better and I
was hurting everybody.

Speaker 2 (48:59):
Therefore, do us all the fire and remove yourself, right.
And it wasn't until and I talk about it in
the book. Melissa ran on two occasions just randomly to
talk to me.

Speaker 4 (49:09):
We worked together. I didn't know this until actually I
was proofing the first copy of the book. I was like,
was that me that called you?

Speaker 3 (49:18):
And she made these phone calls and I was like, Oh,
I'm valuable and important to something.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
That's an interesting thought. I've never had that thought before.
All Right, well I went through that.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
I'll think about something else and I'll do something else.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
But I think that's that's a very important part of it.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
I think this idea of rebuilding your identity after you've
had like this big traumatic In John's case, it was
recalled of all of the traumatic events, like his identity
was destroyed and he was a barm dropped in the
middle of it. And so now there's little pieces that
help you rebuild that identity along the way. And there

(49:56):
was a therapist who gave him the word resilient. She said,
you're the most resilient person I ever met. And he
connected with that, and he's like, oh, I am, well,
I'm something yeah, And then I remember and I think
it's twenty seventeen or so. He read Brene Brown's book
and he came away from that saying vulnerability is courage

(50:19):
and he really connected with that. He's like, I'm a
courageous person, So I can be vulnerable. I can tell
my story. I can maybe help other people by telling
my story. So there's little things along the way I
think that you connected with.

Speaker 2 (50:33):
And that's what I find a challenging a lot of
my mates that are fatterans or ex coppers, is they're
still defining themselves based upon what they were able to
do in their thirties, you.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
Know, And they used to be able to sneak up
on bad guys. Now they can't walk down the stairs
without the knees popping, you know. I warn everybody in
the house and waking the dog, and it's like, dude,
I can't do that thing anymore. Now you can't do
the thing, but that thing is my entire existence. Well, no,
let's talk about who you are, the qualities you have,
and they just can't shift past that. They just can't

(51:04):
click into that and go forward, which I think is
why we have And you think of it. If you
have to totally define yourself by what you've done, you've
been very successful at it.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
You come back now and there's nothing like that, and
you can no.

Speaker 3 (51:18):
Longer do that, and there's no way forward for you
because there's no environment to accept who you are and
really understand what those skills mean and the value they
bring to society. Then you sit in the backyard and
you go, you know, I fucked, I've got no way forward.
I might as well just get out eating here because

(51:39):
I'm in the way of everybody else.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
And I think that's why we have a lot of
those the tragedies that we're having today.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah, I couldn't read more in anything that with This
reminds me of something that we talk about all the
time with our clients, which is the experiences you just described,
the thought process you just discribe to you know, even
defining yourself by what you do and by what's happened
to you, and the victim mindset is really like a

(52:07):
fracturing of trust in ourselves, right, And the interactions that
you had that you described with Mel, with your therapist,
with the different positive role models that you've had over
the last decade plus years or more, have really I mean,
would you say that it sounds like what you're saying
is that they've really helped to model trust for you

(52:29):
so that you can learn to trust yourself again and
sort of repair that trust. Is that fair?

Speaker 2 (52:35):
I think so. I don't think it is. I don't
know what you talked to I think so.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
I think even going back to the nap story and
it's it really is learning to trust yourself that you
know what's best for you in that moment. And Okay,
so all the information I have right now tells me
that I probably just need to give myself. For mission
to take a night doesn't mean I'm lazy or you know.

(53:04):
And so along the way, you wanted to trust and
for John to walk into a restaurant saying and for
him to say, I don't feel comfortable here is too
crowded for him to be able to say that to me,
and to trust that he knows what's best for him.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
But also the fact that she's not going to judge
me and say, well, that's stupid, I really want to
eat here.

Speaker 2 (53:30):
It's like, well, you know, I walked into a candle
saw and I totally freaked out because there was a particular.

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Sense that I remember smelling when I was being abused,
and I mean I totally froze.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
And she wanted to go to this store and see
this thing.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
She didn't yell and scream at my incompetence, which I've
had happened to me before because I wasn't able to
do her.

Speaker 2 (53:52):
She just said, Okay, well we'll go and get an
ice cream. So this level of acceptance has been had
had a profound impact.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
I think you talked about the importance of having those
things external to you. I remember when I talked to
my therapist and I was in the board and she
was a wonderful person, but I thought she was Satan
incarnate herself, missus Lucifer. And she heard my story, and
you know, I went up from a forty five minute
introduction now into an hour and a half.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
And two hours long. And she burst into tears and said,
that's the worst story I've ever heard. I've been doing
this for thirty five years. I can't help you.

Speaker 3 (54:35):
You're just going to have to go somewhere else. And
I remember looking at her and saying, you know what.
I thank you for that feedback, but I need you
to understand. I don't need you to heal me. I
need you to give me tools for my toolbox. I'll
take care of the rest.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
I said. Number one. Number two is I will never
tell this story again. Now.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
I took a chance on you, and I was vulnerable,
and I'm not being manipulative. I'm just telling you that
I flew out of state.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
I went from Texas to South Dakota, so I wasn't
in a place where I felt people would know me.
And I told a perfect stranger who had been recommended
to me all my crap that I never wanted.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
To repeat or even thinking about and I said, I
took a chance on you, and I don't need you
to take a chance on me.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
I'm taking a chance on me. What I need you
to do is guide me to pick up the tools
that I go and I'm going to go to live.
My toolbox can how to handles the one hundred and
twenty tools. I might get three or four from you.
That's all I'm wanting from you. You're my smallness board.
You're not my other card. I just need a couple
of pieces. And that changed that relationship.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
And what was interesting is it put me back in
charge because I felt confident in my ability to be
able to handle this thing. And I think a lot
of people when they get recall, and I'm thinking of
a lot of my mates.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Is they don't feel in charge of their recovery. Which
surprises me because these men have been learned, women have
wort to be in charge in the most adverse situations
every existence in modern history and take charge and fix
it and make it happen. Yet they can't take that
skill and go, I'm going to fix this and I'm

(56:14):
going to make this happen. And that disconnect to me is,
you know, I'm an old rugby player. Mate. We're smart,
but we're not clever. So you know, like, well, if
I can work this shit out, surely these people who
have got the skills and training, you know they can
as well.

Speaker 4 (56:31):
I think one of the most important things we do
for people is we do give them permission to take
charge of their recovery. And we are huge on personal
responsibility around here. So folks who come to us for
coaching and they're they're still sort of swimming the victim loop.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
We cancel the contract after this.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
They don't last very long, you know, they don't we
give them a shits. We're like, look, here's what we
need you to do. We talk about responsibility, identity, getting
out of the victim narrative, and if they don't want,
if they're not ready, then they usually move on down
the road.

Speaker 2 (57:11):
And I think that's why I look, I know my
story is horrible. You know, I wouldn't wish my story
on me, let alone anybody else. I know it's terrible.
It's one of those you think you've got no shoes,
let me swap stories with you. I'm legless over here,
so I'm aware of that, and I use that and
I use that in the sense of I want to
give people.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Permission to have hope that if I can make it,
they can make it. And every time I share my story,
it's a great personal cost, and as I explained earlier.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
It's going to it will cost even after talking today,
But I think it's worth it.

Speaker 3 (57:45):
If what I've been through and what we've learned in
overcoming is give someone else hope that I'm.

Speaker 2 (57:53):
Winning over here, because all those people who thought they
were going to break, they lose. They lose because they did,
and I've actually managed to pass it on to someone
else and now they're not losy. So we win, you know,
and we just go down this path and hopefully they
get to someone else and we all just win. And

(58:17):
I just that's probably one of the things that motivate.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
Me the most is is given a birdy to those
that wanted to destroy me and say, my life.

Speaker 2 (58:28):
Is really good, my marriage is really good, my future
is bright, and it's all going to work out. You know.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
That's really beautiful and very commendable because I think you
I don't think I know that from hearing you talk
about this and hearing you describe what you just described,
that you know you you have done just that, right.
You have helped so many people simply by showing yourself

(59:02):
that you can do it and that you have hope
and given yourself permission to have hope, and giving yourself
permission to heal, and giving yourself permission to accept yourself
or who you are, and giving yourself permission to take
control of your life, to really like step into the
driver's seat of your life effectively. And that's something that

(59:24):
so many people in the world today, whether they've experienced
what some people call big T trauma or little T
trauma or whatever it is, you know, but we've all
had adverse experiences in different ways, and and you know,
whatever we want to call it, it's really about just
giving ourself permission to step into that driver's seat and
take the wheel.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Because trauma's trauma, as you said, and like you mentioned
that much in your little gadget for me, absolutely life
changing because it gave me another tool now and I'm
very grateful you invented it and you did all that
sort of stuff you want.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
The missis that brought simply you did was give me
another tool for my toolbox. And that's what's so enabling
about it is that it's not a programmer or a subscription,
it's not something else.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
It's something I can take and I can use to
day in this situation. And I think people who have
experienced that suffer and face FEEDSD that's what they need,
is like what I need something, Now I've got it
if I can put my hands on it. And that's
why I'm so very excited about It's another tool for

(01:00:29):
the toolbox.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
And you don't nothing you've said or in your literature
comes across like this is the golden egg and this
is the be all and end all to it, and
everything in your conversations with you and in your writings
and your website, it's like we fully accept and understand
that this is one tool in everybody's toolbox. And I
think people are looking for a fairy godmother and she'll

(01:00:53):
never turn up with a magic Wand you know, you've
got to get up every day and go and find
a tool for your toolbox.

Speaker 3 (01:01:00):
And I haven't slept twelve for fourteen years until the
last three months, so I've gone from interrupted sleep that
lasts three or four hours now getting five and six
hours a night.

Speaker 2 (01:01:12):
Now to some people, that's not luck to me, it's
not enough yet. But that's double my sleep because I've
got a tool for my toolbox, and my fairy godmother
didn't give that to me. You know, a maid of
mine who meant a mayor of years, we met this
guy who handed this guy this thing, and all of
a sudden, I'm sleeping so broke. Cutos to you for

(01:01:33):
not being a fairy godmin'.

Speaker 1 (01:01:36):
I'm so glad to hear that that Apollo has been
helping you, and you know, I think that and been
another tool for you. I think this has always been
the biggest challenge as being a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
Working with people with PTSD is almost as frustrating as
being somebody who has it, because we are not taught
to we're not trained to deal with futility. We're we're

(01:01:58):
trained to administer treatments and and to heal people when
they're suffering and to help them feel better, and yet
we are then caught in this same I think what
a lot of people don't realize when they look at
the mental health system is that a lot of us
are as the clinicians, are caught in the same loop
as the patients or the clients whereby you know, we
are taught to provide care, and then that care that

(01:02:21):
we're taught to provide doesn't work and doesn't solve the problem.
And the tools that we're giving people, unfortunately, many of
them are great breath work is, great meditations, great yoga, exercise,
behavior change, CBT, exposure. All of these tools are very
very powerful tools, but they require a lot of effort, attention, assistance,
you know, sometimes invasiveness in the case of implantable tools

(01:02:44):
or intense medicine based tools, and these things are not
without effort, and I think, you know, for us, it
was always about, you know, how do we help our
clients and the people who are suffering be able to
achieve a certain calm or balance so that allows them
the ability to feel like they're more at the center
of their healing experience and that they have more tools

(01:03:07):
that they can use. And then we have more tools
that we can use. And when we can align on
the tools that we have available, then you know, we
can start to recognize the opportunity to bring in more
tools right and to and because there's so many tools
out there, it's just I use this analogy and my
favorite analogies. You know, you think about our bodies being
the highest performing vehicle ever own in this life. And

(01:03:29):
you know, if you go to a mechanic who is
the best mechanic who has the worst tools, then usually
they'll be smart enough to tell you that they are
not going to be able to fix your car with
the tools they have, generally speaking, although in the case
of mental health, where with our hands tied, we're often
still prescribing the tools that aren't necessarily working, which then

(01:03:52):
has the downstream effect of causing other problems that we
then have to prescribe more tools to solve, which is
why people with PTS often wind up on anywhere between
five and fifteen different medications that aren't actually getting to
the root. But then you have a poor mechanic who
has the best tools, and they will definitely break your
car because they don't even know how to use the tools.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
About right. I think the other thing, too, Dave, is like,
you're not messianic in your poor approach, like no one's
got the answer. And as soon as someone tells me, listen,
if you take this, this is going to solve your problem.
It's like, dude, you're full of it. I don't want
to touch that stuff, you know, because it can't be
good for me, because if you believe it's going to

(01:04:34):
fit and you don't even know, so you don't even
know the depths of this problem. But if you come
to me and say, I've got something you need to
But I think it's been a systemic and a cultural
thing in healthcare is there've been either lord or a
place so that put a pedestal that they are the surgeons.

Speaker 3 (01:04:51):
That hold the beating heart in the hand, or they
hold the mind in the hand, and they've got all
that answers as opposed to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:56):
A partnership to wholeness.

Speaker 3 (01:04:59):
Because once you get the partnership the wholeness, then all
of a sudden you're not a single person with a
single bench.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
You're now a team of people and all those patients
with answers and helps and inquiries are all moving together.
It's a collaborative event. And that's what I like about
very much about what I've learned about how you do
think to the mono.

Speaker 4 (01:05:22):
And I think too. We talked about, you know, giving
the patient, you know, the rains, trying to give them
the responsibility for their recovery efforts and I think that
in itself sort of empowers a more holistic approach because
managing PTSD is it's everything about your life. There's food

(01:05:43):
com you know, food and chemicals and processes that happen
in the brain, and devices, wearables and you know, and
so they so it goes on like you you have
all of these tools at your disposal and if you're
if you the patient in the diver's and I think.

Speaker 2 (01:06:03):
She's my biggest tool, glad tool looks.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
From I can tell, and it's that it's that support
you know that you have, that you cultivated that I
think really shows that you are at the center of
your own journey right that you're at the center of
your healing experience. And you know, even this is a
great place to wrap up, I think, because you know,

(01:06:29):
this really goes back to the ancient origins of medicine
and healing, which are not just even going back to
we can go up back to Hippocrates and my Monodies,
who who are some of the originators of what we
now consider Western medicine, which is the idea that even
back then, thousands of years ago, in the origins of
Western medicine, these these people were saying the individual who
is struggling. The patient is at the center of their

(01:06:51):
healing experience. We are the guides, right we as the clinicians,
we are the guides. We have the educators, We give
the tools. As you described earlier, it's up to you
as the individual to actually take the steps as guided
by people like us who can help role model trusts,
who can help role model safety and experience, and teach

(01:07:14):
you how to use the tools so that you can
then bring them into your own life and make the
change in sustainable way. And that also reflects in ancient
tribal medicine and Eastern medicine and the way that we
address all of these different struggles that people face. And
I think the good news about this is in hearing
your story, in looking at the way medicine is moving

(01:07:34):
into the twenty first century, is that we are starting
to finally come back full circle to recognizing that as
powerful tools that medicines can be, they are still and
will always be outside of us, and therefore we must
use them respectfully, and we must use them thoughtfully and
intentionally and always remember that the source of healing comes

(01:07:56):
from us, each of us for ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
Strike I love it Mike, Look, anything we can past
that time with anything we we can do to help
you guys. And we believe in what you're doing the project,
you know, from experiential and theoretical. Uh, you know, I
really believe in what you do. Well.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
I really appreciate that. I can't tell you enough. It's
there's nothing that makes me happier when we spent so
much time working on something like this, a tool specifically
originally for PTSD and helping people cope with trauma, to
hear that it is actually doing that job and helping
people feel better and giving people those tools.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
So para booth was a face of crack you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
So Will done two nights ago. He forgot to wear
it and I was like, why were you so restless
all night? And he was like, I forgot.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
I forgot my thing. I got at a bit at
fran and put the bloody thing on and like the
watch Sleep Watch.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
I just want to say thank you again for your
time today. It's been a pleasure you. Thank you again
for all of your work. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yours do my ends for sleep?

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Yes, yay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
Thanks for listening to the Psychedelic Report. Visit us at
the Psychedelic Report dot com. The Psychedelic Report was brought
to you by a poly neuroscience and produced by Future
Medicine Media. While I am a doctor, I'm not your doctor,
So please don't take anything you hear on The Psychedelic

(01:09:32):
Report as personal medical advice because we don't know you.
If you have questions about anything you hear on this show,
please consult with your doctor,