It’s Not Addiction — It’s Unhealed Trauma | Dr. Robert Bleck

What if addictions, panic attacks, and compulsive behaviors aren’t the real problem — but symptoms of something much deeper? In this powerful Dr. Robert Bleck interview, we explore how unhealed trauma silently shapes our lives and what it truly takes to break free. As the creator of Source Completion Therapy, Dr. Bleck shares permanent healing methods designed to help people move beyond survival and step into lasting emotional freedom.

This deeply insightful psychotherapy podcast dives into the root causes of emotional suffering, offering practical emotional healing techniques for anyone navigating pain from the past. Through real-world examples and decades of clinical experience, Dr. Bleck explains how unresolved trauma often leads to destructive coping patterns — and how trauma-informed therapy can help uncover the source so true healing can begin.

Listeners will gain perspective on childhood trauma recovery, coping with abuse, and building genuine emotional resilience after adversity. Whether you’re searching for hope, understanding, or a path forward, this conversation highlights why healing emotional wounds requires more than symptom management — it demands courage, awareness, and the willingness to face what was buried.

If you care about mental health awareness, are inspired by PTSD recovery stories, or are seeking guidance on your own journey of overcoming childhood abuse, this episode delivers both clarity and possibility. It’s a reminder that personal transformation is achievable — and that healing is not just temporary relief, but a lifelong breakthrough waiting to happen.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. robertblack.com
2. amazon.com

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to Spirits and Stories, a place where we slow things down and talk about the moments that shaped us.

The stories behind the scars, the victories, the lessons.

Every guest brings a journey, so settle in.

This one's meant to be felt.

Hey, how's it going, everybody?

Welcome to Spirits and Stories.

Our guest today is Mr. Dr. Robert Bleck, psychotherapist, former university professor, and the creator of Source Completion Therapy.

Robert is not only a healer, but a survivor.

After enduring severe abuse in childhood, he dedicated his life to understanding pain, trauma, and the human capacity to heal through.

Through decades of clinical work, he developed a powerful three phase process designed to permanently heal emotional wounds at their source.

His book, Give Back the Pain shares real stories of transformation and the method behind them.

Robert has helped thousands reclaim their lives out today.

He's here to show us how healing is not just possible, but it's permanent.

Hey, how's it going, Mr. Black so far?

Well, thank you.

Pleasure to be here and speaking with you and your audience.

Awesome, man.

So, yeah, you know, this show has been around for a hot minute.

I think we're on year four and, you know, it was therapy for myself back four years ago dealing with ptsd.

And I found telling my story really benefited and helped me in a lot of different ways, you know, and it kind of put me on this journey.

So I'm excited to dig into your story.

Why don't we start with a little bit of back history, kind of tell everybody what led you down this path.

Sure.

Well, the start of my life was very painful and difficult for me.

My mother, who was abused herself as a child, was filled with anxiety, rage, and anger.

And that fury came out on me starting when I was about three years old.

I was beaten, I was degraded, and I was abused.

What seemed like every.

Every day when she would beat me, it was sometimes.

And I was a little boy with a small body.

I was three years old when she started.

She would beat me with a fist, open, closed fist, and sometimes with an open hand.

She would beat me with belts, with buckles.

She would beat me with.

She liked the kitchen, the big wooden cooking spoon she would beat me with.

And anything that was near her, whether it was a shoe or something that she could find to throw at me, and that was indeed painful and left bruises.

She also degraded me.

She would humiliate me in front of friends, in front of relatives, and just however she could minimize me and demean me, she would do it.

One time she got creative with her abuse again.

I was about three or four because my sister Wasn't born that.

That's how I. I know the history.

I got up, I would have nightmares because of what she did to me.

And I.

And I went into my parents room, bedroom and she grabbed me by the arm, brought me back, and she tied me to the.

To my bed.

She would tie me the ropes.

The ropes went around the bed, under the bed and chest.

And as I talked to you, I could feel them.

And I feel the fear and terror again.

I was three years old.

I thought I was being killed, you know, so it was terrifying.

So.

So a few of the other.

I mean, I had symptoms from it, nightmares I would have.

I was frightened of the dark.

I was, you know, terrified of that.

I slept with the light on for.

For years, until I was in teenage years.

I bit my nails.

All the symptoms of anxiety that I had, I didn't know at the time I was.

Just.

Had these symptoms.

It started to turn around when I was about nine years old and she was still hitting me, beating me, degrading me.

I began to feel a deep empathy and a deep compassion and a deep sympathy for those around me or those that I saw in some way who suffered and struggled.

Whether it was a child being bullied at school, whether it was someone in poverty, whether it was someone grieving, whether it was someone in the armed services that had things like ptsd.

And I was.

Whether I saw it on TV or read it in a book, I felt compassion for these people.

And that was the foundation of start me starting to want to do something to help humanity.

So.

So what I did, I had to come up with a plan.

I had to survive the house that I lived in.

And I had to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and how I could survive that.

So what I can.

What.

What surface for me, I found.

I was good at sports.

I became an athlete.

I played soccer and h. I played that through high school and college.

And I got strong.

I got strong at it.

I felt confident.

I felt camaraderie with those who I played with on my team.

So it was pleasant for me.

I also found nature was very comforting and soothing for me.

I would get up really early in the morning, I would watch the sunrise, and I would listen to the birds sing.

And I felt they were singing to me, and that was really comforting.

And at night, I loved the stars.

I loved, on a clear night, watching the stars.

So all of that was comforting.

And it was not healing.

It didn't heal.

What I had inside, it was all temporary because I knew I still have work inside.

Those feelings that I had of what my mother caused was still in there.

So at about age 14, my mother had still been hitting me.

She came at me, ready to pounce on me with fists closed.

And I held my palm out and I said, no, you can't do that anymore.

I'm stronger now.

I'll defend myself.

So she looked in my eyes.

She couldn't believe that I was saying that.

She turned around, walked away.

That was the last time she hit me.

And that was the last time she would degrade me, too.

But I was dealing with that.

But I didn't allow her to beat me anymore.

So then I figured out, let's go to college, go to work.

I worked, always worked, because my family, family didn't have money, much money.

So I worked hard in school, learned a scholarship to college tuition, scholarship.

And I had a choice.

I had.

I did two tracks, psychology, which was human emotions, and the track of medicine.

So I decided on.

Let's.

Let's take two tracks.

We'll see which one fits.

For me, the medicine didn't fit.

It was too cognitive.

And I love the psychology.

So I went.

I majored in psychology as an undergraduate and then went on for a PhD as a graduate student in counseling and graduated.

I worked in clinics, I worked in schools.

I worked in many, many universities.

I was hired as a university to develop their child counseling program.

And I did that.

And then.

So that's.

That's where that started.

That was the background.

If you'd like more on how I created the therapy, I'll give you that.

And if you have things you want to add right now, I'm open to that as well.

Yeah, you know, I want to dig a little bit.

I don't hear you, Donald.

You froze.

You're frozen.

You want to come in?

Yeah.

So it's not uncommon that somebody who was abused themselves becomes abusive later.

Right.

And.

And I think there's a lot of different reasons for that.

You know, whether that was the way they felt, that was the only way they could feel love or feel anything.

And then later, that's how they gave it back.

The.

The fact that when you stood up and, and it, like, clicked.

That's.

That's the side of the story.

You don't see too much.

When that happened, what went through your mind?

Was that like an aha moment of like, okay, I'm getting a piece of me back now.

It was an aha moment.

It's a little different for me in many of the.

Many of the people that I Work with.

They feel worthless, they feel they somehow are to blame.

They feel they caused it.

They feel defective, they feel inadequate.

I didn't feel that way.

What I felt was that was something wrong with my mother.

It was okay.

And it's very unusual.

You know, when I had gone into my own therapy, you know, and I explored things, everybody said that that's not, that's really kind of unheard of.

Most of the people would suffer that you, like you did, would, would feel inadequate and defective in some way and worse.

You know, I didn't feel that way.

I felt I had to stop being beaten and I had to move on and get out of there.

So it was a little different than what a lot of people feel.

I was lucky.

People ask me where did that come from?

I said it was just an 8.

I don't really know where it came from.

So, yeah, that kind of resiliency, man, usually takes years to build it and it's never done at that age.

You know, usually I shouldn't say never.

It obviously was with you, but it is usually something that comes from on the healing side.

When you start that healing process, you start building that, that resil.

And I know for me it did, it was, it was exactly that way because I honestly believed the things that I was telling myself that I was a piece of crap and, and you know, a piss poor father and, and this is the reason why everybody hates me.

All those things going through my mind.

And it just leads you down to that, that moment where you stand at the crossroads and decide, do I want to end this permanently or do I want to fight forever?

And you know, so many people make the wrong choice at that, at that step.

They do.

So when, when you got to that moment, what, what part of it was the fact that you said, hey, you know, I'm going to take some of this pain and, and turn it into purpose.

And, and I know you wrote books and, and you obviously went into psychology, but, but that, that moment had to have come before that.

When.

What?

Yeah, it came around nine years old.

I remember I was sick.

I stayed home from school.

I had a flu, the cold or whatever.

I was home from school and I was watching tv.

I returned the channel and the old, the old black and white movie of Les Miserables was on.

Okay.

And I started to watch it.

I said, this seems interesting.

And it's about the misery.

I believe it's about the misery of the French masses of people, how they struggled with poverty.

And it centers around Two characters.

One who steals a piece of bread to feed his family because they're starving, and the other is the character who chases him, the policeman or cop chases him throughout life trying to punish him.

And throughout it, the suffering, the ordeal that the one who steals a piece of bread goes through.

I just was crying, I was sobbing.

And around it is the masses of French people who are suffering in tremendous povert.

And I remember I could feel it almost today with the tears flowing down my cheeks.

And I said, I would like to do something to help.

It came at nine years old.

And then, as I said, then I had to stop being beaten and I had to figure out a way to survive.

And then I would figure out the track that I wanted to go into.

So it was also at an early age that I knew that I knew.

Do you know, it's ironic with me, I always grew up on the sports side of things.

I, I, I wanted to be a professional football player or, you know, even at one point I was a very good bowler.

I thought about pursuing that, but it never crossed to me on, on a realistic career.

And when I got into the upper grades of high school, I realized real quick I'm not the fastest, so let's cross NFL off.

And I'm not exactly interested in, in bowling, so what am I going to do?

And I took that moment, I said, you know, I think I'd like to explore psychology.

And I wanted to be a criminal psychologist is what I wanted to be.

Interesting.

It just fascinated me so much with the decisions that they made.

And I learned real quick that you've got to be smart.

That's probably one of the first requirements.

And that, that part didn't work out so well with me.

And so I pursued my, my love at that time.

And we got married, still married today, got married in 94 and I joined the military.

And it's funny how all the classes that I took in psychology or forgotten when I needed them the most, you know, and I never got that opportunity to build that resiliency.

And so for you to find it at nine that you decide you want to go, you know, help and pursue that, my hat's off to you because.

Thank you, man.

I went in the military because I didn't know what I was going to do.

And I was 19, so I was just lucky.

I don't know if it's DNA or I don't know what it is.

I was fortunate and I admire your service that you did.

And I know obviously you struggled with PTSD from it and I'm sorry for that.

But for me, I was just lucky.

To know, I think what it is, and this is what I have accepted, is I believe that peace comes when you're on the path that you were meant to be on.

And we all find that in different ways and our life experiences can alter the time that it takes to get on that path.

And I was just more stubborn.

And finally I'm here now.

I'm walking the path that I was meant to be on and talking with guests like yourself and podcasting and understanding a little bit about how, you know, PTSD is not a veteran problem.

It's not a child problem, It's a human problem.

It's a human reaction to a bad situation.

Correct.

And it's nothing more.

And the people that we fought against are obviously humans, and at least I hope they were, and they're dealing with PTSD as well, you know, regardless of what side on that battlefield they were on.

And it's, it's ironic that we forget that, right.

And we, we make these problems a me problem.

And then you went out and said, you know, let me, let me not make this a me problem.

Let me make this a me example.

Yes, let's dig into a little bit.

So you, you go through psychology, through college, and, and you start taking on jobs.

What was your first main project that you thought, I'm on that path, I'm doing it, I'm helping people?

Well, when I graduated, I began working in schools with the PhD.

I work with children, I work with their parents, I work with administrators for the emotional well being of children.

And then, as I said, I worked in some clinics doing practice, private practice.

And I, then I was hired at a university to develop their counseling program with children.

Because of my experience and what happened as a result of, at the university, I began to get referrals.

People were coming to me and asking me if I would see them in my private practice, would I see them personally.

And I said I would.

And then they told me because they were abused as children, severely abused as children.

And I said, yes, I would see you.

Let's give that a shot.

And I was trained in a lot of different therapies.

I got a PhD, I did internships and many internships, and I was trained in theories and many techniques.

So what I found, I was somewhat successful because I kept getting more referrals from these kind of people, people who were traumatized and abused.

But I wasn't satisfied with the results.

I wanted more long term, permanent healing.

I didn't feel I was getting that the people were satisfied, but I wasn't.

I said, there has to be more.

So I started to look at what things worked, what things didn't work.

I put it together and I use it on myself as well.

Because I knew I had to heal emotionally from the abuse that I suffered.

I snapped those feelings in.

So I found a sequence that worked.

I found out what worked, what didn't work, and I put it together.

It was called Source Completion Therapy and it involves three phases.

Now, just a background on these people that were hurt.

I just want to go over what they have.

Similar.

When a child is abused, when they're beaten, degraded, demeaned, they.

And all kinds of feelings are generated.

Feelings of worthlessness, feeling of being unloved, unliked, unwanted, feeling of being betrayed, feeling of being insignificant, unimportant feelings of many, many feelings are developed.

There's just a few of them.

So that runs the course of all the people that I work with who were abused.

There's different degrees of severity.

Some were raped, some were beaten, some were just degraded.

So.

But the feelings that come out are those same feelings, right?

So I knew that I needed to get the source of those feelings for each person, get them up, get them out.

Because what happens when a child experiences that abuse, stuffs these feelings?

They repress them, they start to fester inside, they fester, they boil, and they turn into a toxic emotional brew.

So I said if I could get these feelings out, that would heal a lot of things because what would happen is if they're not healed, the subconscious wants them out.

So just like eating a bad meal where you get food poisoning, our body wants that out.

And it comes out in every orifice, basically.

Okay.

It's the same thing for our psyche and subconscious.

It wants those feelings out.

So if they're just.

Because if they're not out, those, those feelings will continue and they come out in ugly ways.

What happens is the subconscious wants it out, but our conscious still doesn't want to feel it.

When we get older, we still.

Our instinct is to keep repressing them.

So they, they kind of come out in what I call diversions, addictions, phobias, eating disorders, things like panic attacks, things like compulsions, things like a rage, like road rage.

It comes out in that, it comes out in all kinds of.

I call them diversions.

Because what they do, they divert you from the original source of the pain.

Even you could have road rage and break somebody's car, but the source feelings will still be in there until you get to the real source and get them out.

So I developed these three phases to get to the source of those feelings, get them out and, and all those, feel all those diversions evaporate.

That's what I wanted because then I would know I have really permanent healing.

See, some, some therapies, like behavioral therapies, what they'll do, they'll work on a symptom.

They might work on the gambling, they might work on the eating.

So, so if you work on that symptom, it's going to come out the other ways if those feelings are stayed stored, sourced in there.

So I said, I know I have to get that out.

And with therapies I went to privately weren't doing that.

Even the therapies I went to in school, in graduate school as part of the program, they weren't going deep enough.

So I had to go deep enough.

And I developed those three phases to do it.

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, those types of things, the addiction and the panic attacks, those are the effects.

Those are not the causes.

And, and, and what it is, is your body looking for happiness.

And, and if you take something away, if you say, look, gambling's bad, you shouldn't be doing this.

It's not healthy.

But you're not getting that happiness from normal living.

You're going to find something else that was, it's funny that you mentioned that, because that was exactly my out.

You know, Texas hold' Em was, was something that I fell into.

I was very good at it.

So that made it even worse because then it, it made me pursue it and think that it was normal when the reality was it was just about endorphins and, and dopamine and being.

Finding a way to be happy.

And it's temporary.

It's just temporary.

Absolutely.

Because, you know, for, for a, a professional gambler, we'll even say there's not an addiction there.

But a professional gambler, they're very up and down.

There's no middle road.

They're either at the top of their life or at the bottom.

And, and you add somebody that's doing it to deal with mental pain.

It's, it's tenfold.

Your highs and lows are.

Are tenfold.

And it, and it's not, it's.

It's.

It becomes extremely unhealthy because it's not just, I had a bad day and I lost.

It's.

I lost because I'm a piece of crap.

I, you know, and, and you just go back at yourself.

I know I'm Speaking from experience, I, I went down that road, you know, and you add you addictions like you know, drugs and self medication and, and all those things, you can fix all those things.

But if you, if you don't fix the underlying cause, like you said, they're gonna, they're going to manifest in different.

Ways again and always 100% in the decades that I've done this work, I've never seen anybody who doesn't get to the source of those feelings, get that out, who doesn't have all these, I call them diversions.

You know, in whatever way person is trying to comfort themselves, it'll only be temporary, those diversions.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, for me it seems like for us soldiers, right, us veterans, that, that path of healing is very common.

Right.

Which makes sense because our training is very common.

And, and we, we rely on those when we're trying to, to fix ourselves.

And, and it starts in several ways.

Right.

It's first admitting, okay, I do have ptsd, it's a problem.

And then it goes from that to now.

Everything I did wrong in my life is because I'm sick, I have a problem, it's not my fault, I just, I have a thing, you know, I have ptsd and that becomes the victim card.

Right, Right.

Yes.

And, and we think we're healing because we accepted that we have ptsd.

The truth is healing hasn't even begun.

Correct.

You're, you're, you're using another deflecting method at this point.

Exactly.

And, and so the real healing comes from the work that you put in.

And that means one, learning to love the new you and accepting that the new you is not bad because the old you is gone.

Those two things are not related.

Right.

And you got to get reintroduced and find that compassion and admit that the problems that have happened is not because you're a bad person, maybe bad choices, but not a bad person.

And then for me it was step two was can I tell my story?

Can I tell my story and not feel shame when I'm done?

And that's where the long road comes.

You know, this is where the.

Now you've got to dissect that story and deal with the individual things that that happened it and pick up those bad decisions.

When I wrote my first book, I realized this because it made me become a third person.

I wasn't Donald Dunn.

I was writing a book about a guy named Donald Dunn that made these piss poor decisions.

And so that's where the, the making amends comes from.

Right.

And, and a lot of those, 12 STEP programs have those same types of things, but it's important.

Right?

And then for me, it brought up another issue, right?

How do you let go after, after you first accepted yourself, apologizing yourself and, and forgave yourself for what you did?

How do you handle when you go to somebody else and you, you apologize to them, but they don't accept it, you know, and those two things, we forget that, that's.

That apology wasn't for them, it was for you.

Correct?

Right, Exactly.

It was you offering amends for what you did.

Right.

If they don't take it, that's not a me problem, that's a you problem.

And, and again, it brings us back and it slows that healing process down because now we have to analyze that and deal with it.

When you went through your, your program and you released these three phases, which phase did you find was the hardest to get people to accept?

Okay, so let me go to the first and I'll go to the second and go to the third, and I'll tell you which one is the hardest for, for people to, to do because they're frightened of doing it, because they have to feel a lot.

Okay.

So the first phase, again, people come in to me, they don't want to really own the source.

Very, very often they say they just come in with the symptoms.

So the first phase is called awareness.

So I, they come into me with all the symptoms.

I know somebody has hurt them.

I know that they've been hurt in some way.

So I have them figure out, and we do it through body interpretation of body language, dream interpretation.

I help them with that and some good open questions.

Who hurt them, how they were hurt, who hurt them and what happened in the event.

So that's the first phase.

So let's.

So in a, in a body language, what I use in that phase, because often the body is talking and they're not really conscious of what it's saying.

So I worked with a woman who came into me.

She had a tremendous rash all the time.

She would get, every, every few months, she would go to doctors, they give her creams, they give her shots, they give her pills.

Nothing was working.

So she was referred to me because the doctors knew what I do.

And I asked her the question, well, let's, for a second, let's look under the skin for what, what that's saying, what is under your skin saying?

And she said, no one ever asked me that question before.

She laughed a little and I said, well, think about it.

And then she thought and she said to me, her eyes got wide open and she said, you know, that's the poison that's still in me from when I sat on my grandfather's lap when I was 10 years old and he molested me.

And I felt he poisoned me and tainted me.

So a simple me asking what her body is saying.

And that was the start.

That was the awareness of how she was, you know, abused.

And then we go to the second phase.

And in the second phase is I have them go back in time in their minds.

Now, the phases, they're sequenced, but there's.

There's a. I want each person to be comfortable with each phase before we go on to the next because it's a safe process for them, because it's a deep process and it brings up these feelings.

So they have to be safe with me and trust me.

So in the second phase, I have them go back in time through self hypnosis.

I teach them that, or hypnosis to the events that occurred.

So they're going back in time and that's bringing up all the feelings.

I want him to be in touch with the feelings, the sights, the sounds and the events, the colors, everything that happened in the event that brings up all these.

All these feelings that they've been repressing.

When they come to me in their 30s or 40s, maybe 20 years, 25 years.

Okay, so we get that.

And I have them stay there in talking about it some.

Then when they come out of the hypnosis, they'll draw about it, they'll write about it.

I have a sculptor that worked with me.

He would make sculptures about these scenes and what he endured.

So I have him do all that to stay with the emotions, to keep expressing it.

And then the last phase, that's what's most difficult for people.

Okay.

That it's called completion.

The third phase is called completion.

What happens in completion is I have them go to the source, the people that have hurt them, and I have them talk to that person, tell them what was done to them and how they felt about it.

So a lot of people are scared to do that because, number one, if they have any kind of relationship with that, let's say it was a caregiver or father.

They don't want to lose it.

They don't want to bring up.

They're also afraid of there's more feelings going to come up, and that's terrifying to them.

So that.

That takes some time to get to that phase.

I don't ever rush this.

I make sure that we go at the pace that the people are comfortable with it, but when it's complete, all those feelings are up, they're out, and they're given back to the source.

That's why the book is called Give Back the Pain.

And all those diversions this lady had, the rashes, she also had an eating disorder.

She smoked, she drank.

So she had other diversions.

They evaporated, they went away.

So that's when I know that I've gotten to the permanent long term healing.

So those are basically in the short version of the three phases.

The book goes into a little more detail.

But it's true all the stories in the book about how these people were healed through that process, but that's the sec.

The third phase is the most difficult for most people a little bit.

Yeah.

So I was writing these down as, as you did it, and I was thinking in myself, you know, how I healed and, and the, the method that I, I used, obviously it wasn't wrote by nobody.

That was, you know, this was me learning as I, as I went.

Right.

Some of the, I did some of this, but I may not have done it in this correct order.

And, you know, the awareness part came from me just finally hitting concrete at rock bottom.

You know, I made a, a horrible mistake with my son.

And, and it was an altercation that became almost physical and my wife had to get in the middle of it, and it damaged our relationship.

But that's, that's when the awareness came was I need help.

Right.

But I didn't know what that meant.

Right.

And so I tried different things.

I went to some therapists.

That worked great.

And then I, you know, he closed his practice and referred me to another person.

And, and I was like, I don't really need another person.

I'm healed, the cold's gone, I've taken my meds, life's great, you know, only to find out that I did no healing and I did no work towards it.

So guess what happened?

The problems came right back, you know, and so the hypnosis part, I think for me was more so of the storytelling.

Right.

And, and it was me reliving these events over and over, whether it been from writing the book, telling it on a podcast, and, and everything else.

Yes, that's the idea.

That's the same thing, because you get to it.

And I think phase three is where I'm at now.

And I'm just now learning this with some spirituality help and, and everything else.

You know, I never thought I would hear the day where I could say that the people that we fought against, the people that killed friends of mine, and be able to.

To say, I get it, you were doing the same thing we were doing and accept that as no blame and let the hatred go.

Because that's really where I've been for years, is still having all that hatred built up for it, and there's nobody that I can walk up to and like in your example of a daughter and a father, you know, and.

And do it, but.

But I can.

I can let it go myself.

Understood.

And so it makes sense.

And your plan is, in my opinion, I can't find any flaws in it because it really is true.

The part that I like what you kept saying was you have to build that foundation.

You have to build the trust.

You have to allow the person to move through these phases at their time and at the same time still be willing to, you know, not let them stop because of fear.

Because phase three is scary.

It really is.

Yes.

Especially if you have to do it in person with another person that you're talking to and seeing and live with and.

And all those things that you just mentioned.

So.

Absolutely.

At what point did you say, let me turn this into a book and, and let me.

Let me share it with the world that, you know, because if somebody pick up that book or watch this podcast, I guarantee you they're going to do the same thing.

They're going to go over these phases and analyze, you know, what they've done and why things in the past didn't work versus things in the future could work.

You know, where did the book come from?

It came from.

I was working in this practice, a private practice, and number of the.

The people I work with say, you know, this is so good.

It's helped me.

Why don't you get out to the world, you know, why don't you get this program, you know, so others could be healed?

So I said, okay, let me.

I put it.

I'll put it together.

And I collected all my notes and I collected the stories, all the true stories and all the healing people.

And the writing was.

The writing.

It was really hard to write this because the true stories.

And then I teach in it.

I teach about the phases of.

So he teached around.

I mixed the two stories with the teaching of it, of the therapy.

I had to go into each character, each.

Each person and feel what they were feeling, because I write the story with feeling and depth.

It was very difficult because I was.

It was painful.

I was feeling their pain and crying as I'm writing and so that is a.

It was a hard process and it was draining for me.

So.

But I wanted to put it together and I did it.

And people seem to get something out of it.

Yes.

I worked recently with an actress and a singer, an award winning actress and singer who saw me on a show and she had read my book and she called me and she said, would you please help me?

I think this could help me.

I've been to a number of therapists and it wasn't helpful at all.

One wanted to.

They tried emdr, it was whether you roll your eyes, that wasn't helpful at all.

Another just tried behavioral therapy and I felt worse.

And then the psychiatrist that I went to told me I was schizophrenic, wanted to give me medication.

So would you please help me?

I was so turned off.

But when I saw you on a streaming site and I read your book, I thought you could be helpful because I've been taking drugs.

I have these toxic relationships.

It's affecting my career and I'm scared I'm just going to ruin everything in my life that I, you know, and the success that I've achieved.

So I said, okay, so.

So I would help her.

So I said yes.

And she began working with me.

And then I said, look, all of these things, you're not schizophrenic.

She was having out of body experience experiences too.

Out of body things.

And I said, that's usually because you have so much pain inside, your brain wants to separate from the pain.

So that's that.

What that is.

So we have to look at is let's look at who hurt you, how did they hurt you?

And we'll get all that out and you will, you will be better.

And you won't, you're not schizophrenic.

Anyone in medication.

So we worked at it a little bit and she came up with her father.

He really hurt her.

He abandoned her, he pushed her away.

He wasn't proud of her in her accomplishments.

She yearned for his approval and it devastated her.

So that's where all her drinking came to numb all those feelings, the drugs.

And when she finished the process, free of all those, I call them, the diversions, and on the road, her career continued to go in a really positive direction.

So that's just an example of that, of going through those three phases and why I wanted to give it to the world.

Going back to the question that you asked.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think you're absolutely right.

And the reason why I say that is in Today's world, I think we're at that point.

You know, it's no secret there has been a mental health crisis that's been happening for years and America and, and probably other countries as well.

But I think we're now to that point where people are accepting, hey, something is going on and, and we do need help.

And I think people are just like you said, they're, they're looking for that answer.

They're, they're looking for that help.

And, and drugs just doesn't make sense.

You know, you tell me if I self medicate, then drugs are bad, but you're going to give me drugs.

And the more research you do on it, you know, there's so much more to the human mind than we'll ever understand in years and years to come.

I do believe, and this has just became lately as I've gotten into spirituality, I do believe that consciousness is not just a contained in our brain.

And when you fill your body full of toxicity, it makes perfect sense with what you said about outer body because it's got to go somewhere.

Correct.

You know, we, we come on this earth to, to learn a lesson.

And at some point when we're learning these lessons, they become so toxic that we can't take that time to process and learn from it because it's, it's trauma after trauma after trauma after trauma.

And, and that comes from just pushing it down and accepting the new one until there's just no room.

Correct.

You know, so that makes, that makes perfect sense to me and you know, for whatever lessons that those people need to learn and, and decided that before they, they came to earth to learn those lessons, you know, sure, that, that makes sense.

But we still all are given free will and, and we still have the choice to learn those lessons and we still have the choice of how we learn those lessons.

So it's great for people to be searching for that kind of content and, and people like yourself that are providing it so people can learn at their own pace and actually become productive about it.

Yes.

I just want to comment on one thing.

On the medication piece.

There were times where the pain is so severe and the trauma that people I work with suffer, that they can't function, the panic attacks are every day, they're going into a deep depression.

So in that case, if they're working with me, medication could really help get the serotonin and the endorphins back in their brain so they could function.

Then we can continue with the therapy.

So I'm not opposed to it.

It's just sometimes it's given when it doesn't need to be given, and et cetera.

So as you were saying, I think.

What I should have said is, is.

And this is the way it was for me, there's a misunderstanding about when.

When we're given the medication.

Right.

And.

And that is we treat it like it's.

It's cold meds.

You know, I take it, the symptoms gone away.

I don't need it no more.

And.

And that's where it becomes, you know, confusing.

You're like, this crap don't work.

You told me if I took these meds, I'd be better, and I was better in.

And then I stopped taking them, and now look, I'm right back again.

And it's because those meds are just like you said, they're for the symptoms.

Let's push that cold out of the way so that we can focus on the work that we need to do.

That's exactly right, Don.

That's exactly right.

And then, you know, because if you don't focus on the work and just take the medication, those feelings are still in there, and they're going to come out.

They will still come out.

Even on the medication.

They'll come out.

Yeah.

In the other ways, and they'll be even worse because you're still.

Just because you're on the meds doesn't mean that trauma doesn't happen.

You know, you're still going to have bad days and things are still going to be horrible, and you're still going to add those on top of it, you know, And.

And so.

Absolutely, I agree 100%.

Look at road rage.

You know, it's in the papers all the time.

It's in the papers.

So there's two guys fighting for a parking spot, or one guy didn't signal and the other guy is enraged over it, and the one gets out maybe with a tire on, and the other guy a gun, and they're going to kill each other over a parking spot.

Right.

So I know, you know, it's never talked about in the newspapers that this stuff is deeper.

These people are having rage inside because they were hurt in some way.

I know that.

So that's the source of it.

Somebody hurt them to the.

To the.

To the source that they want to kill somebody.

They are so enraged at it.

Yeah, no, you are a hundred percent correct.

And, you know, for me, I get it on the veteran side, you know, and.

And it's actually part of the military training.

You know, when we come back from deployments they don't even allow for like the first week and a half, 10 days.

They don't allow the single soldiers off the base.

You know, they keep them on the base because they know all of that anger is still built up.

And if they go to a bar and start drinking and somebody bumps into them, it's not going to just be a fight because they're not used to just fighting to find out who wins and both people walk away.

It's not over until somebody's dead, you know, and that's exactly because of the anger that was instilled in us and the tools that we have to use.

So when our decision making process skills come in, we reach in that tool bag and we only got that one tool and that's anger.

And then you add alcohol or even other drugs to it and it just compiles and it just makes it worse.

But that's where the military fails because they know why they're making people stay on the base and try to slowly ackerman them back.

They're not doing anything to, to deal with that trauma.

And so it's a symptom.

Let me, let me sit over here.

It's a tragedy that they're not doing enough.

Yeah, I'm upset about that, hearing that.

Yeah.

And, and I've got a program that I've been working on and, and a petition that I'm trying to get signed to get the military to change the way we, we look at psychiatrists.

You know, you walk to a military base right now and, and there's going to be one or two psychiatrists that never deploy.

They may even not even be military.

They may be civilians and they're dealing with all the soldiers on that base.

And every soldier that walks in that door has a problem and you're looked at just like that, you have a problem.

And what they need to do is they need to put psychiatrists in the battalions as another soldier trains with them.

They're part of the team.

They're doing training on resiliency and performance training as well as how to deal with fight and flight and, and blood pressures and, and all these things.

And it'll make you a better warrior, it's going to make you a better person.

And you're going to catch these symptoms at a much earlier rate so that PTSD becomes a broken arm.

We take you out of the battle, we fix the broken arm, we let you heal, and then you can go back to being another soldier, if that's what you choose, or, or you know, leave the military already healed and, and have that thought process, but you've got to get rid of the stereotype and you got to be willing to.

To put them as an equal.

And, and that takes money and, and people seem to like that part of it.

They like money.

Well, is this.

Is anybody hearing you in this or listening to you?

Because this is a great idea.

I like it.

Not yet.

You know, I. I've been.

I've been working on this for a while and.

And again, I went through change.org to try to get people to sign the petition.

I've sent letters to Pete Hegseth and got.

I don't even know if he gotten them because I got no response or anything back.

I mentioned it on as many shows just to.

To make people hear it and, and everything else.

I've reached out to sports psychiatrists, one from the Chicago Bulls and, And all these main guys that are dealing with making these athletes, you know, that are looked at as investments by the team even better and, and trying to find that program that they use and how they.

How they use these visualization techniques and, and all that stuff so we can implement that into training for the soldiers, you know, before battle.

And, and there should be a way to, to help train for ptsd, because it's not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's a matter of when it's going to happen.

If you send people to combat, they're gonna have problems.

This is not normal stuff that, that people see.

You know, it's not.

So could I. I hope that.

I hope that the blossoms into fruition for you.

You.

Because it's a really good idea and I admire you for doing that.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

I. I hope it does too.

May I ask where you were deployed, if you could?

I spent.

I spent 68 months between Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.

I did 10 years in the special ops community, so deployments.

That was after I went to the.

To that community right before 9 11.

And then a year later, 911 happened.

And man, it was.

It was on the road constantly from that point forward.

Understood.

Yeah.

Well, how could you not have PTSD with all of what you were through?

I understand.

Yes.

Yeah.

And that's.

That's the other part of that program that I was talking about is there needs to be a limit.

You should not just take soldiers and just keep compounding them, sending them and Sending them and sending them and sending them.

You know, at some point you should recognize that they are, they now need to be separated and used for training.

And, and you're going to keep soldiers much longer by taking them away from the battlefield and letting them train the troops that are going to be going forward.

Because that's the biggest reason why your senior leadership leaves.

They get burned out.

Right.

Of course.

You know, so I, it's, you know, I'm not going to give up.

And, and you know, at some point, maybe AI will make money so irrelevant that people will start looking at it, because I hope so.

I, I, I like, like I said, I like the idea.

I love the, that you do it and would want it implemented.

So keep at it.

You know, I just care about, I care about the guys, man, the, the troops, your brothers and sisters that are out there and that, that's extending even more.

When you start looking at our first responders, you know, and, and they're seeing this stuff over and over and over.

You know, they don't get that break.

The soldiers at least come back for a year and, and can, cannot have to, to deal with it on a daily basis.

That police officers, you know, New York City Police Department guy, he may be seeing it six times a week, every, every week.

Right.

I understand, yes.

I'm in New York.

I, you know, so I, I understand, yes.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I want to hear your passion to do that, to continue it.

I really do admire that.

Thank you.

I want to hit this topic.

I know we're getting to the top of the hour.

For, for me, when I wrote my first book, my first book was a, obviously about my time in the military.

And I wrote it as a document for my wife and kids because I never talked to them about the things that were going on.

Obviously they seen I was not headed in the right direction and, and things were, were not as, as good as I perceive them to be and tell them, but I didn't want to have that conversation with them.

And so I wrote this as a document.

My daughter asked me to publish it, and that's when the work really became hard because you just don't know what you don't know.

So the editing process is brutal.

And, and when you're doing your first book and you're doing it all yourself and you don't know what you're doing, it becomes very daunting and I made a lot of mistakes.

When you first started your book, what was it, what was your experience like?

Did you say, holy cow, I might have bit off more than I could chew.

No, I didn't say that.

The first experience, I had years and years of doing this work.

So it was just a matter of encapsulating it and getting it out on paper again.

The process was hard for me because I would feel each character in each story in order to write it and make sure the writing was consistently the same throughout.

Consistently good throughout and at the same level.

So that, that was the difficulty.

It was the feeling of it.

It was really painful.

I had all the material over years that I collected, so the material was there.

Editing.

I had a publisher when it was first done that said it didn't need much, didn't need much editing.

But my wife helped me also.

She's, she's in the similar field as I was.

So I always went to her to clean up some of the grammar.

Yeah.

But the concept was there and the publisher, the first publisher, really, really liked it.

And I went from there.

But the hardness again was the feeling that I had to feel each person's pain.

So there was tons of stories throughout there.

And I would go, I would go a local diner in the morning and I would, I would do it before I went to work.

They would know I was writing.

The waitresses pour coffee.

I would stay there.

I'd go to public parks to write because I needed time to just clear my head and have peace around me.

So where I wrote was important.

So I would try to pick places each day.

But the feeling was, the feelings were intense and it required a lot of pain for me to do it.

So that was the tough part for me.

Yeah, I, I, I relate to that because that's where, I guess that's what made my, my editing process.

So, you know, I, I did self publishing, so I did the editing.

I did all that stuff.

And, and that meant I had to reread this and relive it.

But I think that's because of that, that's where the, the healing really helped.

Had I just wrote it for my family and never touched it again, I don't know that I would have got the same effects from it.

It.

Right.

But understood it was, it was tough.

And, and not being good at English and everything else as well, you know, added to that, that stress of trying to make it.

And then I fell in that what has to be perfect.

People are going to read this now.

And, and at some point you just got to finally say, it's, it's, it's good.

Let it go.

And I did get some good reviews.

So I Did.

I did enjoy that.

What's the name.

What's the title of your book?

It's called Echoes of War, The Silent transition of a soldier.

So that was my first book.

And.

And since then, I've wrote a few other books.

I wrote a.

A fiction book that I use the fiction to teach people that just don't understand that depression and stuff like that is.

Is real just because.

Because you can't see it.

So I took the phrase, you know, the.

Everybody says, hey, they're fighting their demons or, or whatever.

So I said, you know, I called the book when demons follow you home.

And I took a group of homeless veterans that live under the I75 overpass in Atlanta.

Right.

And I used that character because nobody's going to believe that they're seeing real demons.

They're just alcoholics and druggies and everything else.

Right.

And.

And I took the, the physical manner of the demon and the symptoms that they were putting on those.

Those.

Those veterans was exactly what somebody feels when they're going through depression and PTSD and all those same things, from substance abuse to hating yourself and feeling like you're letting people down.

And, and all of those.

And these demons are feeding off of that.

So I just added a.

A aspect for somebody to see.

That's what's causing it.

That guy over there in the corners hurting that guy over here, you know?

Yes.

And that's the only reason I wrote that as a fiction book was just to kind of get that mesh message across.

And I wrote a book about the.

How to train your mind for life and battle.

And it uses a lot of those same techniques that I would like to hopefully help implement in a program to prepare soldiers for battle.

You know, so it's gotten easier, you know, the more you do it, you learn the.

The editing process can come later.

Let's just get the story down and, and stop writing a paragraph, going back and editing it, you know, because it's going to change anyways.

Understood?

Yes, I do understand that.

So you.

I hope you're proud of what you've done.

Those are.

Those are nice accomplishments.

Yeah, absolutely.

Again, I think it goes back to, you know, when.

When the Lord puts you on the path that you were meant to be, and, and that's when real peace comes.

And, and, you know, you can look back and say, man, I had some tough lessons I learned.

And, and now I'm here to help others learn those lessons, you know, and.

You'Re on your path, a good path, and absolutely healing.

And, you know, it's an absolute place to be.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, I like to end with our.

With a fun question.

If you could discuss your book with.

With somebody alive or dead, who would you.

Who would you like to sit down and talk to about it?

Wow, that's interesting question.

Well, my hero there goes back a while, was John Kennedy.

John Fitzgerald.

Yeah.

He was a war hero.

And when I read that book, I was stunned by what he accomplished in World War II.

He saved men by swimming long distances.

He held them on his back, and he wanted to.

He got out of the war as a hero, and he wanted to help humanity, and he became president.

So I would like to sit down with him.

I would love that.

He was a hero.

I was 13 at the time.

12, maybe 11, right around there.

And I read his book Profiles and Courage.

So I. Wow.

Yeah.

You know, I wrote an article for a better magazine, and I. I wrote it about the.

The differences in leadership style between presidents that served in the military versus those that did not.

And there, when you start researching that, it is a huge difference.

And I'm not here to say that because you didn't serve, you're not a good leader.

I'm just saying your leadership style and the things that you find important are completely different.

And JFK is.

Is a great example.

He cared about humanity and the people, and that is the side that, you know, veteran leaders come from because they're so used to putting the.

The people before them.

You know, you put your squad, your platoon, your.

Your company, your battalion, whatever.

You put your guys, your war fighters, health, being before you.

Right.

And that seems to be a trend that carries over into politics.

I mean, maybe not so much now.

Now it's about, okay, let me serve five years in the reserves, and I'll use that on my resume in my political campaigns.

But, you know, in the olden days, all the way back to George Washington, you could see it, and, and the.

The ones that came from businesses, they even had a different type of.

They cared more about building and, and expanding and, and growth and all the things that are extremely important to a.

To a company.

You know, they did.

And as.

As you said, that's.

Kennedy cared about humanity as a whole.

And I, I admired that when.

When I was a young, young man.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I'm gonna give you that opportunity, Mr. Black, to come forward and tell everybody where they can find your books and, and find you if they'd like to get some help or reach out to you and potentially have you as a.

As a person to help provide that Help.

Sure.

Or any questions they have, they're always welcome to ask me.

You can get me on my website.

That's Robert Black.

See, I just lost you.

No, I made you bigger.

So.

Okay, so you could.

You could find me@robert black.com.

that's my website.

And the book's available on Amazon.

There's a Kindle version and there's a, you know, paperback version.

So those are the two places you could get me or my book.

So that's the best place to do it.

All right.

Well, I hope everybody got something out of this.

I know I did.

I even took some notes and found that it's very interesting in how some of the stuff I did really cosigns along with this method.

So make sure you go to the links.

They'll be in the.

The bio down below and.

And you can click on them.

We'll make sure that you can get right there to Amazon and go directly to the.

The.

The book and, and purchase it there as well as, you know, reach out and follow and, and if you need some help, man, take that hardest step.

And that's just admitting that you need some help.

And, and reach out to somebody, Whether it's or Mr. Black or the VA or anybody, you know, don't, don't think that there's not help out there.

And if your one method doesn't work, there's method 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

Somebody else is out there.

So just know that.

That people care.

So I hope all of y' all have a great day.

Don't forget, man, don't let the day kick your ass.

Kick the day's ass.

Sa.