In this candid monologue, Dallas Bragg reflects on the deep‑seated belief that has driven his meth addiction: the recurring question “What did I do?” which stems from childhood trauma, paternal rejection, and repeated experiences of exclusion. He describes how this belief manifested as chronic shame, a need for external validation, and self‑destructive coping. Bragg then outlines an eight‑step personal framework for uncovering and transforming such core beliefs. The process includes (1) recognizing a trigger, (2) body‑scanning to locate the associated emotion, (3) personifying the emotion, (4) tracing its earliest memory (e.g., a broken camping trip promise from his father), (5) extracting the underlying belief (“I am not enough”), (6) condensing it into a central theme, (7) creating a counter‑belief mantra (“I am enough”), and (8) anchoring the new belief through journaling, repetition, and real‑life examples. Throughout, Bragg shares specific anecdotes from his marriage, fatherhood, and experiences within the gay community to illustrate how the belief operated in various life domains. He emphasizes allowing emotions to fully surface, reframing the narrative, and mourning the loss of his childhood self. The video serves both as a personal testimony and a practical guide for others in recovery seeking to identify and rewrite their own limiting beliefs.
Chapters
Hey everybody. Um, I've been in a really emotional state lately, and, um, I don't know if anybody's going to watch this, but I wanted to put it on record anyway, even if it's just for me. But I am going back through my life and really allowing myself to feel, really allowing myself to— here it comes— just allow the sadness and the regret, the pain to come up for me, not switching over to How grateful I am, and I've survived meth addiction. I've built my life back, and I have a doctorate, and blah blah blah. I have my health. All of that is great, but I have to recognize this little boy inside me who cries out. In pain every day in so many ways that I didn't know and I didn't realize. And in review of my memories— and I'll go over in a minute how I did this— but in review of my My memories, I kept. I would go back and I would observe situations and whatever popped in my head as the most impactful, hurtful memories, or just memories that stood out. Maybe they were really good memories. And I would observe him and try to remember how I felt. And a question that keeps coming up, and it kept coming up in every memory, was, what did I do? I could never understand what I did. I always— I just wanted to be— I just wanted to be me, and I wanted to have a dad, and I just never understood What did I do? Why can't I be enough? And that question turned into so much self-hate, so much continually searching for approval and Ways to feel better and ways for other people to confirm maybe that I wasn't that bad, or you didn't do anything. And just searching for this space of being loved for who I am, for feeling comfortable. I spent my life just being on— walking on eggshells. And trying to disappear and not be seen due to my relationship with my father and the disappointment that I was to him, that I wasn't like him. I wasn't rough and tough and an alcoholic and violent and I wasn't, um, anything like him. So this question of what did I do, um, was in my mind a lot, and, um, it turned into a belief that I couldn't expose who I was. I couldn't be myself because if I did, I would get ridiculed, um, or abandoned, rejected. And so anyway, um, moving forward from that, um, into my adult life, I would get triggered by so many weird things, um, any kind of Hint that somebody didn't like me or wasn't happy with me or didn't include me. It was all this, all of these examples of not being included in school and into my adult life, into social groups, church. I wasn't included. I wasn't like the rest. And it was always a question, and it was always subconscious that I didn't know until now. But I was always asking myself, what did I do? So I had to build a life that answered that question of. In a way that I, I was able to hide myself, keep it here so it wouldn't be ridiculed, but also find some self-worth and find a way to, um, not feel that question, not have to ask it. Um, and so that's why I got married, and that's why I had kids, and that's why I built this all-American dream, was That there was never any doubt that I was in control and that I was okay. I was accepted for the most part by society. You know, I was accepted by my family, if anything, and dove into being a good father and tried to be a good husband. And the story goes, if you've heard my story, of going into the gay community and coming back to this question of what did I do? Just went blindly into this community and didn't know, and the rejection and the ridicule about how I acted and how I looked and how I dressed and not being accepted into the cool groups and Being older, and I didn't know that there were other parts of the gay community that I could search out. I didn't know that there was ways to to find quote unquote normal people outside of the club scene and gay scene in the mainstream gay scene. But I put myself in these situations where I had to ask again: What did I do? Even further out from that, um, people not replying to me, people blocking me, guys not answering me on dating apps, or people in the professional world all of a sudden not responding to me. And it's always, what did I do? What did I do? Everything was personal. And, um, so I'm figuring this out. I had to start, you know, I was without the substance of meth for a while, you know, like 4 and a half years, 4 years before I started really questioning, like, am I sober? Am I over this? Or am I just not using? Because I still felt triggered. I still felt unhappy and excluded, and like I'm always trying to do something to get somebody to notice me and approve of me. So I this is why I made this. 8-step guide for figuring out what the beliefs are. I'll put it up into the, the description of this video if it can help you. But real quick, it's when you're triggered. So when I was triggered once by a gay guy who was very popular and on social media, very successful And he chatted with me and like, let's have a Zoom meeting, let's collaborate. And then all of a sudden he goes quiet. It's the worst for me, the worst agonizing knife in my throat, in my throat and in my stomach. Cannot function after that. I had to pause and, uh, let me, let me quickly review, close my eyes and breathe deep. Scan my body and allow that emotion to permeate. So that's what I'm doing now, and that's what's important, is when you are triggered by something, is just allowing that emotion to come up. And it's going to come up most of the time from your feet. It comes up the body and it rises up and it gets more intense and more intense as it goes up. And then you may cry, you may scream, you may be trembling. You have to let it crest and let it go all the way through. And then pay attention to how it's showing up physically. And then you focus on that place where it's showing up. So for me, it would be right in my stomach. And you bring up the situation. So for me, I would let the emotion come up and I would bring up the situation. I would go through our conversation in my mind. And then in my seeing myself message him several times, you know, and questioning, like, why are you doing this? What did I do? And just bring it up and observe it. And then you ask, who is this emotion that I'm feeling? Personify it the best you can. You know, what is its color? What is its gender? What is its personality, when it's in shape. And so I would imagine— imagine this, this emotion, this feeling, this rejection. Personify it. See it. And then you ask it, when was the first time I felt you? And so when I did that, this memory comes up of I don't know if I'm going to put this online or not, but it was a memory of my dad promising us, my brother and I, a camping trip. It was just going to be the 3 of us for once. I remember being so excited about it. We were in the back of the truck headed down the road and he stops. What? And picks up his brother who has like 2 cases of beer. And I just remember him looking back and scowling at me. And I just remember we were driving away. I promised myself I would never, ever be like him, which I ended up being just like him. But that memory came up randomly, and I remember asking, what did I do? Why doesn't he want to be with me? Oh my God, this is like 40 years ago. Anyway, so that's what I knew. There's something about that. There's something about that memory. There's something about that feeling, about that emotion that's fueling my addiction, that's making me not sober, that's creating a wall between me and my happiness. There's that. There's something about that that created this addiction to crystal meth to block, to make me feel better, to block this Emotion, this horrible stress of questioning myself and thinking there's something wrong with me. So, so you take yourself back to the memory and you observe the emotions of it, careful not to judge or label them, you know, just be a student of them. And then what is the message or the belief? And I knew I believed there was something wrong with me. That belief that there was something wrong with me was the lens that I saw the rest of my life in. At least I figured it out. The next step is to dissolve the messaging into one central theme. Everybody has their version. Every addict has their version of I'm not enough. So I'm not enough because I am not enough because if I reveal who I really am, I'll be rejected. There is I am not enough because there is something wrong with me fundamentally. I'm not going to be accepted. So in a meditative state. You think about the opposite of that. I am not enough. So I am enough because— so I had to, um, adopt this, this belief that I am enough. I, my true self, will be accepted by the right people at the right time. I had to Realize that my father was acting— I had to look at the situation and realize my father was acting out of his own trauma. There's nothing personal going on here. I had to reframe the whole situation and reframe the whole belief. I am enough. My true self is enough. I trust that the universe puts people into my path who wants to be with me, who are in resonance with me, and I trust when they don't answer me, that is divine guidance. That has been my way of dissolving this. So you repeat this new mantra throughout your day. You find ways to weave it into your, your life. You journal about it. You revisit it. You begin to make it a real part of Your belief system and find ways to back it up. You know, um, my— for me, it's, I, I am enough because I am accepted by so-and-so, or I'm accepted by this group. I feel love from, you know, even if it's just my kids. You know, these are examples of me revealing my true self and not being judged by it. And if I can anchor into those, those examples, if I can anchor into the reality of my life, then that belief begins to deteriorate. I see it as false. I see it as just something made up in my head to protect me. So I just wanted to share this as a part of my healing. A part of me moving this, moving this energy through and, and mourning. You know, I'm mourning for the loss of my childhood. I'm mourning for the loss of my relationship with my father. I'm mourning for years of asking, what did I do? Thank God that I have shaken myself out of this guilt and shame that, you know, I have all the wrongdoings I've done, and I, you know, all the stuff that we're taught in sobriety In that I see it. I see now that there was no wrongdoings by anyone. This is the way the ego works. This is the way the mind works. It latches on to a belief. And your— my system, my subconscious truly believed it's been protecting me from feeling that emotion again. The back of that truck, my body didn't want me to feel that. So anytime someone seems to be rejecting me, I would get triggered. My body would say, "No, no, no! Don't go there." I just didn't know. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know how to process it, and I didn't know that that was the that was the beginning of my addiction, and now it's the end of it. So I hope that's helped someone. Reach out to me if you need any assistance or want to talk.
