In this interview, Ann Beale talks with Dr. John A. King about his book Deal With It: Living Well with PTSD and his uncompromising, tough‑love approach to trauma recovery. Dr. King emphasizes that survivors must confront their trauma directly, avoid lingering in a victim mindset, and make rapid, decisive action rather than “camping out in the valley of the shadow of death.” He describes his own intensive therapy experience—two‑a‑day sessions for three weeks—that left him emotionally raw but ultimately helped him transform stress into strength. The conversation also touches on public criticism that his style seems cold, comparing his rapid‑help model to figures like Dr. Phil, and clarifies that his goal is to get people better quickly. Dr. King promotes his book, offering a 20% discount via a special code (ANNBEAL) on drjohnking.com, and encourages listeners to find at least one useful insight from his work.
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We are privileged to have Dr. John A. King with us today. He has the book #DealWithIt: Living Well with PTSD. He was giving us ideas of all the things that we can do for people that have been abused, sex trafficked, or have PTSD.
Sure.
And we were talking on break because someone did text me saying they— his book is like— they don't think they read your book. I think they just saw you on The Doctors or some show you were on. And they said that it just seems kind of cold.
Yeah, I've had people tell me that.
And you said something very good to me is that, yes, well, you know, you have something happen to you and we want you to be able to learn how to deal with it, but we don't want you camping out in the valley of the shadow of death.
Yeah, don't buy a timeshare there. That's no good for you. Yeah, that's really good. What they tell me is I'm harsh and deal with it. I'm too harsh and I am harsh. It's too hard. I am hard. I am absolutely ruthless on myself.
I think you're very straight.
Yeah, and I am. And I've got no room for a victim mentality. Unfortunately, in both the veteran and the mental health space, I meet people whose whole identity is enshrouded with the, I'm a victim. I'm a victim of sexual abuse. I'm a victim of the military theater. It's like, well, I've got no time for you whatsoever. And people have told me, well, you're going to reduce the size of your audience. I want to because I've got nothing to say to those people.
Well, and I think that part of what I do as a counselor and a life coach is I have those people, right? You have people that come to you and they need your help quickly. And so like Dr. Phil, because people will say he's heartless or whatever about him, but he has to help people quickly and it's better to get help quickly. And this is what you've learned.
Yeah, there's an old joke and it's bad. You know, 2 guys were getting together and all of a sudden one guy said, excuse me, went off and he hit his thumb and he screamed. Comes back in, has more of his cup of tea, walks in the kitchen, goes thump, ah, screaming, comes back and his mate says, what's that? He said, oh, my monkey's got cancer in the tail and I'm just chopping it off an inch at a time. And people want to live their life that way. And what I want to do is when I knew what I had and I found someone who would help me, I did 2-a-day therapy sessions for 3 weeks, which was insane to do.
It was painful.
Oh, it was horrible. And I wept and snot and everything else for 3 weeks or whatever it was. But I dealt with it and you need to deal with it. And if you want to protract this thing out and you want to take a lifeline wallowing in this pit of self-pity, knock yourself out, sweetheart. Have a go at it, mate. But don't waste your time buying my book. Use it as a beer coaster. It's going to offend you from the very first Deadpool quote. Promise you.
Because you want them to get better.
Yes.
You don't want them to stay there and that's what this show is all about, getting better.
You have to get better and you have to make the decision and deal with it. This is my story on how I overcame this. And I'm hoping that something in there will help you with your story. If you can just find one thing in here that's going to help you get down the road— I read probably 250 books.
Right.
And out of those 250 books, I got one thing, maybe 2 or 3 if I was lucky enough. But if you want to get this, go to drjohnking.com, put in Ann Beale, A-N-N-B-E-A-L. And it'll give you a 20% discount which will cover all your shipping.
And I know there were some things you wanted to mention before we end today for sure.
Yeah, yeah, I did. Look, Johnageddon. Johnageddon was when John was sitting there and he had the recall and my life went to fertilizer. I mean just to fertilizer overnight and I had recall. I was walking around 24/7 nightmares of the orgies and the things that were done to me for probably 3 years. I was only sleeping 90 minutes a night. I set a timer to wake myself up or I'd get caught in these big nightmares. I mean, it was horrendous. I went from a public speaking worldwide corporate coaching training, speaking in churches around the world business to a chronic stutter that I sometimes still suffer from, a fear of public, a fear of travel. I mean, my life was decimated. And I had to come to a point where I realized that my brain had changed in some sort of way. I went from like right brain genius. driven, or is it left brain, whatever that one is, left brain driven to right brain. I wanted to sit and smoke cigars and write poetry. I really, like overnight. And I didn't like that guy. I didn't like the guy that I couldn't set goals anymore. I couldn't work as hard. I couldn't do some things I didn't want to do and some things I no longer even had an inclination or an ability to do. And it wasn't until I started to realize that what had happened in my brain, the neurological change, had made me into a different person. And that different person wasn't just weak because he couldn't do those things, but had more strengths. And I determined to turn my stresses into strengths. And that is John 2.0.
