Trauma Recovery Isn’t “Six and Done”

Welcome to Christ in Private Practice, the podcast for Christian counselors building bold, sustainable practices with Christ at the center. I'm Camille McDaniel, licensed professional counselor, here to offer faith-based support, business insight, and creative strategies to help you thrive. Let's grow, be encouraged, and take action together. Before we begin, a brief content note. Today's conversation includes a discussion of human trafficking, childhood sexual abuse, and complex trauma, and it includes language related to these topics. I recognize that this material may be triggering for some listeners. Please attend to your own needs as you listen and pause or return at another time if needed. And now on to our episode. With Dr. John A. King. Welcome back to another episode of Christ in Private Practice. Thank you so much for joining for another episode. And if you happen to be new, I'm glad that you are here joining our community. Many of you may know, but some of you may not know that January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. And so while we may have some conversations out in public and online that focus on awareness and prevention, This month is also an important reminder for clinicians to just consider what long-term healing actually looks like for those who've experienced exploitation and abuse and even complex trauma. And so my guest today is Dr. John King. John's an Australian-born author, speaker, and survivor advocate who's based in Texas. He is also the founder of the Give Them a Voice Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for male survivors of childhood sexual abuse and on combating human trafficking. John brings decades of lived experience and advocacy, having worked alongside survivors and law enforcement, veterans, community leaders, and faith-based communities. And his work has been featured in award-winning documentaries, including Stopping Traffic and Light in the Darkness. He's also building the Phoenix Collective, which is a platform that's focused on discipline, purpose, and rebuilding identity after trauma. So today we'll be exploring some areas of trauma recovery, and we'll be just looking at some of the effects of prolonged trauma, as well as getting an understanding from Dr. John's point of view of How we can move forward and how he is blazing the trail. Thank you so much, John.

Oh yeah, you're welcome. That is an awesome introduction. Now I've got to live up to it.

You've already done it.

Man, we better get after this thing, sister.

I'll just, I'm gonna just jump right on in because you've done a lot of work. Like you're, like I said in the introductory, you've done a lot of work with leaders in the community, law enforcement and everything. And from your point of view, what do you think that clinicians may sometimes underestimate regarding just the journey of trauma recovery and what happens when abuse is just prolonged and maybe even from people that we know?

I think that, and it's no fault of anyone's, if you haven't lived it, you don't know it. And I think the, probably one of the biggest underestimations is just how long recovery takes. I think it's not a 6-session thing. You can't do this once every 2 weeks. If someone comes looking to— if someone crosses this incredible series of obstacles to get the courage up, just plonk down in some kind of a therapist and say, all right, it's game on. I'm going to tell you my story and I need you to help me. That's a long process to get there. And it's going to take a long process to get them. It's not a 6-and-done sort of thing, as I mentioned. I think the other thing too is that we are often dichotomous in how we approach human beings. From a Christian framework, you understand that we're body, soul, and spirit.

Right.

I think if you are a psychiatrist, a therapist, a preacher, then you are going to deal with a particular area, a doctor, a particular area. I think we have to come back to understanding that this is a system and it is a body, soul, and spirit. And you have to understand that my gut health is as vitally important as my cognitive health.

Mm-hmm.

Because I have 2 brains. We've proven this neurologically now. And if you're trying to fix this thought process, You have to understand that it's tied to this gut thing that's doing, and cortisol is a problem. And high, and I've had unfortunate encounters with doctors even around heart health when they don't understand that I've had 40 years of stress. So what I'm, and I had one poor nurse practitioner tell me, then why don't you just calm down? My wife literally had to tap me out and drag me out. It's because I was anally raped at 4. That's why I'm a little bit tense. Maybe not my finest moment, but understanding that this is a system that people are trying to navigate and they don't know what they're doing or what's wrong.

I'm glad that you shared it that way. And I'll tell you why, because we don't all specialize in trauma. We, we all have different specializations in our field of mental health, but that does not mean that we will not encounter clients who have trauma that comes up. And, and for those of us who have trained long and through a lot of work with clients, we have a lot of understanding. There are still, there are many of us who have not trained in the area, but it will actually pop up. And we want to be able to understand this perspective so that we can be prepared and not caught off guard to, to maybe present ourselves in ways that are not helpful, like your experiences that you just shared right now. And that actually leads into the next thing I wanted to ask you to share some information with us because one of the things that I read when I was looking at all of the information that you provide for community and for men, I saw that when you were in young adulthood or some early stage of adulthood, everything came flooding back to you as far as your own experiences with trauma. So it wasn't always very present.

Right.

For you, but when it came back, then all of a sudden, like you said in your writing, everything fell apart. And there was a response from the mental health professional that you were seeing at the time. And that led me to think, I wonder what maybe was misunderstood in that moment. And could you share a little bit about what it was that kind of occurred such that there may have been a misunderstanding of your reaction? Almost the person saw it as you're breaking down and you're decompensating instead of maybe understanding that you were responding the way you should have.

Sure. I think what you need at any point in time is, it may have just been me, but I understood by that stage, and I was 45 when I had recall. And for most men, that recall happens around somewhere between 35 and 45 if they've been through abuse, because men are very compartmentalized. They like to compartmentalize and close things down and That's part of the nature. That's why we go to war. That's why we can do some of those things easier than women. And understanding there's a difference between how men and women process things like trauma and acknowledging that difference and acknowledging it's not a matter of better, it's a matter of different. And women often can talk about things that they remember happening growing up and they get in their teen years and they break free and they can have conversations about this. Men will, like myself, will lock it down and it will appear like small frames of information that are floating in your brain. And at one point it all comes together and it plays and you go, oh crap, that was my childhood. I didn't realize that was abnormal because for me it was— I didn't have anything to compare it with. I think the greatest thing a therapist can do is be like a coach. Like, I'm coming to you. And if you think in a man mindset, women do things face to face. They communicate and connect face to face. Men do things shoulder to shoulder. And I say this because the majority of therapists are women, they're female. So a man doesn't need necessarily for you to sit down and talk to him. He needs you to walk beside him and coach him. And if it's like being able to give that, that 40,000-foot view and an awareness of, do you understand, like, the nature of trauma can also affect your health, your stomach, your habits, your self-esteem? Like, having someone who can coach you through those elements, for me, would've been profound.

Okay.

Back then. But back then, and this is 20-odd years ago, I was seen as a predator because I was trying to come to rape groups and they were only female. And I was seen as a pretender because I talked about being abused by my, the woman who raised me and the other women in my life, because that sort of thing. Mm-hmm. Didn't happen to men, and that sort of thing wasn't done by a woman. So when you lock this stuff away, and when you we push up against trying to get help, and you find resistance, not acceptance, then more likely than not, you're going to walk away and say, "Look, I'm done. I'm not. I tried this once," and most guys will try it once. And I'm just speaking. I knew I was giving one person one try, and she she didn't respond well to it, and we had to go back and forth until we came to an agreement on it. But most men. going to be like that.

So then for you, as you were pushing forward for all those years before you came to trying to heal and everything, now that you look back, hindsight being 20/20, what was the difference for you as a, as a male survivor? What was the difference between just handling it, just pushing through life versus actually knowing that you were—

That's a great question. So it happened like this for me, and I can only speak to my paradigm. I literally went from John 1.0 to John 2.0. John 1.0 was a very tucked away, tidy, high performance, goal orientated, run by his diary, not by the seat of his pants sort of guy. John 2.0, he wanted to smoke cigars and write poetry. Literally, my brain changed when I had recall at 45 of what happened to me. And I started to ask a series of questions about the nature of who I had literally neurologically became. And there were some things that I couldn't physically or neurologically or mentally dwell as John 1.0, but He was John 2.0, and I was stuck with John 2.0. So I had to come to peace with him. And I found myself at a point where I understood that for all those early years, I'd lived life from the outside in. And most of us do that. We go to school where we're told to go to school with, hang out who we're supposed to hang out with, even marry who we're supposed to marry, get whatever education. And at some point along the line— and I think this is what happens with recall—

Mm-hmm.

It's not a midlife crisis, but a midlife realignment. And you start to realize that you've got to live from the inside out.

Okay.

And you've got to start to come to terms with purpose, mission, vision, and value. And for me, what those wins looked like was that I started to have a level of peace and acceptance of who I was as a human being, that John 1.0, thriving, successful, traveling the world, Preaching in the biggest churches, speaking in the biggest organizations. He never had peace. Whereas John 2.0, that's all he really struggled for.

Wow. And interesting as you say that, and I'm thinking on the largest stages in the biggest churches and no peace until—

All performance. Yes, it was all performance. But then again, those environments are often performance-driven because they're filled with a lot of people who have never spent the time, slowed down enough to spend the time to do the internal work. And 20/20 looking back, I see so many of my peers at the time having struggled or failed very publicly, unfortunately, because there just weren't things that they came to terms with. And your body and the Holy Ghost will force your hand at some point. He will say, I'm gonna deal with this now.

Yep.

And he'll get about it.

That's the truth. I know that's right. With all— I can attest to that.

I like that. Come on.

Okay. Amen or say ouch.

Amen. We'll get happy here soon.

Okay, exactly. Because of the stages you've been on and the people that you've helped, you've seen faith show up in a lot of different ways in trauma survivors. Can you tell us a little bit about what does faith look like when maybe support and healing sometimes helps? And what does it look like when it unintentionally shuts people out? Or tries to rush them.

Yeah, that's very good. Again, I don't believe the church has a good theology on suffering or mental health. You can't cast a devil of trauma out. It's not something that you can fast and pray through. And I've done my share of 40-day fasts. I am a man who's been in the word since I knew it was a thing that I should do. And I, I think the whole forgive and forget thing is very dangerous and very harmful. We're never commanded to do that. In fact, we're commanded to forgive and judge. We're called to be judges of fruit. And if someone does you wrong, the reason you forgive is because you, you don't want to engage in an activity that is toxic to yourself. You will be inflicted or infected or afflicted. Infected means you hang on to bitterness. Affliction means something happened to you. And when you get into a stage of unforgiveness, you become infected. And that's why we're told to forgive, but we're actually never commanded to forget. And an old priest taught me that years and years ago. The other one is all things work together for good, so let's move on and don't speak negatively. All things do work together for good, but only in the process of owning and confronting those things. And that verse, I believe, applies to not only what we have done but what has been done to us. Now, I know in my own life I've prayed very clearly that he would make all things work together for good, and he has. But that journey took me 15 years. What didn't help at the front end of the journey was, man, this is difficult because it challenges so much. So in the word of faith movement— and I'm not sure of what your people's denominational beliefs are, but I'm sure coming from an African-American church, you know this— we've got to hold on to it, confess our faith, negative be never, say it, the devil's on our words, and so it goes on and on. But if you're talking to a person of trauma who's been raised to believe they're ugly, stupid, fat, useless, a tool to be used, and that's been drummed into them, beaten, sodomized into them for 15 or 20 years, one prayer meeting ain't gonna move a mindset. Now, it could cast the devil out, but it ain't gonna move a mindset. So when I understood it took me 15 or 20 years of abuse to become that, Then I came into Christ. I came to Christ for 15 or 20 years, and then I became aware of this. So the grace that I need to measure to myself, the grace that I've been given, I need to give it to myself and allow myself 20 years to adjust my mindset. Don't judge myself for not being able to instantly manifest it.

That's good. That's good. And you're Something that you mentioned when you're saying it can, one session or one intervention, as far as whatever it may be, deliverance or anything, it may cast out the demon, but it's not going to change the mindset. And that made me think of the scripture when it warns us that if a demon is cast out and you are not then filled with the Word to protect you, to fill that empty void, Then he'll go get a few more of his friends, much more stronger than himself, to come right on back. And so that kind of makes me think about walking with somebody, ministering to people, not trying to rush them through the process to get healed.

That's really good. And if you even do the math on that and you take scripture as it is, so if you go into a spiritual environment, I'm going to cast this diva brokenness out of you. Okay, great. If I don't fill it immediately with something, then I get something back. Now we're told We're supposed to pray, fill ourselves with the word as Christians, and then that doesn't come back in. Okay, I get it. But if I— if you're not prepared to walk with me, don't pray with me. But if you're going to pray with me, then I need you to commit to me that when my darkest days turn up again, because they will, because he will come back, are you going to be there with the same enthusiasm to help me refine and renew my mind according to his word? Now, if you're not, Then leave me alone with the devils I know, because I'm still alive. I've learned to wrestle and live with them. But if you want to walk me in, then know me before you pray for me. And if you don't know for me, don't pray with me. And if you're not going to walk with me, leave me be, because I would rather limp like Jacob than live like Esau. I would rather limp knowing God, knowing that I've been delivered, than go off and The outside, that's a hard cop for a lot of people, but I—

Yeah, but you're touching on something that's good. That'll preach a whole sermon right there because we are excited about helping people heal. That is the exciting part. That is the gratifying part. That's, that's the part that, dare I say, sometimes can puff up our own egos. But the harder work, when the person continues to struggle or stumble, or you've had to continue to wrestle with this over time is not always very—

Yeah, I want to be more than a testimony on your website. Yeah, I want to be testament to the work of Christ in my life. Now, a testimony on your website is a film as I hit the floor under the power of the Holy Ghost, but a testimony to— testament to the word of Christ is I need you to love me whole in my broken bits. And I think that needs to be— and it's more the job of the church than I think the therapist. And if the church and the therapist can start to walk side by side Then we are going to be able to help create new wine vessels for new wine. But if you're just trying to pour more stuff, I'm going to leak all over the place and it's going to be messy for a while. So, you know, I need you to tolerate my mess.

Yeah, that's good. What about the counselors who happen to be working with survivors who happen to be angry at God? A lot of the, this trauma has caused them to stray away from their faith or they're just conflicted because of the trauma. So. What have you found to be helpful with those individuals?

Understanding that God is Jewish. So I've got some great Jewish mates. If you've ever hung out with Jews, they argue with God a lot. Like Psalms is all about— now we read Psalms and we think it's all about high praise and peace, and it starts with David, they're trying to kill me, what's going on, you forgot me. And then we get to the end and he says, uh, but I still love you. And if you've ever spent time with Jewish people, they'll go, God, what do you think you're doing? What's going on? And they've got no problem complaining to God. And I remember sitting with some of them, watching these passionate people who love Yahweh, and I thought, I'm allowed to do that? I can go to God and say, man, it sucks. My life sucks at the moment. Everything sucks at the moment. My world sucks. Recall sucks. My dream sucks. My sex life sucks.

Mm-hmm.

My finances suck and I love you, but I'm just telling you it sucks. And I think as Christians, we are told to put a lid on it.

Yeah.

And stamping it down is gonna ruin your health, ruin your gut, ruin your praise. Everything's robbed from you. Whereas I think God is pretty secure. Mm-hmm. I think he's comfortable with, okay, Job, you're whining. At some point you're gonna understand that you can't make the earth. I'm God. And I love you. And I think for me, that was a very big revelation. And probably the encounter that changed— encounter that changed it for me was, I remember one time as a young teenage boy going through some of the worst things I'd ever been through. And I woke up one night and it was like I had held the finger of God all night.

Mm-hmm.

And I heard heaven cry. And when you hear Heaven cry for your life, you never doubt He is with you. And I don't doubt He's with me. I've just got to try and find Him in the midst of whatever I'm struggling.

Okay. Wow. That's powerful. That's a lot of courage. That's a lot of strength. That's just a lot of determination that it takes. And it definitely takes oftentimes somebody walking with you in order to get through those dark spaces. That's for sure. And you, obviously, that's what you have committed a lot of your life to doing.

I'm trying, sister. Yes, I still get up every day and try.

So then tell me this about what you are creating for other people, because a lot of your work emphasizes brotherhood and discipline and purpose. So why these elements? Tell me, what do you feel is so critical for male survivors that you would include these elements?

I think men respond well to discipline. Men respond well to routine, and particularly if you've suffered trauma. It gives you guardrails of success. If every day I get up and make my bed, I win. If every day I get up, I make my bed, and I go to the gym, I've won twice. Every day I get up, I make my bed, I go to the gym, I come home, I have a high-fat, high-protein diet, I'm 3 in. And some days that's all I can win, but I can win those 3 things. What I love about the gym is that the gym is a place where I can work out a lot of things. Now, neurologically and Metabolically, I understand that it's giving me a lift of endorphins and there's a whole range of very positive things that happen. It helps with my self-esteem. It helps me feel that at 62, I'm strong and physical and I can— I'm prepared. I can look after myself. Whereas 12 or 8, I wasn't able to defend myself, but now I can. So all of that goes through it. And it's not about punishment. It's about proving yourself again that I can do hard things. That why? What no man wants to keep going if all he's doing is managing symptoms. He wants to have a mission bigger than his pain, and sometimes you've got to break those missions down. Now, when fellas come back a lot from the sand, they've spent a lot of time being warfighters. They're coming back with no sense of mission. So you've got to repurpose this mission, and sometimes that mission is self-care. So because we're over there caring for others in one way or another, and a lot of times we've gone over because we were abused. As boys, and we said, no one is ever going to mess with me and mine again. And we come back and we haven't addressed these issues, these underlying issues. So it comes a point where a man's got to understand you are not what was done to you. And men have to walk amongst men in order to get— now, it's not saying that a woman can't bring tools to us and help to us.

Sure.

But at some point, a lot of that redefinition has to happen shoulder to shoulder.

That's good. And you've seen with all the different lives that you've touched and all the men that you have walked with and stood by, how can you tell, help us to understand what is healthy strength? How do you know that somebody is now operating, performing from a place of strength versus pain? The type of pain that maybe even caused them to question their identity or Anything else in their life.

And when they grind less, I think grinding to me is a sign that they— grinding in an unhealthy way as opposed to a passionate way. Strength doesn't mean don't cry, don't talk, you don't need anyone, keep going. I think for me, strength is the ability to be still with yourself, to sit with your issues, and to calmly talk if you need to talk, to put up a hand and say, hey, I'm struggling. I think part of that is all strength. So a couple of things. I think the ability to tell the truth is very important about how things impact you and about how you impact them. So you've got to be authentic. You've got to understand that. I think the courage to set boundaries and to walk away from people and be prepared to walk alone. I've had to walk alone a long time to make a group of friends that will walk with me. And I think probably next would be boundaries, as we talked on a little bit. Body, mind, and spirit. Not, sorry, not boundaries, but discipline. So what are my spiritual disciplines? What are my work disciplines? What are my physical disciplines? Some of that's what I eat and what I don't eat. Some of that's what I drink and what I don't drink. Some of it's getting up every day. For me, I start the every day, 3 C's, Christ, coffee, and a cigar. And it's been like that for 15 years and I'm comfortable with it. And I don't care if people don't like coffee or don't like cigars or Jesus. I don't care. I'm gonna smoke me a stogie. I'm gonna have me a cup of cha and I'm gonna talk to God about how awesome he is and how life sucks or life's good. And we're just gonna have a chat. And then I think the willingness to love and protect others has to come out of, not out of a savior complex, but out of a selfless sense of self. The biggest act of protecting my wife is caring for me. And that sounds incredibly selfish, but going to the gym every morning is the best thing that I can do for my marriage.

Okay.

And so it's, that's. When I don't want to go, I go because I'm no, I'm going to be a, I don't want to be an a-hole, but if I don't go to the gym, I'm an a-hole and I don't want to do that. Anyway, that's, that's part of what I think.

And I appreciate it. I think, I think this will resonate with a lot of people because you're just, you're just real.

Thank you.

And people can—

authenticity is very important to me because I'm an incredibly good liar. I lied to survive. I lied telling people I liked what they did to me and I lied telling people That I liked what I was doing. So I lied to survive. So for me to become authentic has been a work. The major, the biggest work in my recovery was being able to say no because I didn't wanna do it. Say yes because I really wanted to do it and understand the difference.

Okay. Nice. Thank you for that. Let me ask you a question then about your work as you talk about coming into yourself. You came into yourself a long time back, but the work that you're doing now, It reflects that change and the Give Them a Voice Foundation and your work with the Phoenix Collective. It's a very intentional journey. What were you seeing in survivor spaces that made you feel like something like that needed to be created?

Probably 2 things dawned on me over a period of time. I was involved in the, in the tail end of the Epstein case with some people I was working with. And then the guy who took over from him, Nygar. And that was the sexy side of anti-trafficking movement, which is the rescue part.

Okay.

And I met with some of these women and, man, they were still pulling tricks and doing drugs and doing stuff. And here they were living in guarded, protected custody, so to speak, getting ready for indictments and testimonies. And everyone had done the rescuing and the organization I was with was burning about $1 million a month on this. Protective custody and the housing and overhead, et cetera. And none was being spent on therapy.

Wow.

So the, here are these people that have been in this.

Yes.

And no one even thinks about the backend. And I even think about my own journey. Okay. Recall, go to therapy. Okay. 6 sessions and I'm done. Like what? What now? What? I'm, all I am is aware of how much more broken I am. I would've been literally like the casting out devils thing. I would've been better off being left alone because now I'm aware of how broken I am and what do I do now? So that was one occurrence. And then the second occurrence was I've got my pilot's license and my instructor was talking about when you fly a plane, how you've gotta make sure that you're always on track because if you're not even by a degree, then over a couple of hours you are massively off target. And I thought to myself, you know what? It's taken me 15 years to get back here and I'm, I'm, I live in America and we microwave everything. Popcorn, 30 seconds plus, dang, it's over and we don't wanna wait anymore. And I thought, what I'm wanting— and God spoke to me one day and he said, I'm your Heavenly Father, not your fairy godmother. If you get up every morning and you seek me and get a tool for your toolbox, then life will work out. And I realized that I wanted my life to change. I was praying for a miracle. It wasn't coming the way I thought it would. I'd seen blind eyes healed, deaf ears open, lame people walk, but I wasn't getting any. I wasn't getting set free from nothing. And I realized that my goals were too big. I realized that I was way off course and wanting an instant answer, whereas what I had to do is my life had veered from its course 1%, and I needed to be prepared to do 1% back. But if you think of it, if I make a 1% change per week, then I've changed 50% of my life in a year. If I change my life 1% a month, Then in 4 years, I've totally revolutionized my life. So I tried— I stopped trying so hard. I said, all I'm going to do is work on 1% of me for this month. And the moment you relax into that sort of mindset, things multiplied and speed up. And so what we've done with the Phoenix Collective is try to take 15 years of recovery and break it down into 5-minute daily exercises. And the response we're seeing is profound. We do group coaching. Everyone starts the day with a video and an exercise that takes 5 to 7 minutes. Some people get a little bit antsy cuz they want more. They can go ahead and study more, but the problem is the wheels will fall off.

Mm-hmm.

In 3 months. And it's just relax. You are gonna get there. And I look at some people have been in the course and after 3 months, 4 months, they're probably where I was 3 or 4 years into it.

Okay.

And so I'm seeing profound, incremental, sustainable results.

That's, that actually then answers a question I had, because as you're talking about sustainable results incrementally, even talking to the fact that sometimes people may come and they want more. It's let me hurry, let me get all that I can get. And you're like, slow down. This is not a sprint. We're, we want lasting change. Because I was going to ask you, when you're talking about performance and purpose, Do people ever misunderstand that for a push through it? Or if you just think differently, you can hurry up and heal faster. But that's not at all what I'm hearing you describe about your programs and what you do. No.

And you'll know this. People say prosperity and they hear money. I'm not talking that. I'm talking a prosperity of your soul. You say healing and they hear instant. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking, I had a Blood thickening issue. That blood thickening issue nearly killed me twice. Two different medical emergencies near death within three or four hours of it. Finds out, finds out that I'd spent my whole life huddled down like this as a kid, which shortened my diaphragm, which meant that I didn't take deep breaths. I lived like this, which meant my blood was thick. So my physical therapist adjusted my. Right ankle, which freed up my right knee, my right hip, and my whole body stood up. And for the first time in my life, I breathed a big breath of air. The whole system is connected. And so if you want to make a massive change, sure. But sometimes your revelation of that— this healing that I needed for my blood took 20 years to find out. Now, in that whole process, I was in faith to believe I would get it. If it takes me 20 years to find the person and the answer, does that lessen the nature of the miracle?

Mm-hmm.

And so in our recovery, why can't we relax into the fact that God in his sovereignty has prepared a path and the grace and the mercy for us to get there? And lo, I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Don't set up timeshare in the thing, but walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Now he says you'll stop with your enemies.

Once.

The rest of the time you're walking. If you gotta sit and come face to face with who you are and what people did to you, do it once, but then get up and get back out into the sunshine, sunshine.

Nice.

And so I think this whole concept of journeying forward is actually a very positive thing.

Yes. That sounds spot on. Yeah. With what people need to heal in order to understand or hear in order to understand what that process is like. So then let me close and ask this. For any of us clinicians, mental health professionals who happen to be listening to this episode and we happen to carry the weight of these stories home with us that we hear in our office, whether we specialize in the area of trauma or whether a client has just come to this awakening of all the things that have happened to them, what has helped you continue to do this work all of these decades? Without losing yourself. This is heavy.

I'm nobody's savior. It's just that I understand that I have a role on the planet and being the Messiah is not my role. Okay. It's not a position I want or that I'm qualified for. And I can give you a list of my sins, secret and public, if you want. Public, you can probably get them on the internet. And your soul's not disposable. You need to guard and tend your soul, and you need to let God be God and let yourself be human. You need to go to the gym, not just advice for your clients. You need to eat well and not freak out. Your clients Your clients need to take lunch, you need to take lunch. And I think as caregivers, we are not good at taking our own advice. So that would be my challenge. And that is my challenge to clinicians that I coach. I do a lot of clinical coaching, mental health coaching for clinicians. It's that sense of authenticity. Are you as good as your own advice? Because if you're not living it, then you probably shouldn't be saying it.

Yeah.

And they often push back on that and say, I'm not perfect. No, you're not. You know the theory, but you've gotta be working this thing out in the practice. You have to. And often in coaching relationships, and we get mental health professionals in the collective because a lot of it is about a performance mindset as well. It's okay. Let me walk with you with this. Let me invest in you. You invest in this relationship like you want your clients to invest in you, and I'm gonna coach you. To a point where you don't need me anymore, but you understand that you've gotta move forward into some of these things.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Just so real and out there and bringing a wealth of decades and decades of experience. How can we find you? I know that you have social media, you have a website. How can we find you?

Probably the best way is drjohnaking.com, the website. We've got a book coming out, so if they wanna sign up for the book launch, love to. We're just releasing a couple of new things with the Phoenix Collective, and if they put an email in and they say, hey, this is what I wanna do, I think there's a calendar there. If clinicians wanna get together and have a chat, we can talk about getting on the collective or personal coaching. But you know, all my social media is Dr. John A.

King.

My website's Dr. John A.

King.

Substack's Dr. John A.

King.

So if I can help people, connect with me. And if I can't, I'll tell you. Or if I don't want to, I'll tell you as well. That's, that's that whole awful thing, isn't it?

Oh, okay.

I only work with people I like. I'm too old. Like I did all that other stuff. John 1.0 was very good at sucking up. John 2.0, I could be smoking a cigar and having coffee with Jesus.

Yes, you could. Thank you so much, Dr. John.

You're welcome, love.

We'll make sure that we also, in addition to everyone who's listening to the podcast episode and can hear the link that they need to go to, it will also be on the website so that you will have nothing to worry about. You'll have access in multiple locations. You all heard the episode. You can reach out to Dr. John. He's, he's very forthcoming and very easy to talk to, I found, even before our episode today. And so all the information will be listed. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Very raw, very real, very important information regarding the clients that we help and for some of us, for our very own journeys. Until we meet again, God bless.