This transcript is from a YouTube interview (Josh Trent hosting) with Dr. John Demartini about using perception shifts to heal trauma. Demartini recounts multiple detailed case studies — a woman in his Breakthrough Experience program (which he says he has run 1,203 times) who reframes childhood abandonment by identifying alternate caregivers, and a suicidal foster youth in Mumbai who reframes perceived rejection after seeing his mother’s intent. Core method: ask different, solution-focused questions (e.g., ‘How did this help me fulfill something meaningful?’ or ‘What would the drawback have been if X had occurred?’) to reveal hidden benefits, dissolve victim stories, generate gratitude, and redirect life trajectories.
Chapters
It's just seeing what you're obviously not seeing, you know? Can I share some stories and examples, please?
Stories are the best.
Yeah. So I had this lady in Florida who came to the my signature program, which I'm about to do tomorrow morning, called the Breakthrough Experience. I've done it 1203 times. And she comes there and she's in Florida, and she's, you know, really playing the story of the being a victim. You know, I was unwanted. My mother abandoned me. You know, I've been beaten. I've been raped. I've been this. I'm just running into story, story, story. And I said, all right, let's start from the first one. She said, I've been abandoned. Okay, good. Let's. Let's. Let's go to what you thought you're abandoned. You know, my mom didn't walk me, and she abandoned me. Great. What trait specifically did you think you missed out on because of that? Well, I didn't have somebody that gave me affection and didn't guide me and didn't, you know, know tell me she loved me. And this. That's that. Okay, so let's take each one of those. Who is it that guided you in your life instead? Because nothing's missing. Who took on that role? He says, nobody. I said, look again. That's what the story you've been running. Look again. Nothing's missing. Look again. She finally, after a few promptings, she said, my aunt. My mom's sister. Right. Who else? A best friend's mom. Great. Who else? My grandmother. And who else? A teacher. And who else? My aunt's best friend. Who's to hang out at the house? I said, so did they provide what you thought your mother was to provide in your life? Yes, now that I look. Yes. And then I took each of the traits she thought she missed out, and I found out who is providing it in her life because nothing's missing. I learned that when I was 14, living on the street, I realized everybody's changing hands and becoming parents and becoming these people. And I learned that way back then.
Yes.
And so all of a sudden I said, now the next question, now that you see that everything you thought is missing wasn't missing, it was in a variety of other people's forms. What would been the drawback if it had been your mother? You never asked that. You hold on to a fantasy. See, depression is a comparison of your current reality to a fantasy you get addicted to and hold on to. You had a fantasy. If your mom had done this, life would have been happier. What have been the drawback if your mom had done that? One by one we went through them. If your mom had done that. All of a sudden she went blank and stared and started to cry. I said, so what is it? She said, she shook and she said something. My aunt said, so what is it? She goes, she started crying. She said, wow, she got chills all of a sudden. She said, when I was very young, it just came back to me. And I ignored what my aunt said. My aunt said, your mother gave you up to me because she had bipolar condition. And she put you in the bath and forgot you were there. And you nearly drowned and you nearly burned to death because the water was too scalding. And when she found that out, she thought she was so feeling so bad that she almost killed her daughter that she says, my condition, I can't do this. I'm not. She deserves a better life than what I can provide. And when she all of a sudden heard that she's now 47 years old, the story and the psychologist that promoted the story had been going on all these years and been a victim of her history. And I said, so what was the benefit? What would the drawback your mom did? She says, I would be die. I would have died. I wouldn't be here. And what was the benefit of your aunt doing it? She taught me a new language. What is the benefit of their teacher there? She was like a mother. And she would keep me at the school until my mother would come home. She started looking at this and she started bawling. And she goes, I've been angry with my mother because I was not willing to hear even what my aunt said at the time. But right now, all of a sudden, it's just clear and I'm just in tears and all I want to do is thank my mom for giving me this. What happened? I never saw it. See, the quality of your life's based on the quality of the questions you ask. If you ask the question, why did this happen to me? Why am I a victim of this? You get a different world. That if you ask, how did what happened help me fulfill something meaningful in my life? My. My highest priorities. Where have I done this in my life? Whenever I'm judging. If they hadn't done it, what would the drawback to crack the fantasy? If you ask a new set of questions and you turn this experience into something you're now as fuel and gratitude. She was in such gratitude at the end of the program, people gave her a standing ovation for the most transformed because her story. Because she felt unworthy. Right? So she hung out with guys that basically took advantage because she didn't feel worthy of a guy, great guy, so guys would take advantage. And she didn't want to turn down sexuality with them because that was the only thing she thought she had that would give them value. I mean, her whole story stemmed from a. From an incomplete awareness that she started with as a child. And all that just dissolved. She changed her perspective, changed the way she looked, she changed her hairstyle, she dropped weight. She started writing a book. She said, people need to know. This changed her whole direction. A trajectory change from asking the right question. And most people don't. They get caught in moral hypocrisy. That was bad. And I'm an innocent victim. They're the perpetrator and I'm this. This victim. That zoological psychological babble stops people from mastering their life. Because it's not what happens to you. That some of the most challenged people are the ones that. The most amazing things. I. I had another boy. I gotta share this story. This boy is. Comes to me and this. This mother says, please try to help my son. And he's suicidal, and he just doesn't want to live, and he doesn't feel worthy of everything. And I. And I said, so. And this is the foster mother, because he would been. He'd been abandoned, right? And orphaned. And. And I said, so what. What's the deal here? And he said, he said, first of all, I was given up and rejected and unwanted. And I regressed him back right to his birth. And when he did, he saw his mother crying in a window, in a. In a. And she was. He was in a hospital and crying in a window. And the father taking her away. She didn't want to let go of the baby. Turned out this was in Mumbai, India, which I was just at a few days ago. And the mother was in a slum and believed this boy deserved more than what they could offer in a slum. So when he all of a sudden saw that, his whole perspective, that she. It's not that she rejected him, she wanted him, but felt he deserved more than that. And the moment he did, he started to realize. I went over and pulled out people who had been abandoned and orphaned on the Internet. Celebrities and famous people that were orphaned and abandoned. Go look them up. It's worth. It's a hundred. There's hundreds of them. You know, Sir Isaac Newton, right? And. And I just started going down the list and I said, do you know these People. We looked up each of these famous people and their accomplishments on the Internet while on his phone, and I said, they're all orphans. They were all left. And look at what they've accomplished. You're in that category. So we. In, in, in 30 minutes, we transformed the perception of what he had over there and the idea that he was abandoned and unwanted to. I'm now in that category of people that do extraordinary things. The trajectory in his life and his desire to want to do something for his mother to prove that he was, you know, that she, because she did that, gave him that chance. The guy just took off and the story changed. And, and a lot of times, if we're not, if we don't have a story of thankfulness, we don't have the true story. We have a. We have a story that's incomplete in awareness. We're not seeing the hidden order. We're seeing the chaos. And, and to me, asking the right question, to see the whole, whole picture where you can be thankful is liberating and energizing and vitalizing to human experience.
Wow, I got so much from that share. Maybe there's somebody's watching this for the third time because we all learn the most through story. So thank you for those two stories. What a pivotal moment in both of these people's lives. And John, on a personal level, you just described what I went through in a vision quest in 2020 22. In a vision Quest, I sat and I was going through all this anger with my father, and it was like a lot of young memories coming through. Because I'm. I'm sure you're familiar with Vision Quest, where you go and fast for 100 hours, just you and nature and water. And I stood up in the sharing circle and I screamed as loud as I could. I said, my father didn't want me. He didn't want me. And then once that energy had released and we sat down and there was sharing with the ego completely out of the way, my mentor, Mark, said to me, have you ever considered that maybe the greatest gift your father could have ever given you was the absence of his presence? And I feel it in my throat and my heart right now just the same. It's really the question and the perception based on a new awareness. But that new awareness can only come with certain ingredients. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Click the link if you want to watch the full episode, and I will see you in the next video.
