Episodes

  • You're Not Broken — You're Protected

    You're Not Broken — You're Protected
    May 6 2026
    She Called It the Process of Unbecoming — And It Changed How I See EverythingLacey Kelly is a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and author of three books — The Process of Unbecoming: A Different Relationship to Being Human, Already Human: Why the Culture of Self-Improvement Is Making Us Feel Broken, and God Is a Dirty Word: A Cultural Reckoning with the God We Left Behind. All three are available on Amazon.I went into this conversation a little uncertain. I told Lacey — and my listeners — exactly that: “I was tentative... what am I going to say today? I’m not sure if I’m ready for this.” By the time we wrapped, my shoulders had literally dropped. A weight I’d been carrying for a long time quietly lifted.The Premise That Changes EverythingThe process of unbecoming is not another self-help system. It’s a response to what Lacey kept seeing in her therapy practice — people arriving with the underlying belief that something was fundamentally wrong with them and then finding that all the effort they put into fixing themselves only reinforced that belief.“The core that I see in this is the premise that people go into self-help or therapy with is that it makes sense, it’s this way, but there’s something wrong with them, they’re not good enough, or that they’re somehow broken,” she said. “And until we address that premise the work itself can become rather fruitless because it tends to set up a pattern of effort that often reinforces that premise they came in with.”The starting point — the base of her entire framework — is this: wholeness is not something you earn. It is inherent to every human being. You were born with it. No experience takes it away. You will die with it.“When we operate from that place,” she said, “everything starts to change on its own.”Six Principles That Reframe the Whole PictureLacey built the process of unbecoming around six core principles. She was careful to call them philosophical, grounded in what she considers fundamental truths about human beings. Here’s what we covered:1. Wholeness is inherentWorth and dignity are not conditions to be earned. They are built into every human being. “When we believe that we are whole and complete as we are,” Lacey explained, “and within that wholeness holds our worth and our dignity as human beings, it holds the vulnerability that reaches and can feel and connect with other people.”2. Identity is adaptive.Human beings are exceptional at adapting to their environment. The problem is that during childhood, identity is forming at the same time we are adapting. The patterns and behaviors we developed to get our needs met — in whatever environment we were raised in, functional or not — later get labeled as personality flaws or pathology. “Adaptation isn’t necessarily who we are,” Lacey said. “It’s just what we needed to do in that environment.”She also pushed back against putting too much weight on the family unit alone. Biologically, she pointed out, we are designed to be raised in groups of 25 to 150 people. Today, we’re lucky to have two parents in the house. That mismatch puts enormous pressure on parents — and on children.I grew up in the 1960s with relatives up and down the block. I told Lacey about my cousin who took me under his wing when I was a heavy, uncoordinated kid who couldn’t pay attention in school. He put me to work alongside him, bought me lunch, took pictures of me holding a tool in front of a car. That relationship built something in me. I think back and wonder: without that kind of community support, where would I have ended up?3. Capacity is inherent.This principle challenges the common therapy-world idea that capacity — the ability to tolerate and meet experience — is something you build or develop through work. Lacey disagrees. “Capacity is always within us,” she said. The issue is not that it doesn’t exist. The issue is access. When we don’t have enough co-regulation — the steadying presence of other nervous systems around us — we lose the ability to reach our own capacity. The goal in her work is not to develop something new. It is to reconnect with what is already there.4. Protection precedes pathology.This gave me a long pause. The behaviors and patterns we most hate about ourselves — the walls we put up, the ways we push people away, the cycles we feel trapped in — are not evidence of brokenness. They are protection. “We are born vulnerable,” Lacey explained, “and humans have the instinct to protect what’s vulnerable.” When that vulnerability felt threatened, protection came online. What we often call personality problems or disorders are adaptive protections that got locked in.“When we relate to them as protective rather than something wrong with us, the intervention changes, and the protection tends to soften through the relationship that we build with it.”5. Change happens through ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • What Your Therapist Is Really Thinking | 50 Years as a Patient Meets 50 Years as a Psychiatrist

    What Your Therapist Is Really Thinking | 50 Years as a Patient Meets 50 Years as a Psychiatrist
    Apr 22 2026
    I’ve been in psychotherapy, on and off, since I was 16 years old. That’s 51 years as a patient. My guest on this episode, Dr. David I. Joseph, has been on the other side of that equation for just as long — 50 years as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. His book chronicling his journey in the mental health profession, Listening for a Lifetime: The Artful Science of Psychotherapy, is available on Amazon, including Kindle Unlimited.When I read it, I recognized my entire mental health life on those pages.Know Who You’re Talking ToBefore we got into the book, I asked Dr. Joseph for a primer — one that I wish I’d had 50 years ago. What exactly is the difference between a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and a psychotherapist?His answer: “A psychiatrist is someone who’s gone to medical school and then done specialty training in the field of psychiatry,” which means training in both the brain and the mind, including the ability to prescribe medication. Psychologists focus on how the mind functions. Their training centers on providing psychotherapy, not pharmacology. And not all psychiatrists are equally equipped to do deep psychotherapy work — some are, some aren’t.That explanation paralleled my experience. In my time in the system, I found that psychiatrists often moved quickly to the prescription pad. Dr. Joseph, to his credit, agreed — and contextualized it. He was trained in the late 1960s and early 70s, when psychiatrists still received serious education in psychotherapy. Today, many don’t. And the economics make it worse. As he put it, a 15-minute appointment and a prescription generate more income than a 50-minute conversation. Knowing that matters when you’re choosing who to see.A Book Built on AphorismsListening for a Lifetime grew out of Dr. Joseph’s decades of teaching and clinical practice. His students and colleagues kept telling him he had a gift for distilling complex psychological truths into short, memorable phrases. After the third person said he ought to write a book, he did.He spent about a year and a half collecting these aphorisms — phrases he had developed over the course of his career that condensed the essential experience of both therapist and patient. “I decided that I would organize the book around these aphorisms because I wanted to make it understandable, readable, substantive. I didn’t want to dumb it down.”The cover of the book, by the way, is a photo of his actual office. His story is that real.Being a Patient Is Hard WorkDr. Joseph said it plainly: “Being a patient is hard work.”He’s right. And the hardest part is opening up about the things you’d rather leave buried. I told him I’ve been in situations where I refused to go there — where something was too painful to bring to the surface and I just covered it over instead.His response was not what I expected. He doesn’t coax anyone. “I never coax anyone to do anything,” he said. And he reframed the whole thing for me. It’s not that talking about certain subjects is painful. “It’s risky to talk about certain subjects because you’re going to make yourself vulnerable.” That distinction matters. Risk is something you can evaluate. Pain feels like something that’s just happening to you.What a Bad Therapist Looks LikeI’ve had a lot of therapists over the years. Some great, some not. I gave Dr. Joseph two real examples.The first: after my brother passed away suddenly in January 2024 — he was 66, they found him in his chair — I found a telehealth therapist through my insurance. I told her my brother had just died. She had me fill out a questionnaire. Session after session, we went through the questionnaire. She never once said she was sorry. When I mentioned my brother again — the details, the shock of it — she moved on to page two. I had to drop her.Dr. Joseph’s reaction was unambiguous. “I would say that this is a lousy psychotherapist. I would no more give a patient a questionnaire before I’d met them and talked with them a long time. I never have given a patient a questionnaire and never would.”The second example: a psychiatrist who started avoiding me — not returning calls, not available for appointments. When I finally got in to see her, she told me, to my face, that I had been “so draining.” I later found she was going through something herself — possibly a divorce however her approach had already hit my psyche hard. My first thought was that I was actually that bad — that I had broken my own psychiatrist. Dr. Joseph’s take: she couldn’t make herself available in the way I needed, and the professional thing would have been to say so and refer me to a colleague. The failure wasn’t mine.Where the Problems StartI brought up my own tonsillectomy — I was four years old. My parents turned and walked away. Someone put a mask over my face. I remember smelling and tasting the anesthesia, and then it went black. I’ve always believed that...
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    1 hr and 6 mins
  • What a TV Reporter Turned Media Coach Taught Me About Showing Up on Camera

    What a TV Reporter Turned Media Coach Taught Me About Showing Up on Camera
    Apr 15 2026
    Most people think communication is just talking. Susan Siravo proved otherwise.Susan is a former television reporter and anchor who spent roughly a decade in local news as a general assignment reporter — covering crime stories, water main breaks, political hearings, whatever the day brought. She later became a public information officer for a water and flood protection agency in California, transitioned into corporate communications and social media for a regional bank, and eventually built a media and communication coaching practice. She joined me on Lens of Hopefulness to break down what it really means to communicate effectively on camera — and along the way, I made some discoveries about myselfJournalism Taught Her More Than She ExpectedSusan traced her path back to where it started: a genuine love of storytelling.“I was always attracted to the field of news and journalism. Since I was a kid, I loved watching the news and the idea of storytelling.”That love turned into a career, but the most enlightening part came when she crossed to the other side of the camera. After years of interviewing people as a reporter, she became a spokesperson for a public agency — and discovered something humbling.“One of the hardest parts of it was being the person who speaks to the media. I thought that would be so easy because I had been in the media for so long interviewing people and I know what makes a good interview and all that. But then when the camera was on me and then I was supposed to be articulate and succinct — that was very hard. And so now when I work with clients, I know what they’re going through.”That experience is why her coaching connects. She’s not teaching from theory. She learned it the hard way herself.The Pandemic Changed EverythingWhen COVID hit and the world moved to Zoom, Susan saw a problem most people didn’t even have language for yet. Professionals who were competent, knowledgeable, and credible in person suddenly looked and sounded uncertain on screen. Teachers were trying to reach kindergarteners through a webcam for the first time. Executives were running town halls from kitchen tables.“So many people had no idea how to communicate well on Zoom with a webcam in front of them. It started out with me helping people with the look and feel of how they presented themselves. And then the next part was to be able to help them understand how to speak to the camera effectively.”The challenge she identified goes deeper than just logistics. When you’re speaking to a live audience, you get feedback — nods, laughter, visible engagement. On camera, none of that is available to you.“It’s so different when you are speaking to a camera. You’re just looking at the lens. There’s nobody laughing, there’s nobody smiling at you, there’s nobody nodding — but yet you have to give the same performance as if you are seeing all of this in front of a live audience.”That gap between what feels natural and what the camera requires is exactly what she trains people to close.Camera Presence Became a Business SkillI shared a story about a financial consultant my wife and I interviewed on Zoom during the pandemic. He was highly recommended. He never looked at the camera — he was positioned in the corner of the screen, looking up at something off-screen — and despite his credentials, we didn’t hire him. We couldn’t get past what we were seeing.Susan wasn’t surprised.“If you’re selling some sort of service and you have potential clients, they’re looking for reasons not to hire you. So you want to remove all of those. And if you can show up on camera, you’re looking at the camera, you look professional, your background looks organized, you look like you know what you’re talking about — at least that’s a good start.”She also made a point I hadn’t fully thought through: the camera has to be at eye level. Not on a desk looking up at you, not tilted down. Eye level — so the person watching feels like they’re in a conversation, not looking up at a ceiling or down at a head.And the background matters. Not because it has to be perfect, but because every element sends a signal. “It’s just a matter of making sure that it’s the right message that you want to share and that you’re deliberate about it.”The Four-Week and Eight-Week ProgramsSusan’s coaching isn’t structured as a one-day seminar. She offers four-week and eight-week programs — one hour per week with assignments in between. Clients record videos on their phones, upload them, and she reviews and gives feedback.“I have found that working with people over the course of four weeks or eight weeks, that’s when they make the most progress because they have an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned week to week to week.”The intensive one-day model doesn’t stick. I know this from personal experience with self-improvement seminars — you walk out energized, and two days ...
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    57 mins
  • The Silent Threat Inside: A Conversation About Heart Disease, Loss, and Hope

    The Silent Threat Inside: A Conversation About Heart Disease, Loss, and Hope
    Apr 1 2026
    This episode hit close to home. My mother passed away suddenly at 65. My brother at 66. My father had severe heart disease in his 50s before cancer took him first. And me? I’m 67, and I’ve got a partially blocked artery. So yeah, when I found Julia Lindenthal wanted to talk about what happened to her father — and when she also said she could connect us with Hannah Drake Litman from theheartfoundation.org — I knew this conversation needed to happen.What followed was one of the most honest, eye-opening discussions I’ve had on Lens of Hopefulness. And I’m not just saying that because I’m biased toward the topic. I’m saying it because these two women showed up with something rare: raw truth, real data, and genuine hope.Julia’s Story: When the Unthinkable HappensJulia Lindenthal is warm, articulate, and still clearly working through something that shook her to the core. In November of 2024, she got a phone call on a Saturday morning that no child is ever prepared for.“I got a phone call from my mom, and I knew right away that it was strange… she told me the unthinkable, that dad had died. And my entire body went cold in a way that I never even knew was possible.”Her father, John George Lindenthal, was 80 years old. He was, by every visible measure, the picture of health. He had just reached the finals in a men’s doubles tennis tournament. As Julia put it, he never smoked, he hardly drank, he ate well, he went to the doctor and was responsible. He wasn’t the person you’d look at and worry about. In fact, Julia told me people would regularly say to her, “When I’m 79, my goal is to be like your dad.”The autopsy told a different story. Her father died of an aortic dissection — his aorta, right near his heart, had severed. The cause? Calcified plaque had hardened one side of his aorta, weakening the other. Further along toward his legs, his arteries were described by the pathologist as almost completely calcified. The night he passed, he had mentioned to his wife, “My legs are shot” — something she didn’t think much of at the time. Looking back, it was likely a sign.Julia’s response to her grief wasn’t paralysis — it was action. She researched foundations doing meaningful work in heart disease, specifically around arterial plaque research, and she started a fundraiser in her father’s name through the Heart Foundation. Her mission became clear: 100% of the money raised would go toward finding a cure for artery plaque, a condition her father may have been genetically predisposed to. As Julia said, it’s not always the person’s fault. Sometimes people are born inclined toward this, and some of them look good on the outside.The Heart Foundation: Small But MightyHannah Drake Litman represents theheartfoundation.org, and I liked her energy immediately. She’s deeply knowledgeable, and completely passionate about this cause. She was also refreshingly honest about how she isn’t a doctor — she’s an advocate, and a very good one.The Heart Foundation was founded in 1996 — which means this year they’re celebrating their 30th anniversary as a nonprofit. The origin story is heartbreaking in a familiar way. A 35-year-old man named Stephen Cohen — married, father of two daughters both under ten — was playing his weekly game of pickup basketball. He looked, as Hannah described it, like someone who “today, if you were to be swiping on, like, TikTok… would have been a fitness influencer or something.” He was seemingly healthy. And he suffered a fatal heart attack.His passing galvanized his friends, family, and community. They wanted to save other families from the same kind of loss, and they wanted to be part of the future of the fight against heart disease. That’s when the Heart Foundation was born.The organization partners with the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai, which Hannah described as one of the leading cardiovascular institutes in the country. They support research led by Dr. P.K. Shaw and his team. And when I asked Hannah what distinguishes them from the American Heart Association, she didn’t skip a beat: “We are the tiny, but… small but mighty grassroots organization. The little engine that could, if you will.” She explained that they’re deeply focused on one thing: funding research and spreading awareness. I said it sounds Stand Up to Cancer versus the American Cancer Society. Same fight, different focus.The Research: Reason for Real HopeHere’s where things got genuinely exciting for me. The Heart Foundation has been funding research that is now in the production of two therapies designed not just to prevent arterial plaque, but to reverse it. One of those therapies is currently in a phase two human clinical trial.So, there may actually be a drug coming that goes into the artery wall and removes plaque — not just reduces cholesterol but targets the actual calcified buildup. Hannah was careful to note she’s not a doctor,...
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    42 mins
  • The Strength Within You and Why It's Always Too Soon to Quit

    The Strength Within You and Why It's Always Too Soon to Quit
    Mar 25 2026
    When I read Jay Setchell’s book The Strength Within You before our interview, it stunned me. I thought to myself, “how is this man still alive?”The answer, as I quickly discovered when Jay joined me on Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino, is that he’s still alive because he has refused, at every possible turn, to be anything else.Jay Setchell is a 76-year-old Marine Corps veteran, entrepreneur, author, and a living testament to resilience. He has survived 73 surgeries. He has physically died not once, not twice, but three times. And yet, there he was, talking to me with warmth, humor, and a philosophical insight that I wasn’t expecting from someone who’s been through what he’s been through. I felt a real kinship with him — not because I’ve endured anything close to what he has, but because I understood the importance of intestinal fortitude.We started our conversation so strongly that I forgot to even introduce the show. That’s how good this conversation was.Three Times GoneLet me give you a sense of what Jay has survived, because numbers alone don’t do it justice.The first critical accident happened in 1969-70, when Jay was a young Marine. A teammate on his criminal intelligence unit had been injured, and Jay was rushing him to get medical help. His friend’s wife had her arm around the injured man’s head, applying pressure, when Jay’s car slammed into an unlit truck in the pitch dark. The impact was catastrophic. Jay’s face was literally crushed into the steering wheel — his head caved in on the left side, burned, and he was put in traction for over eight and a half months. He spoke so matter-of-factly about this as if he weren’t phased.In terms of NDEs, he said he floated above his own body, his back against the ceiling, looking down at the doctors working on him. Everything appeared red to him, and violent. He watched the doctors give up and walk away. Then a Dr. Gray — a Navy oral surgeon in white — walked in and, through some intervention Jay can barely explain, pulled him back. Jay doesn’t remember returning to his body. One moment he was above it; the next he was in a coma, able to hear voices, starting the long road back.The second near-death was at the hands of a drunk driver who sideswiped Jay, sending his car rolling into a deep ditch. The drunk driver himself was thrown from his truck, with no seatbelt, and was killed.The third time — and this is the one where Jay describes perhaps the most striking near-death experience in the book — happened at a pool. Jay broke four vertebrae diving into the pool feet first. He was drowning at the bottom while people around him assumed he was just goofing around. He describes the sensation in his book as being pulled down “a long endless vortex as if I was inside a tornado. No bright light, no voices, just nothing.” No tunnel. No heaven. Just gone. They dragged him out and got him to a hospital, and somehow — again — he came back.When I mentioned to Jay that his descriptions were unlike most near-death experiences I’d heard, he agreed. He’s lived through too many versions of near-death experiences to establish a set pattern!Because of so many accidents and surgeries, Jay has a condition called syringomyelia, along with other serious spinal diagnoses, that means — by every medical understanding — he should not be able to move anything from his shoulders down. He was a case study at the Neuro Center at Methodist and Baylor in Houston, and at Seat and Brain and Spine in Austin, where roughly 25 to 28 doctors from around the country and the world gathered to ask a single question: why is this man still moving?His neurosurgeon, Dr. Rose — who himself was a MASH doctor in Vietnam and had seen a few things — gave them his answer. He told those assembled doctors: “Number one, he’s a Marine and he doesn’t know when to quit. And number two, he’s just stubborn.”Jay’s next statement tied into the power of manifestation I’d heard before but this time with living proof, “I believe in the power of your mind. I believe that I can move because I think I can move and I want to move. I will myself to move. And the day that I accept the fact that I can’t move anymore, I probably won’t.”So, a mind over matter case study sat before me, lived, tested, and won.I asked Jay on where this grit came from. Because you don’t just wake up one day and decide to be the person who survives everything. So where does it start?For Jay, it started on a farm in Northern Illinois. He grew up working from the age of five — mixing powdered milk for the calves at five in the morning, stepping on nails (more than once, he told me, including one that went clean through his boot and out the top), pulling weeds, hauling buckets through the snow. He talked about watching the seasons change — planting, cultivating, harvesting, resting — and how that rhythm built something in him that he carries to this day...
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • What It Means to Have a Neurodivergent Brain — And Why That’s Not a Bad Thing

    What It Means to Have a Neurodivergent Brain — And Why That’s Not a Bad Thing
    Mar 11 2026
    My podcast interview with Kit Slocum felt the most personal of many I’ve conducted. Maybe because she’s a neurodiversity coach who works with people like me — and she happens to be neurodivergent herself. Perhaps that’s why I kept saying “that’s me!” so often during the interview.Kit is the Neurodiversity Lead at Flown (flown.com), a platform built around something called body doubling — which I’ll explain later in this article — and she also does one-on-one ADHD coaching. When I saw her high energy-glowing picture on Flown’s website at 3 a.m. during one of my sleepless nights, I just knew she was the right person to have on the show.I spoke a great deal on the podcast because Kit was gracious enough to let me share my own stories, and she related to them. That doesn’t happen every day.Growing Up Neurodivergent in the 1960sI went to grammar school in the 1960s. Strict Catholic school. Uniforms. Nuns with rulers. And if you weren’t paying attention — or if your brain just didn’t work the way others did — you suffered for it. Literally. You didn’t get picked for teams, and you got a ruler cracked on your desk or your hand by a nun who had zero patience for a kid who couldn’t sit still and focus. For me, it was any attempt at math that humiliated me, and a nun who shook her head in disbelief when she saw my feeble answers instead of offering me help.I didn’t know at the time that I was neurodivergent with two of my monikers being ADHD and GAD (Generalized anxiety disorder). Nobody did. What I knew was that I felt different, I felt ashamed, and somewhere along the way I started calling myself stupid because there was no other explanation for my ineptitude. That label stuck with me for a very long time. If I’m being honest, it still sneaks back in sometimes.I barely graduated high school, then didn’t go to college until seven years later because my experience had been so bad I never wanted to see a classroom again. When I finally went back as an adult, things were different. I was motivated. I had maturity. I eventually earned an MBA — though I’ll tell you, online schooling was the game changer for me. Working at my own pace, without the pressure of everyone around me and strict unforgiving teachers, made all the difference.My son is also neurodivergent. When he was young, we were fortunate to live in a part of New York state that provided at home services. When he grew older, people told us, “Don’t put him in inclusion (teacher-assisted classes). Once he’s in, he’ll never come out.” We ignored that advice. He graduated from two colleges. I think about that often when someone tells me what a neurodivergent person can or can’t do when given the proper support.From “Something’s Wrong with You” to “Your Brain Is Different — Not Broken”Kit brought up something I had heard previously from another neurodiversity person and that is there’s a difference between what she calls the pathology paradigm and the neurodiversity paradigm. When I heard what she said, it reaffirmed conclusions about myself.From my experience, neurodivergence was treated as something to be fixed. ADHD, autism, dyslexia — these were seen as defects that needed to be corrected so you could fit into the status quo. That’s the pathology paradigm. And if you grew up in it, you know exactly how much damage it can do.The neurodiversity paradigm says something different. It says our brains aren’t wrong — they’re just different. There’s no one “correct” brain. Kit used a beautiful analogy: eye color. Blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes — they’re all beautiful. But if you have blue eyes, you might be more sensitive to sunlight and need darker sunglasses. That doesn’t mean your eyes are broken. It just means you need a different kind of support. That’s all.She also talked about a pattern she sees often in her clients — mostly folks in their mid-40s to 60s — when they receive a late diagnosis. Some feel relief. Finally, it makes sense. But others experience a kind of grief: Who could I have been if I had known this sooner? If someone had supported me properly? It’s a retroactive grief for the version of yourself that never got the chance. I used to do that to myself. I would use a parade of “what ifs”. Today, I realize my growth occurred a harder way, but it happened and I am grateful. I wonder if a lot of people listening will feel that way too.Let me back up and explain Flown, because it consists of a process that initiated that very thought, “Where would I have been if I had this growing up?” And that process is called body doubling.Body doubling is the practice of working alongside another person — not necessarily talking, not necessarily collaborating, just being present together. For many people with ADHD, working completely alone leads to distraction, avoidance, and paralysis. But having someone else in the room (or on screen) can make an ...
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    1 hr
  • When Philosophy Meets Politics: A Conversation About America's Forgotten Foundation

    When Philosophy Meets Politics: A Conversation About America's Forgotten Foundation
    Mar 4 2026
    Some conversations make your brain work in ways you didn’t expect. My recent interview with Damien Terrence Dubose on Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino was one of those conversations that had me pausing, rethinking, and honestly needing to study up before we even started recording.Damien is a Washington, DC-based financial professional and author of America’s Ethical Archetype: Establishing the Psychology of Moral Authority and Correcting Our Country’s Broken Politics. And I’ll be honest with you — when I first read his book, I had to put it down a few times. Not because it wasn’t good. But because, as I told Damien, “this man has a beautiful mind.”The book is intense. It covers psychology, philosophy, political theory, and leadership in ways that made me realize I needed to do my homework. So I did. And the conversation that followed was worth every minute of preparation.Not Your Typical Political ConversationLet me be clear about what this interview wasn’t. We didn’t argue about personalities. We didn’t debate who’s right and who’s wrong. We didn’t get into the usual shouting match that passes for political discourse these days.What we did talk about was something much deeper: the psychology and philosophy of leadership itself.I tried to frame the core of Damien’s argument early on. His book, I said, isn’t about the usual policy prescriptions — “it’s not, well, we need to impose more tariffs…or we need better unions. It’s not that.” What Damien is actually proposing is something far more foundational: a whole new approach to leadership, one that we haven’t seen in a long time, that blends psychology and philosophy.Damien confirmed that’s exactly right.Ayn Rand and the IndividualNow, I’ll admit — I didn’t know much about Ayn Rand before reading Damien’s book. I know her now. And I understand why she’s controversial.Rand founded objectivism, which is rooted not in egotism in the sense of someone with a big ego, but egoism as an ethical philosophy. It’s based on the freedom and rights of the individual.“A person’s individuality or individual character is what we should be focusing on,” Damien said. “The thing that makes them different from other people, makes them an individual, centering a view of life around that.”When I asked for a practical example, I landed on the word that makes a lot of people uncomfortable: capitalist.“Exactly,” Damien said. “That’s this exact frame of reference I’m thinking about.”And right away, I knew some people’s hackles would go up. When I think of capitalism, I think of free market — versus socialism or communism at the other extreme.My Corporate Experience and Individual FreedomI worked for corporations my entire career — JPMorgan Chase and IBM. These companies employed a lot of people. They allowed me to retire at a relatively young age. During that time, I was all for free market and business because I wanted to stay employed. I felt like if they got tax breaks and could operate within reason — not polluting rivers and all that — they needed to grow and invest for the company to thrive. And both companies have been thriving for over 100 years.But Damien pushed deeper than just economic outcomes.“A lot of times people look at the outcomes of situations,” he said. “But really what’s at the root of it is: as an individual, I get the right to choose. And I’m not saying that I get the right to take your life or injure you or do anything of that nature. That’s where we get to the rational and irrational perspective. But essentially, I’m not here to make decisions only that you approve of. I’m not going to limit my life to that realm.”How Did We Get Here? The Wisdom of the Founding FathersOne of the most impressionable moments in the conversation came when I pointed to the opening pages of his book. The Founding Fathers, he wrote, “established the United States on the core principles that emphasize the role and rights of the individual.” America was built as a constitutional republic firmly rooted in those axioms.So what happened?Damien’s answer was both historical and psychological. The individualist perspective, he explained, is actually a fairly new concept in human history — only about 500 years old. Before that, we lived in collectives, tribes, castes. We didn’t see ourselves as individuals apart from our groups.And here’s what struck me: we underestimate the wisdom of the people who built this country. “They foresaw a lot of the things that are happening today,” Damien said. “That is exactly why the system is set up the way it is today.”I shared what I’d heard from a philosophy and rhetoric professor: that back in those early days, you had to study, you had to command the ability to communicate, you had to execute rhetoric efficiently — or you’d better know how to fight. There was no casual scrolling through a feed and forming a ...
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • The Prescription That Changed Everything: A Conversation About Benzodiazepines, Dependency, and Hope

    The Prescription That Changed Everything: A Conversation About Benzodiazepines, Dependency, and Hope
    Feb 25 2026
    The Prescription That Changed Everything: A Conversation About Benzodiazepines, Dependency, and HopeThere are some conversations that hit different when you’ve lived through similar experiences. My recent interview with D E Foster on Lens of Hopefulness with John Passadino was one of those conversations where two people who’ve traveled similar difficult roads can speak the same language without having to explain everything.D (as everyone calls him) is a medical researcher and the author of “Benzo Free: The World of Anti-Anxiety Drugs and the Reality of Withdrawal.” But those credentials don’t tell you what you really need to know. What you need to know is this: D was prescribed clonazepam (Klonopin) by his doctor in 2002 and took it for 12 years without any warning about the risks. When he discovered he was dependent on it and tried to withdraw, it became “the hardest and most challenging experience” of his life—one he’s still dealing with today.I know something about this journey because I’m on it myself.When Anxiety Becomes InvisibleOne of the first things D said that resonated with me was this: “One of the key problems with mental illness is its innate invisibility.”And isn’t that the truth? You can’t see anxiety. You can’t take a blood test for panic disorder. There’s no X-ray that shows your fear. And because it’s invisible, people—including doctors—don’t always take it seriously enough. Or conversely, they may rush to prescribe medication without fully explaining what that medication does or the risks involved.As D explained, anxiety becomes a real problem “when it becomes consistent, when it becomes chronic, and when it becomes something that affects our lives significantly.”I felt that deeply. Because I’ve lived there—in that place where anxiety isn’t just occasional worry but a constant companion that makes it hard to function.My Story Meets D’s StoryI admitted to D during our conversation that I’m a lifelong anxiety sufferer. I have what I jokingly call my collection of acronyms: GAD (General Anxiety Disorder), PD (Panic Disorder), HD (Hypochondriacal Disorder). I put the phobias as a cherry on top.“They’re special,” D said, and we both had to laugh. Because sometimes you have to laugh at the absurdity of it all, even though it’s incredibly intense.I told D about my own medication journey—how I resisted taking anything for the longest time. I kept telling my psychiatrist, “No, no, no. I don’t want to take anything. I don’t want to get addicted.” Then a neurologist finally said to me, “You need to be on medication.”That was decades ago. And here’s what I want to be clear about: I actually needed something at the time. The panic attacks were overwhelming. I would get them at work, at family gatherings—anywhere really. You feel like you’re dying. It’s incredibly intense.But here’s the thing that D’s story highlights so powerfully: I can’t say I was fully aware about what I was being prescribed.The Prescription Without WarningD’s experience is even more striking. He wasn’t even given Klonopin for anxiety initially—it was prescribed for stomach distress.“I was never diagnosed with an anxiety condition,” he told me. “I finally went to a GP around 2002 who decided to try me on clonazepam, which is generic for Klonopin.”He started at one milligram, eventually worked his way up to two, and took it for 12 years “not even thinking there was any problem with it.”“It’s just a drug my doctor told me to take, so I kept taking it,” he said. “I think it helped me a little bit, but it wasn’t dramatic.”Then tolerance set in. And when he discovered what had happened and tried to withdraw, his “whole world basically crashed down.”In summary, per D: His doctor prescribed him a benzodiazepine for 12 years without warning him about dependency, tolerance, or the potential complications of withdrawal.What We’re Not Being ToldThis is where the conversation gets really important for anyone who has been prescribed a benzodiazepine or knows someone who has.Benzodiazepines work on GABA receptors in the brain—they’re part of what D calls the “brakes” in our system that calm us down when glutamate (the “exciter”) gets us hyped up. They can be helpful in the short term. But long-term use changes your brain chemistry in ways that can create dependency.And here’s the critical part: Many doctors may not be warning patients about these risks today, and that is why it is important to question, research, and assess alternatives.D has spent over a decade researching benzodiazepines, withdrawal, and anxiety. He read and catalogued over one thousand articles, books, and videos on these subjects. He co-authored multiple research papers, including the 2023 study that introduced the term BIND—benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction.BIND describes the protracted state of neurological changes...
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