From Emotional Neglect to Self-Awareness | Justin B. Long

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And so my mom's mom rejected her in favor of her little sister. So she spent her whole life searching for acceptance and a place to feel plugged in. And she turned to what I call extreme religiosity, trying to find that. She felt like if she prayed hard enough and got involved enough in the right churches, that eventually God would notice her and cure what ailed her. But she was not a disciplinarian. And her way of dealing with me...

00:29
was to have me bring the big trash can in from out back and sit inside that and wait for my dad to come home when I was bad. So, you know, if I'm running around making too much noise or whatever, she would make me sit in the trash can until my dad got home. So, my two primary caregivers are, you know, my dad's gonna beat me no matter what, and my mom is likely to throw me out, throw me in the trash can. So, that was my childhood, right? There's a lot of screwed up stuff happening there, but...

00:57
Those were the formative years when I formed my opinion and my understanding of who I am and my self beliefs. How does that, like, how did, who were you in your mind? You were someone that couldn't measure up? Yeah, I was somebody that was never gonna be good enough, no matter how hard I tried. And I always kept trying, I never gave up. I think that's what, part of what made me an overachiever is that I kept.

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hoping that you know that carrot that was dangled in front of me there that eventually I'm going to get that carrot. My dad's going to come home one day and he's going to say that was perfect. And then you know it never happened. Today's guest is Justin B. Long. Justin is an accomplished author, he's an entrepreneur, and he's a podcast host who's really transformed his life in truly extraordinary ways. From his best-selling book series, The Adventures of the Horse Doctor's

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Justin's work has resonated with audiences across the globe, but beneath this impressive list of accomplishments is a story of struggle and resilience that is both deeply moving and powerful. In this episode, Justin bravely opens up about his journey from a childhood marked by really unattainable standards and definitely emotional neglect to his current state of success, self-awareness, and healing.

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We'll explore the profound impact of childhood experiences on self-perception, as Justin shares about his early years, really dominated by his father's unreachable standards and his mother's emotional neglect. He takes us on a journey towards self-discovery and healing, one that began when he embraced sobriety at the age of 32. Justin's story highlights the power of sharing these personal experiences. By opening up about his life, he reminds us the strength inherent in overcoming adversity.

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His experiences inspire us to confront our personal challenges, seek growth, and really strive for healing. As you listen to Justin's story, I encourage you to reflect on your own life. Consider the moments that have shaped you, the experiences that have challenged you, and the transformations that have led you to where you are today. Before I jump into the episode, I want to thank Traci and Emily for sponsoring two episodes every single month on the Patreon feed. It is so helpful. And I am so thankful for your support.

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for sponsoring these two episodes every month. This helps with the production costs, the hosting costs, all the little things that come along with podcasting. Each episode takes about eight or 10 hours of work from the recording and interacting and getting the social media together and editing and all the pieces that come with it. And so any contribution is super helpful. So thank you for this sponsorship, Traci and Emily.

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If you are interested in directly supporting the show, you can head to patreon.com slash the Life Shift podcast, and you'll see all different tiers there. So without further ado, here is my conversation with Justin Long.

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I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift. Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

04:15
Hello, my friends. Welcome to the Life Shift Podcast. I am joined today by Justin. Hello, Justin. Hey, how's it going? You know, it's going. Lots of things happening, lots of moving parts. And as we're recording this, my birthday was last week, so I was just telling you, I took a week off. So for all the listeners, they're like, wait, but there's episodes every week. Yeah. Because we do it more than once a week. So here we are the week after my birthday. Thank you for being here. You're not supposed to show the magic behind the screen, but.

04:43
I'm glad to be part of it if we're going to shine a light on it. Open book. Like we were talking before recording you, you know, a lot of your story or all of your story is an open book, literally and figuratively. And I think it's so important that people like you share the stories that you have, even though many of the stories that you're going to share today and the part of your life has been really hard and things that I think for a long time, a lot of us were told to kind of hide or keep away.

05:12
And so thank you for just being you in the world, open book, behind the scenes, all of it. I think it's important to have people that shine the light on all of life and not just the good stuff. So I'm happy to be part of that movement. I agree and it's kind of why I started this show, for people listening, maybe new listeners, this show started as a school assignment actually when I was during the pandemic, I was just taking an extra master's degree and.

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took a podcasting class and I didn't know what I was gonna talk about. And then I realized my life story was important and I think that I wanted to share that with people in the same way that you writing your book. And so when I was a kid, my mom died in an accident and my life was totally different from one day to the next. A life shift, if you will. And growing up, I felt like I was the only one that had experienced it. And I didn't feel like I was allowed to talk about it and how I felt. And so now I get to have.

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conversations with people from all over the world talking about these moments that have changed us and how really bad moments can eventually become something good. They can become a new journey for us. And so, you know, my goal here is that people listening feel less alone in their experiences if they hear someone's story that maybe has gone through something similar as what they're going through. And so that's where we are today.

06:37
I think that's one of the most important things in the world because I think everyone feels alone in some way, at least for a chunk of your life, until you can find someone else who has had a shared experience. And if nobody talks about the stuff, then you never know that it's not just you. And we're tribal animals. Like we need that connection to other people. So that is critical stuff. You're right. And I talk to a lot of people about this, like, I guess society's expectation or these checklists that we have. And so like...

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You know, as a guy, you're not allowed to do this. You're only allowed to feel this way and you're only allowed to feel this particular emotion. And we kind of absorb that or or assumed that responsibility. And I love that, like it feels like in twenty twenty four more people are shedding that and kind of just being like, look, I'm a full human, you know, and I I live and I exist and good and bad things happen. We are three characters. Imagine that it's so wonderful. No, I think it's important. And.

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And I know your story is going to be hard for some people to listen to, but I think it's important for a lot of people to listen to. So before we get into that, maybe you can just kind of introduce yourself. Like who are you at this moment in time that doesn't give away too much of your story? Well, my name is Justin B. Long, and I am an author of eight books. My wife and I own a large equine veterinary clinic in Florida. So I'm a business owner.

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We also have the biggest equine podcast in the world. I'm a podcast host and producer. I'm a videographer of sorts. We have a big YouTube channel. I've really gotten into video. So, producing that kind of stuff is really important to me. And I don't say any of that stuff to brag. I say that so that when you see where I was 15 years ago, you can see what a dramatic difference that my life is compared to what it used to be. So, my life is very full. It's very busy. I am...

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probably an overachiever in a lot of respects and I'm okay with that. It's one of my less unhealthy behaviors that I'm holding onto. But I am committed to living life to its fullest and bringing every last drop out of it that I can. And I feel like I wasted a lot of time in my 20s and my early 30s and I'm trying to make up for that now by just living and doing all the things that I wanted to do. I love that.

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that you found this space, that you can live out loud, full, and do whatever you want. Because I think it will inspire people that are going through things that you went through in your background. So without kind of skirting around it, maybe you can kind of paint the picture of what your life was like leading up to or before you were able to be this version of Justin, when you weren't able to live the full life that you are living now. Right.

09:28
Yeah, I got sober when I was 32. And since that time, I have learned that the farther back in my life that I go, the more relevant the things become. And so I didn't understand anything about myself until I was in my 40s, really. But now I know that I grew up with a very, very emotionally challenged set of parents.

09:58
So my dad also grew up in the same kind of situation. His dad was extremely hard on him. And my dad just recreated all that and did the same thing that his parents did. But my dad was a workaholic. He was not an alcoholic. He didn't do drugs. He didn't do a lot of the things that a lot of us do in terms of behaviors when you have emotional dysfunction in your life. But he was a workaholic. And he believed in...

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absolute perfection, like the highest of standards in everything that you do. And so he would go make me a chores list every day. When he went off to work, I would have a list of chores that I'd have to get done before he got home from work. Some of the examples that I use in my book are like firewood. You know, in the wintertime, I was in charge of stacking firewood, chopping it and stacking it in a rack behind the house.

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And my dad's system was the firewood had to be stacked all the way to the top of the bin, and it had to be perfectly even on the front and the back and flat across the top. And when he got home from work, we would go out and inspect the firewood stack, and I would get swats for every piece that was sticking out or wasn't, you know, could have been flatter on the top and that kind of stuff. So and it was that way with all of my chores. And that basically, from my perspective as a six, eight, ten year old kid.

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is that I would come home and work really hard and do all the things that my dad would come home and punish me for it. So my mom, on the other end of that spectrum, my mom was not a disciplinarian. She was also came from a very difficult childhood. Her mom wanted the perfect daughter that she could take to sewing circle and show off to her friends about how perfect my kid is and how much better she is than your kids. And my mom was not that kid. My mom had scoliosis. Her back was all twisted up.

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She had surgery a couple of times when she was young trying to work on that. She had framework in her back because that was the 50s and medicine then was different than it is now. But she was not the perfect kid, but her little sister who came along when my mom was six or seven I think ended up being the perfect kid. She was pretty and smart and played the instruments and the sports and did all the stuff. And so my mom's mom rejected her in favor of her little sister. So she spent her whole life searching for acceptance.

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and a place to feel plugged in. And she turned to what I call extreme religiosity, trying to find that. She felt like if she prayed hard enough and got involved enough in the right churches that eventually God would notice her and cure what ailed her. But she was not a disciplinarian. And her way of dealing with me was to have me bring the big trash can in from out back and sit inside that and wait for my dad to come home.

12:40
when I was that. So, you know, if I'm running around making too much noise or whatever, she would make me make me sit in the trash can till my dad got home. So, so my two primary caregivers are, you know, my dad's going to beat me no matter what. And my mom is likely to throw me out, throw me in the trash can. So that was that was my childhood, right? There's a lot of screwed up stuff happening there. But but those were the formative years when I I formed my opinion and my understanding of who I am.

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and my self beliefs. How does that, like, how did, who were you in your mind? You were someone that couldn't measure up? Yeah, I was somebody that was never gonna be good enough, no matter how hard I tried. And I always kept trying, I never gave up. I think that's what part of what made me an overachiever is that I kept hoping that, you know, that carrot that was dangled in front of me there that eventually I'm gonna get that carrot. My dad's gonna come home one day and he's gonna say, that was perfect.

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And it never happened. Was your dad, knowing that he expected perfection of you, was he perfect? Did he exhibit perfection in the things that he did from your perspective? Yes. As far as I could tell, my dad was absolutely amazing at everything. My dad, I have such a different perspective on him now than I did then.

14:04
But my dad was a do-it-yourselfer, like a super hardcore do-it-yourselfer, and he never paid anybody else to do anything for him. So he was his own mechanic and electrician and plumber and carpenter, and he would do all these projects. He was always working on the car, and there was always house projects going on. He built a second story onto our house when I was a kid, just me and him, major projects. He did all kinds of stuff, right? And so I believed...

14:32
like most of my life that he was not just a jack of all trades, but he was a master of all trades. He was, he could do everything. And I didn't realize until I was in my forties that, you know, he would spend weeks and weeks doing a project on the car that I take my truck to the shop and they do in two hours on a Tuesday afternoon. You know, he spent two years doing, you know, house projects running new water line and, and making everything work. And like all that kind of stuff. Like he wasn't actually very good at it. I just,

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didn't know that because I didn't have anything to compare it to. Right. And you were busy chasing the carrot. Were there ever times that you remember where you met the goal or had an achievement in any case from your father? You know, there were times where he would get right up close to that line of almost

15:29
Almost saying it, but I think he felt so compelled that he had to find a flaw. And I think part of that deep in my heart, I think that it wasn't malicious. I think that he believed that, you know, you're never going to be perfect, but you should always strive for perfection. Right. So he wanted to be like, you know, here's something that you missed that you could have done better. Always show me somewhere where I could have improved. Well, and if he never received praise himself from his own parents in that way, he might not have known how he was taught.

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That's how he was taught to parent. And I don't think he ever questioned that. Yeah. I can imagine how you would absorb, like, I'm never going to be good enough moving into your 20s. Like, I can see how that would happen. Yeah. I formed a lot of insecurities as a result of that and my belief in who I am. And we teach other people how to treat us. And so because I believed that I was a loser,

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You know, I was a loser at school. I was, I was the nerd, the outcast. I was book smart, but I was never good at sports. I wasn't ever allowed to play anything like that. I was wearing hand-me-down clothes from the church basement. So I wasn't one of the cool kids. And so I got ostracized at school. That just reinforced my belief system about who I am and my lot in life. You know, I didn't I didn't have any place that I was plugged in and a part of a thing until I was a teenager. I managed to get into a youth group at church.

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Nobody knew me from school there because it was a different town. And my parents didn't go to church there. So nobody nobody knew them to know that, you know, that I was part of a screwed up family. So like that was my one safe haven for a short my two years, maybe. When you were in that, did you were you able to feel like you could be yourself? Or did you feel like you were performing as someone else? You know, I think by that time, I was like 12 or 13 when I got into that. And and I was learning how to.

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put on masks and pretend like I'm somebody that I'm not. At the time, I thought I was reinventing myself and there may have been an element of that in there, but I was horrified when my parents decided to switch churches and come to the one that I was going to because I felt like that this is the end. Everybody's gonna realize that I was a fraud and that once they meet my parents, because my parents, they weren't just like emotionally.

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disrupted people, like they were weird. So they were both big into historical reenactment stuff. They got into that when I was probably 10 or 11. So, you know, like Civil War reenactment, they didn't do that. They did like Indians and mountain man rendezvous where you go camp out in teepees and tents. But they went super overboard with all of that. And so, you know, my mom was making all of the clothes.

18:19
You know, my dad had this big bushy beard and hair down to his belt that he wore in Willie Nelson braids and because he was the mountain man. And at some point in there, my mom decided that she was going to be a medicine woman. And so even though she's as white as the day is long, she appropriated somebody else's culture and started wearing the leather medicine bag around her neck and feathers and all this. And like, so it's weird, right? Especially when you're a teenager and your status is all that you have. Like...

18:48
them walking into church was the end of the world for me. So I was so ashamed of my parents. And as long as I can remember, I was ashamed of my parents. But that phase really, really took it to an extreme. Yeah, and also like, it's hard because you think, you know, you're ashamed in that sense, but also like, it sounds like you never really experienced love from them either. And so then there's like this, or the love was conditional in...

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particular ways and so it's like almost How do you not become them? When that's all you know and you're fighting for this affection So that like you're just always trying to do something that will please them But also you're embarrassed of them, you know, like right. How do you how do you how do you not become them? I? Felt outside of my family like

19:42
All the way back as far as I can remember. And in a way I was. I was not my dad's biological child. He adopted me when I was maybe a year old somewhere in there. And I think that was another element that added into this. My mom and dad went to college together. They dated all through college. And then when they graduated, my mom ran off with another guy that they used to party with and went to California and had me.

20:09
And then that didn't work out. And so she called my dad back to come rescue her. And so I was a package deal reminder of that time that his girlfriend took off with some other dude for a couple of years. But when I was six, my little sister was born on my birthday, which is not good when you're poor, but that was his first child. And I think at that point, once he had his own kid, like he didn't like it.

20:37
A lot of things changed at that point. So I really got put on the outside of things then. And the following year, when my sister turned one, I think, and I was seven, at Christmas time, I got a bundle of sticks for Christmas. And that's what I got with a ribbon wrapped around it. And it's for, you know, for being bad, apparently. And I can imagine that at the time, like, I really self-examined as much as I could. And I couldn't think of...

21:06
of anything that I had done that was like really bad. But I can certainly see with a new baby in the house that I was feeling backburnered for attention and probably acted out in a way that they found annoying and unacceptable. But yeah, I remember sitting, they made me sit by the Christmas tree with my bundle of sticks while they opened up presents for my little sister. And I kept thinking that they're...

21:33
They're teaching me a lesson and once I cry and promise to be a good boy that, you know, they'll go in the closet and get the presence out the real presence out. And that didn't happen. Like it, it didn't happen. So like, I think that was, that was the day that I really felt outside of the family. And, and I never, I never got back in, but you know, I remember,

21:57
in my 20s. I don't know what the movie was, but I saw some Christmas movie, probably like a Hallmark thing where it's like the neighborhood and it's snowing and it's Christmas time and the guy's walking down the cold sidewalk and he looks in the window and there's a family in there and they're all like happy and joyous and doing the Christmas thing and he's outside in the cold. I remember thinking like, oh my God, that's me. That is my life in a second right there.

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I didn't feel like I was part of my family. I didn't feel like I was part of anything. Like I've, I felt outside of everything in the world. I think it's because I never learned how to connect with people and be on the inside. Like all through my adult life, I've still felt like I was on the outside. I have a really hard time being a part of because I spent so much time being apart from. And even when I stopped being apart from like mentally, I was still apart from it. I don't know how to have a positive emotional relationship with somebody because of my childhood.

22:53
One last thing about your childhood is like, you say you always felt like separate from or like outside of that. Did you remember feeling like you wanted to be part of it or did you feel like that was your space and you needed to stay in it? Because I think it gets really exhausting continuously trying to be a part of something in which possibly never will be a part of. Right. I think it was kind of both at the same time. Like...

23:21
There was a part of me that resented them for not providing me the love and support that I felt like I needed. And then there was a part of me that rejected them for rejecting me or whatever my unconscious thinking was on that. But so I'm like, I was trying to do both at the same time. Like I wanted to be in that family or a family and that I didn't really have any other options for family. So I wanted to be.

23:48
on the inside of that one and get the affection that I needed. But I also wanted to be as far away from them as possible, as soon as possible. I can't imagine. I would imagine that you would just find every coping mechanism to exist in the world through that. I mean, you said you at some point went towards alcohol in some way. But were you driven towards that? Oh, yeah. Like, I used, and I know people laugh when I say this,

24:18
reading books alcoholically, if you will, from the time I was like five or six years old, seven years old, I was deep into it, because books were an escape for me. Like I could get into a book and be in another universe. And I read stuff like the Hardy Boys and the Bobsy Twins and Nancy Drew and all that when I was young, Encyclopedia Brown, like all of these stories where the kids are the hero and the kids are smart and appreciated for what they can bring to the table.

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And like, I loved being in those universes because that's, that's where I felt like, you know, I could be plugged in and be a part of something. And so I read books voraciously to, to not be part of this world as much as possible every day. And I did that all the way up until I got to, uh, got to high school and discovered alcohol and found out that alcohol made me feel pretty good about who I am and what I'm doing. And so the, once I, uh, once I get, got into high school,

25:16
and found a couple of really good friends that accepted me for who I was. And we started drinking together and having a good time. Those two things kind of happened simultaneously for me. And so I associated feeling good and being connected to something with drinking. Those two things went together for me. And then once I got out of high school, my escape plan was to go to the army, which I did. And that got me into a group of people who drank like I drank.

25:46
welcomed me in and just reinforced that belief system that as long as I'm drinking, I'm okay. But- Right, you get approval. Right, right. I got some of what I was needing, but my problem, I had a lot of problems at that point. Like, and as a young adult, was that I had all of those insecurities and beliefs about who I was, and drinking could make me feel okay about that.

26:11
while I was drinking, but you can't drink 24 hours a day. And so I still had that negative self belief on the inside and nothing, all the approval in the world didn't fill that for me. This is again, unconscious, but I found that if a woman was willing to have sex with me, like that was an acceptance thing, like on another level. Right? Like that's the ultimate form of showing me that I'm okay.

26:39
And so I started pursuing sex like crazy just because I wanted that connection with another person who accepted me. And that went hand in hand with the alcohol because the great disinhibitor lets you go behave like a maniac. And if you're running around in a party crowd, then the people around you are more or less at least willing to tolerate it, if not approving of that behavior. But, you know, so that became my lifestyle for...

27:08
10 years as an adult. And those are just coping mechanisms with me trying to feel okay about myself. Right, and to find validation. Right. Validation and love and acceptance and like you exist to people. I feel like it's almost like, you know, as bad as alcoholism is and can be for a lot of people, it makes sense. Right. Alcohol wasn't the problem. Alcohol was the solution, you know, and it just stopped working.

27:38
You might not have needed it either, but you didn't know because that was everything was associated with once you started drinking, you found your friends that liked you for you because you were drinking and you didn't. It's hard to dissociate that when you're a forming person, you know, and then everything just kind of, it's all that subconscious stuff that you keep mentioning. It's like, sometimes we don't make the decisions on purpose. We just kind of fall into these things in the way that we feel. We continue to seek that out.

28:06
You know, like as someone that experienced alcoholism, does it affect your day to day or were you functioning in a way that was quote unquote acceptable? Or did it get you in a lot of trouble? I was still functioning. I had a good job. I went to work every day. I was at work at six o'clock in the morning every morning. I was in a relationship. I found a woman who was willing to let me sleep with her twice, so I moved in with her. And she also put up and tolerated with my behavior because I was still.

28:34
you know, drinking and trying to get laid with everybody every weekend and with all of our friends and everything else. But she tolerated that for 10 years. Yeah. Wow. 10 years. Yeah. So from the outside, like I had a good job. I was making money. I was in a relationship. I had a place to live, you know, had all the things. You were checking all the boxes. Right. So I could tell myself that I'm doing okay because I have all the things that I'm supposed to have. It doesn't work on the inside. Like it's still...

29:03
You know, everything's external and all the feelings are internal. And it doesn't work. Yeah, you're not processing it. You're just pushing it down. You're just covering it up. You're just you're masking it. And then at some point, it's still there. So it's going to it's going to come out at some point. Was there a point and a breaking point for you? I didn't really have a rock bottom moment, but I had, you know, for me.

29:28
Every time we would go out and I would hit on somebody or make out with some other woman in the bar or at a party or whatever, like the next day I would just be consumed by shame. I would feel horrible about what I did. Like I can't believe, you know, that that's, oh, you know, I can't ever look anybody in the eye again, all this stuff. And so I would beat myself up all day long at work about, you know, my behavior, not understanding what's driving it, just knowing that, you know, I did it again. I thought I was a sexaholic for a while.

29:58
And so I would, you know, go home from work and start drinking again so that I could stop feeling that shame. And that became my cycle is that shame, drinking, shame, drinking, shame, drinking. And like that shame just ate my lunch and it wore me out. Like even if I didn't go anywhere or see anybody or do anything inappropriate at all, I sat at home and played solitaire and drank six beers last night. I automatically wake up feeling ashamed of myself, like to the point of being suicidal sometimes. Just horrible shame.

30:27
And that's what I decided that I could not keep going like that. Like something had to give. So I worked with a guy. He was super cool. Everybody liked him. He liked me. So his his opinion meant a lot to me. And we would sit out behind the shop and smoke cigarettes and kind of sweat out our hangovers in the mornings and talk about drinking and like, you know, trying to wrestle with it and get it under control. Always in a semi joking way, like we never.

30:55
really said, hey, I have a drinking problem. It was always like, man, I gotta get this thing. I gotta slow down a little bit, give my liver a break. But one day I heard a comedian somewhere talking about his drinking and like, not bad enough to go to a meeting, but it's getting rough. And I didn't really know what that meant, but I thought it was a funny line. And I said that to the guy that I was working with. I was like, yeah, I'm not ready to go to a meeting, but I gotta do something.

31:25
And he's like, man, I've been thinking about going to a meeting. And I was like, Whoa, like, like that was like a permission slip that I needed. Right. Cause he was, he was everything that I wanted to be. Cause I'm, you know, comparing his outsides to my insides. And I felt like he had it together. So like, if it was okay for him to go to a meeting, then it was okay for me to go to a meeting. That's what got me into Alcoholics Anonymous, which was a, definitely a transition point for me.

31:53
And I didn't go there to stop drinking, but I went there to try to figure out how to stop letting the shame monster eat me for lunch. Do you look at those talking moments with with that guy as like the first opportunity that you really let some of those inside vulnerable moments out and like maybe in a joking way, but like in a sense that like I'm going to test the waters because some of this is starting to leak out in a way that

32:20
You know, I need to share a little bit of the shame out loud. Do you look at that as like the first time in your life, really, that you were sharing your vulnerabilities? I think so. And it's like that was definitely sticking a toe in the water at most because that we worked on a military base as civilians. We were a bunch of mechanics working out there as civilian contractors. But everybody that I worked with was all prior service just like me. And that's that is the toxically masculine environment of all.

32:49
environments, right? Like everybody is like, you know, always looks tough and we don't, we don't admit pain. Like you can never admit pain to anything. So to even acknowledge that maybe the drinking is out of control is really pushing the boundaries on what two dudes can say to one another and like, which is so ridiculous, right? I look at it now, the...

33:15
the conversations that I'm willing to have with somebody. Like, I just feel like that's so ludicrous that we're so uptight about, is anybody seeing a flaw in our armor? But I think so many people can relate to it. Oh yeah. But because nobody in my world ever talked about anything bad, I didn't know that they felt that stuff, you know? That I thought it was just me, like we were talking about earlier, you're feeling alone. Like, I felt like I was the only one who walked around feeling ashamed of myself and hating who I was.

33:44
And I wasn't like everybody has all kinds of doubts and fears and everything. And I thought that it was just me. And it's interesting that like a comedian or like a little joke that you decided to kind of say again out loud, you know, to, to make your conversation, maybe he'll laugh, but actually there's this little hint of truth in it in which it kind of made that little crack for you, you know, maybe didn't change your life in.

34:12
in big giant ways, but it got you to the meetings. It got you as part of this Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm assuming that probably was a kickstart to something. Oh, that was a huge change for me. That was alcohol. Because you saw people like you. Right. Alcohol and cigarettes were my only two coping tools. But my very first AA meeting, there was a group of probably 20 people that sat around.

34:38
They did what's called a first step meeting for me for newcomers that walk in the door that you do a first step and that's basically everybody takes turns kind of telling their story. And how they ended up there and what they've gotten out of being there. And that was the first time in my life that I ever heard people talking about negative self feelings. And, and it was one after another people talking about, you know, I hated who I was. I slogged through every day. It was, you know, just, just going through the motions of existing.

35:07
You know, if I crashed into a tree and died on the way home, that probably would have been okay too. And like that blew me away. I had never, never heard people talk about that kind of stuff before. And I felt understood without even ever saying a word. And so that made me feel plugged in, in a way that I had never experienced. And I was 32 years old at that point. So definitely as an adult, I had never felt plugged into people who understood me like I did there. And that was enough to keep me coming back and be brave and try something different.

35:37
And that, you know, taking alcohol out really like that was hard in a way that like my only tool left for managing emotions was smoking. Like I can smoke a cigarette if I'm if I'm angry, I can smoke a cigarette if I'm excited. Like I was what I learned in that whole process is that I'm never OK with how I feel right now. And I feel like I've got to do something to change the way I feel. Distraction.

36:04
and I didn't have the alcohol to help me with that anymore. And that was a crazy transition point for me. And just in like budding self-awareness, because until that point, I think I had spent my whole life being reactionary to everything in life, not really having direction, not having purpose, not having any self-awareness at all. Like I had just never ever occurred to me to consider how my behavior impacts the people around me. Mostly I think

36:33
Again, back to childhood, because I was marginalized in every way, and I didn't feel like I mattered. And so therefore, I didn't feel like I could have an impact on other people. My girlfriend, we were together almost 11 years altogether at the end. But when I got sober, and she didn't, she continued drinking, kind of doubled down on that. But I realized that when I took alcohol out of the equation in our relationship,

37:01
that we didn't really have anything. Like we didn't have any common ground. I didn't like the TV shows she watched. Like we didn't do anything activity-wise other than party. That was the end of that. It struggled on for another year and a half because I was scared to death to live by myself because I'd never done that as an adult. I didn't have any, you know, no confidence that I could do anything on my own. But...

37:27
you know, taking the alcohol out and starting the process of introspection and trying to self-examine a little bit and figure out who I am. That was a crazy, huge transition point in my life. Do you feel like that was the first time you gave yourself permission to sit and think and feel?

37:51
Yes, I would say to not try to change how I feel, but just to observe it and even identify it. Because the only feeling that a man can have that's acceptable is anger or rage. So I had all these feelings all the time that I immediately smoked a cigarette to change or drank something to change those feelings. I couldn't even identify half of my emotions.

38:20
You know, I'm going through a lot of therapy in the last 10 years, but just a lot of that is me trying to figure out what my, what I'm feeling and then know that it's okay to feel what I'm feeling because I spent my whole life rejecting everything that I feel. And like, that's a, that's a huge transition to, you know, you got to get past that knee jerk of, okay, I have a feeling, uh, let me change that instead of, you know, let's identify it, figure out what it is, why I'm feeling it.

38:49
Is it destructive? Do I need to change this or is it okay? And learning that it's okay, like that's, that's a hard thing. And it's weird because I wonder if you feel the same way before I got therapy for my own situation, I felt like I could identify it in other people. Like I could identify like, Oh, it's fine. You can do this, this, this, this myself. I could like it was impossible to acknowledge.

39:16
that I was feeling a certain way and that was okay. But I could also tell people that it was okay if they felt that way, but not me. It was like one of those things where like, you could see it, just not in ourself. Did you have a similar feeling? I have a lot of that. And it was, I always have this mental image of like an actor when they have all these pictures of themselves with different expressions on their face trying to show all the different emotions.

39:43
Like that was basically my sense of what emotions were. It's like, I can make this face and you'll think that I'm happy. I can make this face. You'll think that I'm serious. I can make this face. You'll think I'm confused. Like it took me a long time to even be able to connect those things to the feelings that they were representing. So it was like a performance. Like your life up to that point was very much a performance and probably subconsciously for what? Approval of your parents, like stemming all the way back there.

40:11
and then the people around you to think they're thinking I'm OK. They're thinking I'm X, Y, Z, whatever that might be. So everything was trying to to become somebody that my dad would approve of. You know, my dad was super hands on. I was saying, you know, all that he could do all the things, right. But he had no respect or appreciation for intelligence and book smart stuff. And I was a book smart, intelligent guy. I was not a hands on guy.

40:40
But I tried to quash all of those elements of myself. And that's why I was a mechanic in an army base. I was trying to do something that my dad would think was a worthwhile job. Do you think he was afraid of those things? And that's why he didn't approve of them? Yeah, well, he didn't have them. Like he could barely read and write, you know? So he was afraid of it. Yeah. I think. Yeah. There's me being a therapist, which I'm not, so.

41:07
Oh yeah, there were definitely some challenges going on there. I was into all of the opposite things that he was into in every way. And I think that people who are very narrow-minded, small-minded, can't tolerate people who are different than them, right? And I think that my dad fell into that category with me, is that I was different from him and he couldn't tolerate that. Or he just didn't know how. I mean, I wonder if...

41:35
the tools provided by his parents and hit them. You know, we get this generational trauma that's kind of like just keeps following through if we don't make the changes, which it sounds like you've broken some of these. I have these chains of of trauma. I don't think until something happens. I think a lot of people just don't ever even think about that stuff, right? They're just living their life unconsciously.

42:01
Like, you know, I was living my life unconsciously until it got bad enough that I had to do something. In sobriety, I met a guy named Roland Mora, who was my mentor for six or seven years after that, that changed everything about my life. But he was an old gay, one-eyed Apache Vietnam veteran yoga instructor. So like- Is that on his business card? It's such an incredible guy. You're like long black hair, you know, a glass eye that looked off into the distance

42:31
It was never pointed in the right direction, but he had so much presence. He sounded like George Takei when he talked. I could just... I don't know. I love that guy. But he spent hours and hours and hours and hours with me, trying to help me work my way through my belief system, not just about myself, but about everything in the world, and examine why I believe what I believe, and do I really believe that?

43:01
And, you know, in that process, I learned that I had been living unconsciously. I just, you know, absorbed all this stuff from my parents and assumed that this is, this is what I believe. And I never really thought about any of that stuff. I ended up rejecting the vast majority of the platform that my whole life was built on. Like I've changed my beliefs on just about everything. But I think until you get somebody in your life or a situation in your life that forces you to stop and think about that stuff, like.

43:30
You just you just on autopilot like you don't ever really think about that. Right. I was just going to say, how did he break into that, though? Because I understand like your A.A. meetings were probably helpful in that sense. But it's really hard to come to that awareness and then break all the things around you. Like, how did how did you break through? One at a time. He took me through it. There's a workbook called A Gentle Path Through the Twelve Steps by Patrick Carnes. And Patrick Carnes is

44:00
I think he's an addiction psychologist. He has a lot of, a lot of stuff in that realm. But that book, we spent a year going through that book and me writing, I have notebooks filled with my answers on to all these questions and it kind of forced me into self-examination and then Roland and I would get together once a week, twice a week and go over what I had done that week. And, uh, and that, that kind of set the foundation and I had a big breakthrough moment when I quit drinking.

44:29
I had a lot of time to fill. And so I made friends with a guy at work who was into playing guitars and I was kind of into guitars. And we started playing music after work every day so that I could not drink, right? Because I needed something to do. And we ended up having a band. That was the first creative thing that I got into that made me realize I really like being creative. But we played a gig over in Savannah one time and then we went out to a steakhouse afterwards to celebrate because that was like a big...

44:58
milestone for our little music gig. And I'd never eaten in a steakhouse before. But on the rare occasion that we had steak when I was a kid, my dad always said, you know, a good steak ought to be burned to a crisp. And so all of my adult life, you know, I cooked a lot of steaks on the grill and I always burned mine to a crisp because that's how you eat your steak. And of course, the steakhouse wasn't willing to do that. And my buddy basically put me in a headlock and made me try a medium rare steak.

45:27
And it was amazing. Like it was absolutely amazing. I was like, my dad was wrong about steak and that was the cracks going across the ice. Yeah. Like my dad was wrong about steak. What else was he wrong about? Isn't it amazing that something like that? Stunning. Yeah. He was wrong about everything. He was wrong about who I was and what my value was, you know, but I needed to eat a bite of steak to start.

45:56
the process in my brain to examine what else I believe that might be wrong that I got from my parents. Is a moment like that positive or scary? Like is it a positive thing at the moment or is it like something that maybe the old version of you would have grabbed a drink to push down because oh my God everything that I knew is now wrong? It was scary but it was positive.

46:25
enough. Let me say this. At that point, I had already had several successes in trying scary, unknown things. Like getting sober. My life was better after I quit drinking. I couldn't deny that. I got single. My life was better after that. I started doing scary things like being in a band and playing music in front of people, which I never ever did or would have even considered before.

46:52
So I had enough successes like that under my belt to start leaning into change and being okay with the idea of changing my mind about things and doing things different, which is something that still gets reinforced to this day. Now I embrace change because I have had hundreds of positive experiences with my life just keeps getting better when I try to do something different. But you can't keep doing things the way you've always done them if you want your life to be different.

47:19
And I tried that for a little while, but I learned early on that change is good and I need to be okay with being uncomfortable in that initial moment. Yeah, it's hard because you think back to the younger version of you who probably did some things differently and then got like a pile of sticks for Christmas or got put in a trash can. You know, like those could have been moments in which you were doing something a little different than what people were expecting.

47:46
and you could have learned and you could have been better, but then you were always kind of like punished in a way. So I can see how scary that something like that might be. Yeah, I don't know. I think I just, I have some sort of resilient streak in me that always kept me going. Well, and I think the example you gave about going, with your mentor, like breaking down little things and reflecting and understanding that, okay, at some point in your life, you can now trust yourself.

48:16
You can trust your decisions. You can trust that you're going to be okay moving forward. I would imagine that it makes everything a little bit more palatable. Well, that happened for me when I finally started going to trauma therapy. And that's been the biggest, biggest, most gigantic life change for me. I went through EMDR and we examined all those childhood experiences that I had.

48:42
For people that aren't familiar with EMDR, it is a form of trauma therapy where you can change the emotions that are tied to memories. So we went back into my childhood and I would stand beside eight-year-old Justin at the firewood stack while dad standing there with the paddle in his pocket getting ready to spank me for the firewood not being perfect. And I could look at that and with my adult perspective and know that I did a great job.

49:09
Like the firewood stack was full, the house got heated, like we were never cold. Like I did my side. You know, my dad was messed up. He didn't know how to properly motivate and support me, but that had nothing to do with me, like I was fine. And we did that over and over with, with all these different childhood memories of, of situations like that. Like being in the trash can, you know, it wasn't because I didn't know how to keep my mouth shut, it was because my mom was a bad mom, right?

49:38
had nothing to do with me. She was 100% involved in that. I was 0% involved in that. I was just there. Is that lights and sounds? Is that how that works? You can do it with light. You can do it with sound. We did it with paddles, where you have a paddle in each hand and it vibrates back and forth from left to right. And it doesn't matter what it is, because the bilateral stimulation gets the amygdala fired up. Because I don't want to get too into the science on this.

50:07
And I don't know it well enough to get too deep into it, but I love it. But you know, your traumas don't make it through the amygdala the way the rest of experiences do. Traumas tend to get hung up and it's just feelings. Like there's no words in the amygdala. It's just a feeling center. And so when we fire up the amygdala with bilateral stimulation and then work through this stuff, you can get those feelings.

50:34
processed and moved on to the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex and other parts of the brain where they get turned into regular memories and then it doesn't cause a knee-jerk reaction every time a Insecurity gets triggered the way that it does when it's just hanging out in the amygdala unprocessed So so when I went through that like that reframed my whole understanding of not just who I am today But who I've always been I don't I don't look back on my child self or my teenage self or even my

51:02
you know, mid-20s alcoholic self with shame at what a loser I was. I look back at myself with pride, like, you know, considering the circumstances that I was dealing with, I did a great job at all that. And yes, I was a raging alcoholic with horrible behaviors, but of course I was. Like, nobody is gonna go through that experience and come out without some sort of massive trauma response, right? That's...

51:29
All of it made sense to me when you told me the story. That's how behavior works. So the only thing that's remarkable about any of that is the fact that I managed to pull out of it and change the direction that my life was going. A lot of people don't. And I could have died an alcoholic who was miserable and self-loathing and hated myself all my life, and I didn't. But that's because of trauma therapy. Trauma therapy changed everything for me. Is there a piece with...

51:57
trauma therapy and something as significant as that in which, you know, were you in your 40s, I guess, when you started this around that time? Is there a grief period of like things you, you didn't get to experience because you didn't have all these tools early on? Like is there a grieving period of your previous life? For sure. I mean, I feel sad about a lot of things in that respect.

52:25
I hate that I wasted so much time before I managed to get myself on track. You know, there's parts of me that, you know, wish that I could have figured this stuff out when I was 20. And, uh, but, you know, that's, that's not how it works. And, and, and wishing isn't going to change it, but what I can do now that, you know, I have this connection with all these child versions of myself and as, as I can, I can treat that kid. You know, I went to Disney for the, for Thanksgiving. It was the first time I've ever been to Disney. It was just this last year. So.

52:54
47 years old, went to Disney and they have Tom Sawyer's Island out there. And you ride the little boat over there and you can run around the trails and they've got the fort and they've got the cave and tunnels going through this thing. And like, I just brought my six year old kid out to have a blast. Cause I used to love reading Tom Sawyer. So we, I ran around like a, an idiot and had a great time on Tom Sawyer's Island for 30 minutes, went around the rest of the park, rode the rides, but I was consciously making sure that, you know,

53:24
My child's self is here experiencing stuff that he never got to experience in 1985. And so I can do that today and put myself in the right frame of mind. So it's not just an old guy out here acting like an idiot. It's that I'm giving myself things that I need. And who cares if you were? Right? Yeah. If you were an old guy doing whatever you want. I mean, this is the point of life. As long as you're not hurting other people.

53:50
If you can do the things that bring you joy and the things that that you're interested in, that you could be bad at, you know, and all these things are okay. Like we're allowed to make mistakes. We're allowed to do things wrong. For sure. Learn from them and we can have fun with it. And it's all okay. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting too. Like I feel like my, my moment in therapy was like in my thirties, I finally found like the right therapist that felt right for me. And

54:18
she was like, you realize that every decision that you've made since your mom died was with that eight-year-old's brain, like afraid of the next loss. And I was like, that was that crackling. You're like, and there was a grieving period of like, why didn't I do it this way when I was 18? Why didn't I do it this way when I was 20 something? But then at the same time, you have to, there's a grace, there's a forgiveness, there's a, you were doing the best you knew how to do with the tools that you had at the time.

54:48
And so I think that's what's so impactful about your story is that like, I mean, you found out at 44 that you could, you could heal that part of you or however old you were. I was 44. Oh, there you go. Yeah. You know, I have a, one of my visualization things that I do is I like to ride around in the truck. I've got a really nice truck and I like to crank the stereo up and we listen to gangster rap or heavy metal or whatever. And I have, you know,

55:14
a vision of like my 25 year old self is in the passenger seat and eight year old self's in the back seat, 12 year old self's in the back seat, 15. The truck is full of me and we're all just having a great time head banging and just having fun and being in the moment and accepting who we are. I think that being able to get there, getting okay with 25 year old alcoholic, sexually inappropriate Justin was really hard.

55:42
That took me the longest out of it. Because I can have compassion for the kid in the trash can. It was a lot harder for me to have compassion for the drunk guy in the bar feeling up everybody. Is that because you assume that 25, you should be making good decisions? Or like what was the hardest part about that? Because I've inherited my dad's belief system that I should be perfect. And learning how to accept the fact that I'm flawed and that that's okay. You know, that's...

56:08
That's where my grace is, I think, is when I can have my 25-year-old self sitting over there and just be okay with who he is. And feel compassion and love and empathy for that guy. Then I know that I'm in a good spot. And most days I'm there today. And it took me a long time. That wasn't an overnight thing. But over the last four years, I have made massive strides forward in self-acceptance for all versions of me. And that's an amazing thing. Like when I can...

56:36
Like that affects my confidence, my ability to be a leader, my ability to have empathy for other people, my ability to understand people. Like, you know, we have a vet clinic with 13 employees and they're all people and they have challenges and emotional traumas of their own and being able to recognize what's going on with them and know that, you know, she's lashing out, but it's not about me. She's lashing out because she's got a lot of crap going on in her personal life. She doesn't know how to deal with it yet, because she's 23.

57:06
So, you know, that allows me to be a better leader and I can support her and find ways to get her where she needs to be. So instead of, you know, feeling like I've got to fight to the death to defend my honor, when somebody says something catty to me, I can be like, you know, I know where you're at. I feel you, you know? And one of the things that we do in our business is we're willing to pay for anybody on our staff to go to therapy. So I put a pile of people through therapy every month. And...

57:35
To me, that's the best thing that I can do to help out the next generation in a way that I didn't get at that point in my life. That's wonderful. I wish more people did that. And I think maybe we're getting there. You know, as you were telling this story, I keep thinking back to like the moment of you sitting outside with your buddy at work and like just having this random like joke conversation come out of your mouth. Did you ever think of like, what if we didn't step outside that day? What if we didn't?

58:03
I've not thought about that, but that that was a pivotal moment. Like that that one conversation got me where I am today. It's this butterfly effect is like, I mean, the steak moment, too, like where you just like. Maybe if you had you ate a steak at home all the time, maybe if you had undercooked one once, you wouldn't have had that same reaction. But like the setting, the place, the understanding that like, no, promise you this is going to taste good and it's going to be better than you ever imagined. And then it did. And they're like.

58:34
My whole life what but it's funny like life is just a series of those butterfly moments And it's it's fascinating to me to sit and and and look at them and try to put all the pieces together But it also makes me so grateful because it seems like it's also unlikely, you know You know, I love to kind of bring these conversations home with a question and I'm wondering if if you Justin at this age this version of you

59:03
could talk to the little boy at Christmas time that was just waiting, hoping that the presents were actually hidden somewhere else or holding those sticks. Is there anything that you would want to say to him? I would want him to know that his value does not come from any external stuff. It doesn't come from anybody else's opinion. It doesn't come from things like his value is on the inside and he is amazing, no matter what happens. Yeah.

59:32
Well, you got here. You got here. You know, that little boy version of you got here and had to go through a whole mess of things, but you are here and it sounds like you're doing the things for you right now, but also you're, I mean, because of what you've learned, now you're helping the people that work for you. And I mean, it ends up being a beautiful story, despite some of the bumps along the way. It was a hard road to get here, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

01:00:01
because I don't think that I would be able to appreciate what I have in life if I hadn't had the stuff to compare it to, right? I need the bad for the goodness, the in and the yang. It's hard to say that out loud. It is the first time, maybe the second and the third time. Yeah, I say it too, and you know, facing my mom dying when I was a kid, not that I want that to ever happen to me.

01:00:28
But also I don't know who I would be had she not died when I was a kid. And so it's really hard to think back and go like, I'm thankful for what's happened since, I'm not thankful for the moment. And it's like, it's this weird thing to say out loud because we appreciate who we are at this moment in time and we know that all those things brought us here. Yeah, yeah. You know, my life is so full today. I have an incredible wife who's, you know, one of the most emotionally healthy and just amazing people.

01:00:58
on the planet and I have all of these things that really fill me up and make me feel like I'm contributing something to the world. And like, I don't wanna trade that stuff. I really don't. Yeah, no. Well, thank you for what you're bringing to the world. I know you mentioned you have eight books. So people wanna find you, read your books, like learn more about all the little details in your story. What's the best way to like get in your orbit? Everything is on my website at jboid.com.

01:01:27
long.com. I've got my books there, my blog, links to podcasts and all kinds of stuff. Awesome. And if they're needing of veterinary care, if they have a horse in Florida? Well, yeah, if you're interested, if you're a horse person or just wanted to hear about horse health stuff, our podcast is called Straight From the Horse Doctor's Mouth. And it's everywhere you can get podcasts. And our veterinary clinic is Spring Hill Equine Veterinary Clinic. And you

01:01:57
And we're on all the social medias at SpringHillyCoin. You never know. You never know who's listening. So get in Justin's orbit. And thank you for sharing your story in this particular way and letting me ask these questions. And I just appreciate you. Well, thank you for what you're doing. I think it helps. These conversations help break down barriers for other people and makes it OK for them to. And this changes the world. So you're changing the world. And I appreciate that. I appreciate that as well. I think.

01:02:27
You're right, I think it's just hearing these stories, even if you don't have the exact same experience as what you experienced, just to know that certain feelings are, all of it's okay, all of these things that we feel inside are okay, and we just need to find a way that is healthy to process it and work through it. So if you are listening and you connected with something that Justin said and you wanna reach out to him, please do that. If you know someone that needs to hear his story, please share this episode with them.

01:02:55
and I would be so grateful for that. And with that, I will be back next week with a brand new episode of the LifeShift Podcast. Thanks again, Justin. Thank you.