Project I Am | Podcast in RSS.com

Project I Am

di Dr. David J Schlosz

Stagione 2

Empathic Witness: The Reaching

There is a particular kind of loneliness that has nothing to do with being alone. You can be loved, married, surrounded, texted-back-within-the-hour, and still feel that no one in the room is meeting the real you. Just the version you sent ahead. The easy one. The capable one. The one who's fine. For a lot of us, that gap wasn't an accident. We built it. Because somewhere along the way, being seen stopped feeling safe. In this episode, Dr. David Schlosz explores the need to be seen: why it's biology rather than neediness, why we run from it even as we ache for it, and what happens in the body when someone finally stays long enough to witness us and doesn't look away. As he says, "We were made for the dance." Three lenses: your inner life, the therapy room, and the one who does the seeing. The episode ends with a short guided practice. You are not broken. You were adapting. Come as you are.

Capacity: The Art of Staying

What determines whether pain breaks us or transforms us? In this episode, David explores one of the most neglected concepts in psychological healing: capacity, the room we have for our own difficult emotions, and for each other's. Through three lenses, our own inner life, the therapy room, and the heart of the helper, this episode weaves together the window of tolerance, research on emotional suppression and experiential avoidance, the neuroscience distinguishing empathy from compassion, and stories of people learning that the feelings they feared would drown them were actually survivable. Whether you're a clinician, a leader, a parent, or simply someone carrying something heavy, this episode offers both a framework and a practice: capacity is not a trait you're born with. It is a room you build, one ninety-second stay at a time.

When Healing Changes Your Relationships

We often imagine healing as a journey toward peace, freedom, and deeper connection. But what happens when your growth starts changing the relationships around you? In this episode of Project I AM, Dr. David Schlosz explores one of the most difficult and rarely discussed realities of healing: not everyone benefits from your becoming healthier. As you learn to set boundaries, listen to your body, speak your truth, and stop abandoning yourself to keep the peace, relationships inevitably shift. Conversations change. Roles dissolve. Old patterns are challenged. And sometimes the people who seemed most comfortable with you are actually most comfortable with the version of you that ignored your own needs. If you've ever felt guilty for growing, lonely for changing, or confused by how others respond to your healing journey, this conversation is for you. Because sometimes healing isn't about learning how to keep everyone else comfortable. Sometimes it's about learning how to remain loving without disappearing. "You do not need to become less compassionate to become whole. You simply need to include yourself in the circle of compassion." #ProjectIAM #HealingJourney #Boundaries #SelfWorth #AttachmentHealing #Relationships #TraumaRecovery #MentalHealthPodcast #Authenticity #PersonalGrowth #NARM #RelationalHealing #SelfCompassion #TherapyInsights #EmotionalHealth

Anger as Protest

Anger is one of the most misunderstood emotions we experience. Many of us were taught to fear it, suppress it, spiritualize it away, or turn it inward against ourselves. But what if anger is not the enemy? What if healthy anger is actually a form of protest, agency, dignity, and self-protection? In this episode of Project I Am, Dr. David Schlosz explores the difference between destructive rage and healthy, integrated anger. Drawing from trauma psychology, somatic work, relational healing, and personal reflection, David discusses how suppressed anger often becomes shame, depression, self-abandonment, perfectionism, and self-criticism. Sometimes anger is not evidence that something is wrong with you. Sometimes it is evidence that something inside you still knows you deserve dignity. If you’ve ever struggled with self-blame, resentment, people pleasing, emotional suppression, or feeling disconnected from your own needs, this episode is for you.

Abandoning Ourselves to Protect Ourselves

There are moments in life when we abandon ourselves in order to protect ourselves. We stay silent instead of speaking honestly. We disconnect from our feelings to avoid conflict, rejection, shame, or discomfort. And afterward, something painful lingers: the feeling that we betrayed ourselves. In this episode of Project I AM, Dr. David J. Schlosz explores the hidden cost of self-abandonment and why so many of us learned to disconnect from ourselves in order to survive. Drawing from relational therapy, trauma work, somatic psychology, and personal experience, David unpacks how self-protection can quietly become self-betrayal and why choosing ourselves in healthy, grounded ways is one of the most courageous acts we can make. If you’ve ever felt exhausted from performing, people-pleasing, caretaking, or disappearing inside relationships, this conversation is for you. You do not have to disappear to be loved.

I Didn’t Deserve This

In one of the most personal and vulnerable episodes of Project I AM to date, Dr. David Schlosz explores the painful intersection of shame, trauma, grief, and healing. Drawing from his recent experiences in an intensive training, David reflects on a profound realization that moved from intellectual understanding into something much deeper. This episode explores how children internalize blame in order to survive unsafe environments, how shame becomes embedded in identity, and how survival strategies formed in trauma can later affect relationships, emotional regulation, and self-worth. David discusses the difference between cognitively knowing something and emotionally believing it, the role of the nervous system in trauma, and why anger often protects deeper grief. Blending personal storytelling, somatic awareness, relational healing, and reflections from thinkers like Gabor Maté and Carl Rogers, this episode offers a deeply human reminder that survival was never your identity, it was an adaptation. And beneath the adaptations, there is still a self worthy of love, grief, compassion, and belonging. This episode contains discussions of childhood trauma, sexual abuse, conversion therapy, shame, and grief. Listener discretion and self-care are encouraged.

Confessions of a Covert Narcissist: Protecting Instead of Connecting

In this follow-up episode, David moves beyond labels and into honest self-reflection with a powerful conversation titled “Confessions of a Covert Narcissist.” This episode is not about diagnosing others. It is about recognizing the subtle ways fear, shame, insecurity, and emotional self-protection can shape all of our behaviors. Why do we become defensive when receiving feedback? Why do we sometimes over-give and quietly keep score? Why does being misunderstood feel so painful? Why do we perform instead of authentically connect? Blending psychology, nervous system insight, personal anecdotes, therapeutic wisdom, and compassionate reflection, David explores how covert narcissistic tendencies often emerge not from arrogance… but from unhealed shame and the desperate need to protect ourselves from emotional pain. This episode offers a compassionate reminder: Having protective patterns does not make you broken. It makes you human. The work is becoming aware enough to choose connection over protection. Because awareness is not condemnation. Awareness is the beginning of freedom.

The Hidden Armor: Understanding Covert Narcissism With Compassion

What if narcissism isn’t always loud? In this compassionate episode of Project I Am, David explores the hidden world of covert narcissism: the quiet, vulnerable, and often misunderstood ways people protect themselves from shame, rejection, and emotional pain. Rather than reducing people to labels or internet buzzwords, this episode looks beneath the behavior to the deeper wounds that often fuel defensiveness, validation-seeking, self-absorption, withdrawal, perfectionism, martyrdom, and emotional fragility. This conversation is not about blame. It is about awareness. Blending psychology, personal insight, therapeutic wisdom, quotes, and heartfelt reflection, this episode invites listeners to move away from judgment and toward compassionate self-awareness. Because sometimes the behaviors that hurt others most are rooted in the deepest fear of not being enough. This episode is for anyone who has: struggled with criticism or defensiveness felt unseen or emotionally fragile experienced confusing relational dynamics over-given while secretly longing for validation wondered whether healing is possible for deeply ingrained patterns Healing begins when we stop protecting the image… and start telling the truth.

Why Healing Trauma Requires More Than Talking About It

There are some wounds that insight alone cannot heal. In this episode of Project I Am, Dr. David J. Schlosz explores why effective trauma therapy must go beyond cognition and include the body and nervous system. While many people understand their trauma intellectually, they often continue to struggle because the trauma remains unprocessed physiologically. This episode dives into the growing field of somatic experiencing and explains the difference between top-down healing (thoughts, insight, narrative) and bottom-up healing (nervous system regulation, embodiment, and safety in the body). Drawing from attachment theory, neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory, and trauma research, Dr. Schlosz explores how trauma lives in muscle tension, hypervigilance, shutdown, shame, and relational patterns and why healing often requires reconnecting with the body compassionately and slowly. Through stories, reflections, quotes, and therapeutic insights, this conversation offers a deeper understanding of why people can “know better” cognitively and still feel stuck emotionally and physically. This episode is for therapists, counseling students, trauma survivors, and anyone seeking a deeper understanding of healing. “Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.” — Peter Levine

A Conversation about Grief with Elli and Rachel

We think we can prepare for grief. We read about it. We anticipate it. We try to brace ourselves for the moment we know is coming. And then it happens… and nothing prepares us. In this deeply human and unfiltered conversation, David sits with two guests to explore the lived experience of losing a mother through illness, through distance, through time, and through the quiet shock that follows even when the loss is expected. This is not a clinical discussion. It’s not a guide. It’s not five steps to healing. It’s a real conversation about what grief actually feels like: the illusion of being prepared the isolation of mourning alone the weight of being present at the end the disorientation of feeling untethered the complexity of loving imperfect parents and the slow, ongoing work of learning to live without them There are moments of heartbreak. Moments of honesty. Moments of unexpected laughter. And somewhere in it all… a quiet recognition that grief does not take everything, it reveals what remains. If you’ve ever lost someone… or know that one day you will… this conversation is for you.

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