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Project I Am

by Dr. David J Schlosz

Season 2

Staying on My Own Side: A 20-Minute Meditation on Not Abandoning Yourself

This episode is a little different. No teaching, no notes to take. Just twenty minutes of guided practice, for you. Most of us learned early how to leave ourselves. How to get smaller, quieter, more acceptable. That wasn't weakness. You were not broken, you were adapting. But what was learned for survival can be unlearned in safety, and this practice is where we begin. Through slow, spacious affirmations, you'll practice staying with yourself in three places where self-abandonment likes to hide: in the moment you feel afraid, in the moment you're seen, and in the quiet afterward, when the room empties and the second-guessing begins. That drive-home voice that asks "was that really okay?" This one is for it. A note on listening: this practice invites your eyes to soften and your attention to turn inward, so please don't listen while driving. Save it for a moment when the time is yours. And don't forget to save it. This episode is built to be returned to. It works best the more familiar it becomes, so come home to it as often as you like. Keep becoming.

Two Things Can Be True - A Conversation with Megan Yale, LMFT-S, LPC-S

What if the two things you've been told to choose between: accepting yourself as you are, and changing, were never actually in conflict? In this episode, I sit down with my longtime colleague and friend Megan Yale, LPC-S, LMFT-S, for a conversation about Dialectical Behavior Therapy that goes far beyond the acronym. Megan trained intensively in DBT at the University of Washington and with its creator, Marsha Linehan, and she tells the origin story most people never hear: how Linehan tried a change-only approach and it failed, tried an acceptance-only approach and it failed, and then built a therapy on the radical idea that two opposite things can be true at the same time. We explore what that dialectic looks like in real life, why DBT is not just for any one diagnosis, and why the goal was never to get rid of emotions but to build a pause between feeling and action. Megan also shares two distress tolerance skills you can practice today (STOP and TIPP), and we wander into her other love, sandtray therapy, where the inner world gets built in miniature and people come face to face with their own truth. Whether you're doing your own healing work or sitting in the other chair as a helper, this conversation holds one message at its center: struggling doesn't mean you're broken. Sometimes you were just never given the skills. Connect with Megan: inlinemind.com where feelings are understood and skills take shape. Megan sees clients online and in person in the greater Austin area and offers Sandtray therapy training for clinicians.

The Challenge of the Binary - Beyond All Good and All Bad

We like to believe we see ourselves and others clearly. Yet under stress, uncertainty, shame, or relational threat, the mind often reaches for simpler conclusions: good or bad, safe or dangerous, success or failure, worthy or unworthy. In this episode of Project I Am, Dr. David J. Schlosz explores all-or-nothing thinking not merely as a cognitive distortion, but as a survival strategy. Binary labels can create temporary certainty and protect us from disappointment, ambiguity, and grief. Yet they also flatten our humanity, turning behaviors into identities and complicated people into fixed categories. Drawing from psychological research, contemporary culture, and the wisdom of poets including John Keats, Walt Whitman, and Robert Frost, this episode invites us to make room for a wider truth, one that allows for accountability without shame, compassion without compliance, and firm boundaries without denying another person’s humanity. Perhaps healing does not require us to decide whether we are good or bad. Perhaps it asks us to become spacious enough to recognize that we are complex, unfinished, accountable, and still becoming.

When Burnout Is Prolonged Self-Betrayal

Burnout is often described as the consequence of doing too much for too long. But sometimes, exhaustion is also the result of repeatedly leaving ourselves behind. In this episode of Project I Am, Dr. David Schlosz explores the idea that burnout, in many cases, is prolonged self-betrayal. This is not an accusation or a suggestion of moral failure. It is an invitation to become curious about the adaptations that once helped us remain safe, useful, successful, or connected, but may now be asking us to disappear. Through reflection, personal storytelling, and a guided somatic practice, this episode examines the distance that can develop between the life we perform and the truth our body is carrying. It explores resentment, exhaustion, boundaries, belonging, and the protective parts of us that learned to preserve connection by silencing our own needs. Recovery may require more than rest. It may ask us to recognize what is no longer sustainable, repair the relationship we have with ourselves, and reorient our lives around greater honesty and alignment. Perhaps healing begins with a simple promise: I will not abandon myself.

The Contraction After Expansion: When a Dream Makes us Visible.

What happens after you do the brave thing? You send the proposal, share the idea, apply for the position, set the boundary, or finally allow yourself to be seen. For a moment, it feels like expansion. Then the adrenaline fades, doubt rushes in, and a familiar voice asks, “Who do you think you are?” In this episode of Project I Am, I share a recent experience of putting something into the world and the internal collapse that followed. Together, we explore why courage can be followed by contraction, why being perceived can feel so vulnerable, and how growth may awaken old fears about criticism, failure, success, belonging, and the relationships we could disrupt by becoming more fully ourselves. We also examine the difference between fear and wisdom, between disappearing and setting a healthy boundary, and between protecting ourselves and abandoning ourselves. Rather than treating contraction as proof that we made a mistake, what if we approached it as a protective response deserving curiosity and compassion but not always authority? Perhaps we do not need to eliminate fear before moving forward. Perhaps a different kind of confidence becomes possible: not the certainty that nothing difficult will happen, but the trust that we will remain in relationship with ourselves when it does.

Living in the Realm of Possibility: Dreaming at the Size of Your Self

Nobody dreams bigger than their relationship with themselves will allow. In this episode, Dr. David Schlosz explores why the size of our dreams is a measure not of imagination but of self-concept, the quiet, adaptive answer we carry to the question who am I allowed to be? Drawing on NARM's insight that we disconnect from ourselves to stay connected to others, Carl Rogers' conditions of worth, the possible-selves research of Markus and Nurius, Bandura's work on self-efficacy, and Snyder's hope theory, this episode reframes small dreaming as an old act of protection and shows where present-moment agency lives. For clinicians: what it means to hold a client's possibility in trust until their self-concept can hold it themselves. For everyone: a guided somatic practice called Breathing Room, making a quarter-inch more space in the self. Referenced (as attributed paraphrase): Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander, Laurence Heller (NARM), Carl Rogers, Hazel Markus & Paula Nurius, Daphna Oyserman, Albert Bandura, C.R. Snyder, Judith Herman, D.W. Winnicott, Murray Bowen, Parker Palmer, Rilke, Desmond Tutu (Ubuntu).

An Interview with Kim Fry: The Therapist's Greatest Tool - Bringing Your Whole Self

What if the most important thing a therapist brings into the room isn't a technique, intervention, or perfectly timed question, but themselves? In this deeply personal conversation, I sit down with licensed marriage and family therapist Kim Fry to explore how our relationship with ourselves shapes every relationship we have with others. Together we talk about the transformative power of curiosity, why therapists don't heal people by fixing them, and how our own unresolved stories inevitably show up in the therapy room. Kim shares the profound story of a single voicemail from her own therapist that forever changed her relationship with anger, authenticity, and what it means to truly be seen. From there, our conversation unfolds into an exploration of presence, supervision, vulnerability, and why healing begins when we stop performing and start showing up as fully human. Whether you're a therapist, helping professional, or simply someone longing to live more authentically, this episode is an invitation to consider a different question: What if your greatest gift to another person is not having the answers—but being fully present with them? In this episode, we explore: Why the therapist's relationship with themselves matters more than any intervention How curiosity creates the conditions for healing The difference between fixing someone and being with someone What anger can teach us about ourselves Why authenticity is often our greatest challenge, and our greatest gift How therapists can cultivate a more sustainable and deeply human practice

The Well (3 of 3): Offering the Cup.

An invitation to stay with yourself. We've spent two episodes digging the well and learning how to draw water. Now it's time to drink. The final episode in The Well series is unlike any previous episode of Project I Am. Rather than another teaching, this is a guided experience, a gentle invitation to slow down, and reconnect with your body. Through reflection, visualization, and somatic awareness, Dr. David Schlosz guides listeners back to the place where healing begins, not by becoming someone different, but by finally learning how to stay with themselves. You don't have to earn rest. You don't have to earn compassion. You don't have to become perfect before you deserve love. The deepest wells are not filled by striving. They're filled by relationship. They're filled by grace. They're filled by the courage to keep coming home to yourself. If you've journeyed through Parts One and Two, this final episode brings the series to its emotional and spiritual conclusion. Take a deep breath. Come to the well. The water is waiting.

The Well (2 of 3): Drawing Water. How Your Healing Becomes Someone Else's Hope

How your healing becomes someone else's hope. We've spent years talking about self-awareness. But what actually happens when two nervous systems meet? In Part Two of The Well, Dr. David Schlosz explores the invisible space between people, the place where healing relationships are formed. Why do some people make us feel instantly safe? Why do we sometimes carry emotions that don't belong to us? How can we remain deeply compassionate without losing ourselves? Drawing from counseling, attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, and years of clinical experience, David unpacks the profound difference between rescuing and accompanying, empathy and emotional fusion, and reacting versus remaining present. In this episode, you'll discover: Why your body is always listening The hidden wisdom of countertransference How to ask, "Whose feeling is this?" Why differentiation is essential for healthy relationships The difference between helping someone and carrying them Most importantly, you'll discover that people rarely heal because someone says the perfect thing. They heal because they discover someone who isn't afraid to stay. Whether you're a therapist, a student, a caregiver, or someone who simply wants to love the people in your life more deeply, this conversation will change the way you understand connection and yourself. Because when you've spent years digging your own well... you finally have water to offer.

The Well (1 of 3): Digging. Why Your Healing Begins with You

Why your healing begins with you. Before we can become a safe place for someone else, we have to learn how to become a safe place for ourselves. In Part One of this three-part series, Dr. David Schlosz explores one of the most important and often overlooked truths of healing: the work we avoid in ourselves inevitably shapes the way we show up in our relationships. Using the metaphor of a well, David reflects on why personal growth isn't separate from helping others, it is the foundation of it. Whether you're a counselor, parent, teacher, leader, or simply someone longing for deeper relationships, this episode is an invitation to stop performing, stop abandoning yourself, and begin the courageous work of digging beneath the surface. Together, we'll explore: Why healing is expansion, not erasure How childhood adaptations become adult patterns The difference between surviving and truly living Why your greatest gift to others is your willingness to keep doing your own work Because every difficult conversation... Every honest therapy session... Every boundary... Every tear... Every moment you choose yourself instead of abandoning yourself... You're digging the well. And one day, someone else's hope may come from the depth you've been willing to create. "Every place you've learned to stay with yourself becomes another place you can stay with someone else."

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