Project I Am

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

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.

Grief has a way of undoing us.

It can leave us feeling unanchored… disoriented… like something essential has been taken and nothing quite makes sense anymore. And while the world keeps moving, something inside of us feels like it has come to a standstill.

In this episode of Project I Am, I invite you into a different kind of encounter with grief.

Not one that tries to fix it. Not one that rushes you through it. But one that gently makes space for it.

This is a guided meditation designed to help you sit with your grief… to notice where it lives in your body… and to reconnect with what remains. Because while loss changes everything, it does not erase the love, the connection, or the imprint left behind.

Whether you are grieving the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, a life transition, or a version of yourself… this space is for you.

Slow down. Breathe. Come as you are.

You don’t have to carry this alone.

What does courage really look like?

In this second group conversation about Courage, Dr. David Schlosz invites four new guests to share a defining moment in their lives when they chose courage.

What unfolds is an honest and deeply moving conversation about truth, returning to self, saying yes, being an ally, new beginnings, and the difficult decisions that shape who we become.

Each guest shares a personal story followed by a meaningful poem, and together the group reflects on what courage feels like, what it costs, and how it often requires us to choose authenticity over approval.

The conversation becomes something unexpected: a sacred space of reflection where strangers witness each other's courage and discover the common thread connecting their stories.

If you are navigating a difficult decision, a season of change, or a moment where life is asking you to be brave, this episode will resonate deeply.

What does courage really look like?

In this powerful roundtable episode of Project I Am, Dr. David Schlosz invites four guests to share a defining moment in their lives when they chose courage.

What unfolds is an honest and deeply moving conversation about truth, grief, leadership, self-trust, and the difficult decisions that shape who we become.

Each guest shares a personal story followed by a meaningful poem, and together the group reflects on what courage feels like, what it costs, and how it often requires us to choose authenticity over approval.

In this episode you will hear stories about: • Speaking the truth despite painful consequences • Standing up to authority with integrity • Choosing your own path when expectations say otherwise • Navigating grief and loss • Leaving situations that no longer honor who you are

The conversation becomes something unexpected: a sacred space of reflection where strangers witness each other's courage and discover the common thread connecting their stories.

If you are navigating a difficult decision, a season of change, or a moment where life is asking you to be brave, this episode will resonate deeply.

If fragmentation forms in relationship, integration must also happen in relationship.

In this episode, Dr. David Schlosz enters the therapy room to explore how identity integration unfolds in real time. Drawing from the existential immediacy of Irvin Yalom and the relational conditions described by Carl Rogers, he describes how subtle micro-moments in therapy create opportunities for reintegration.

This is a practical and clinical episode — exploring how therapists can work with parts without pathologizing them, how shame is metabolized in relationship, and why the therapist’s own regulation is central to integration.

Integration is not technique alone. It is relational presence in action.

What is it like to grow up inside a system you did not create?

In this deeply personal episode of the Project I AM Podcast, David shares his experience of growing up in apartheid South Africa and reflects on the historical events that shaped an entire generation.

But this episode is not simply about history.

It is about what history teaches us.

At the heart of the episode are three personal lessons David carries with him from growing up in apartheid South Africa, lessons about how systems shape us, the remarkable capacity of human beings to transform, and why healing always begins with truth.

Through storytelling and reflection, this episode invites listeners to consider how the systems we inherit influence who we become and how we might participate in shaping a more just future.

Because sometimes the journey of becoming is not only personal.

Sometimes it is historical.

How does identity become divided in the first place?

Building on Episode 1, Dr. David Schlosz explores the developmental origins of fragmentation. Through attachment theory, the identity-based trauma lens of Laurence Heller’s NARM, and contemporary neuroscience, he examines how survival strategies become personality.

This episode unpacks how shame silences parts of the self, how nervous system states shape identity expression, and how early relational environments organize internal experience.

Fragmentation is not random. It is structured adaptation.

Understanding that structure is the first step toward integration.

The Problem Beneath the Problem: Fragmentation, Not Failure

What if symptoms are not signs of disorder… but signs of adaptation?

In this opening episode of the Relational Identity Integration series, David reframes anxiety, perfectionism, numbness, and relational patterns through a developmental lens. Rather than viewing clients as broken, he introduces the idea that many psychological struggles are expressions of identity fragmentation, protective adaptations formed in response to attachment disruptions and shame.

Drawing from existential psychology, relational theory, and trauma-informed frameworks, this episode lays the foundation for understanding therapy not primarily as symptom elimination, but as the restoration of identity coherence.

If you’ve ever felt high-functioning yet internally divided, this episode will help you see your symptoms in a radically different light.

Healing begins with understanding.

What if therapy is not about fixing what’s broken… but about retrieving what was lost?

In this deeply reflective episode of the Project I AM Podcast, David explores the idea that therapy is a modern form of soul retrieval, the gentle, relational process of helping clients come back into connection with the parts of themselves that had to go into hiding in order to survive.

Drawing from the work of Irvin Yalom, Carl Rogers, and Lawrence Heller (NARM) — alongside the wisdom of poets and mystics like John O’Donohue, Rumi, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Ávila, Mary Oliver, and David Whyte, this episode weaves psychology, spirituality, neuroscience, and lived experience into one powerful truth:Healing is not becoming someone new. Healing is becoming someone true.

Whether you are a therapist, a student, or someone on your own healing journey, this episode invites you to reconsider what growth really means — and what it feels like to finally come home to yourself.

If you’ve ever felt successful but not fully alive… connected but not fully known… this conversation is for you.

Welcome home.