Project I Am

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

...

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...

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...

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 expl...

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 ep...

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...

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 healin...

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...

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...

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.

...

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...

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...

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, bu...

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, Mar...

Most of us move through life solving, fixing, performing, and managing.

We answer emails. We check boxes. We handle problems. We get things done.

But somewhere along the way… we forget how to truly meet each other.

In this reflective and deeply human episode of the Project I AM Podcast, David explores the work of philosopher Martin Buber and his timeless idea from I and Thou: that there are two ways of relating in the world.

I–It: where people become roles, problems, or tasks to manage. I–Thou: where we slow d...

In this Project I AM episode, David slows everything down and brings you back to one of the most life-changing practices you can learn: living and healing in the here and now. So much of our suffering comes from getting stuck in the past or bracing for the future. In this conversation, you’ll learn how to recognize the subtle moments when your system shifts into protection, like shutting down, speeding up, people-pleasing, numbing out, overthinking, or trying to control. And you’ll learn how to come back to yourself with compassion.

If you’ve been feeling anxiou...

The inner critic often disguises itself as responsibility and “honesty,” but it runs on threat. This episode helps you spot the disguise, understand what the critic is protecting you from, and practice nonviolent truth — the kind that leads to change without humiliation.

In this episode:

In this special end-of-year episode, David steps away from teaching and enters the realm of blessing, offering an extended inspirational poem instead of a traditional talk. “The Year Is Turning: A Blessing for Your Becoming” is a gentle, hope-filled reflection for anyone standing at the edge of 2026 feeling tired, hopeful, conflicted, or all of the above.

This poetic episode invites you to release harsh self-judgment, honor the year you’ve survived, and step into the new one with softer eyes and a kinder voice toward yourself. It’s not about resolutions or reinvention, but about learning to treat yo...

In this episode of the Project I Am Podcast, David invites you into a compassionate conversation about the stories you tell yourself, especially the ones shaped by shame. Together, you’ll explore the difference between what happened to you and what you made it mean about you, and how those old meanings can quietly run your life in the present.

David normalizes the deeply human experience of carrying harsh internal narratives like “I’m too much,” “I’m not enough,” or “I’m the problem,” and helps you trace where those stories came from (families, culture, relationships, faith communities) a...

What if the biggest barrier to your self-acceptance isn’t your past…but your refusal to forgive yourself for it?

In this episode of Project I Am, David explores why unforgiveness toward self is the #1 block to genuine freedom, confidence, and wholeness.

Together, you’ll unpack:

· Why shame and guilt are not proof that you’re a good person

· The hidden reasons we cling to self-punishment and can’t “let it go”

· How unforgiveness becomes a prison we decorate and call virtue

· What “delusional” self-forgiveness really means (and what it doesn’t)<...

In this episode, we name a kind of grief that rarely gets spoken aloud: not grief for what happened, but for what couldn’t happen. The unlived life. The version of you that never got to thrive. The dreams that never had safe ground. The tenderness that had to go quiet just to survive. This is grief without ritual and often without witnesses—yet it shapes how we carry ourselves, love others, and imagine our future. Together, we slow down enough to honor what was missing, to tell the truth about what was lost, and to soften the shame that...

In this soulful and meditative episode of Project I Am, Dr. David J. Schlosz gently guides you through the often-unseen experience of self-betrayal—the subtle ways we abandon parts of ourselves to fit in, be accepted, or feel safe. Drawing on wisdom from psychology, mystics, philosophers, and real-life reflection, we explore how self-betrayal fragments our wholeness and how we can begin to call our hidden parts home.

Through compassionate insight, inspirational poetry, and practical steps for self-reclamation, you’ll be invited to rediscover your inner truth, embrace your unique self, and find belonging without compromise. This episode is a...

In this slow, contemplative episode of Project I Am, Dr. David J. Schlosz lingers with the luminous theme of belonging—guided by the Celtic hospitality of John O’Donohue and the tender wisdom of Henri Nouwen. What if belonging isn’t something we win, but a home we remember?

Pour some tea. Let your shoulders drop. Come home to the truth that you already belong.

What if belonging isn’t a place you find, but a home you remember? In this sweeping, soul-level lecture, Dr. David J. Schlosz traces the long arc from exile to homecoming—guided by the luminous insights of Toko-pa Turner and echoed by voices like Maya Angelou, bell hooks, James Baldwin, John O’Donohue, Brené Brown, Henri Nouwen, and Parker J. Palmer.

David explores why the ache to belong is more than a feeling—it’s human infrastructure—naming what culture, public health, and art are all saying out loud: we need each other or we break. This episode invit...

In this deeply relevant and encouraging episode of Project I Am, Dr. David J. Schlosz explores the modern, secular wisdom behind the age-old phrase, "Forsake not the gathering together of the brethren lest you be deceived." Drawing from current psychological research, real-world stories, and lived experience, this episode uncovers how isolation leaves us vulnerable to believing lies about our worth, our value, and our place in the world—and how gathering in authentic community can offer clarity, healing, and strength.

You’ll learn:

· Why isolation is a serious mental and physical health risk

· The sp...

In this deeply grounding and inspirational episode, Dr. David J Schlosz guides you through a 20-minute meditation focused on resilience — the quiet, powerful strength that allows us to bend without breaking, to keep going even when life feels overwhelming.

Whether you're walking through a season of challenge or simply needing a moment of rest, this practice invites you to reconnect with your inner capacity to endure, heal, and grow. With gentle breathwork, self-compassion exercises, and imagery rooted in research-backed principles of resilience, this meditation offers both calm and encouragement.

You’ll be reminded: “You are strong...

A calm, grounding practice for counselors. In this episode, I guide you through “I” statements designed to help you arrive in the room, hold spacious, compassionate presence, and loosen the grip of impostor thoughts. Use this as a pre-session centering, a between-clients reset, or an evening debrief to return to yourself. No fixing, no perfection—just breath, awareness, and the reminder that you are enough for the work in front of you.

What you’ll get

How to...

Loneliness and isolation are spiking worldwide—but connection is medicine. In this episode, Dr. David explores Relational-Cultural Theory’s Five Good Things—zest, clarity, worth, empowered action, and a desire for more connection—and shows how they function as vital signs of relational health. You’ll hear the origin story from the Stone Center, research linking social connection to better mental and physical health, and simple practices to track and grow the good. Come learn how to be seen for who you really are—and to build relationships that repair, energize, and last.

In this episode of Project I Am, I have a conversation with Phoebe Cocetti and Julia Berg about Limerence. These two Austin based therapists provide group therapy to people experiencing Limerence.

Limerence is often described as an intense, involuntary state of romantic infatuation. It goes beyond having a crush—it’s a powerful emotional and physiological experience characterized by obsessive thoughts about another person, longing for reciprocation, and a deep need for emotional connection. People experiencing limerence often find themselves replaying interactions, daydreaming, or feeling heightened anxiety and euphoria depending on how the relationship—or even perceived signal...

In this episode of Project I Am, I interview Dr. Charle Heaton, a career educator and married gay man. From navigating deeply conservative spaces to fully embracing his authentic self, Dr. Charles Heaton’s journey is a powerful testament to resilience, identity, and pride. In this inspiring episode, Charlie shares what it was like to live as a married gay man while building a career in education—and how he found the courage to defy societal expectations and choose a life of truth and freedom.

Join us as we explore the complexities of identity, the cost of sile...

In this intimate interview on Project I AM, Dr. David Schlosz speaks with Diane (a pseudonym) about the unraveling and reweaving of her marriage to Jack following his affair. The conversation delves into the complex emotional journey through betrayal, the challenges of rebuilding trust, and the hard work of transforming their relationship. Diane shares the impact of infidelity on her self-esteem, the reconciliation process, and the practical changes they made to ensure a healthier, stronger marriage. This episode highlights the raw, ongoing evolution of a couple determined to break generational cycles and rebuild a deeply connected partnership.

In this reflective and educational episode of Project I Am, Dr. David Schlosz explores the profound role of transference and countertransference in the therapeutic relationship—unpacking how these often misunderstood dynamics can become powerful tools for growth, insight, and healing.

Through the lens of Relational-Cultural Therapy (RCT) and the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), David breaks down how the therapist-client relationship becomes a living classroom—one where old wounds show up in the room and where genuine connection creates the conditions for change. With real clinical vignettes, current research, and candid reflections from his own experience as a ther...