Justin's Story
I experienced life through a lens of Mental Health patterns that were created out of fear surrounding an inability on how to process emotions and emotional traumas. Mental Health begins when we lack an ability to speak our truth or communicate to others around us how we feel which debilitates our self confidence, self esteem and the greatest detriments, the lack of self love and self care. When our Fear becomes so great, we create habits that will have us distract from the uncomfortable feelings associated to an experience or experiences we do not know how to process. Often these habits are destructive to our being as we begin to believe the external pain we cause to ourselves will help mask the internal pain we do not have a language for.
For 23 years I used drugs and alcohol the same way people use video games, shopping, social media, food, porn, gambling etc. as a way to disconnect from areas of my life that I did not have the tools to heal from. Addiction had become an identity that I would display to the world to hide from my true authentic self for fear of having to Speak my Truth, simply because I lacked a language on how to communicate about my Feelings. My addictions began at the age of 14 where I would begin to traverse life through the varying degrees of drug use. I experienced all drugs habitually as my appetite to disconnect from uncomfortable feelings, surrounding difficult experiences would only grow over time, as I began to create new emotional traumas as the result of my choices.
When I was 19 I was introduced to Heroin and the needle. At this point in my life my experiences would become far more intense within the consequences of my choices. Over the course of the next 17 years I would face the loss of three children, partnerships I had within two companies, family, my freedom and my home. When I faced a state of homelessness, I began to learn life from a very different perspective. Fuelled by addiction and a lack of will to live at the loss of all that I accumulated, I found myself in jail where I would finally surrender to Love and face the root core issue of why I began to disconnect in the first place.
Awakening and Understanding
An awakening into Love took place at a time when I knew I didn’t have anything to loose because I was sick and tired of being tired and sick. With a new mindset and a desire to understand the tools of love such as compassion, kindness, forgiveness, empathy, through the lens of honesty and authenticity, I would transform a very difficult life experience that I believed happened TO me, into something that happened FOR me.
Now, I share with others how I overcame my Addictive personality and poor Mental Health practices through the emotional education of what our emotions are trying to teach us. Rather than fear emotions which causes us to avoid the feelings, I offer an understanding of trauma and how the education within the experience allows us to process the past. Once we are able to use the tools of Love within traumatic areas of our life such as not being seen or not being heard, abandonment, physical or sexual abuse, toxic relationships etc. we can begin to heal a root core issue that no longer requires substances to mask the symptoms caused by it. The awareness of education within the difficult experience has been where I have seen my greatest results within those that are looking to grow, simply because it allows them to view the experience outside the lens of blame and victim mentality.
As the results of my practice I overcame a situation that statistics state only .01% of people make it out of. I have a beautiful wife, who is more of a best friend, whom I grow with through the continued understanding of who we are together and who we are within ourselves as individuals. I own two companies that allow me to travel the world and share my message with many people within the awareness that Mental Health and Addiction affects Human Beings, a part of the Human Race, to bring an awareness of equality to our current situation where Mental Health and Addiction affect 80% of humans today.
I have a Podcast called Real Talk for an Unreal World that shares about the power of adversity within human experience as a means for others to connect with real people and see how they can overcome areas that they feel discomfort within, to help them evolve into and connect with Love. I am a consultant for the Government of Canada a part of The Shift training program that teaches government employees how to better understand Mental Health and Addiction through lived experience but my greatest achievement is the daily practice of understanding myself and evolving within the Power of Love so that I can continue to share the results with my brothers and sisters around me, to be an example that you can do anything in this Life with a shift in perspective.
Start the Journey
Available for 1 on 1 Online Wellness Coaching sessions as well as Corporate Events (online or in person in select areas).