Welcome back to the podcast. I just had my weekly therapy session, which these days is midweek in the afternoon. My therapist's name is Arthur, and we've been working together for about a year now. Arthur has been monumental for my healing.

I want to reflect on today's session. Arthur came in and said, "Forget about dating. Forget about men. Forget about Julian"—whom my heart is still aching for. He said, "You're traumatized. You carry trauma in you—let's talk about that." So we worked a bit with my inner child, and how my inner child was the part of me chasing the breadcrumbs from Julian—how at the slightest crumb Julian gave me, I groveled to get it. It's pretty sad, and I wanted to cry, yet at the same time I felt so seen and validated sitting there with Arthur.

For some reason, my inner critical parent immediately wanted to shame me for it: "Oh, you still have trauma? Wow, you're not healed yet—shame on you." I could feel that flash of shame, wanting to insist that I'm improving. But the reality is that healing from decades of childhood trauma doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen in a month. It takes a lot of time to heal, to learn to love yourself, to recover, and to become the person you need to become.

We also spoke a lot about "the machine"—the force inside me that drove me to build a successful business, that drove me to pursue prestigious academic fellowships, that drove me to become a professor in my twenties, that drove me to travel all over the world—and now that exact same machine is driving me to go on endless dates: date, date, date. Arthur's advice was simple: "Slow. Slow. Slow. Slow down."

I feel so much better after therapy today because I felt genuinely seen and validated. It felt like my younger self—my inner child—was finally being seen, heard, and supported, and it left me feeling loved and held.

I want to use this podcast to reflect on what it's actually like to heal from trauma, and how you recover and manage it. Trauma is a huge thing: it affects your nervous system, it affects your boundaries, it erases your needs, and it erases your emotions. And we all suffer through trauma—a heartbreak is trauma, a divorce is trauma. Often, from childhood all the way into adulthood, we don't pause to process it. If anything, the painful experiences I've had recently have forced me to finally stop and recognize that there is real trauma here to work through. At the same time, I am not defined by my trauma. It's something I face, not my self-worth—just as my external achievements don't define my value or self-worth either.

Another question that came up in therapy today was: "Who am I outside of all the achievements?" I think about this a lot, and I have two answers.

First, on a human level, I both know and don't know who I am—but here is what I know for sure: I am someone who craves connection. I am someone who is neither above nor beneath anyone else; I want to belong to a tribe and a community. I am someone who deeply values his relationships—with my parents, my sister, Marcus, my team, my coworkers, the people I hire, and even the strangers I interact with. I cherish human connection and try to treat everyone with honesty and integrity. I want intimacy in my friendships, I want to show up for others when they are in need, and I am someone who makes sacrifices and is generous with the people who work with me. That is who I am. And yes, I am someone who wants and needs an intimate partner—someone I can heal and grow alongside.

Second, in terms of what I want to do professionally, I honestly don't know who I am yet. I built a successful business, and when I went to an industry conference and sat alone in my hotel room, I thought to myself, "That's not who I am." I can manage it and handle it, sure, but I don't want to spend my life pouring my time into it anymore. And I'm definitely not an academic or a professor at heart—I don't like teaching, and I don't like doing administrative tasks for any university or corporate department. I am not that.

So professionally, I can't answer who I am yet, because I'm exploring. Right now I'm exploring music, and I'm discovering that I really enjoy speaking into a microphone with this podcast. I'm someone who likes going to the gym and working out, someone who likes swimming, and someone who really, really loves having a cappuccino and a chocolate croissant every fucking morning. That is who I am. I'm someone who wants to be present, who meditates and feels grounded afterward. I am a work in progress, I am learning, and simply being able to talk openly with my therapist about all of this feels like the cornerstone—the baseline—of how healing actually begins.

I have to head out to a dinner now with my friend. Thank you for attending this episode.