In Season 3, Episode 6 of Unharmable, TJ sits down with Michael Crown for a deeply personal conversation about addiction recovery, self-worth, shame, consciousness, and the transformative power of changing the way we understand our past.

Michael shares his journey through addiction, recovery, and the lifelong struggle to reconcile his potential with the belief that something inside him needed to be fixed. He reveals how an unexpected realization about his adoption transformed his understanding of abandonment, worthiness, and love—and ultimately changed the story he had been telling himself.

Together, TJ and Michael explore why so many of us build our identities around painful experiences, how shame can keep us trapped in patterns of self-sabotage, and why true healing isn't about becoming someone new. It's about reconnecting with the wholeness that was never lost.

This conversation challenges conventional ideas about recovery, personal growth, and healing. Rather than defining ourselves by our trauma, mistakes, diagnoses, or past behaviors, we can learn to hold our experiences with compassion while choosing a different way forward.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why you are not broken, even if you've spent years believing you are.
• How shame and feelings of unworthiness can shape your identity, relationships, and decisions.
• Why gratitude and acceptance don't have to mean settling for less than your potential.
• How Michael reframed his adoption story from one of abandonment to one of love.
• The difference between changing your past and changing your relationship with it.
• Why success, achievement, and external validation cannot create lasting self-worth.
• How self-compassion and compassion for others can help us move beyond victimhood.
• Why wholeness doesn't mean perfection or the absence of pain.
• How recognizing the beliefs beneath our behavior can open the door to meaningful transformation.
• Why healing begins when we stop defining ourselves by what happened to us.

A powerful reminder: You are not your past. You are not your mistakes. And you are not the painful conclusions you've drawn about yourself.

What if your story doesn't have to define you?

Please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who may need this message today.

Learn more: www.Unharmable.com

For more on Michael Krowne: https://michaelkrowne.com

In Season 3, Episode 5 of Unharmable, TJ Woodward sits down with Dr. Krista Gilbert, PhD, longtime friend, mentor, therapist, executive, and former clinical leader, to explore what it means to discover the “unharmed” place within—the part of us that remains whole, loving, and capable even in the midst of trauma, suffering, uncertainty, and profound life change.

TJ and Krista reflect on their shared history, including the difficult experiences that first brought them together in the treatment world, and how those experiences ultimately revealed something deeper about healing, leadership, purpose, and human potential.

Rather than asking, “What’s wrong with me?”, this conversation invites us to ask a different question: “What is still true about me beneath everything I’ve experienced?”

Together, TJ and Krista explore:

• The brokenness paradigm and why so much of modern culture is built around fixing what we believe is wrong with us
• The concept of an “unharmed” or whole place within that remains untouched by our circumstances
• Krista’s childhood experience of recognizing an inner sense that there was always a path forward
• TJ’s own childhood awareness of love, followed by the experience of forgetting that knowing
• How trauma, addiction, shame, and cultural conditioning can cause us to believe we are broken, unlovable, or not enough
• The difference between grit and the deeper capacity to keep moving from a place of inner knowing
• Why difficult experiences can burn away identities and beliefs that were never truly who we are
• Limiting beliefs, self-concepts, and the question: “Who do you think you are?”
• The importance of purpose, mission, and remembering who we have come here to be
• Leadership, executive coaching, and the transformative power of seeing someone's potential when they have temporarily lost sight of it
• Why we need one another as mirrors, witnesses, mentors, friends, and sources of connection
• The relationship between suffering and joy, and why expanding our capacity to experience pain can also expand our capacity for joy
• The power of leaning into pain instead of running from it
• Equanimity—maintaining balance and presence in the midst of uncertainty, stress, and change
• How reconnecting with our essential wholeness can create a different kind of energy, purpose, leadership, and freedom

This is a conversation about healing without defining ourselves by what needs to be healed—and about discovering the possibility that beneath the layers of conditioning, fear, trauma, identity, and limitation, something whole has been there all along.

Please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who may need this message today.

Learn more: www.Unharmable.com

For more on Dr. Krista Gilbert,: https://www.growingedgebh.com

In Season 3, Episode 4 of Unharmable, TJ Woodward sits down with physician, chronic pain expert, and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Mel Pohl for a deep conversation about what happens when we stop treating people as broken and start seeing the possibility within them.

TJ and Dr. Pohl explore the powerful intersection of trauma, addiction, chronic pain, shame, nervous-system regulation, and healing—and why true recovery may require us to move beyond purely cognitive approaches.

Dr. Pohl shares how his own work has evolved from a traditional, symptom-focused medical model toward a more holistic understanding of healing that incorporates the body, nervous system, emotions, connection, and safety.

Together, TJ and Mel challenge the idea that healing is simply about eliminating symptoms or fixing what's wrong. Instead, they explore what becomes possible when we become curious about the underlying experiences that created our survival strategies in the first place.

In this episode, they explore:

• Why shame doesn't heal shame and how self-compassion can become an antidote.
• The shift from seeing people through a pathology lens to seeing them through a possibility lens.
• Why healing trauma isn't simply about talking through what happened.
• The critical role that safety and nervous-system regulation play in recovery.
• How the nervous system continually evaluates whether we are safe or unsafe.
• Why chronic pain is real and how the brain and nervous system influence the experience of pain.
• The surprising connection between trauma, addiction, and chronic pain.
• How behaviors and substances can become brilliant survival strategies that eventually stop serving us.
• Why some people can actually find safety frightening when they've spent their lives in survival mode.
• The importance of presence, connection, and being truly seen and heard.
• How childhood experiences can shape unconscious beliefs and patterns later in life.
• The difference between being triggered by something external and understanding what has been activated internally.
• TJ's four-step process for transforming survival strategies through gratitude, awareness, and discovering what we truly desire.
• Dr. Pohl's “Notice, Name, Nurture” framework.
• Why meaningful change comes from moving toward what we want, rather than simply trying to escape what we don't want.
• How science and spirituality may be converging around a more expansive understanding of healing.

At its heart, this conversation asks a profound question:

What if the things we've spent our lives trying to get rid of aren't evidence that we're broken—but brilliant strategies that once helped us survive?

Please like, subscribe, and share it with someone who may need this message today.

Learn more: www.Unharmable.com

For more on Dr. Mel Pohl: https://www.drmelpohl.com