No matter how hard I tried, I could not control this.

I could only hang my head in shame and fury that I couldn’t get us out of this mess.

A few months earlier we had returned from living in Thailand where my sons were born in shaky circumstances as I realized the magnitude of my role as a provider.

I knew it would get harder before it got easier to get my family on solid ground.

We leap-frogged from Bangkok to Boston and then to Oakland, CA where all 4 of us lived in one room so we could barely afford me going to grad school by day while working manual labor at night.

That was only the beginning of our mess.

At 1 in the morning, with my family sound asleep, I was on the job... and suddenly was laid out on my back.

What happened? Where was I?

A large metal cable with a heavy socket that plugs into huge speakers was hanging from the ceiling of the Oakland Coliseum.

It came undone, swung through the air, and smacked me straight in the forehead.

I never saw it coming.

Many years earlier, in my career as a collegiate athlete, I had a lot of trouble with head injuries... as well as the depression and anxiety that often comes with that territory.

After college, a near-death ski crash put me unconscious for 45 minutes...

So any more concussions, big or small, are a big deal for my brain.

This one was BIG.

I was messed up. I needed to rest and recover.

But, because I had been living overseas for 7 years, I had not paid into the US workman's comp system. My injury benefits would not be enough to support my family.

I did what Dads do. I went back to work to pay the bills and I stayed in school to tend to our future prospects.

I was hazy, dizzy, nauseous and the dark thoughts were creeping in.

“Dammit, I thought I was over this. Not again.”

I had done SO MUCH personal work to heal from childhood depression and anxiety, already.

I was terrified it was coming back.

I can’t make this stuff up.

3 weeks later, again in the middle of the Oakland night, this time on a loading dock…

I was pushing a heavy lighting truss up a ramp into a truck. The latches came undone and the truss slid back and landed on my head.

You have got to be f-ing kidding me.

A 2nd concussion in 3 weeks!

This was bad, really bad.

Every time I looked at a computer screen I puked - not cool if you are in grad school.

I had to stay in a dark room because the light was too intense. Kids crying felt like daggers in my skull.

I began having about 20 panic attacks a day. The full-on, “I’m dying right now take me to the ER” kind.

Suicidal thoughts, that so often follow head injuries, got louder and louder.

ALL. In. One. Room.

I wish it was a joke, and I can laugh at it now, but a neighbor's cat also infested our one tiny room with fleas.

Seeing my 9-month-old son’s precious baby skin covered in flea bites and not being able to MAKE IT STOP …

brought on a different kind of RAGE….

But, then… a breakthrough…

THIS would be my OPPORTUNITY! This would be my CHALLENGE.

I would have to take all that I learned through my personal therapy earlier in life, my spiritual work, my years of meditation, yoga, and Ayurveda studies, my graduate degrees, and my relentless passion to learn, to totally REWIRE and UPGRADE my brain.

But I wasn’t just going to stop at healing, I was going to THRIVE…. JOYFUL EXCELLENCE BY DESIGN, or bust!

My family, friends, and clients know that I am by no means perfect. I share my vulnerability as my strength.

But, to make the long story short…

I have 3 beautiful, healthy, resilient, and wise children and enjoy the companionship of an amazing, powerful, gorgeous wife with whom I went to the brink of divorce, and back to better than ever where we are now. 

We've lived around the world and done the things most people say, "I've always thought about doing that, good for you." 

I’ve worked with hundreds, probably thousands of clients over the years. I’ve got my “10,000” hours - and then some.

I’ve founded, staffed, and managed a Family behavioral health center that still serves thousands of families to this day. I’ve earned TWO master's degrees and hordes of certifications and specialty training.

I am saying these things only to instill confidence.

YOU CAN DO THIS.

I have been through it. Personally and professionally.

I’ve been in the trenches: community mental health, trauma work, addiction, abuse, parenting, family stuff, couples work, work with combat PTSD, cognitive behavioral therapy, somatic work, EMDR, and more.

I navigate the heights: optimal performance, nutrition, exercise, breath work, meditation, stress inoculation, sleep and dream work, NLP, hypnosis, flow states, spirituality, creativity, and more.

My work is part therapy: empathy, non-judgment, understanding, kindness, experience…

Part coaching: encouragement, solution-focused, practical, positive, humorous….

And, ALL Heart. Together we thrive. 

(For those curious who like to listen: I tell my story in more depth and detail, among many other things, in this Podcast, 10,000 No's with Matthew DelNegro: Even Tough Guys Get the Blues.)

Michael Boyle, LMFT CDBT

Speaker, Author, Therapist, Coach

My name is Michael Boyle and I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who specializes in optimal performance, trauma therapy, and a tools-based, solution-focused approach to cultivating the conditions for thriving in one's body, mind, spirit, that naturally result in healing and a better life. 

It is time for a new "mental health" paradigm. Looking around, what we are doing is not working. In our families, in our schools, in our workplaces, and in our community… overwhelm is on the rise. In an over-correction towards the important interests of empathy and respect, we have swung the pendulum too far from the yesteryears of denial, machismo, and shame about "mental health" to a tipping point where we are losing our grip on mental-emotional grit, resilience, and joy for no reason other than our power to choose and create. 

At ALL Together Academy, we are outgrowing the need for psychotherapy in a therapeutically friendly way. We are putting the soul back into the psyche so we can come alive again. It works better to create solutions than it does to fix problems. Most people don't know that we can completely outgrow patterns and problems by systematically wiring new ways of thinking, feeling, acting, and experiencing such that the old patterns and problems become obsolete. Coping skills are great. But, even greater is our capacity to generate such wholesome states of being that the problems no longer exist. 

The remainder of this document is to explain a philosophical orientation, but the reader can be assured, that working with me is nothing if not practical, grounded, tools-based, and results-oriented. 

In addition to 1-1 therapy and coaching, I teach, speak, and write about how our body-brain gets programmed by the "cultural trance" in such a way we reactively form a "false core self" (FCS) centered around a "primary negative" (PN) that we immediately, automatically and pervasively mistake for who we are and how we perceive self, others, and world. Due to this misidentification with the FCS as who we think we are, this not only filters our perceptions and actions so that it becomes what we experience, “our truth,” but more insidious, is that our body's built-in survival mechanism ends up defending our identity with/as our FCS with the neurochemical and physiological demands that are designed to protect us from life or death threats. 

For example - in ways that make perfect historical and neurological sense and are no one’s fault - we can develop an FCS around the PN such as, "I am worthless." This generates an inner milieu, below our conscious awareness, as a sense that “life is pointless” and so we withdraw, and hide. These types of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are manifestations of the "freeze" mechanism of our survival mode, which we experience further as a sense of apathy, numbness, and lack of motivation. Because we are disconnected from the lifestyles and connections that would actually nourish and enliven us, we feel truly empty and alone… emotions of shame and self-hatred arise in the package of mental-emotional-physiological symptoms we call "depression." Underneath all these stories, explanations, and rationalizations for why we “are depressed” - however valid and “true” they may be - is a nervous system stuck in survival mode: FREEZE. We are stuck there because the way our mind has identified with being “worthless” has activated the very survival chemicals responsible for anesthetizing us in the face of extreme danger. 

Another example would be a reactive-self-sense organized around the PN concept, "I am not safe." Again this happens in less than a second, automatically, beneath our conscious awareness is kind of like the fish in water not really noticing that its environment is “wet.” This can result in the biological survival mechanism turning on neurochemicals of "flight" that feel so intense that we will avoid leaving the house. Despite rationally knowing we are safe in our home in the immediate moment, we can feel like we are dying under extreme duress, and we call this a "panic attack." When we don't leave the house much, or take chances on our behalf to pursue our dreams and values because it “just doesn’t feel right”, we end up with a far less satisfying and successful life, which may result in insufficient income to support a modern lifestyle, which can spiral into living conditions that are not safe… and we will have "evidence" that confirms, "I am right, I am not safe." Additionally, the intense neurochemicals of panic and anxiety can wreak real havoc in our bodies and generate real medical conditions that are truly life-threatening. 

One of the more tricky dynamics of the FCS is that we often form an unconscious, compulsive approach to trying to feel healthy and happy, which is a reaction/resistance to the primary negative. To use our examples from above, we will spend our life force energy trying to "prove" that we are worthy and we may do this by compulsively helping others in a way that burns us out and is ultimately detrimental. Or, we will compulsively try to "make the world safe" by "avoiding triggers" and limiting our lives in ultimately harmful ways. But, here's the tricky part, these compulsions can be counterfeit versions of life-expressions that are innate gifts we have to share with the world as a benefit to ourselves, others, and all. These instances would be a case of "don't throw the baby out with the bath water" as we work to distinguish the compulsion from the authentic expression of our Indestructible True Self (ITS).

The number one reason why people's efforts to become healthy and happy - whether through "trying harder", self-help, therapy, coaching, etc -  are continually thwarted is because they are doing "the work" FROM, and as a REACTION to, their FCS. This generates a type of "isometric tension" - what we resist, persists - that unfortunately concretizes the FCS, "firing and wiring" into our neurochemistry with such frequency, intensity, and duration that it becomes "easy and automatic." The delusion of who we think we are becomes our lived reality. As Socrates said, "The masks we wear are apt to become our face." Or more humorously, Mark Twain, “It's not what we don't know that gets us in trouble, it's what we think we know, that just ain't so.” 

To summarize,  I teach people:

1. The practical know-how and tools to change the state of the default mode of their nervous system from reverting to survival mode to operating from an upgraded state of thriving mode. No positive change will last if the nervous system continues to default back to survival mode. 
2. And no nervous system will stop defaulting back to survival mode if it is organized around a False Corse Self. So, in addition to the tried and true nervous system upgrade tools, ATA community members learn to recognize their False Core Self, their Primary Negative, and the Cultural Trance at play in their lives. 
3. We also learn how to spot counterfeit personality expressions that are a "near miss" to the real expression of Who We Are. 
4. We then discover how to systematically dismantle the FCS, which unhooks us from Cultural Trance so that we are no longer reactive/at effect and instead are free to be creative and empowered. But this is not enough. Nature abhors a vacuum. Dismantling the FCS clears the canvas, so to speak, for us to create the authentic masterpiece of our life: Who and What What Are. Unless we replace the FCS with a "stand-in" created, creative personality structure that is organized around our most cherished virtues and values, we will easily fall back into the convenience and familiarity of the "habit body" established by so consistently and unconsciously experiencing and expressing the FCS for so long (likely since we were young kids). 
5. So we learn skills to support and develop our Creative IAM (C-IAM) and our Neurological Roadmap to the Future We Value and Choose (NRF), so that we have at hand, at any given moment, a plethora of MTIs (maps, tools, and instructions) for turning what were stops in our lives, into steps, and for thriving on the very ground over which we once stumbled. 
6. The more we cultivate the CIAM traveling on the NRF, the more we discover The Indestructible True Self which outshines all forms of suffering and is characterized by Joy, Openness, Love, Kindness, Awareness, Gratitude, Presence, and Surrender (our JOLKA-GPS).