Project I Am

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...

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? Ho...

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, Dav...

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...

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 sup...

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, s...

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...

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...

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 ord...

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 sometim...

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 de...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 m...

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...

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 lesso...

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 sta...

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 a...

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 o...

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 w...

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, sp...

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: How to tell the difference between wisdom and threat Why urgency + contempt are big “tells” A simple real-time...

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...