East Meets West at the Intersection of Mental Health and Trauma with Psychotherapist Benoit Kim

SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Grit, Grace, and Inspiration.

I'm your host, Kevin Lowe, and I'm excited to welcome you inside.

This is the kind of place where your glass will never be anything other than half full because we choose to focus on the positive side of life.

Now, this doesn't mean that we shy away from the real talk.

No, not a chance.

Matter of fact, we explore all aspects of life.

From the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But all of that is done with one purpose.

unknown: One purpose.

SPEAKER_01: To inspire you to never give up on life, even when it may seem like life has given up on you.

Now I get it, life is hard.

But starting today, you've got grit, grace, and inspiration.

What's going on and how are we today?

My name is Kevin Lowe, your host, and this is episode 153.

Today we are getting real on mental health because, well, we are in the studio with psychotherapist and discover more podcast host, Benoit Kim.

Benoit is a man with a story to share and deep insights on life.

He's been through a lot in his life, and we're going to unpack as much of that as we possibly can.

We're going to be talking about everything from his childhood, growing up all over the world, because Benoit would not come to live in America until he was a teenager.

We're going to talk about why he would choose to join the United States Army.

We're going to talk about the impact that had on his life, on his mental health.

We're also going to get to explore why he came to start his own podcast called Discover More.

And what does that even mean?

Now, we do discuss some pretty serious topics inside of today's episode because Benoit, he's had some experiences in life that have been pretty traumatic.

He's gonna specifically speak to three near-death experiences that have left him with profound insights on life.

Now, I do want to warn you that towards the end of our conversation, we do get into a pretty serious subject matter.

And if you find it to be a trigger talking about sexual trauma, I just want you to be made aware that we do talk about that because it is a big part of Benoit's story.

My hope is that today's conversation with Benoit will leave you thinking about life in a little bit deeper sense, thinking about your own mental health, giving yourself the opportunity to do a little mental check.

How am I?

How am I feeling today?

And acknowledging that feeling and then moving forward from there.

Before my interview with Benoit Kim, I do want to remind you, I am wanting you to step off of the sidelines and get into the show because I'm giving you an opportunity to take part in a free 30-minute life roadmap planning session where me and you, we're gonna sit down one-on-one and we're gonna map out your roadmap to take you from where you are right now and to get you to where you want to be.

That's right.

Me and you, one-on-one, free 30-minute session where we literally are going to design what you want your next year of life to be.

Now, what's cool is that afterwards, it will then be aired as an episode on this very podcast.

Now I understand the topics that we discussed may be sensitive.

And so you do have the choice to remain anonymous, or at most, only your first name will be you.

Head on over to workwithkevan.coach.

That is workwithkevin.coach, or make your life easy, and check out the episode in the show notes where you can find a link to sign up today.

With that said, it is my pleasure to introduce you to Ben Walkin as we catch up on his story, unpacking his life and what has brought him to where he is today.

SPEAKER_00: Benoit, welcome back to the podcast.

Kevin, it's been about two months, and I'm very, very excited to have a fluid and organic conversation with you today on this show.

Absolutely, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01: Well, listen, my goal with today's interview with you is to kind of just unpack your story to give my listeners this idea, this evolution, we could say, of your life and and where you've come from, what's got you to where you are today?

And and so I would love to start off with kind of a big level question and hoping that you can kind of unpack it for us.

And when you look back on your life, are there any things that stick out in your mind as monumental events that really have shaped your life that have brought you to where you are today?

SPEAKER_00: Oh, that is a vast question.

And here's my uh big answer to that.

Absolutely, Kevin.

As you know, both of us ascribe to this idea that pain teachers, right?

Often the most gratifying and profound lessons in life come with pain and suffering.

And mine is no exception.

So I've had three near death experiences in the last seven years, and I think those will be encompassing about why I am here today, how I became a mental health advocate, and how I became so passionate about psychedelic therapy, which I subscribe to, and I'll be practicing in that down the road.

But let's start with the first neurotide experience.

So I used to be part of Greek life, and I used to drink and partook in drinking quite heavily so, because as you know, America celebrates and glorifies drinking and normalizes that behavior like no other.

And when I first moved to Philadelphia in 2017, I went out this weekend in downtown Philadelphia and Gaborhood, and there's this club called Woody's.

It's one of the most popular clubs in all of Philadelphia.

So I thought it was pretty safe.

And I'm one of those social butterflies where as I get more intoxicated, the more outgoing and social I become.

And I eventually ditch my friends because they they become too dull and too boring for me.

And I wander my way into the alleyway outside for some reason.

As you know, when you're that drunk, you don't really know.

And I was jumped, actually.

This person came out and he had a knife.

And he pretty much jumped me.

He took my wallet, my phone, my loafers, and my belt I had on at the time.

And the next morning I woke up in the ER room and I said, Dang, I got too drunk.

Must have been alcohol poisoning.

And the nurse came in and she said, Benoit, it was not alcohol poisoning.

A bystander around 4 a.m.

had to call an ambulance to get you in because you were bleeding out in the alleyway.

And thankfully, I was not stabbed.

The guy just knocked me out and took my belongings.

And in fact, I went to the detectives police precinct to file this report because I was mugged and I was jumped.

My first weekend in Philadelphia.

And the detective looked me in the eyes with a dead stare.

I remember this like yesterday.

He asked me, Did you bleed?

And I said, No, but I have a head trauma.

And I almost bled out because my head hit the curb when I fell.

And he said, No, no, no.

Did you get stabbed?

And I said, No.

He asked me, don't even try to file reports because hundreds of people get stabbed and shot in Philadelphia every single night.

So my report would not even make it on top.

But the crazy part of me sharing this story is because I quit drinking about two years ago.

I haven't had a sip of alcohol because I don't view things as good or bad.

I view it as does it serve you or does it not serve you?

And it started to disturb me in my life.

So I quit drinking.

But the crazy thing is the next weekend after I was jumped, I went out and drank again.

And that's the crazy part.

And that's the pervasive and the power of alcohol.

And that's where I want to start.

But then the second near-death experience during my military deployments in Korea allow me to sort of see what mental health really is after my first major depressions.

And I'm happy to share that as well.

But I wanted to start today's interview with that because uh we're recording this around Christmas holiday seasons, and there's a lot of alcohol involved, and I have no judgment against those who drink.

At the same time, I think it's really important for all of us to spend some time intentionally to review the archives of our behaviors and patterns and identify what are some of the behaviors we're not very proud of and or are disturbing us.

If so, identify those and we do need to make a change.

That's what I believe what optimal life experience is.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Okay, so we've got a lot that we're gonna have to circle back around to with your answer to that first question, which I mean so deep, so impactful on so many levels.

But before we go to that level, I would love to kind of back up a little bit and get an idea of kind of where you come from, what childhood was like for you, where'd you grow up?

And then, you know, we'll kind of come back around.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.

I've gone through so much life in the last eight years.

I I don't even think about my adolescent years anymore.

Because I think a lot of us are like, oh, life is short.

Indeed, it is.

At the same time, life can be very long through intentionality and through mindful living.

But yeah, to answer your question, Kevin, my first name gets mispronounced quite often, which is why you checked in with me before recording started because it's French.

So I am a French Korean American.

I was born in Paris through my parents, and I lived there for about six and a half years before moving and migrating to Korea for about a year, which is my nicity.

And then I migrated to China for an additional six and a half to seven years because of my mom's business.

And then I migrated to the United States at age 15, and now I'm 30.

I share that because I'm a global citizen.

I am a third cultural kid.

I spend the first half of my life in three different continents and four different countries, and I speak all those languages.

In fact, I do my therapy sessions with my clients and patients in all Mandarin, English, and Korean.

I don't really speak French anymore because languages need to be brushed up like a toll.

And there's not a lot of French people in the US.

They're a dying breed, as I say.

So I didn't have a lot of opportunities to practice.

But through that experience, I think I learned about cultural humility.

I have this very unique openness of how I navigate life and how I view life and world through because of my vast and unique global experiences.

And that's something I'm very proud of.

At the same time, when I first came to the United States, I did struggle heavily with this Asian identity because America puts so much emphasis on your racial identity marker.

If you're Asian, they only see you as Asian, nothing more, nothing less, which is very, very limiting.

But then I've come to embrace my unique circumstance of being a global citizen because I'm a global child.

And that's how I view life through.

And it's it keeps life very interesting.

And whenever I do come across people with their unique own sets of circumstances, I think it allows me both clinically and also interpersonally to be very, very open and empathetic and compassionate towards different avenues of life.

Because I've gone through a lot of them myself.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wow, wow.

So I mean, you you made mention about the past eight years being so monumental, but man, I'm so glad I asked this question though, because I mean, talk about shaping you into a person who can be so understanding of different cultures, to be so just thoughtful and and and curious about people's lives and and about the way people do stuff because of your childhood living in so many, you know, different places.

I mean, that's just really, I mean, really unique, amazing opportunity.

And I mean, I'm sure it was difficult at times, but I mean, in the big picture, wow.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the you're absolutely right.

It is a very instrumental and formative years.

I actually just talked about this on my show, Discover More, with a psychiatrist about how childhood really impacts adulthood, even with these experiences we don't quite recall.

They truly form our brains and our health, everything in between.

But you're right, a lot of that has been difficult and painful.

But at the same time, when we look back in life in retrospect, a lot of those memories get either glamorified or kind of fade out.

But I do remember this visceral experience where I've encountered racism for the first time when I was about five or six years old.

I remember this just like yesterday, where my mom and I, since she was a single parent, we were in a subway in Paris, France.

A lot of people think America is racist.

Go to France, and it will put brand new perspective on racism is.

And this white French man spit in my mom's face for no reason, with a toddler like me next to her because of the skin of her color, because she was an Asian minority woman in Paris, where it's dominated by white French people.

So I do remember all of these racist encounters growing up, but then as I grew older, I understood the difference between willful ignorance and just ignorance due to the lack of exposure.

And I do feel like most people are not malicious, and most people who exhibit racist or ignorant tendencies or fill in the blank, a lot of that is because of their own lack of exposure with certain avenues of life.

Like if you grew up in a small town in Midwest, somewhere in the United States, and you've never seen an Asian person or any minorities, instead, you only view certain race or ethnicity through stereotypes or some of these narratives on mainstream media, you're going to internalize those as truth and navigate your life consequently or subsequently to those people.

I don't think it's primarily their fault.

At the same time, it is 2022, almost 2023.

So we do have to recognize our responsibility, especially in this very globalized and multicultural country we live in.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, no doubt.

And I mean, I I can relate in in one sense to what you talk about there is terms of being somebody who is disabled, as you know, I am blind.

And the way in which people react to me is is quite just sometimes it kind of can blow your mind because of you mentioned here we are on on the the cusp of 2023 when we're recording this interview together.

And yet sometimes, you know, I walk in and I feel like I've stepped back in time because of the way people react to me being blind.

And I'm thinking, oh my goodness, haven't we seen enough TV shows or or been around the world enough to realize like we don't have to act weird, you know?

But um, you know what I mean?

But it's like, but then you know, you encounter somebody who's amazing and and it renews your you know hope for mankind, you know.

SPEAKER_00: So I'm saying this in part to keep myself hopeful.

Yes.

Since I've gotten quite cynical over my uh former uh policymaker years and career, where I do feel like sure, there are some sinister forces and there are some bad people.

Obviously, there's eight billion people.

Some of those apples are going to be rotten and genetic markers, circumstances, trauma, all these things.

At the same time, I think the world at large is comprised of good people.

Yeah.

How do we know that?

Because we're alive, chatting right now.

If the world was mainly bad, the world would have been not burning down, which is right now, it would have already been burnt down.

Therefore, I do feel hopeful at large.

But yeah, you're right.

I think open-mindedness and a lot of these negative encounters we experience, either as a people of color like myself or someone with living with a disability like yourself, Kevin, I do feel like we have to recognize how nuanced and how big this world is, beyond our imaginations or beyond our perceptions of what the world is or how this world operates.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

So, so going back a bit to kind of your life story that we were starting to unpack, and you talked about moving into America, I believe you said when you were 15.

I'm kind of curious what happened from that point as far as, you know, because you mentioned earlier about going into the army, but you know, I'm kind of curious, you know, your career ideas, was college something you were gonna do?

The army kind of unpack like as we go into that next kind of chapter of life.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.

I was raised by a tiger mom.

For those who are not familiar with the terminology, it describes typically women and moms who have this authoritative personality, they're very headstrong, extremely alpha, very capable, competent, and so on.

So my mom was one of those.

So I was raised by like many fellow Asian Americans and people of color where mental health is not real.

Everything's about achievement.

Perseverance will always prevail.

Your grit will always prevail, is what I was raised under to believe.

And I realized that perseverance always prevails until it doesn't.

I share that because I've always had my three, two, five, two, seven-year meticulous plan that's just how I was raised.

I was raised to attend the best university, which I did, which is University of Pennsylvania for policy, uh, before I had to take a leave of absence due to my military deployment that I alluded to earlier.

But I thought I wanted to be a diplomat, like an ambassador, because I speak three and a half languages.

I'm multicultural, I'm very articulate, I have a certain personality about myself.

And then when I attended graduate school at UPenn that I just mentioned, I was ruptured, or my perceived life plan was interrupted by life.

Because, as you know, Kevin, life is larger than we are, period.

And that sort of prompted me to take my own personal pivot and my career pivot into the trans mental health space as a psychotherapist.

But yeah, I thought I wanted to be in the policy making, which I did for a while before I was jaded.

I thought I wanted to become this ambassador.

And it's funny because the biggest reason why I wanted to be a diplomat, because in all those shows that we watch, they talk about the diplomatic immunity.

Like I think the stats in New York City is they have uh millions of unpaid fines every single year by the ambassadors of foreign nationals because they cannot be subjugated by the American laws, because they represent uh foreign sovereignty.

So you literally cannot arrest them or fine them, and they're above the law in a sense, of course, unless it's like murder or serious, serial crime that they will be committed to.

But for that reason, I was like, man.

How cool would it be if I become a diplomat?

Police have no power over me.

I can skip all the lines in the airport.

They roll out this red carpet for all my Grant's entrances.

And of course, I was a very naive little young boy.

But that's those are the reasons, and those are some of the ideas that I had about how my life could be.

But of course, in reality, God had other plans.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Well, I absolutely love that.

The the mindset of a child or or even a college student is just, oh man.

I don't know.

Sometimes I kind of wish we we kept that kind of mindset, you know?

The innocence mindset, yeah.

Exactly.

Exactly.

So then where did the army come into play?

SPEAKER_00: So I wish my answer is, oh, I am a patriot.

I wanted to serve and give back to the country.

It's not really that, even though I have been a morning gym goer for the last like eight, nine years.

I work out in the morning at 5 a.m.

So I knew that the military lifestyle and my own self-disciplined way of life will be very compatible and aligned.

But my biggest reason was for a naturalized American citizenship.

The program has been disbanded after Mr.

Trump, but this was a very unique and rare linguistic program called Mavini.

Basically, American government and military they require certain languages that's in high demand that could be strategically conducive for the warfare or foreign relations.

And since I'm multilingual, I tested into the set program through Mandarin and Korean.

And I was able to get my naturalized American citizenship in a very expedited way in about four months, which is unprecedented.

There is no other programs like that.

Because as you know, the American immigration process is a long, cumbersome due process since a lot of people want to achieve or strive for the American dream in the United States, even though I think at large the American dream has been dying because of economy, political influence, and all these things.

But yeah, that's why I joined the Army and I served on my six-year commitment two years ago, where I folded my military chapter.

And a lot of people wanted me, like my drill sergeants, my commanders of my units, they actually all encouraged me to go to the OCS officer candidate school to become a military officer, in my case, army.

But I chose not to because I didn't join the military for money's sake.

And I don't want to be a career military serviceman.

Otherwise, I would have gone there.

Uh, because I do quite enjoy the self-disciplined military lifestyle and having all these routines and systems in place.

But I just have all these ambitions outside of the military domain into creating a podcast, being psychedelic therapist, all that so forth, because uh military is not going to tolerate psychedelics and things like that, of course.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wow, wow, wow.

How remarkable, though.

I mean, to be honest, that you did that now during the six years, were you deployed overseas?

SPEAKER_00: So I almost did in 2017 when Mr.

Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea were having their air quote dick measuring contest.

Please excuse my French.

Uh there they were saying, Oh, I have a red buttons, you have a red buttons.

And of course, it's all jokes and fun now in retrospect.

But in 2017, as some of us remember, it was extremely contentious and it was potentially life and death situation.

So my reserve unit was one of the 12 units to get summoned to support the stations, military troops, and North and South Korean border, because that's a very strategically important stronghold that we have with South Korea in light of North Korea and the Chinese government military forces and all that.

So I had to take a leave of absence from my studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

I had to put my life on hold after experiencing the major depression, because that was the first time I had to confront and contemplate about my mortality, the chance of me actually dying at such a young age, which is a very unique and gratifying experience in hindsight.

Because after that, I live my life hyper intentionally.

I don't live life passively because I view the life that I have now as an added-on bonus, because I really could have died.

So it was a near deployment because we were mobilized to Kentucky because of the similar weather and humidity with Korea as like a parallel training process.

But the day before we were mobilized or deployed to North and South Korean border, the General Lucky, he's a three-star or four-star general in the US Army Reserve, and he's like the top guy.

He flew in and told us that, hey, thankfully, the deployment would have cost us way too much money.

And the tension between North Korea and the US military has de-escalated in the past week or so.

So there is no longer a need for us to go to Korea and North South Korea border for the next nine months.

And then I actually found myself in a Coachella music festival the week from that to celebrate this abrupt transition from potential death to celebrations of life.

SPEAKER_01: Okay.

Okay.

Well, I mean, yeah, thank goodness.

Now, one thing that I'm curious about when we talk about you experiencing this depression, anxiety, all of that, how was that while in a situation as being a soldier, being in the army, where I don't view that as a situation that's probably very open to talks of depression and stuff?

What was that experience like?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like I alluded to earlier, it was this utter darkness.

And until this moment or this catalyst where I experienced mental health for the first time, I didn't believe in mental health.

I thought you can just put your head down and grind, work hard.

You can wool your weight through life through sure willpower and discipline, all these things.

And we know that's not the case because willpower and discipline is also genetic markers.

There's genetic variations with all of us, and some of us have better support systems, accountability buddies, and so on.

And I attribute a lot of that healing to God, of course, through my faith.

But at the same time, I had to see a therapist for the first time because I stopped working out for the first time in many years.

I no longer wanted to go out and dine with my friends and my family for the first time.

I didn't have the motivation to even shower or make my bed.

All these symptoms, because a quick psychoeducation is about depression.

A lot of people view depression as a single symptom.

That's not true.

Depression, whether it's major depression or just depression, it's a cluster of symptoms.

And those symptoms include apathy, lack of motivation, sadness, lack of or absence of happiness.

All these things create this depression.

So yeah, I just felt like I was stuck in this bottomless pit, like the one from Dark Knight Rises, where Batman luckily got out towards the very end because of his thick plot armor.

I didn't have the plot armor that he did, and I'm not Batman.

So I was I was stuck in this like utter, utter consuming darkness where I didn't feel any light.

I didn't feel any hope.

I really thought how I feel at the moment is going to last forever.

But of course, we do know that feelings don't always last.

And you can go from sadness or despair to hope in relatively short time, depending on the toolkits and support avenue that you have.

But yeah, it's just such a dark space.

At the same time, I feel so much gratitude towards that experience because without that my own chapters of darkness, because life absent flows and life is a seasonality.

I would not have been a therapist now.

And I wouldn't have started a podcast to advocate for mental health and to even sharing about my own personal experience and my own healing journey through Pain Teachers, through the discomfort, through the despair, to now I'm in a place where I'm filled with love, filled with great, great lights.

And I'm yeah, I've just been um in such a better space through that pain teachers.

But yeah, it's it was a very, very dark experience.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow.

Now you kind of alluded to it at the the end there.

Do you believe that having gone through what you did makes you a better therapist today?

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

We often in the clinical field talk about therapists or clinicians can only take clients as far as we've gone ourselves.

What I mean by that is unless we've done the work, whether that's shadow work, the Carl Young's shadow self idea, whether that's trauma therapy, whether that's just mental health or talk therapy, journaling, meditations, whatever the avenues are, unless you've done the self-work first, you will not be able to extend the healing to your clients and patients.

It's just not possible because we don't know what we don't know.

So, how can we help people if we've never gone there ourselves?

So 100% my own major depressions has allowed me to be more empathetic, understanding of others' experience, even though not one of us walked this path of life the same.

At the same time, not one of us walked this path of life alone.

In that sense, I attribute a lot of my ability to relate and my relatability with a lot of my folks through my own experiences and beyond.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Oh wow.

I I absolutely love that so much.

So now I'm curious what at what point does the idea come in to mind about adding to being a therapist to also become a podcast host?

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's one of those.

I wish my answer is, oh yeah, I thought about all these to foresight three years ago when I started the podcast.

I knew my podcaster hat and my therapist hat would coincide perfectly.

That's not the case because I just became a therapist two years ago through my career pivot at age 28.

At the same time, the reason and the intention behind me starting my Discover More podcast is simply leaning into curiosity over fear.

I knew that all of us feel lonely at times, but like I said, not one of us walk this path of life alone.

And I really uphold this belief about the collective experience of human beings, the collective entity of the humanity.

So I wanted to dissect and synthesize and distill some of the respective experiences, people that I respect, that I look up to.

And by dissecting those experiences to really show myself first, because I created the show for me.

And then now it has grown to a point where I have thousands of listeners.

But all of that was because of my belief and my upholding of the power of curiosity and the healing power of the curiosity.

And that translates directly to my therapy work where I'm a lot more curious because of that.

I burn out less because I have an additional avenue to talk about these things, in addition to just being a therapist all day, which I absolutely love.

But it's important to sort of create this harmonic balance that keeps you grounded and anchored in life.

And that to me is podcasting is my anchor.

I become a better interviewer because of my therapy work.

And similarly, on the podcast, I'm a lot emotionally in tuned to what's happening, even in a virtual conversation, because of my experience and my identity as a therapist.

So very serendipitously, through serendipity, my hat of a podcaster and my hat of a psychotherapist, they do complement each other exceptionally well, which is honestly uh accidental happiness, or it was an accident.

But I'm not going to complain.

I'm just going to count my blessings.

SPEAKER_01: I love it.

I love it so much.

And you answered so many other questions I had in that one answer because I wanted to know about, you know, do you feel like the two kind of cross each other on different avenues and and and lanes from therapists to podcast?

And you basically answered that with yes, it does.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So now your podcast is called the Discover More Podcast.

What I want to know is through this journey of having your podcast, what have you discovered more about yourself?

SPEAKER_00: The grit, the grace, and the inspiration.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

I'll get I'll give you the 10 bucks after we finish.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, of course, that's the name of your show, but I truly mean it because I've discovered more about my own capacity for curiosity.

I I've discovered more about my own way of thinking, my worldview, how I view others, the relationship containers and mental health.

And I discovered more about just endless toolkits and experiential wisdom and practical wisdom by others.

But yeah, it's been an insane journey.

Like I said, the the genesis of the show was just simple curiosity three years ago to now blossoming to something bigger than myself, which is a pretty, pretty crazy journey.

But I view it as I think I view my discover more show, the way I view therapy container, where it's a domain or a container of self-discovery.

Because a lot of people view therapy as oh, if I see a therapist, my life will be magically upgraded and better overnight.

Sometimes, yes, but often it requires a lot of work, a lot of integrations.

And it's just about helping you going from stuck to unstuck through self-discovery and uncovering or discovering more about ourselves and the way we think about this world.

And to me, the podcast is almost like a self-therapy space for myself.

Of course, I also see a therapist outside of this, but yeah, it's just this passion project that has grown so much bigger than I initially thought into this business and everything in between.

But yeah, I view it as like an avenue for me to discover more about myself and the world.

And I do think they're very, very intricately connected.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I absolutely love that.

Out of curiosity on my end, when I look at you and I look at what you've shared today from from your childhood growing up in this kind of crazy childhood that you had and living in different parts of the world, to then going on to going to college, to to being in the army, to to what you're doing today.

Is there any one challenge that you face that you've overcome that stands out above any other?

Wow.

That's uh that's a big question.

SPEAKER_00: I think I want to tie that into my recent engagement with my fiance.

And just a quick trigger warning this is going to involve sexual trauma.

So please be aware.

The biggest journey and challenge and pain that I've moved through, since we talked about this before, I don't like the word overcoming because whether it's depressions or anxiety, it's part of our experiences and they're a part of us, whether we like it or not.

So there's nothing to overcome because they are us.

So I like to use the word move through.

I was able to move through the biggest trauma that I had.

And I'm happy to share this now because there is a fundamental difference between being traumatized and having a traumatic experience.

Mine was traumatic at the time, but because now, in hindsight, on the other side of healing, I could share this openly and without being triggered.

So I encountered a sexual trauma or sexual assault in college myself for a year.

And of course, a lot of women get sexually traumatized and sexually assaulted every single year.

But the latest statistics that I saw was about one in six men experience sexual trauma.

And not a lot of men talk about this.

So I think this is a very important conversation to be had.

So, like I said, I've always been a Christian and I'm very spiritual by trait and religious by practice.

So I'm both.

So I didn't necessarily want to save my virginity for my wife per se, since who knows if that happens during the college days, especially I was part of the Greek life.

So I chose not to partake in sexual intercourse and things like that because of my faith.

And then this person took advantage of me at her birthday party.

And the next day I woke up with the sexual trauma, which was devastating for me.

And actually catalyzed the whole sequence of events where I started to objectify a woman.

I was not the best person out there because I was feeling vindictive.

I was angry.

I was feeling vengeful and spiteful because she took the most important thing from me.

So I wanted to revenge upon the world.

And that very unhealthy and traumatic lens and experience lasted until my mid-20s.

So about four or five years after I graduated from college.

And I tried to see a therapist, I tried to journal, read a lot about self-help books, and a lot of these self-help healing avenues, none of those worked because it was such a traumatic experience.

And it was first of its kind.

So I had no reference point, I had no data points, I had no written manuals to how to navigate this trauma since it was my first time experiencing it.

And mental health was not as open as it now.

This was about 2017, 2018, so uh four or five years ago now, until I came across psychedelic therapy.

And it was a psilocybin assisted therapy, or a lot of people colloquially call it as magic mushrooms and things.

And I want to preface this where this is not just a personal hobby.

The evidence and the data between psychedelic assisted therapy is extremely robust.

And you can find a plethora of these on peer-reviewed scientific journals out there.

And I'm both a practitioner and I'm also a beneficiary of this medicine, where within eight hours, Kevin, I've had this thought for the first time in those four or five years of struggling and battling with this sexual trauma.

Where I thought to myself after the guidance session the next day that, huh, I wonder how she's doing.

Maybe I should reach out and tell her that I forgive you.

Not because of you, but I forgive you by giving myself the permission to move on with my life.

I never reached out to her because I forgot her last name and it was too cumbersome, so I just let it go.

But think about this.

Eight hours prior, I was still angry.

I was not able to forgive this person.

I was not able to forgive myself to move on from my sexual trauma.

And I was anchored and limited by my own circumstances to a point I became a victim.

And I externalized my victim mindset by victimizing, of course, non-violently, but like sexually or just in a non-Christian way towards other women through one night stands, hookups, whatever.

And then after this guided psychedelic session, I came to peace and I was able to revisit my sexual trauma in a non-triggering and a more self-compassionate way.

Because I knew at that moment this was not my fault, but it is my responsibility to own up to my health and my life because it is my life, no one else's.

And through God's grace and other support system I had, I was able to fully move through my sexual trauma that plagued me until my mid-20s.

To that ultimately allowed me to find a long-term partner and now being happily engaged to my fiance.

So that is the most deeply meaningful experience, the toughest experience I've gone through in recent years, but it is the most gratifying because without that, I would not be able to advocate for men's mental health and men's sexual health, and also be in this very happy and long term engagement with my current fiance.

SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Thank you so much for feeling so open to be able to share that today.

I mean, I know that is a deeply perfect.

Personal experience, especially just because of the pain of it all.

And so, I mean, I truly want to just thank you for being so open to share that for the simple fact that there very well may be somebody listening to this podcast today who just heard what you said and was like, wow, that's what I needed to hear, that I'm not alone.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's what mental health is, right?

The way I view mental health is even during the darkest moments in our lives, we may feel utterly alone.

In reality, none of us walk this path alone.

A lot of us have people that love us that are cheering us on from afar.

Sure, quietly and silently at often, since men aren't aren't the best at supporting each other on uh hourly, but none of us walk this path alone, and there is actual hope.

And sure, it might be anecdotal experience, but it is still evidence regardless.

And like I said, I'm a social scientist at trait, so I'm very empirical.

And if I may, Kevin, can I share certain statistics and educations about psychedelics, some of the efficacy of it, and some of the warning labels since it's not a miracle truck with no downside?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I talk about this more in-depthly on my most recent episode, episode 115, that I had a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist on talking about psychedelics.

So I urge people to check that out more in-depthly.

But just on a high level, there's numerous FDA-approved clinical trials for psychedelics.

Uh, one of them was spearheaded by Johns Hopkins University through their psychedelic research center MAPS, M A P S.

So feel free to fact-check this and look up at your own court online to really fact-check the established efficacy or established evidence in psychedelic medicine.

But for this specific clinical trial, which is the second phase, the outcomes already out now.

So they recruited a lot of participants for this FDA-approved clinical trial.

And the eligibility, Kevin, is people who've been battling treatment-resistant depressions and complex PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorders.

What that means is all of the participants who are enrolled in this clinical trial and many more, they've been medicated by antidepressants like SSRIs, and they've seen a psychotherapist for many, many years for at least a decade.

So these people have gone through everything and they've been utilizing all available healing avenues out there, yet their symptoms are still very, very severe.

Um, that's what complex PTSEs and treatment-resistant depression means.

After two to four controlled trials with controlled dosage, they did a two-year follow-up study because sure, you may be healed in the moment, but then if the efficacy or the effectiveness of the medicine is not sustainable, and you almost have to keep doing this like every few weeks, A, it's expensive, and B, it doesn't really help that many people.

Like SSRIs, you have to be on that for a long time.

So they did a two-year study to establish that this is just not a fad, this is not just a short-term fix, but it's actually sustainable healing.

Two years later, Kevin, 86% of the said participants who enrolled in this clinical trial, they no longer exhibit any symptoms that's related to PTSD or depression.

Let me say that again.

After the psilocybin and MDMA assisted psychotherapy they've done through this clinical trial, 86% of those participants no longer exhibit any symptoms to a point where they are not even eligible for the diagnosis.

This is not a symptom reduction, this is a complete eradication of the root disease itself.

No other medications in 2022 come even remotely close to the documented efficacy of psychedelics.

A quick I don't want to nerd out too much on this, but I love this topic because the science is real and I've experienced it where if you look at effect size, so generally speaking, effect size of like minor to moderate effectiveness is like 0.3 effect size to 0.5.

If it's moderate to really good effectiveness, it's about 0.7 and 0.8.

SSRI or antidepressants is about 0.3 effect size.

What that means is it works for some people.

Psychedelic, Kevin, the effect size is 1 to 0.2.

It's four times and fourfold the effectiveness of SSRI.

That's mind boggling.

And like I said, this is not a Fed.

Since the 60s, thousands and thousands and thousands of research were established before the Nixon sort of declared war on drugs and halted all the great research out there.

And of course, I wish there was no downside, but I'm not a physician.

Please consult with your medical providers because there are actual risk factors associated with psychedelic medicine.

One, if you have any sort of heart disease or heart problems, stay away because it's going to worsen and you could potentially cause heart attacks or other very, very detrimental physical illnesses.

That's one.

If there is any mental illness history in your family, and by mental illness, I mean bipolar personality disorders or personality disorders and things like that, like schizo, because mental illness is not mental health.

Mental health is the overarching umbrella and mental illness is within that umbrella of mental health.

If you have that, you have to stay away from psychedelics because psychedelics has been known to trigger and erupt psychosis.

And if you have mental illness in your family, through our most cutting-edge research, it shows that mental illness is about 20 to 30% genetics.

What that means is if you have a certain mental illness in your family, that gene stays dormant, or it's almost like a sleep calculate for a while until like a significant stress range in your life sort of trigger and erupts the illness into the outside.

And once it's triggered, it's irreversible, it's permanent.

So if you have those risk factors and a couple other you can do your own research about, you cannot unfortunately do psychedelics.

But for others, please do your medical consultations.

And if you're safe to try this, there are a lot of psychedelic healing centers around the country, especially recently after Oregon officially legalized TMP Sil7 and a couple of psychedelics for clinical usages.

You can find the help if you really need it.

But there's tremendous hope from this, and there is a way out.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow.

Very interesting.

And thank you for sharing all that, you know, with us.

You know, I find that just I mean, it is, it's truly fascinating.

Benoit, I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to be a guest here on the podcast, to share your story, to share just your wealth of insight and information into this mental health space in particular, because as we know, that is such a huge aspect of things that people are dealing with.

And I don't feel like it's talked about enough.

So I wanna sincerely thank you for for being so open and and willing to share all that with us.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Kevin, I had uh tons of blasts, and your episode did really well when you came on the show, I think a couple months ago now.

Man, time is loose, right?

I feel like with the pandemic, it's just a giant three years lumped into one.

But yeah, I feel honored and I'm grateful that you're willing to host my own experiences and share some of these deeply meaningful and intricate conversations with your listeners as well.

And hopefully someone discover more something about and derive some benefit and healing from our conversation today.

But I appreciate you for hosting my experience.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely.

And and to end our conversation, would you please just share where people listening can find the Discover More podcast, can can find more about you.

You know, give them your information, where would be the best place?

And then I will be sure that that's also included inside of the uh show notes for today's episode.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.

I don't have any books to promote, not yet, at least.

So if you found any insights or any benefits, or if you discover more something about from today's conversations, and you're fascinated or interested by my way of thinking, some of my unique and often esoteric worldview, please check out some of my other conversations that I have with world-class leaders and thinkers on the show at Discover More podcast.

And Discover More is a play on words, it's where discover more practical mental health insights from authentic life stories.

And if you wanna, if you're more of a viewers or visual learners, I also have a YouTube channel for the podcast.

And you can find that on YouTube for Discover More Podcast.

And if you want to shoot me a message and bring this conversation offline, or you wanna dig in my brain a little bit further to discover more something about, feel free to shoot me a message on Instagram at Discover More Podcast.

I am not on TikTok, you have to draw the line somewhere as a content creator.

But uh yeah, I'm really, really deeply passionate and purposeful about mental health.

And my mission, statements, is simply to show the world, especially for men, that mental health equals health.

SPEAKER_01: Fantastic, fantastic.

Benoit, an absolute pleasure to have you on the show today.

Once again, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00: Thank you.

And please continue to spread your grit, grace, and inspirations with the world, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, absolutely.

And um, I'll get you that 10 bucks as soon as we stop.

Okay, awesome.

And for you listening, oh my goodness, I hope you've enjoyed today's episode, today's conversation with an amazing guy.

Benoit is so just electric with energy and just so full of insight and knowledge.

And it just kind of leaves you wanting a little bit more.

So please be sure to check out today's show notes where you can find all of the links that Benoit mentioned.

Definitely go check out his podcast because you know, we all need another podcast to listen to.

Until next time, this is Grit Grace and Inspiration.

I am your host, Kevin Lowe.

Get out there and enjoy the day.

Hey, real quick before you go, I have one last thought to leave you with.

I of course hope that you've enjoyed today's episode, but more importantly, I want to remind you that I never want you to listen to an episode of this podcast to hear something that I have to say or that my guest has to share, and think, wow, I wish I could be like them.

I wish I could overcome my own challenges and do the great things that they are doing, but I just can't.

Well, friend, that's where you're wrong.

unknown: You're wrong.

SPEAKER_01: You are capable, you are able, and you darn sure are deserving of having all that you can imagine in this life.

There's nothing special about me or any guests I have on this podcast.

We are all just normal people trying to make it in this life.

And so I encourage you to take a look at yourself in the mirror and remind yourself that you know what?

I can do it too.

Now, of course, if you would like help along that way, reach out to me.

Whether that's as a listener of this podcast, a friend, or if you'd like to work with me as a coach.

My contact information is inside of every episode's show notes, just like this one.

So go down, check out my contact information, and reach out to me today.

With that said, I encourage you to take on the day every day with grit, grace, and inspiration.