From Trauma to Superpowers: A Listener's Story

might find yourself going, oh, here we go. Chad writes this, When I was a child, I had it in my head that I was supposed to have superpowers, Not in the way most kids dream about it, but with a deep, inexplicable certainty, almost as if I had possessed them before and was trying to understand where they'd gone. I was convinced I could move things with my mind and communicate

through telepathy. Society eventually taught me that it was impossible, but as life would reveal, the impossible is never impossible. Profound stories. Mine begins with a challenging childhood. I was a hyperactive kid who struggled with authority. Blessed with a mother who, despite her rheumatoid arthritis, embodied kindness and gentleness and was a terrific mother. Her boyfriends, however, brought darkness into my life, especially after one leveled up and claimed

the title of stepfather. The mental and physical abuse became my unwonted companions, compounded by a traumatic incident with an uncle in law that I dare not mention in order to not trigger any of your listeners. Living in constant fear shapes child in ways that echo through decades. Another uncle, one that I respected and loved, unknowingly setting to stage for my future, told me at age seven that I'd be the first in the family to go to prison.

Those words would follow me throughout my life, though not in the way I imagined. Seeking escape, I found solace and alcohol at a young age, trying to stay anywhere but home. At sixteen, I found refuge with my best friend and his mother. School became an afterthought, and while I started running with the wrong crowd, some inexplicable force kept me just shy of serious trouble. Unlike many my companions, even in those dark times, I maintained this peculiar ability

to radiate joy and help others. People did often take advantage of that giving nature, but the act of helping still filled me with purpose. Nonetheless, with alcoholism running through my family tree like sap the progression into addiction felt almost predetermined. By twenty two, I had transplanted myself far away from Michigan, where my past was painted onto every interaction. I had to a sunny Florida, where the traumatized seemed to shine bright here, as shown an every news headline.

Here I became a bartender and predictable, a full fledged alcoholic. I was lean, then, confident in my appearance in life had a way of presenting opportunities, like my first Florida love, who convinced me to give education another shot and believed that I could do more. Armed with my ged I entered art school, beginning an intense four year juggling act of bartending, drinking, and education. Unlike my high school days of skipping classes, yet somehow still easing the tests, I

approached college with genuine dedication. That drive led to graduation in three and a half years with a nearly perfect four point zero, only slightly marred by life's inevitable curve balls. My uncle's dismissive prediction kept fueling me. I developed this beautiful obsession with proving people wrong about my potential. The corporate world of my early thirties brought success tinged with irony.

While I consistently delivered exceptional work as a graphic in motion designer, always the go to person for premium clients, my body was silently rebelling. In just three years, drinking helped me gain over two hundred pounds. My frame, unaccustomed to such weight, felt like a foreign entity. Confidence crumbled, self loathing grew, and thoughts turned dark. Little did I know this suffering was merely the prelude to a deeper transformation, albeit one that would push me to death door, only

to knock and run away. The journey point came around Saint Patrick's day, shared with a friend who was fighting similar battles of weight gain from too much consumption of the Irish syrup. After one final celebration, I embraced sobriety in a modified Kido diet, no sugar, under thirty five grams of carbs daily. Fifteen months later, I'd shed two hundred pounds through sheer determination. But as my physical burden lifted, the emotional weight I'd been drinking to suppress came rushing

back with a vengeance. My brain, I discovered, had been locked in fight or flight mode for decades. The constant anxiety, the hypervigilance, always scanning for exits. These weren't just quirks. They were survival mechanisms I no longer needed, sobriety meant facing these truths head on. But I was still trying to ignore my brain's desperate warnings. Do you know what happens when you ignore your brain like that? It painfully

reminds you? Boy? Don't I know that? Chad? Well? The pain began as a subtle baseline in my lower back before orchestrating a masterpiece of agony throughout my entire body. Chad, you are quite the writer. Everything below my chin became a battlefield of sensation, from my fingertips to my toes, each nerve ending singing its own song of suffering. Arms and legs felt as though invisible hands were constantly wringing them like wet towels, twisting and opposing directions with relentless force.

My back, well, that became a special canvas of torment, as if dozens of ice picks had taken up permanent residence, each one driving deeper with every breath, my heart beat, setting the rhythm of my own fading soundtrack. To call it extreme, agony would be like calling a hurricane a light breeze. The timing of it all seemed especially cruel.

I just met the love of my life. It was building a future filled with promise, where my brain remained steadfast in its conviction that danger lurked around every corner for that first year that the silent track was stuck on repeat, pulling me under His doctors were left scratching their heads. Every scan came back clean, every blood test normal, a picture of perfect health on paper, while I was drowning in a sea of pain. The eventual fibromyalgia diagnosis

arrived like both a revelation and a sentence. I remember thinking rather naively that it couldn't possibly get worse. When every inch of your body is already screaming in pain, you assume there's nothing left to hurt, no new territory for pain to conquer. But I should have known better than to underestimate my brain's creative potential. After all, I'd built my career on thinking outside the box. Why wouldn't my brain be equally innovative in finding new ways to

command my attention? Have you ever experienced shingles? Imagine that heightened skin sensitivity where even a gentle touch feels like assault, then expand that sensation across your entire body. My brain, in its desperate attempt to be heard, had turned my skin into an instrument of torture. My wife's touch wants a source of felt like burning matches against my skin, turning the thing I desire most to ease my suffering

into a weapon against me that would break anyone. And it did, just not in the way you might expect. Instead of surrendering, I found resolve. Having survived so much already, I wasn't about to let this be my undoing. I'd ended up going to the prestigious Mayo Clinic, but the words didn't change, hearing once again that my condition was incurable. They did, however, offer behavioral therapy, claiming up to a sixty percent pain reduction after four intensive weeks, eight hours

a day. But as a business owner, I couldn't simply disappear for four weeks. That kind of absence would be in watching my client base evaporate. Without clients, there'd be no business to return to, no income to sustain me outside of that, and more importantly, as someone who'd made a habit of achieving the impossible. I wasn't just interested

in managing the pain. I wanted it gone. And if that wasn't enough, Life and its hilarious sense of humor gave me an addictive personality that had let me down the path of pain medication dependency. But even in that darkness, there was no way that was going down that path. A had nap with how far I had come. Something deep within me rejected the incurable labor, and I refused to accept this as my new normal. Determined once again,

I set out to prove them all wrong. After exhausting countless conventional approaches in some non conventional ones, I just gave up and did something so radical and so crazy that I never thought I'd ever be able to do. I stopped everything and simply just shut the f up and listened. For once. I sat in silence, closed my eyes, and gave my brain the attention it had been screaming

for my entire life. I connected with every part of my body, acknowledging our shared trauma while affirming our safety, our worthiness of love, our right to peace. Nearly three decades of fight or flight conditioning doesn't dissolve overnight, but through persistent meditation, mindfulness, and self love. Something miraculous happened. The pain stopped within three months. It was just gone.

I had achieved the impossible, curing my incurable condition. I knew getting off pain medicine was going to be hard, but I kept telling myself that if I didn't stop taking them, my brain would give me a physical reason to have to take them. I wasn't about to let that happen. So that day, the same day that I noticed that the pain was gone, I quit taking the pain medication. Well, this might be where you'd think my story ends, but it isn't. This is where my story begins.

Fascination with the mind's potential consumed me. Meditation and paying attention to my thoughts had me experiencing precognitive glimpses to simple things like knowing who would appear at my door even if I didn't know them. This led me to a profound realization. See my lifelong ability to instantly read people's intentions, detect deception, and know the type of person they were wasn't universal. I thought everyone had this ability. Discovering I was a psychic EmPATH opened a door I

couldn't help but walk through easily opening other abilities. Childhood, me knew something that I didn't. I did have a superpower. My quest for understanding led me down countless fascinating paths, delving into ancient knowledge, quantum physics and mechanics, alchemy, evolution, archaeology, and the subtle energies that connect all things. I explored every religion, studied, ancient alien theories, metaphysics, and anything esoteric

I could find. This wasn't just casual curiosity. It was an insatiable hunger to understand the deeper mysteries of existence. I became a certified past life aggression and hypnotherapist using the QHHT method, and began taking psychic meadership classes at a local spirit shop. Beyond my empathic abilities, I discovered I was clar cognizant, possessing a profound knowing that transcends

ordinary intuition. During medium readings, when I connect with someone to understand their essence, their journey, their struggles and triumphs, their insights flow with remarkable accuracy. It's not just intuition nor educated guessing. It's as if the information simply appears in my consciousness, fully formed and precisely detailed. Learning to trust this gift, to embrace it with confidence despite its

unconventional nature, has been one of my greatest challenges. When it's just there and there's no woo woo in sparkles, I find it difficult to go with it. That is where my journey is currently, and the pages for tomorrow are still yet to be written, and for once, I am truly excited to find out. The Skeptic Meta Physicians podcast has taught me some new techniques and insights that

have helped build my confidence in my gifts. After finding particular resonance with one of the episodes, I left a comment sharing how it had inspired me with confidence to give my first to ROW reading. The opportunity came with my wife's friend, someone naturally skeptical, agreed to be my first subject. As I conducted the reading, she just sat there, nodding and smiling, a response that would typically make me second guess myself, Yet I remained grounded in my confidence.

What I thought was reserved skepticism melted away when she exclaimed, Wow, that is exactly what I needed and was really accurate for what I'm doing and trying to do in my life. That moment of validation, especially coming from someone who approached the experience with healthy skepticism, reinforced that my gifts were real and meant to be shared. You all helped me with that confidence with your recent to Row episode with

the founder of Biddy to Row. If I could give one message to all that are listening, it would be this, It's not the struggles and dark times we go through that define us. It's how we react to them and what we do afterwards that make us who we are. Believe it and it shall be. And lastly, weird, well, that's the new normal. This is a true story and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. Chad, I love your story. Thank you so much for sharing it with us. You don't seem very

very different than me in a lot of ways. I actually am also clear, cognizant, and yet have a very difficult time embracing it. You're right, there's no will with just kind of just there. And I've actually said to Karen a couple of times, I'm getting this like this, but I'm not. I don't know if it's real or if I'm just making it up. And almost every time when we go to verify the facts, they have seemed to have come to be true. So keep at it, don't lose hope, don't feel like you're making it up.

The more you use it, the more confident you'll become, the better you'll be at it, the more you'll be able to help others with this gift that you have, yes, your own superpower. All right, chat, thank you so much for sending us over. This was a wonderful read. And if you out there are listening and you have a similar story or another story that you feel the audience would really benefit from listening, to send it to us. Send us an email Skeptic Metaphysician at g dot com.

You could always reach me at will at Skeptic Metaphysician dot com, or you can always reach out to us to our contact us page on our website. However, Chad alerted us to the fact that you can only send so many characters, so if your story takes longer to write than what is available on that contact us form, email is definitely the way to go, just like Chad did. All Right, this was fun. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks again, Chad. That's all for this episode of The

Skeptic Metaphysicians. Until next time, I'm will and we'll see as soon