John A. King: Trauma to Triumph by Giving a Voice to the Voiceless

Transforming Trauma into Purpose: John King's Journey on Why Not Me
In this episode of Why Not Me, embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide, host Tony Mantor interviews John King, a trauma recovery advocate, author, speaker, and survivor.
John shares his compelling journey from being trafficked and abused as a child to becoming a prominent advocate for trauma recovery, neurodiversity, and anti-human trafficking.
He discusses his recent autism diagnosis, the challenges of masking, and his methods for healing and resilience.
John emphasizes the significance of authenticity, self-discipline, and relentless resilience in transforming trauma into a purpose-driven life.
He also talks about his foundation, Give Them a Voice, and his future aspirations as a writer.
This episode offers profound insights and practical advice for anyone facing similar struggles and endeavors to inspire and empower listeners worldwide.

01:08 Meet Today's Guest: John, a Trauma Recovery Advocate
02:00 John's Journey and Diagnosis
03:22 Steps to Healing and Managing Trauma
04:30 Understanding Trauma in the Body
05:52 Navigating Social Interactions and Self-Discipline
06:54 John's Recent Autism Diagnosis
08:43 The Venn Diagram and Living Authentically
10:37 Handling Bad Days and Emotional Challenges
14:10 John's Mission to Help Others Heal
16:24 Changing the Stigma Around Male Trauma
18:43 Reframing the Inner Narrative
20:44 Four Key Steps to Getting Back on Track
22:43 Give Them a Voice Foundation and Future Work
25:49 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

INTRO/OUTRO : T. Wild
Mantor Music BMI

The content on Why Not Me: Embracing Autism amd Mental Health Worldwide, including discussions on mental health, autism, and related topics, is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only. 

The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of the podcast, its hosts, or affiliates.

Why Not Me is not a medical or mental health professional and does not endorse or verify the accuracy, efficacy, safety of any treatments, programs, or advice discussed.

Listeners should consult qualified healthcare professionals, such as licensed therapists, psychologists, or physicians, before making decisions about mental health or autism- related care.

Reliance on this podcast's contents is at the listener's own risk. 

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intro/outro music bed written by T. Wild
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome to Why Not Me, Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide, hosted by Tony Mirator, broadcasting from the heart of Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join us as our guests share their raw, powerful stories. Some will spark laughter, others will move you to tears. These real life journeys inspire, connect, and remind you that you're never alone. We're igniting a global movement to empower everyone to make a lasting difference by fostering deep awareness, unwavering acceptance, and profound understanding of autism and mental health. Tune in, be inspired, and join us in transforming the world one story at a time. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me, embracing autism and mental health worldwide. Today's guest is John A. King, a trauma recovery advocate, author, speaker, and survivor who has dedicated his life to helping others turn pain into purpose. What makes his story so compelling isn't just the work he does, it's the journey he's lived. Drawing from his own experiences, he now equips others with tools for healing, resilience, and reclaiming identity beyond trauma. His mission is simple but profound to give survivors a voice and help them step into strength. He has a great journey to tell us, so before we dive into our episode, we'll be back with an uninterrupted show right after a word from our sponsors. Thanks for coming on. Thanks, man. Thank you very much. I love your work. Oh, thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

I was really touched by um your work with the autistic community. It's a diagnosis I've come through just recently. Oh, really? I mean recently, recently, the last couple of months. It was something I've masked my entire life, and it has brought such clarity and insight um and been incredibly helpful for me.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

That's good to hear your diagnosis has helped you. Can you give us a little insight on your past and what you're doing now?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

I was trafficked and abused as a kid. I had recall of that back in 08. So out of that came complex post-traumatic stress disorder. And I look, I look back and I see authenticity's always been a challenge to me. I had to be an extremely good liar as a child to survive. And so I bring that into this continual masking behavior and presenting something that was very acceptable to people. So you bring it forward into life, and I have these implosions when I get recall of what happened to me. So the whole walls come off. And the last 15 to 16 years have been this process of getting well, getting my hands around what I've experienced and what I faced on a daily basis. And out the other side of that, very passionately involved in anti-human trafficking, neurodiversity, and trauma recovery. So we we've provision for the vision. We run some IT companies and we do some stuff, and all of that money goes towards impacting and helping communities, very similar to the sort of ethos you have towards the communities you're involved with.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Can you give us a little insight on the steps that you have taken so that you could heal and how that has helped you moving forward? Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

I read a lot of books. When I first had recall, there was nothing available as a resource, particularly to a man who'd been sexually abused and the predators were female. And 20 years ago, we weren't really even talking about PDSD or complex post-traumatic stress. So I read everything. I went back to the Napolygonic Wars when it talked about, you know, battle heart, then into the Civil War, and then up through World War II. And I read all that material and I'd started to digest and condense it. And I really set up a Venn diagram and I identified the 20% of things, the middle intersection that would impact 80% of my life, Paretti's principle. And I started to actively try and work on those 20%. So over time, as I've gone on, I've constantly been refining that and working on that to get to a place where, you know, life is life is joyous. My childhood is horrendous. And I'm in a space where I'm really I wake up every day and I'm very, very happy to be alive. And it wasn't like that for a long, long time.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

You often talk about trauma as something that lives in the body, not just the mind. What does that mean in real everyday terms for someone that may be listening to our podcast right now? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Well, it could manifest as hypertension. It could manifest as an inability to sleep, it manifest as constantly being on full alert, an inability to relax, unable to just walk into a social environment and enjoy yourself because your body is always in this state of continual fight and flight. So all that those stresses, adrenal stress, um, all those sorts of things are a constant thing you have to learn to manage over time. In order to not only have a sustainable quality of life, but for longevity, because all of those things I've listed are things with terminal consequences if you don't manage them appropriately. So I think that's part of it is understanding the mind-body connection. I believe we are body, mind, and spirit. We've got these three aspects of who we are as human beings. And if we're not taking time to develop each of those, then there's a wholeness of life that we're missing out on.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

What are some of the most effective ways people can either seek out or gather information from whatever sources may be available and then apply what they learn in meaningful ways to improve their lives moving forward?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

There's some simple things you can do is manage yourself, and sometimes that can be managing your time and your environment. Saying no to things doesn't make you impolite, it makes you the captain of your own ship. Sometimes there's environments that I can go into, and there's environments that I can't go into. So part of that nuance is is it best for me and my family if I'm not in a situation where I'm hyper vigilant? So therefore, let's not go into that restaurant or let's not go to that event. So part of that is managing that. And then the other issue is self-discipline. You know, getting up at the same time every day and going to bed at the same time every day. Constantly working out, you know, three to five times a week, making sure that you don't eat red food coloring number five, you know, little things like that, and that it's the micromanagement and the understanding that trauma, like any other neurodiverse factor, is not going to go away. It's a lifetime of managing it. You know, depending on the there's trauma and there's trauma, you know, big T, little T. But you know, it's a lifetime of committing to managing it to be a better person.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

You just mentioned you were recently diagnosed autistic just in the past few months. What led you to go that route to get a diagnosis so you could see what it could actually be?

SPEAKER_00 7:05

Man, great question. And well, that's a I've never had to answer that question in my life. So let me stumble around in here with you. I'd gotten to a point in my recovery where I had done as much as I believe I could have, and yet there were still things that I didn't understand, and there were reasons I was hesitant that didn't make sense anymore. And I started to ask questions because there have been times that people have suggested back in the day when we're on the spectrum or off the spectrum, and people have suggested, look, you need to sit with someone and have a conversation about, you know, possibly being autistic, high-functioning autistic. They were particularly talking about masking autistic behavior for social acceptance. So we started, my wife and I started to unpack that. And, you know, we went through a stage of talking to a few people. You do the online thing at 3 a.m. in the morning, and then it came down to I want to start to really understand this and talk to some people about it. And and it did. It was a I was very high on the masking score. I think it's 174 and it was 147. And so we started to unpack that as a couple. What it did was make sense to me again, back to Venn diagram, is there's a series of behavior that have been put off and said, look, this is one thing. And for me, it wasn't an excuse for behavior, it was a reason for behavior. Because I'm the sort of person, if I understand something, then I can go about managing it and making it work for me. Really, that's what it's been for. As I said, Tony, I'm only fresh on this aspect of the journey. It's amazing, but once you get insight and tools, you can realize you go, huh, crap, I've been doing that for 60 years. Now I understand why it's like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Now you just mentioned the Venn diagram. There's many people out there that might not know what it is. Can you expand and explain a little bit about it and how you used it to help you in what you were going through in your journey?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

So what what it did for me was give me okay, so we've got an internal measure, and we've got an internal set of feelings. And those internal set of feelings and measures are often imposed on us. We spend a lot of our life living from the outside in. We're supposed to behave this way, do this thing, act this way, believe this, all from the outside in. There comes a point in our life where we have to live from the inside out. So that's very important in a recovery process, is that authenticity. Very important. So what this did for me was make me realize that there was whole aspects of my life that I was living and behaving in such a way because it was a construct to how I thought people perceived me or what they wanted from me to accept me. And I've realized that for most of my life I've lived in such a manner as to please others and put them at ease at the cost of myself and the things that were very difficult. So, in order for me to go into a social environment and make sure everybody else is comfortable, cost me a lot personally. And so what this measurement did was help me identify those things and put a handle around those things and go, okay, so I'm obviously masking a series of behaviors to make other people comfortable, but that's causing me to be internally stressed. That's caught in cortisol dumps. That's why I can't sleep at night. That's another reason why I have nightmares. And nightmares aren't only about what happened to me in my past, it's about the concerns about the social interaction I have tomorrow. So what it did was just help me understand this is why I'm behaving the way that I'm behaving. As again, a reason, not an excuse.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

Okay, as we know, healing and recovery is not linear. So let's say you have a bad day. What does a bad day look like after years of healing? And how do you personally move through a bad day if you should have one now?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Good question. So I had I had something happen last week. So let's see. I mean I'm I'm packing it at the moment, so this could be messy. So it may not be a linear uh answer for you. Okay. So I had something happen and I sent an email. And normally when you send an email and someone doesn't like that email, or they respond, it was they were on a list that I run because we reach out to a lot of people. They were incredibly rude and insulting, and it hurt on a very deep level. So because and I would have just at one stage said, that's because I'm just oversensitive, but now I understand it's because I'm so desperate to be accepted, wanted, and seen as normal for whatever that phrase means, that it really kicked me into a spiral. So I've spent this whole week looking at that emotion, going, okay, there's some of this I can own, and I apologize to the person and say I, you know, I didn't mean to upset you by you getting on an email list. But after that response, the person came back incredibly harsh again. So now what I'm trying to do is sit with these emotions, and I have to see this person tomorrow night. Sit with these emotions going, I'm just not going to own these feelings. These feelings are coming outside of me. It's really not because of anything I've done. So I'm wrestling with understanding that. So I'm in the process of just sitting with it, unpacking it, owning my part. And once I've owned that part, then just developing the skill to put the rest to one side, which is a very, very difficult thing, as you would know. Um, you know, just putting it to one side and saying, that's not my responsibility.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

That is tough because no matter what, you still have that emotion attached to it.

SPEAKER_00 12:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

It's not like you're just putting it on a shelf like you would an old toy and walking away and forgetting about it. It's still gonna be in your memory.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

Yes. That comes into some of the neuroplasticity things I've worked with. Is that the moment you say stop to a feeling or a word in your mind that comes up, negative thinking comes up again and again, and often people just dwell in that space. But the moment you say stop to that voice, that idea or that feeling, you're actually starting to rewire a whole series of things again. So neuroplasticity is a beautiful thing. You say stop enough times, and at some point your brain will develop a new way to work within that environment. So for me, when I saw this thing come at me, for the first time in my life, I recognized it for what it is. So I understand, based on neurosilence, that I'm actually in the midst of this uncomfortable process of developing a whole new way to think about it, program myself, and respond to things. So the feeling I now see this as a very good thing. This uncomfortable feeling I've been able to rebrand it as this is process and change, and there's gonna come a time very soon where these sorts of things won't ever have that impact on me again.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

Yeah, now your work is very personal. You've gone through many things in your life, you have definitely had to heal. What moment in your life made you realize you just didn't want to heal, but you wanted to help others heal just like you have?

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Um, I've I do a lot of podcasts. This is probably my most enjoyable one. You're a tremendous interviewer, thank you. Oh, thanks. I really appreciate it. There were two times they were 15 years apart, 15, 16 years apart. The first was when I went looking for support as a man who'd been sexually abused by the females in his world, and there was nothing. And I tried to go to support groups, rape support groups, and I was told that I was a predator, not a victim, that I was a pretender, and basically this horrible vitriolic behavior manifested it. And I came away from that thinking, okay, that's just the way of the world now. If I at any point can get better with living with this, then I want to do something for someone. And I wanted to help men, particularly men, because there's very few advocates for men that are dealing with a lot of this. So that was number one. But then I spent 15 years concentrating on me because I didn't want to be that person that, you know, you get 12 months into recovery from something, and all of a sudden you're starting a website telling everyone how to do it, and two years after that, you're back on the bottle. We've all seen those horror stories. We've all been those horror stories too, probably. And then it's really just recently, two years ago, I stopped, I turned 60, I stopped, and I thought, I'm feeling pretty good. I'm enjoying life for the first time ever. My feet are up under me. I was able to go back out in the workforce because in 08, I I lost everything. I lost my business, my family, my children. I I lost it all when I got sick. And I felt like my feet were under me for the first time. And at that point, that's when we started the Phoenix Collective. And we took all this teaching, these 15 years and $300,000 we've spent on getting well, and we put it into a form where people could hopefully stand on someone else's shoulders and move forward. So that we've been developing that over the last two years. So it really has been that first decision that, and I started writing poetry. If my poetry can help one person, then that's fantastic. Up to now, when it's a just a very focused effort to, you know, do something, to be helpful and useful and contribute.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Now, you just brought up something that totally makes sense, and unfortunately, it is part of the world. My question is going to be how do you see us changing this? A lot of men still feel silenced when it comes to abuse and trauma. It's the stigma that goes along with it, just like autism has stigma, mental health has stigma. These things still have a stigma, which I prefer the word perception. It's still attached no matter what. So how do you see us changing that?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I think unfortunately with De Evolve, we're at a time in our nation and many parts of the world where the ability to critically think is no longer valued. And things have been placed in small pockets around agendas and social engineering that are held as opposed to having conversations and evolving as a species. We're in an unfortunate position where it's okay to talk about women and girls being sexually abused or raped or trafficked. But we are not in the same place when it comes to men because we've made that issue of the sexual abuse and trafficking a gender issue as opposed to a human issue. And when it comes to things like autism and mental health, particularly in America, we don't do well as having conversations about mental health. In places in Europe and even in Australia, conversations about mental health in the workplace in the community are commonplace. In America, we seem to still be behind. We're ahead in so many other things, but we're behind. We don't want to do that. You can't tell someone that you're autistic and you have a trouble in crowds when it comes to getting into a congested airport. You've got to get a wheelchair. You've got to get a wheelchair because then they'll put you in a wheelchair, or you've got to get a walking stick, or you've got to get an emotional support can or something. You know, I don't know what it is. There's not, there doesn't seem and you know, there's a lot of people that unfortunately live in this victim mindset and they want they want all accommodations for things that really don't need to be accommodated for. And then there's the other extreme of people who really do need some help. They've got very little leverage to be able to ask for that help personally or community. And so we're caught in that place where people don't seem to want to have on they want to talk a lot, not have honest conversations.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

You just mentioned something I think is very important, and that's the victim mentality.

SPEAKER_00 18:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

A lot of victims that do survive, they struggle, from what I understand, with identity. They often will say, Am I broken? Or am I becoming something? How do we help people reframe that inner narrative? Because this narrative has to be changed so they can feel better about themselves moving forward with their life.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

A couple of decisions I made in my journey that my past would either define me or refine me. I was always going to have to carry it. Was I going to be known as John the victim or not? Would there become a stage in my life where people would look at me and not know that I was a victim of anything? Because I just was, I had my handles around this thing. So defining and refining. The second thing is ownership, I found. At some point, scars of shame had to turn into medals of honor. I had to be comfortable enough with what was done to me as a child to say, hey, look at this. This is just who I am. Isn't this great? I've dealt with this. Afflicted or infected. Either things done to you are going to inflict you or infect you. It's going to be one of those. So those series of thoughts came to me when I was about four or five years into this process. And I realized that I could never allow myself, very early on, I recognized that I could never allow myself to be, call myself a victim of anything because that was a death sentence. And I think when people get into the they put it on their bios on their social media account, and every time they go there, those words are defining them. And they go, even going to support groups, and I and now this is a challenging one because I would encourage everyone to go to support groups and to get help. But is that support group nurturing you to a level of wholeness or is it celebrating your brokenness? And only you can be big enough to make that determination. Because there's a lot of support groups that you can go to and a lot of therapists when what they're doing is they're just actually enabling behavior and keeping you indebted to them on an ongoing basis. And I don't think that's a very positive thing to allow yourself to be caught into.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Okay, let's expand on that if we could. If someone listening has this inner feeling that they are stuck, they feel like they've tried everything they can do. What's one small but powerful step you believe almost anyone, no matter what stage they are, can do to help them get themselves back on track for their lives?

SPEAKER_00 21:03

I've got I've got four things that over these 15 years and $300,000, you boil it all down, it comes down to four things for me. Number one, be authentic. You know, mission, vision, values. We teach that, but it's a reality. It's like, am I being true to the person that I know now? Very important. So that's your starting point. The second thing, and the hardest thing to do is imagine the future you want to inhabit. What does tomorrow look like for you? And people say that and say, Well, that's a great fridge magnet, but it's the hardest thing I ever do. Every day I find it a challenge to imagine a positive future when all I've ever known is negativity. The third thing is then I'm being who I am, I'm looking at my future and saying this is who I want to be, and then allowing that to set goals for my life. Being in a place and big enough to go, you know what? These are really the things that I want to go after. Not what people are telling me from the outside in, but from me from the end. And the Third and the final one is Sasu. The tattoo I've got on my arm. Is that Finnish word that means white-knuckled courage in the face of overwhelming odds? Sasu, the spirit of sussu manifests itself. It's very very hard to define that word. And for me that means relentless resilience. And so what I find is that if I'm being true to myself, I've got an idea of who I want to be, I'm a writer, and I allow that to set my day and my calendar. I spend every time every day writing, every day editing, every day talking to people. And then I just determine that I will relentlessly and resiliently pursue those things. That nothing will get in my way.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

I believe that over the years you finally got to the point of where you created a foundation. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah, yeah, we did. We founded the Give Them the Voice Foundation.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Can you give us a little information on it?

SPEAKER_00 22:55

So give them the voice was simply because there was a group of people at the time when I started it that had no voice. And it was men and boys who'd been abused and trafficked. And then it came down to then it moved into people in general because we were working with a lot of military people, tip of the spear, pipe hitters, police, law enforcement. And that these people were committing suicide at a horrible rate. And the majority of those that do that are men. So again, we overlap. And then his last phase of things has been again giving a voice to people with a neurodiverse background and an everyday experience. So the aim of the give them a voice is to be able to provide tools and opportunity for people to be able to grow and develop coaching resources in a very accessible manner. And that's where we came up with the Phoenix Collective. So it all sits together under this one hub of working with people who feel they don't have a voice in order to give them a voice and give them the tools so they can live a productive life.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

What's the best way for people to connect with you, whether they want to follow your work, reach out, or support what you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 23:57

If they go to drjonaking.com, they'll find a bunch of links on the front page there. You know, with our material, I don't like subscriptions. Everything is subscription now. You know, $9 for this letter. It weighs me out, man. So we made it $99 for life. But if they've heard your podcast and they go on it and they join the Phoenix Collection, it's like $27 or something. It's ridiculous. But it's for life. So you've got 15 years and $300,000 worth of mental health coaching and support. $27, it's a cost of a meal, man. So we're trying to make it as obtainable for people as we can. So they yeah, so I reckon they go there. I've got over a hundred videos on YouTube, all that material's in there. We hold free workshops eight times a year for people to come to.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

Looking ahead, what does the next chapter of your work look like? What kind of legacy do you hope that it leaves for those that you've worked with and future survivors?

SPEAKER_00 24:50

When I had recall, I went from John 1.0 to John 2.0. John 1.0 was very goal-driven, determined. Out there, you know, guy. John 2.0 wanted to write poetry and smoke cigars. And the two never really got on. I couldn't like we had no interest in what John.10 was. But now I'm up to a stage where John 3.0 has turned up. And John 3.0 is going to spend the next 30 years of his life being a writer. So for me, I feel like I'm gathering all this stuff that John 2.0, John 1.0 went through that John 2.0 thought, bloody hell, I need to solve this. And now John 3.0 gets the benefit from it. So I'm trying to bookend this material. That's why I came up with the Phoenix Collective. I want to give all this middle stuff away to help other people because I want to go on and write. I want to write about military sexual trauma. I want to write about human trafficking. I want to write, you know, obtainable heroes doing imaginary things and conquering the universe. Because um just because it's fun. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:45

Yeah, and that's what you have to do. Enjoy your life a little bit. Well, this has been great. Great information, great conversation. I really appreciate your taking the time to join me today.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Well, thank you, Tony. My agent has got two books shopping at the moment with publishers. When I get them out, I'm going to hit up a mate and come back for a virtual book tour. Yeah. Come back at love to launch my books on your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Yeah, that would be fun. I think it would be great to hear what you're writing and what you're doing and just reconnect again. So yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 26:13

I appreciate you, man. You do a great job. You got a great shed, too. I love it. You got a great shed. I love your shed. I like talking to people with good sheds. Thank you, mate. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

Yeah, I've really enjoyed it. Thanks again. Thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. If you know someone who has a story to share, tell them to contact us at whynotme.world. One last thing, spread the word about why not me. Our conversations, our inspiring guest, the Joe. You are not alone in this world.