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

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Tony Mantor: Why Not Me?

Episode: John A. King – Trauma to Triumph by Giving a Voice to the Voiceless
Release Date: April 27, 2026
Host: Tony Mantor
Guest: Dr. John A. King

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Overview

In this profoundly honest conversation, trauma recovery advocate, author, and speaker Dr. John A. King joins host Tony Mantor to discuss transforming personal pain—especially from complex trauma and neurodiversity—into resources and hope for others. The episode delves deeply into John's own journey through childhood abuse, late-life autism diagnosis, the work of healing, and his formation of organizations to help give a voice to survivors, particularly men who have been systematically overlooked.

Topics include the realities of trauma recovery, the impact and management of neurodiversity, overcoming stigma, and the power of authenticity and resilience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Journey Into Healing and Advocacy

• Late Autism Diagnosis and Its Impact

  • John reveals he was only recently diagnosed as autistic, despite masking symptoms all his life. This diagnosis brought "clarity and insight," allowing him to understand long-running tendencies and patterns ([04:10]).
  • "It has brought such clarity and insight and being incredibly helpful for me." – John, [04:18]

• Surviving Abuse and Trauma

  • John recounts his childhood trafficking and abuse, resulting in complex PTSD, and how masking and inauthenticity became early survival mechanisms ([04:37]).
  • "Authenticity has always been a challenge. I had to be an extremely good liar as a child to survive. And so I bring that into this continual masking behavior..." – John, [04:37]

• Transition to Advocacy

  • His work now is focused on anti-human trafficking, neurodiversity, and trauma recovery, funding these efforts through for-profit ventures to ensure sustainability ([04:37]).

2. Steps Toward Healing

• Self-Education & Strategic Action

  • Early in his journey, John sought out every available resource—books on trauma from history to the present to understand his experience, especially as a male survivor of female abuse ([05:46]).
  • He used a Venn diagram approach to focus on the 20% of actions producing 80% of results for well-being (the Pareto Principle) ([05:46]).

• Embodied Trauma and Daily Management

  • John emphasizes trauma isn't just psychological, but physiological—manifesting in hypertension, insomnia, hypervigilance, adrenal overstress, etc. Long-term management is critical for health ([06:58]).
  • "Trauma, like any other neurodiverse factor, is not going to go away. It's a lifetime of managing it..." – John, [08:08]

• Self-Discipline & Environment

  • Small, methodical life changes—consistent routines, physical exercise, dietary awareness, and boundary-setting—are vital ([08:08]).
  • The embrace of “saying no” and tailoring environments for one’s needs is highlighted as a powerful step to control triggers and hypervigilance ([08:08]).

3. Understanding and Navigating Neurodiversity

• The Decision to Seek Diagnosis

  • John and his wife’s exploration into autism came from a feeling of “hitting a wall” in trauma work. Deep self-assessment (including high-masking scores) led to diagnosis ([09:21]).
  • The diagnosis offered reasons (not excuses) for lifelong patterns ([09:21]).

• The Venn Diagram Explained

  • By explicitly mapping internal feelings against external expectations, John recognized behaviors performed for others' comfort were often self-erasing ([11:10]).
  • "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..." – John, [11:10]

4. The Ongoing (Non-Linear) Nature of Recovery

• Handling “Bad Days” After Years of Healing
  • John shares a recent story about emotional upheaval after a negative reaction to an email outreach, illustrating how deep sensitivity and need for acceptance persist ([13:09]).
  • He discusses owning his part, learning from the emotional response, and then using neuroplasticity—rewiring the brain via repeated self-talk and reframing—to process and ultimately move past the pain ([15:00]).
  • "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." – John, [15:00]

5. From Individual Healing to Helping Others

• Motivation to Help Others

  • Two pivotal moments led John to advocacy: lack of support for male victims; and, after 15 years of personal recovery, feeling whole enough to begin his foundation ([16:35]).
  • "If my poetry can help one person, then that's fantastic. Up to now, when it's a very focused effort to, you know, do something, to be helpful and useful and contribute." – John, [18:32]

• Stigma and the Silencing of Male Survivors

  • John addresses the deep cultural stigmas around male trauma and mental illness, noting that discussions about men as victims remain taboo, especially compared to women ([19:02]).
  • He contrasts more open global attitudes to mental health with ongoing American reticence, also criticizing both “victim mindset” and resistance to honest conversations ([19:02]).

6. Reframing the Narrative of Survivors

• Moving Beyond “Victim” Identity

  • John advocates for survivors to decide if the past will “define or refine” them, emphasizing ownership and transforming "scars of shame" into "medals of honor" ([21:10]).
  • "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.'" – John, [21:10]

• Cautions Around Support Groups

  • Survivors should ask whether their support systems nurture wholeness or reinforce brokenness ([21:10]).

7. Practical Steps for Anyone Feeling Stuck

• John’s Four Pillars ([23:19])
  1. Authenticity: Am I being true to myself?
  2. Vision: Imagine a desirable future, even when it’s hard.
  3. Goal Setting: Let that vision set the day’s priorities.
  4. Sisu: Cultivate white-knuckled, relentless resilience in pursuit of healing.
  • "For me, that means relentless resilience. And so what I find is that if I'm being true to myself, ... then I just determine that I will relentlessly and resiliently pursue those things, that nothing will get in my way." – John, [23:19]

8. Foundations and Legacy

• Give Them a Voice Foundation

  • Originally focused on abused/trafficked men and boys, the mission expanded to all without a voice, including military, law enforcement, and the neurodiverse ([25:09]).
  • The Phoenix Collective, an accessible mental health resource, also sits under this umbrella.
  • "The aim ... 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." – John, [25:11]

• How to Connect and Get Resources

  • John’s main site: drjohnaking.com ([26:12])
  • Affordable, one-time lifetime access to his materials, videos, workshops, and the Phoenix Collective ([26:12]).

• Looking Ahead

  • John sees himself entering a new phase—John 3.0—dedicating his next decades to writing, consolidating his experiences, and creating resources for others ([27:05]).
  • "Now John 3.0 gets to benefit from it. So I'm trying to bookend this material... because I want to go on and write." – John, [27:05]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trauma and Masking:
  "Authenticity has always been a challenge. I had to be an extremely good liar as a child to survive." – John, [04:37]

• On Lifelong Management:
  "Trauma, like any other neurodiverse factor, is not going to go away. It's a lifetime of managing it..." – John, [08:08]

• On Neuroplasticity:
  "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." – John, [15:00]

• On Support Groups:
  "...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." – John, [21:10]

• On Authentic Healing:
  "At some point, scars of shame had to turn into medals of honor." – John, [21:10]

• Most Enjoyable Podcast:
  "I do a lot of podcasts. This is probably my most enjoyable one. You're a tremendous interviewer." – John, [16:26]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [04:10] — John’s recent autism diagnosis and its meaning
• [04:37] — Trauma history, masking, and entering advocacy
• [05:46] — Self-education and building a healing framework (Venn diagram, Pareto Principle)
• [06:58] — Physical manifestations of trauma; mind-body-spirit connection
• [08:08] — Practical management and self-discipline
• [09:21] — Why seek an autism diagnosis? The process, masking, and relief at answers
• [11:10] — Living from the inside out; using Venn diagrams for self-understanding
• [13:09] — Handling setbacks, email incident example, and emotional processing
• [15:00] — Neuroplasticity and changing internal narratives
• [16:26] — Motivation to help others and beginning to create resources
• [19:02] — Culture, stigma, and silencing of male survivors
• [21:10] — Reframing identity: from victim to survivor
• [23:19] — John's four pillars for moving forward
• [25:09] — About Give Them a Voice Foundation and the Phoenix Collective
• [26:12] — How to connect, access resources, and community offerings
• [27:05] — John 3.0: Looking forward and legacy

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Final Thoughts

This conversation is a beacon for survivors, caregivers, and advocates looking for insight, hope, and practical guidance. From radically honest admissions to strategies for recovery, John A. King offers both concrete resources and an inspirational narrative for anyone facing trauma, neurodiversity, or simply looking for meaning beyond suffering.

Listeners are invited to visit drjohnaking.com for further resources, workshops, and support.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

Welcome to why Not Me Embracing Autism and Mental Health Worldwide, hosted by Tony Mantour, 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 Mantour. 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.

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[B]

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[D]

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[E]

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[D]

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[E]

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[D]

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[F]

Thanks man. Thank you very much. I love your work.

[C]

Oh, thanks so much. I really appreciate that.

[F]

I was really touched by your work with the autistic community. It's a diagnosis I've come to just recently.

[C]

Oh really?

[F]

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 and being incredibly helpful for me.

[C]

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?

[F]

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 has 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 implosion 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 at the other side of that, very passionately involved in anti human trafficking, neurodiversity and trauma recovery. So we've provisioned 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.

[C]

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.

[F]

Thank you. 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 PTSD or complex post traumatic stress. So I read everything. I went back to the Napoleonic 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, Paredes 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 was horrendous and I'm in a space where I'm really. I wake up every day, I'm very, very happy to be alive. And it wasn't like that for a long, long time.

[C]

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.

[F]

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 fl. All those stresses, adrenal stress, 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, 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.

[C]

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?

[F]

There's some simple things you can do is manage Yourself. And sometimes that can be managing your time in 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 hypervigilant? 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 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 this trauma and this trauma, you know, big T, little tissue, but, you know, it's a lifetime of committing to managing it to be a better person.

[C]

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?

[F]

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 was 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 suggestion 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 3am in the morning. And then it came down to, I want to start to really understand this and, and talk to some people about it. And. And it did. It was. 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 had 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 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, oh, crap, I've been doing that for 60 years. Now I understand why it's like that.

[C]

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 was going through in your journey?

[F]

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 causing cortisol dumps. That's why I can't sleep at night. That's another reason why I have nightmares. The 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.

[C]

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?

[A]

Good question.

[F]

So I had. I had something happen last week. So let's see. I mean, I'm unpacking it at the moment, so this could be messy. So it may not be a linear answer for you.

[C]

Okay.

[F]

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 said, 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. You're just putting it to one side and saying, that's not my responsibility.

[C]

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

[F]

Yeah.

[C]

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

[F]

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 neuroscience, 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 going to come a time very soon where these sorts of things won't ever have that impact on me again.

[C]

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.

[F]

I do a lot of podcasts. This is probably my most enjoyable one. You're a tremendous interviewer. Thank you.

[C]

Oh, thanks. I really appreciate it.

[F]

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 at me. 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 There will be no 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 lost everything. I lost my business, my family, my children. 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 very focused effort to, you know, do something, to be helpful and useful and contribute.

[C]

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?

[F]

I think, unfortunately, when we've diavol we're at a time in our nation, in 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 that 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. It 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.

[C]

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

[F]

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 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 then 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.

[C]

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?

[F]

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, as, 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 on 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 sisu. A tattoo I've got on my arm is that Finnish word that means white, knuckled courage. In the face of overwhelming odds, the spirit of sisu 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 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.

[C]

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

[F]

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

[C]

Can you give us a little information on it?

[F]

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.

[C]

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?

[F]

If they go to drjohnaking.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 lip sways 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 bucks 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 bucks. It's the 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 100 videos on YouTube. All that material's in there. We hold free workshops eight times a year for people to come to Looking

[C]

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?

[F]

When I had recalled, 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. I 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 to 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 of 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. Just because it's fun.

[C]

Yeah, 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 you taking the time to join me today.

[F]

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

[C]

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.

[F]

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.

[C]

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 are inspiring guests that show you are not alone in this world.

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