SHAIR 82: "Healing the Wounds of Childhood" with Dr. Don St. John, delving into the human experience.SHAIR 82: "Healing the Wounds of Childhood" with Dr. Don St. John, delving into the human experience.
The SHAIR Recovery Podcast
Host Omar Pinto talks with Dr. Don St. John about childhood trauma, addiction, and the long process of becoming whole through bodywork, spirituality, and therapy. The conversation highlights practical tools and perspectives for people in recovery who want deeper healing beyond sobriety.
1:05:53•6 Sept 2016
Healing Childhood Wounds and Becoming Whole with Dr. Don St. John
Episode Overview
- Childhood trauma and lack of emotional presence can create deep shame and a sense of being fundamentally defective.
- Feeling good in your body through movement, breath, and healthy food can strongly support long-term recovery.
- Somatic methods such as rolfing and Continuum movement may help release patterns stored in the body and shift long-held emotional states.
- Writing down what you believe about relationships versus what you want to believe can expose limiting beliefs that need to be tested and changed.
- Rather than aiming to be “normal”, focusing on becoming who you are meant to be can make recovery feel more authentic and hopeful.
“Don’t try to be normal. Try to be who you are meant to be.”
What makes a recovery story truly inspiring? This SHAIR Recovery Podcast episode brings together host Omar Pinto and guest Dr. Don St. John to show how healing addiction means healing far more than substance use. Dr. Don, author of *Healing the Wounds of Childhood*, shares how a violently chaotic home, early drinking, and years of destructive behaviour left him convinced there was “something very, very wrong” with him.
He talks openly about blackouts in the Air Force, waking up bleeding in the back of a car, and realising, “You need help.” From there, the conversation tracks decades of gradual change rather than overnight miracles. You’ll hear how group therapy, body-based work like rolfing and Continuum movement, psychotherapy, and a powerful spiritual experience all played a part in his recovery.
Don explains why feeling good in your body matters so much in sobriety, tying in diet, movement, breathing, and what he calls “felt love moments” – those rare times someone really sees and appreciates you. The chat is relaxed and often humorous, but it goes straight to tough questions: What happens if you grew up without real emotional presence from your parents? How does shame become “I am bad”?
And what can you do if you feel you have no one who truly sees you? Along the way, Don offers simple, practical tools, like writing down what you actually believe about relationships versus what you want to believe, then courageously testing new behaviours. His closing advice sums up the heart of the episode: “Don’t try to be normal.
Try to be who you are meant to be.” If you’re in recovery and still wrestling with old wounds, this conversation might nudge you to ask: are you just staying sober, or are you letting yourself become whole?
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