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Written by Autumn Williams

“I didn’t grow up writing songs but music was always a huge part of my life,” he says. “I would play old records of Kenny Rogers and Lionnel Richie and play them on repeat til the needle would wear out. I swear I could feel the lyrics and melodies just moving under my skin.”

Justin grew up in a small town called Seymour Indiana. It was so small, in fact, John Mellencamp wrote the hit song “Small Town” about it.

He told me he thought he had a normal childhood but he started having panic attacks in his early twenties. Some were so bad they could last for days and he recalls spending a decade of his life on pills trying to cope.

“Nothing worked,” he would tell me. He buried himself in antidepressents and alcohol to curb the anxiety. As he was recounting his story, he looked out the window and said, “At one point, I didn’t think I would find my way back.”

After 10 long, painstaking years, Justin met Kathyrn and it changed his life. “I didn’t stop having panic attacks over night. It took what felt like years of hard work to unwire the way I thought. I remember one counselor telling me – ‘you’re the problem. But you’re also the solution.’ I thought that was the worst news you could tell anyone because if I was also the solution then I was sunk.”

He went on to talk about how Kathryn told him his anxiety was the result of how he felt. He didn’t like the way he felt and spent 10 years trying to change that. Once she was able to show him how you feel is a result of HOW you think, that’s when the lightbulbs came on.

“She had me write out on paper things I think about myself. Things like, ‘I don’t matter’ or ‘nobody sees me,’ and ‘I’m just a punching bag for others’ came out. Then she had me put a big bold title at the top and call it ‘LIES.’ Then I drew a line down the middle of the page and titled the right side ‘truth.’

“Truth,” he said, was hard to figure out. He told me about the childhood years of getting bullied growing up that really created a lens for how he saw the world.

“Unsafe is what it is. It’s unpredictable. I knew there had to be a connection because even as an adult I would get triggered anytime I felt like I had done somehting wrong or was in trouble.”

Kathryn had taught him to work his way backwards and that’s what he did. He put in some hard work and now he says if anyone is willing to do the same, he knows the same steps will work for them and they can get their life back.

It’s 175 pages of no B.S. After a licensed therapist read his book the first time, she emailed him and said he should end the chapters with some form of congratulations because facing your giants isn’t easy and people are going to need some encouragement to go through it. But I guarantee you will say it was worth it.

And you will laugh too. He’s transparent and he’s a storyteller and he shares some of the deepest moments of pain that a lot of people can relate to. But that’s Justin…he’s just real and honest.