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What is Living Centered Podcast?
So many of us go through life feeling out of touch with ourselves, others, and the world around us. We feel disconnected, overwhelmed, distracted, and uncertain of how to find the clarity, purpose, and direction we so deeply, so authentically, desire. The Living Centered Podcast in an invitation to another way of living.
Every episode, we sit down with mental health experts, artists, and friends for a practical and honest conversation about how to pursue a more centered life—rediscovering, reclaiming, and rooting in who we truly are.
Welcome to the Treating Trauma Podcast. Join us for this limited series of conversations with our clinicians and alum. Together, we'll explore the pillars that support the Milestone's innovative recovery that works. These conversations are an inside look into the approach, expertise, healing, hospitality, and community that make up the Milestone's experience. Let's jump in.
Speaker 1:Hi, friends. Welcome to the final episode in this series of the treating trauma podcast. I am tempted to say that we saved one of my favorite interviews for last. I loved connecting with today's milestones alum, Billy. I think every time I've had a conversation with him, and I've had a few over the years, I just leave so grateful for the way that he has leaned in with curiosity to quote unquote, the work.
Speaker 1:I think as he shares in this interview, he represents a part of the world, a demographic that is often turned off or has been told that mental health is taboo. And so as a man in the South, he just shows up wholeheartedly to talk about how a lifetime of adverse circumstances piled up on him and really brought him to a place where milestones was the answer. And I was just so grateful. There were several times that I teared up in this conversation, and he talks about the ways that milestones came alongside him to help him own his healing and really empowered him to do that, and then how he's continued that healing after leaving milestones. So this is, our final episode in this series, and I'm so excited that you get to hear from our alumni, Billy.
Speaker 1:What do you think, Christopher?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a great conversation. Billy has one of the biggest hearts of any human I know, and I really appreciate his willingness to share his story and to kind of talk about his experience. And you talked about being grateful to have the conversation. I really related to that. And I think Billy's really grateful for his healing journey as well.
Speaker 1:All right, I'm excited for you to meet Billy. Why don't we start with kind of the beginning? What if you were to
Speaker 3:give us a
Speaker 1:snapshot of what your life looks like before milestones and maybe a snapshot of what your life looks like now?
Speaker 3:So I would say, you know, if you backed up my life and five years ago, six years ago, if you were looking at my life and said, okay. What's Billy like? I think most people would describe me as a man's man kinda guy. I say what I think. I was a successful businessman, had a a wife and five kids, and, I mean, just I'm a go getter from you know, if you could look at me in high school, you know, my senior year, I was student council president, voted by our class that I'm I'm the best all around.
Speaker 3:So in my mind, I kinda carried that. Like, I'm I'm the best. And now there's a reason I tried to be the best. And I didn't realize that some of that was, you know, started from childhood, but I I just have always been a go getter. And, you know, we live on a farm.
Speaker 3:I've raised cattle, and we love to hunt and fish. You know, I'm I'm probably as close to an Alabama redneck as you can get. And if you looked at my life, and I think I would have even told you I have a pretty awesome life. Things are good. If you were to give a picture of my life several years before Milestone, I may have thought things were just great Mhmm.
Speaker 3:For Billy Atchison. And now fast forward to my first day at Milestone. And I remember meeting a friend of mine drove me, and I remember meeting Crystal. I was super anxious and my friend's right there. And and she's like, hey.
Speaker 3:Do you want me to help you get your stuff? And I said, yeah. I got a suitcase right there and then a cooler beer you can help me with. And she didn't laugh. So I looked at her and I said that jokes like that aren't funny here, are you?
Speaker 3:Are are they? And she looked at me like super kind. And she was like, no. Not really. And then I I looked at my friend, you know, and I just started bawling crying that I I couldn't believe I'm about to check myself in to a place like this.
Speaker 3:And I I didn't even know what a place like this even meant, but I I remember going and laying down on the bed and and just thinking to myself, how did I get here? Like
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And a week before, I I was planning on ending it. So Yeah. I was thinking in my mind, man, I'm a I shouldn't even be here. But thankfully, some men intervened and and got me there. And I I know my friends were probably well, they were a nervous wreck probably not knowing how do we help our friend because I had sent them all a text just letting them know how much I loved them, and and they clued in on on that there was more to that than met the eye.
Speaker 3:And so I'm so thankful, you know, to have those friends, but they they said, hey. We think you should should go to this place called Milestones. You know, it's run by this company called On-site. Here's the link. And I I tried to read some of it, and I I just I couldn't.
Speaker 3:And I saw that they had a video. And I I watched the video, and it was a lady, and she's not there anymore, or at least she wasn't there when I was there. But she described in the first minute of that video, she described me. I never knew anybody could connect with me like that. And then the next guy on there, he said was a testimony of a guy, and he said, I decided I wanna live.
Speaker 3:And when I saw that, I just stopped the video. And I called my friend and I said, this is where I need to go. And that was it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And
Speaker 3:and I couldn't even afford it. And they they helped raise some funds for me and and put things together. And and milestones, I mean, saved my life. And I I chose yeah. I wanted to live, but the way I was living was awful.
Speaker 3:And the thought of continuing to live like that was unbearable. And so milestones gave me a second chance. It would be the biggest thing. And so if you said, okay. You went from this awesome life to now you're about to end your life with a wife and kids and what happened.
Speaker 3:And so so many years ago, we we lost our four year old daughter. Yeah. And so that was super traumatic. As, you know, any parent losing a child, it was awful and one of the hardest things we've ever gone through as a family. And but over time, we healed, and I knew I'm gonna see my daughter again in heaven, and god's in control.
Speaker 3:So end of discussion. Everything's good. Yeah. And people would tell me, Billy, you ought to see a counselor. No.
Speaker 3:I don't need to see a counselor. I know the truth. Mhmm. So you rock along and all the songs that they write about, you know, country music, man, they write them about me. And life is good.
Speaker 3:And I told my wife, hey, we're gonna save money, and we'll build a dream home. And then a year later, that dream home burnt to the ground and, you know, catastrophic loss. We were all there in the house. And what was interesting is I was in the fire service. So every fire truck, every SCBA, all the turnout gear, the boots, everything that showed up on that fire, I sold And and I'm just incredibly grateful for firefighters and especially the volunteers that came.
Speaker 3:So I thought, you know, I had lost a child, hardest thing that any person could ever go through, and nothing will faze me again in life. And after the fire, when I look at my family, and I'm telling them, I knew that how I responded was gonna be so important to them and their stability. And I remember I looked at him and said, guys, we're solid. Like, we are gonna be fine. And then I wasn't fine.
Speaker 3:I I went started going really downhill after the fire. And I remember a guy telling me that is experienced with stuff like this, telling me he thinks I have PTSD. And I'm like, no. I'm I'm fine, man. You know, military guys, they can can carry that label, but not me.
Speaker 3:And Mhmm. But I began and then my work started going downhill and my relationships were starting to suffer, and I was getting more and more angry at life and God. And if you've ever heard of that trauma response, the fight, flight, freeze, and how some people can get stuck. And I I certainly got stuck in fight. And I became, like, this incredibly angry man, just pissed off at at everybody and at God.
Speaker 3:And Mhmm. You know, things are not going good with my family. And and to sleep, I use it's an incredible sleep aid that that there are people out there. It works great for a while. It's called alcohol.
Speaker 3:And I use that to help me sleep and calm my nerves down. And because nothing would calm my nerves better than alcohol. And that worked great until it doesn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then then you got a whole another slew of issues that, you know, I tried to solve by drinking more alcohol, but it's like all the problems you try to solve get recreated because you keep solving them with an awful thing. Mhmm. And I I I almost lost my family over it. I had just really wounded my kids. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:I abandoned my family for, like, three years. I just checked out
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Of life and wasn't a father, wasn't a husband. And because I wasn't strong enough to pull myself up like I always have been, Come on, Billy. You know, get your shit together. Let's go. Your family needs you.
Speaker 3:And I couldn't. And I couldn't concentrate. And then I began this, like, just cry all the time. And I would even wake up at night crying.
Speaker 1:Imagine it felt very disorienting because of this is the image I have of who I am. And then this is what's showing up. And those two things aren't congruent. And I bet that that was really, really hard.
Speaker 3:Thought I was going crazy. Mhmm. Would be the truth of it. You know, one thing that I had learned is when you have early or childhood trauma, you know, you can stuff that because you don't know how to deal with it and you you stuff it and keep it to yourself. And that's what I did for, you know, forty years.
Speaker 3:And eventually, that kind of stuff is going to come out. And I think when you wake as long as I did, it comes out in a really nasty way and at least for me. And and it wasn't fun, and it was a really you know, it was a conversation I had, and it just it just exposed itself. And and even that created damages. And and that was kind of the pinnacle point for me.
Speaker 3:It was like I broke at that point. And that's was kind of the beginning catalyst that got me heading towards milestone. Because after that, I know I became, you know, suicidal and it was really hard. I was abused sexually by a leader in the church. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And so there's just, you know, lots of things that I didn't realize how that can affect your life.
Speaker 2:I just really appreciate you sharing that story. And and what's interesting about your story, Billy, is, like, there's just a combination of things. And and, you know, for so long, you had, quote, a normal life and were successful and had had the American dream. Right? And then stress hit and things started to kind of come apart a little bit and then more so and more so.
Speaker 2:And it kind of led you to a point where you didn't even recognize who you were. Really, I would be super curious, you know, after hearing your story and kind of hearing about your first day at Milestones, you know, what are some of the, like, I don't know, the top or the top two things that happened at Milestones that really shifted things for you? Like, what were some of the either interactions or experiences that were like that led to self awareness or just led to you feeling like you're moving in the right direction or that were just like things that you'll never forget?
Speaker 3:Here's where I wish I would have written down some notes because it's overwhelming to try to reiterate to you all the things that Milestone did from my life and my wife and my kids now. It's I'm just so thankful. So if you could think of a guy that would have looked at the schedule of what I'm gonna be doing during the week, first of all, I wouldn't wouldn't have known what any of those things were. Yeah. I would have been ex and I was extremely skeptical.
Speaker 3:Like, this stuff seems so woo woo and and just not me and not like a manly kind of thing. It's just weird. I've never even heard the word modality. That's that's like a mental health word, I think.
Speaker 1:Real therapeutic. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We I just don't hear that on the fire scenes. But the most impactful for me was probably you know, actually, I can't say. There wasn't one thing that was just stood out. It was the conglomerate of everything together. And I and I had said, you know, there's some woo woo things that actually were not woo woo at all.
Speaker 3:There's there's scientific. There's so much research behind everything that is done. Another modality that was extremely impactful was something called EMDR. EMDR is what my therapist did at Milestone to walk me through my sexual abuse. And Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And I had never talked about it to anyone really. And so I I started to tell him the story. And I said, man, I had just moved into this town with my family, and I was just this young little boy and didn't know anybody in this, you know, children's director in the church or comes up and befriends me. And and I told Terrence, my counselor, I was like, man, we like, we had a really good friendship. He was like a second father figure to me.
Speaker 3:And and Terrence is a very good listener, and he had never interrupted me in any time I was telling one of my stories or trauma. And I'm telling him this, that that this guy was like his true he was like a friend. And he he goes, Billy, I'm gonna stop you right there. And I kind of felt I don't know. It was odd that he would interrupt me right in the middle of kind of this deep story.
Speaker 3:And he said, I'm gonna stop you right there. He was never your friend. You were a child. Your brain wasn't fully developed. You were misled.
Speaker 3:He manipulated you. He lied to you, and he groomed you, Billy. He was never your friend. And that was like so impactful for me to hear. And then he went, now continue.
Speaker 3:And so it it it and and I really think that helped me understand a lot of my whole life and judging people and things like that. But I'm telling you, there was so much, like, extremely therapeutic to walk through a past event. And and with all of this, me telling this me coming forward to tell the world, it's like, I'm telling my traumas from just the past tense now. When I was at Milestone, it was the present. All my traumas were the present right now.
Speaker 1:And that's what trauma does. Right? It makes our past feel like it is in us right now. One of my favorite quotes from one of our clinicians is trauma's not what's happened to you. It's what's happening to
Speaker 3:you. It
Speaker 1:is when it is happening in this moment to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And and, you know, with what you just said was there was training and learning and with understanding, like, what happened to you and and now why you act the way you do allows you to give some grace to yourself. Another modality that was super impactful was the brain spotting. And evidently our brain holds memories like in different quadrants. So if you could picture, you know, a chalkboard in front of me with different quadrants and
Speaker 1:Yeah. Kinda spatially.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And and your eyes are connected to your brain, or I think your eyes are actually part of your brain. And so your parents would basically move a ball around the quadrant. And I'm like, now what am I supposed to be doing? And and the topic is my daughter, Elena.
Speaker 3:And he goes, all I want you to do is just thinking about Elena. That's it. And so he's doing all this, and and now we're five or six minutes into it, and there's nothing. I'm like, what am I supposed to feel? Do you want me to talk?
Speaker 3:He goes, nope. Just think about Elena. And we keep going, and he got to right here about 02:00. If you're looking at a clock, when my eyes hit that spot, boom, I started bawling, crying, and he went, there she is. And so incredibly painful.
Speaker 3:And when I think of when I had thought about her, all I would do is just go to the grave site, go to her dead body when I saw her on the gurney. That's like just these awful things, and it's just so painful. And what parents was able to do was walk me through the trauma and now put her in a place in my mind. And it could be something real or something I just pictured, but it's the most beautiful place in my mind. And that's where she is.
Speaker 3:And I can go and talk with her. And and then when I'm done visiting with her, I can put it in a little folder and file it in my Elena folder and close it. And that that just did something incredible for me. I get to milestone, and I knew this is life or death for me. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And and that was my approach to everything. And how I have been doing life for the past forty years has led me to hear, and it didn't it it hadn't gone so good. And I need to redirect and and open myself up to some new things. So every single thing that Milestone offered, I approached it with ultimate I tried to with humility and curiosity. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:And the things that I thought were the most cuckoo, woo woo, chase a rainbow, kumbaya stuff ended up impacting me the most. And I'll tell you this, if you wanna know, like, as far as a sound bath, this past Sunday, I just did a sound bath here at the local yoga place. And so, I mean, meditation is something I do every day when I get up in the morning. And and back in the day, I would have thought meditation means, like, getting a bible, reading a verse, and then thinking about the verse. But, man, that's that's so much work, and it's exhausting sometimes.
Speaker 1:What does meditation look like for you in the morning?
Speaker 3:Meditation always looks like, I don't wanna do this. Yeah. I don't know that I've ever gone to it going, I can't wait to do this. And then while I'm doing it, I'm like, man, this isn't even working. A lot of times I'm thinking that.
Speaker 3:But while I'm thinking that, I try to relax and let that thought go by and just listen to my breath and then try to breathe in. I I go eight eight eight eight. So I'm the box breathing that Marie, she taught me the box breathing. And and so I used to have this awful, like, temper and would get just like I said, I was fight, fight, freeze, and I was ready to fight at a moment's notice around any corner could be a lion. And I literally for four years, I was amped up as if there was a lion about to attack me every day even while while I slept.
Speaker 3:What Milestone has begun to do is allow me to just give myself some you know, be kind to myself and be graceful and you know, because the the the shame is something that I think people with childhood abuse evidently carry. I guess what I have come to realize is is that lion that was there. And I I didn't I was so comfortable with the lion. I didn't realize how it's affecting my everyday life, but it's like that lion is gone to sleep. He doesn't pop his head up anymore, and I'm sure he could.
Speaker 3:But I think me trying to meditate and mindfulness was a huge thing. We went on a wilderness walk in our first week there, and the whole point was to slow your walk down and notice things that you've never noticed before. And Bobby says, I want you to find shade and sunlight on your face and see what that feels like. So I'm like, I've never done that. So to to be still enough and to feel the heat of the sun on my right side and then the coolness of the the shade on my left, I started getting, like, in touch with my my soul and my body.
Speaker 3:And, you know, when we talk about trauma and it it's it's stored in the body, I can't tell you what meditation, yoga, mindfulness, when I when I apply those modalities, just what that does to my soul. I just am am calmed down, and I'm at peace. And but but it's you know, this September September seventh will be two years that I've been you know, since I went in. Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And there is not a day that goes by that I don't think about milestone and the Mhmm. The things that you taught me to do, and then the things that you don't teach that you just get to observe the other counselors dealing with the other clients. And and I'm watching how that process and then applying things that the counselor is saying to my buddy, and I'm using it to for my own life. And then the community that I connected with there, I mean, there's gonna be a handful of people there that I hope you know, if I go before them, I hope they're carrying my casket. Like, I know there I got my good friend, the milk farmer.
Speaker 3:Yeah. He's has been an incredible friend to me. And I think for milestone to work is to make those connections and then keep them going.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you bring that up, Billy, because often people will tell us that the schedule, like the therapy, the activities that were really helpful, but then a lot of people talk about the healing power of the community.
Speaker 1:Like
Speaker 2:when you first got there, were you pretty open with everyone or did that take you a little while to start getting connected to the community?
Speaker 3:I mean, good thing that y'all had going for you is I had zero expectations.
Speaker 1:That's good.
Speaker 3:Other than I I know I certainly did not expect to be as as loved as I was. As as quick as I got there, like and and not like a fake we care about you, it you know, I I've truly felt loved by the community and by your employees.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:mean, from the people that cut the grass to the kitchen workers. Wanda, if she's there, make sure y'all give Wanda a big hug.
Speaker 1:She's still there.
Speaker 3:But, yeah, everything about milestones was great. And every day, I I decided to, you know, get in shape. I was like, okay. I'm here at this I don't have any place to go. And at 50 years old, to be somewhere and then and had nothing to do, Like, not nowhere to be other than what we're doing there.
Speaker 3:It was such a great reset for me, but I would go on these walks and the the trails through the property, and they y'all would have those signs. And I'm not I'm not kidding. I would read those signs, and I would I would just pull crying, like reading one that would say, like, the world needs you. That one's in the parking lot. And when you're that low in life where you think the best thing for me to do for my family is to end my life, you think that's the greatest act of love?
Speaker 3:I mean, that's where I was. The world to me is my family, and my family does not need is how I felt. And for you to contradict that that gut deep Mhmm. Shameful emotion that I had about myself, It's just like learning why helping learning why I am the way I am, why I responded the way I did to trauma in a honestly, in a totally normal way, or heck, I I went through more than most, Billy. You you you did great.
Speaker 3:And and honestly, alcohol, instead of me feeling the shame of that that I struggle with to this day even. But I can say to myself, hey, Billy, you you had to do that to stay alive. And and alcohol, thank you. You did evidently, you did what you're supposed to do, but I'm done with you now. I don't I don't need that.
Speaker 1:I just wanna park there and call out because I think that's something that I know I've experienced and feeling a lot of shame over, like, different ways that I coped or different times when I wasn't the person that I am now. And I remember a therapist one time saying that he was really grateful for his drug addiction It was one of our on-site therapists. And he said, I'm thankful every day for my drug addiction because it kept me alive. And I love just the grace you had with that of, like, thanks, alcohol. Like, of course, this was a lot, and you had to do what you had to do to survive.
Speaker 1:And so I just I just wanna say that out loud. If today y'all are feeling any kind of shame of, like, I'm coping in this way, and I don't like it. Yeah. Okay. But it's kept you to this point.
Speaker 1:And today, it could be different. You know, I just I just wanted to kind of call that out and land there because I think that's such a beautiful sentiment. And you stayed alive. And even just the way you were just saying, like, I even did a good job. Like, there was so much coming at you, and I don't think we give ourselves permission to let it matter all the things that kept on stacking on top of you.
Speaker 1:That's a lot.
Speaker 3:Well, you're kind. And I would think most people and y'all probably have seen it. That's that's not an easy thing for someone, I think, with some trauma to give grace to yourself. Like, shame, I think, is is the biggest like, if you could picture me in a canoe, and I'm ready to leave the, you know, the bay, and I'm gonna go out into the ocean in my canoe. And I'm paddling, but there's an anchor that I'm if I'm unaware that my canoe is attached to, and it's shame.
Speaker 3:So let me go back to that part where I was frustrated and even disagreed with y'all and therapists that would say this is a lifelong journey. Like, that made me extremely discouraged. Like, I can't do this my whole life. That that, like, deep introspective gut wrenching
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I I don't think that's what you're talking about. You don't stay there, and you can't stay there. Mm-mm. I'm like a different person. And now, like, I've told you, I wanna go back.
Speaker 3:I I need to evaluate how much of an anchor Shane is on my life right now. Mhmm. And and you can't do that yourself. I don't it's like I look down into the water and it's too dark. I can't see that chain, but other people can see it.
Speaker 3:That's where, you know, community comes in and good counselors. Mhmm. That's what was incredible at Milestone and then after Milestone and me trying to find my own community. And that's been difficult. And and and my struggle with, you know, the creator of the universe, one of you know, at milestones you in your application process, you have to list one, two, or three goals.
Speaker 3:My goals were, number one, am I worthy of love and respect? And number two, it was something like being okay with not knowing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's hard.
Speaker 3:So all those, like, deep questions that I was having, I finally got to a point where I'm like, you know, Billy, I don't think anybody really knows those answers if you we were being truthful about it. And that's where faith comes in. And so for the first time in my life, I'm going, okay. This is what faith is. And and Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's okay that my faith might look a little different than yours, which is so freaking free to let you be who you wanna be. Like, there are other points of views, and there are so much there's so much about life that I don't know. And I've been so wrong about so many things. It's just a great place for me at this next chapter of my life that almost ended. And thankfully, and I'm gonna say thanks to God that I'm still here and thankful to milestones.
Speaker 3:And that's something I try to do daily is have that thankful mindset instead of just that awful, angry, ready to fight mindset that I was in for four years straight and couldn't get out of it on my own. And I don't think I would've without your help.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thanks for sharing that, Billy. Before we end, kind of at the front end, you were sharing what your hopes were with sharing your story. And so I wonder if you would just, share some encouragement for someone who's thinking about coming to milestones or maybe in a similar situation that you found yourself in a couple years ago. What would you want them to know?
Speaker 3:For the person if you've heard this and you're like, man, that is similar to my story, or I can resonate with some of that. I have searched for places equivalent to Milestone so I could recommend it to other people, just different parts of the country. But I don't know of any place that approaches a person the way that you do. I never once felt like a number, or I'm just one of the many here. It was right from the get go.
Speaker 3:Crystal set the stage with me with her eyes. Like, just it was almost like, we're glad you're home, Billy. And and I definitely felt like home. And I think that's maybe one of the scariest things for a man, especially a man with responsibilities Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:To stop his life and and commit to at least thirty days. But had I not done that, life would definitely not look the same.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Yeah. I can't put into words, like, had I not done it other than I probably would've ended it would be the truth. Yeah. And and and that's a real thing.
Speaker 3:And nobody wants to talk about the s word. Mhmm. But it's a real thing, and people choose to end their life every day. If you're at a point in life where I was where you're you're just your tanks are on empty and you got nothing left, now my encouragement would be don't wait till the wheels fall off like I did. Like, I almost didn't make it.
Speaker 3:If you're in that spot where where you feel like this is my only out, I just this is what kept me going is aren't you just a little bit curious what life could look like for you if what I'm saying about milestone is true. Aren't you just a little bit curious that you could smile again? But you won't know if you make that ultimate decision. And what I would tell men is milestone is the closest thing to a reset button for real life for people that need help. And if you're willing to do some hard self work, there is no other place in the world that could help you better than Milestone.
Speaker 3:And that's truly what I think. And I think that summarizes about everything.
Speaker 1:That's really good, Billy.