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I'm Not Dead Yet: Dr. Joshua Caraballo on Surviving the Story You Were Given and Choosing the One That's Yours

Published 1 week, 6 days ago
Description

What happens when the version of yourself the world handed you was the version you were taught to fear? This episode is for anyone who has ever quietly wondered if they were allowed to be loved as they are.

Sayan sits down with Dr. Joshua Caraballo, industrial-organizational psychologist and author of I'm Not Dead...Yet. Joshua walks through the conviction he made inside a prison cell, the years of believing God wanted to destroy him for being gay, surviving Hodgkin's lymphoma twice, and the slow, deliberate work of falling back in love with himself. They unpack the PERMA model from positive psychology, why questioning what you've been taught is a fruitful exercise even when you keep believing it, and what self-acceptance actually looks like in practice. Honest, unhurried, and quietly hopeful.

About the Guest:

Dr. Joshua J. Caraballo, PsyD, is an industrial-organizational psychologist, author, performer, and the founder of Dr. Josh Business Solutions. Based in Denver, Colorado, his career centers on inspirational storytelling and applied science for human betterment, particularly for historically marginalized communities. He is the author of the memoir I'm Not Dead...Yet: How I Turned My Misfortunes Into Strengths, which traces his journey through a strict Jehovah's Witness upbringing, mental health struggles, addiction, prison, surviving Hodgkin's lymphoma, and coming home to himself as a gay Puerto Rican man.

Key Takeaways:

  • Survival can become a habit. At some point you have to ask whether the life you've been getting through is the life you actually want.
  • Questioning what you were taught is not betrayal, it's a fruitful exercise. Sometimes it brings you back to the same belief. Sometimes it sets you free. Either way, the asking matters.
  • Values aren't preferences. A real value can never harm yourself, others, or the world. If a "value" requires harm to hold, it isn't one.
  • Identity is not always a choice. Some parts of who you are are as fixed as ethnicity. The work isn't changing them, it's recognizing them.
  • The PERMA model: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement and vitality. All five together build a life worth flourishing in.
  • Real change is incremental, not sweeping. Self-love is built in small, repeated acts, not in a single breakthrough moment.

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