Bob Separ

I’m attracted to those who have walked a similar path in life and have actual experience, strength, and hope overcoming similar adversities as I have faced. I find those are the people I can learn from and hear their message. 

And so, I wanted to share my story so my clients can see my journey. Given this is a public website, I’m only sharing high-level details and I share far more intimate details with my clients as we begin to forge a working relationship. I do not agree with the traditional therapy take that a therapist should not reveal personal information as open and honest communication allows for trust and intimacy in the helping relationship. 

I grew up in Long Island, NY with parents who did the best they could. I worked hard and played hard in high school, college, and in my twenties. I was successful in every aspect of my life: great education (double major in marketing and computer science from Boston College, great jobs (GE and Morgan Stanley), great friends, great relationships with women, leading to marriage.

At 30, it was clear something was very wrong. I spent the prior 3 years extremely depressed and lost the ability to control my drinking. It cost me everything: my marriage, my career, my finances, and almost my life. I had the courage to face both and haven’t had a drink in 18 years and overcame my depression. 

At 35, I was about to get engaged and start a family. I rebuilt my career and began to find joy in life again. But I made a foolish mistake of letting a chiropractor do a neck manipulation and he almost paralyzed me. I went thru 18 months of horrific pain and was getting worse not better until I found an amazing doctor (John Sarno) and therapist (Arlene Feinblatt) who pioneered mind / body pain and psychotherapy. They believed most physical pain was emotional in nature not physical and stemmed from unresolved anger or fear in the subconscious. Within a year of seeing them I was pain free, but Arelene kept saying something happened to you as a child that we aren’t seeing and you’ve repressed it.

At 40, I left NY and all my family and friends for a promised promotion in Seattle, but due to management turnover I never got it and left Seattle with a resentment for Nashville just a year later. The second I landed in Nashville, my Dad died, my job went to hell, I had moved cross country twice by myself, found myself all alone, and I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. A friend recommended a trauma therapist and I declined as I didn’t have any trauma, but was told she did general psychotherapy as well so I decided to go and see her. Well, she quickly figured out what happened to me in my childhood and I ended up in a trauma treatment center and two years of trauma therapy trying to deal with the horror of what I had been through and never realized.

At 45, after having brought up all that repressed trauma, I ended up having OCD and PTSD as I sought to keep myself safe and became extremely isolated. I literally could barely get out of my apartment and anytime anyone was sick or coughing around me, I would run away as I was so afraid of getting sick or hurt and having to go back to a doctor or dentist, which was a big part of the childhood trauma. And then, as if things couldn’t get worse, I lost a new job, lost everything I owned in a freak building flood, and then Covid hit leaving me no chance to get a new job and I barely found a place to live before the lockdowns started. So, after rebuilding my entire life and working on myself for 15 years, I had lost it all yet again, but this time due to no fault of my own. I lost my faith, my confidence, and my will to live. But, despite it all, I kept going. I definitely got “stuck” in the fear and darkness for a while, but soldiered on and have come out the other side much stronger.
 

At 48, I started to come out of the darkness and walk thru my fears. I got a new corporate job, restarted my private practice, and started going to doctors and dentists again (even getting braces).
 

I’m all about change and regardless of what happened to us, we have a choice of how we want to move forward and whether we stay a victim or become a survivor and whether we stay in the darkness or move towards the light.