What story lies behind the therapist sharing insights from the couch? In this episode, Bill Courtright takes a step back from the usual advice and sits down with his co-host, Eddie Reece, for an intimate conversation about Eddie’s life story and the experiences that shaped him. This isn’t just small talk; we’re tracing Eddie’s path from growing up in a segregated Atlanta and working in grocery stores, to discovering classic rock radio and, quite accidentally, falling into the world of psychology. Eddie shares vivid memories of his childhood, the transformative influence of caring individuals during a time of racial division, and the serendipitous moments that led him to a career in helping others. It’s a raw, honest look at how personal challenges and unexpected opportunities can lead to a life of compassion and understanding. This is part one of a two-part journey, revealing the human story behind the therapist’s chair.
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Beyond The Couch: Eddie Reece’s Heartfelt Journey Of Overcoming And Understanding (Part 1)
Diving Deep Into Eddie Reece’s Story
Eddie and I were just talking a little bit as we do before we hit the record button on our Zoom recording device with our Yeti microphones. Hopefully one day they’ll sponsor us. We had a conversation and we decided that we should have an expose. We should have an in-depth Barbara Walter-style interview to get to the heart of who Eddie Reece is.
We’ve answered questions like, what is therapy? Who might benefit from therapy? We’ve asked and answered some questions that hopefully were impactful and valuable. If we encouraged one person to go to their phone or computer and search a therapist near them to share some challenges and receive support, we are overwhelmingly grateful. That is absolutely why we do this, and we’re just trying to save the world one mind at a time.
I’m really looking forward to having the 2 or 3 subscribers we’ll get asking us questions and stuff.
Two or three, then 200 or 300, then 2,000 or 3,000, then 200,000 or 300,000, then 2 million or 3 million, and we’ll see where it goes. Yeah, it dawned on us that maybe you’ve heard, or maybe this is the first time you’ve found us on YouTube, in case you have, please like this, subscribe, ask us some questions, turn on those notifications so when we’ve released an episode.
If you prefer to listen to us while you drive or work out or walk through the park, that’s cool too. We can be found anywhere you consume audio podcasts. We are thankful to Libsyn for syndicating us so successfully. Now that I’ve mentioned every single piece of technology and possible sponsor, we’ll get into the question at hand which is, really, who’s Eddie Reece and how did he get here?
I’ve had the privilege over the last couple of years to get to know what I will say is quite a bit about Eddie. I can confidently say I don’t know him certainly like his bride knows him. I don’t know him like his closest friends know him. I certainly don’t know him like his parents once did. I think it would be neat to get to know a therapist from a personal level, and I think it would be really helpful for people to realize Eddie’s perspective on who he is.
Perhaps, somewhere along the line, he’ll talk about his relationship with therapy on the same side of the screen or couch that we would be on because I can’t say it’s like most therapists, I just don’t know that, but Eddie is a proponent of eating his own dog food, drinking his own Kool-Aid, if you will. I’m sure we’ll talk about that. Eddie, I think the easiest place for us to begin, let’s just pause. Did I encapsulate that in a way that you expected or is there anything you’d like to add before we get into it?
Yeah, I don’t know. I didn’t have any expectations. I’m very much into doing what we do and the way I do therapy is improv. I think we do really well there. We just throw out a subject at the beginning and then riff on it. Improv, jazz musicians, jam bands.
We are the conversational therapy and patient improving our way through this show to your point of expectations. Set expectations are the seeds of future disappointment. In some cases, maybe in your conversations with me, you keep your expectations to a minimum, which I appreciate, because it tends to keep a smile on your face.
They’re non-existent. They really are. If you’ve read a few of these, you should know by now, this is not scripted.
Eddie’s Atlanta: Downtown Birth To Booming Metropolis
No, it definitely is not. Eddie, let’s harken back. Tell me about where you were born.
I’m a native Atlantan. I was born in downtown Atlanta, which, at the time, was Georgia Baptist Hospital, which is no longer a hospital. I think it’s a condo complex in that building or something now on a boulevard, which I think is a different name. Right smack dab in the middle of downtown Atlanta
1975?
Expectations are the seeds of future disappointment.
’83, ‘84. 1883.
Yes, just after the Civil War. We’re assembling downtown Atlanta after it had burned. Eddie was entering into the world. You’re born in downtown Atlanta. Now, for those that may not know, a native Atlantan is a rare thing. Atlanta is a bustling metropolis now. I made my way here from Chicago by way of South Florida. I absolutely love it.
I couldn’t be happier to raise my family here. Not too many people. If you look at the population of Atlanta over the last 25 years, it’s gone up considerably, which obviously, they’re not having babies five at a time. You can surmise that most of these people came in by way of Hartsfield Jackson Airport. Eddie, how has Atlanta, in your lifetime, changed?
Where I live, which is in Alpharetta, which is a Northern suburb, growing up, this would’ve been considered Tennessee, Kentucky. I didn’t even know it existed. Atlanta, growing up, it’s hard to imagine how small it really was. I was a kid when the Braves came to town in ‘66, and we may have lived five miles from where they built Atlanta Fulton County Stadium, which was right next to where Turner Field was, which is the GSU stadium now. We were considered way out of town. We would go downtown to watch them build the stadium, or go to a game. That was the suburbs in West End. I lived in West End and way out of town.
When I was in college, undergraduate school, my first roommate said, “I’m going to go visit my parents. Do you want to come?” I said, “Sure.” We get in this car and we’re driving, and I’m thinking, “We’re never going to get there. Where in the world do his parents live?” We just kept traveling North. It felt like days, and they lived just off Riverside Drive, just on the other side of 285, which is what that is now. I’ve never been anywhere near there. I’m probably 17, 18, 19 years old. I’m like, “Who lives out here?”
For those that don’t know, 285 or Riverside Drive that Eddie’s referring to now is a soft boundary for the city limit. It’s essentially that area of North where what we call North Fulton County, which is where I also live. Atlanta is built at the crossroads of a bunch of railroads. Right in the center of the country, a rare city, really, where you’re completely land bound. Not too many cities are, when you think about it. Atlanta is one.
If you look at Atlanta 285, which is the expressway that circles the city, it looks like a clock. Basically, people refer to, “Where do you live?” “I’m at 130,” “I’m at 1015,” or whatever. You know where you are based on that. 285 is essentially the perimeter. In Atlanta, we’ll say, “Are you inside or outside the perimeter?”
This is how much it’s grown. When I was really young, where I lived was in College Park. South side of Atlanta.
Just North of the airport.
Actually, I was South of the airport by about two blocks. As a kid, I walked over to the chain link fence of the airport, there was 1 runway and 1 building, and watched the planes coming in and out the turbo crops. The jets started coming in our house. I’ve looked several times trying to find out where that house wound up. It’s somewhere under a runway, or maybe it was part of 285 or something. That was how small it was. I could just walk over to the airport sit down, and the planes were not far from me at all. It really has grown.
I’m a good old boy. I talked like this, and all my family talk like this. If you want to learn how talk like that, you don’t move your jaw. Just let it sit there. Some people could actually be very good ventriloquists because we don’t hardly move because it is so hot down here because we don’t have air conditioning. It was air conditioning and the airport that made this city what it is. Nobody would’ve moved here if there was an air conditioning.
Interestingly enough, the airport proposition wasn’t only Atlanta’s to have. It was actually Birmingham from what I’ve read and understand. It was between Birmingham and Atlanta.
Segregation And Early Influences: A Child’s Awakening
Atlanta and Charlotte was involved in that, who was going to be the big city. If you want an interesting story, make a great movie. The finagling, we’ll call it, that went on to make that airport, what went on to make that airport happen. That’s really a very interesting story. It’s a lot of down and dirty stuff that folks don’t know about or don’t care about, really. They just want their flight to be on time. If they’d say, “Where’d you grow up?” I said, “I grew up in a small town in Georgia.” They go, “Which one? Atlanta?” “It was.” It was very small and lived in College Park, West End. We were in the West End area. I’d have to do the math. I’m not real good at math. What year this was. It was the summer between 8th and 9th grade, so mi-‘60s, I’m guessing.
Atlanta is heralded as an oasis in the South in terms of racism. It was, looking back and studying the history, but it was incredibly segregated. The neighborhood we lived in, a rectangular sort of thing, you crossed one street over, there was the Black neighborhood, and it was the same thing. It was a Black neighborhood or a White neighborhood, and it had always been that way.
The White people did not go into the Black neighborhood at all for any reason. The Black people would come into the White neighborhood to work and then they would go home after work. As a child, I never thought much about it. My family and friends and everybody around us were racist, but they had no idea that they were racist. They never considered themselves.
The way I’ve always demonstrated that to people is they say, “I got nothing against the Negroes. I just wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one,” or, “I wouldn’t want one living next door to me. I got nothing against them.” That was the racism that was really prevalent in Atlanta. We did know about the client. It was active. We did hear about it. We never saw anything where we were. That’s the atmosphere that I grew up in.
If it wasn’t for the Black women that came to our house and watched me and my brothers while my mom worked, I would’ve probably stayed that way for a long time. I would’ve stayed that racist mentality, because I didn’t know any better. These women were just amazing human beings. Even now, decades and decades later, most of them, we may have only had a couple, and it really wasn’t for a very long time, but in my memory, they were much older and they were somewhat heavyset. Even now, if I see a Black woman that has that image, my heart melts. They were so good to me. I know it didn’t happen consciously at the time, but looking back, I went, “That’s where I lost my racism.”
That somehow, even as a kid, I was like, “The things I hear can’t be true.” These women, in many ways, treated me better than my own mother did. They were just the sweetest humans, and looked at me and treated me and my brothers as their own, which, given the circumstances, how do you do that other than you just are almost pure of heart, I guess, or something. That was a huge influence on me. I accidentally went to college. Growing up, I worked in a grocery store and my uncle was the manager of the grocery store. I admired my uncle. I had a blast working there. At the time, the union was really strong.
The union was strong in Atlanta.
The union was strong everywhere.
I grew up in Chicago. I know.
Grocery Store Dreams & Serendipity: Finding Radio
You were in the middle of it. The kids that work in the grocery store, all of us had brand new muscle cars. We were the only kid that could afford a car, and we paid for them ourselves. That’s the kind of money we made. My dream was to be a grocery store manager like my uncle, because if I can make this much money sacking groceries and stocking shelves, I bet I can make a whole lot of money running one of these places.
I remember, and I wish I could find this woman, Carolyn Wagner, one of my English teachers. She was my 11th grade English teacher because I didn’t go to school, but for a few days in my senior year, she nagged me and nagged me about going to college. I would just tell her the same thing. I go, “Why? I don’t need to go to college. I’m going to be a grocery store manager, like my uncle. He makes really good money. I don’t need a college degree.”
She’s like, “Go to college.” I would love to give her a hug. I don’t think I ever thought about it this way. I want tp thank her for planting a seed. She planted a seed, because I didn’t come away from any of those conversations going, “Maybe I’m going to college.” I accidentally went to college. A lot of things have happened like this in my life, which is really fascinating to me. I was in bed one night listening to the WSB radio, the AM version. There was some talk show on the radio. I had my little bitty transistor radio. For whatever reason, I don’t know, I decided I was going to call in and make a comment.
I get on the phone and I’m talking to an engineer while I’m on hold, and I said to him, “Tell me about your job.” I don’t know what he said. I didn’t know anything about radio other than my little transistor and I listened to WLS coming out of Chicago at night, but after the conversation, I went, “I’m going to be in radio.”
“Eddie in College Park, go.”
It’s really hard for people who didn’t live through that to understand what a big deal the radio station was.
I’m going there.” What in the world would make a little boy redneck, go, “I’m going to be in radio,” and that’s what happened. That’s how I wound up in college, because Georgia State University had a radio station, WRAS, and I just figured, “I could work there and to work there, I’ve got to go to the school. I’ll apply, go, and I don’t care what classes I take. That way. I’ll work at the radio station.”
In the meantime, I went to one of those schools that’s advertised on late night TV. “Do you want a career radio,” kind of thing. There was a school called the Elkins Institute, and it was located right there in downtown Atlanta. I went there to learn how to be a disc jockey. They actually taught me a lot of things that were really valuable. My buddy that I was hanging out with in school, we’re standing outside during the break one day. I told him, “That hotel over there, they’ve got a radio station in that hotel. It’s WKLS.” I just found that out. He goes, “Really?” I said, “Yeah, let’s go over there.” He’s like, “What are you talking about?” “Let’s go over there and see if we can talk to somebody over there.”
I dragged him across the street. We get off the elevator, and where the disc jockey was sitting, there was a big window right there at the elevator bank, so you can see into the studio. I walked over there and knocked on the window, and I’m like, “Let us in.” The guy let us in. This is a different time back then. We start talking and we’re like, “Yeah, we want to be in radio. We go to Elkins.” He goes, “If you want to be in radio, don’t tell anybody that.”
I’m like, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah, it doesn’t have a great reputation.” I’m like, “Okay.” I said, “Here’s my plan. I just enrolled over at Georgia State. I don’t start until six weeks from now,” or something like that. “I’m going to go over to WRAS and see if I can get a job there.” He’s got on an Oxford cloth shirt. He unbuttoned and pulls it out like Superman. He is got a t-shirt on that says WRAS.
I’m like, “Whoa.” He goes, “I’m Drew Murray. I’m the program director, music director,” which was true. I’m like, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah.” He said, “Do you have your student ID yet?” I’m like, “Yeah, I’m enrolled. I’m going to start in the next semester.” He goes, “Okay. Go down to the school, go over the radio station and go in and ask for Joel Ackerman.” Joel’s a GM. He said, “Would you be willing to work the midnight until the 6:00 AM Saturday night shift?” I’m like, “Sure.” The next day, I’m knocking on the door at the radio station, “I’m here to see Joel Ackerman. Drew Murray sent me.” Joel shows up. The next Saturday night, I am on the air.
WRAS at the time was 1 of the maybe 5 stations or so in the country that played albums. We put an album on the turntable. Every other radio station at the time put a 45 on the turntable. They played the same Casey Kasem’s top 20, top 40, whatever. That was what radio was at the time. We’re playing what is now classic rock. I was actually one of the pioneers of classic rock. That’s what we were doing. We were doing this format of we’re not going to play the hits. We’re going to find the album cuts that are worth playing, and then we’re going to find these groups that nobody plays like King Crimson or something. We’re going to play those and Genesis.
That’s what we did. I became the program director there. I took Drew’s place when his turn was up. At nineteen years old, I could go anywhere in the city and go to any concert, any club, anything I wanted. All of the record companies came to us. All the concert promoters came to us before they even went to the commercial stations if it was about rock and roll because our listenership was huge.
We got all the concert tickets, and at one point, I had like 350 albums. I’ve been selling them off. “Any of you want some vinyl from the ‘70s? I’d like to hear that.” I think I only had one turntable my whole life. Most of those albums never even seen a needle, because they just go, “Here,” hoping I play them. That’s how I wound up in radio. How does that happen?
An Unexpected Path: From Radio To Psychology
1960s, you’re spinning discs, you’re in college.
This is the ‘70s.
Okay, so ‘70s, you’re in college. Super sounds of the ‘70s just like Reservoir Dogs. You’re spinning vinyl. You’re in Atlanta, you’re going to Georgia State. Race relations, you discovered what that was like. I love the story of your formative years and how your view of the world was altered forever based on the nurturing and care, genuine love that you had from your caregiver. I have a similar story. It’s not pertinent for this episode, but I’ll talk to you about it later, in Chicago, very similar situation.
Anyway, so now you’re spinning records. You’re going to concerts, probably bringing a date here and there. I don’t want to presuppose, but you’re a charming guy, so you’re doing well. Take that for what it’s worth, fans. At that point, did you think that you were going to be a well-known disc jockey or radio personnel for the rest of your career?
Absolutely because it’s really hard for people who didn’t live through that to understand what a big deal that radio station was. They’re all college stations. I think there might’ve been a couple of commercial stations that played album cuts, but we changed what radio was and how the music industry viewed the radio station, what it was all about. Yeah, we all knew this was it, this was our career. An awful lot of folks that worked at that station at that time had great careers. They did really well. I’ll leave the story out, but I wound up getting out of radio. It was really upsetting to me because, to your point, I really did think that’s where I was going to go.
It was so upsetting to me. I got really down and felt very onboard. I was just like, “What am I going to do now?” I’m still working at the grocery store, making a ton of money, stocking groceries but I was like, “I don’t know. I don’t want do that for the rest of my life.” I was really interested in what in the world was going on in inside my head, and my thoughts and my feelings, and I didn’t understand any of that. Again, I don’t know where. I don’t know how I do this. I went and signed up for a Psych 101 class. Coming from where I came from, I’ve never heard of psychology before I saw it in the book of classes you could take.
There’s just so much division and animosity in our politics today.
I didn’t know there was a such thing as a therapist. I didn’t know that was a job. I didn’t go take that class to become a therapist, because again, I didn’t even know that was a job even when I signed up for the class. I just thought it was a class. I had a terrifically entertaining teacher, and he loved what he was teaching, and I was fascinated by it, so I took another one. Next thing I know, I’m enrolled in the undergraduate program for mental health at Georgia State. I’m going to be a therapist. Where does this come from?
How old were you when you started your first private practice?
Old because when I graduated, and to give you a little more background, my entire extended family is uneducated. Most of the people, until my aunts, had never graduated from high school. For me to graduate from college, even go to college, although I didn’t consider myself going to college when I started, I was working at a radio station and had to take stupid classes so I could work at the radio station.
I don’t even remember the classes I took when I worked at the radio station because I was there every day, all day long. It was pretty amazing that I wound up graduating from college. Coming from this background of not only uneducated, but alcoholism, drug addicts, domestic violence, your standard family. It wasn’t a dysfunctional family as much as it was just a family.
You put the fun in dysfunctional.
On Campus: A New Universe And Different Perspectives
In college, just the experience of being on campus, that was like being in another universe. It wasn’t another planet, it was another universe compared to what I grew up with. Until I got on campus at Georgia State, I don’t think I’d ever seen an Asian person, an Indian person, anything other than a Black person. There were Black people and White people. There wasn’t a Black person in school with me until the eighth grade.
I didn’t finish that story. Somewhere between eighth and ninth grade, segregated neighborhoods. This is all planned out. One Black family moved one street over in every neighborhood in Atlanta at the same time. I’ve got this snapshot memory of looking down my street. Every house had a Brown & Reese Realty sign there, which was the Black realty company. Those people must have made a fortune that summer. By the end of the summer, every single White family was gone. That’s when the suburbs were created. It’s called White Flight.
We moved to Mableton, Austell, West. People were moved to Snellville, Sandy Springs where my roommate’s parents lived. I couldn’t comprehend what had happened. I wound up living in with all the other rednecks and good old boys in Midleton and Austell. Until I got to Georgia State, like I said, Black people, White people, those are the only people. I’ve heard about other people. I’d heard about Catholics. They were pretty weird people, apparently, and Jewish people. People don’t believe me when I say this. We heard about Jewish people, and they, the Jewish people, actually had horns on their head. This is how uneducated and just completely uninformed people were at that time.
We’re not talking 100 years ago. It was 1970s.
Sadly enough, if you can speak the language, you can walk around in South Georgia and you can begin to talk to people and tell them where you’re from and stuff. Don’t tell them nothing about what you do. Don’t show them that you drive a fancy car or fancy car or anything that is not a Ford truck or something. They talk to you and they will say all the same things that the people I grew up with would say. It really has not changed that much.
The point I want to make is racism and the struggle for equality is a huge part of just my body because growing up, being beaten and abused in so many different ways, however you’re damaged as a child, it doesn’t matter the method, you wind up going, “I’m not good enough. I’m less than.” I think it was that part of me that helped me understand what racism really was about and Black people. I didn’t think about it in terms of anybody else were really going through. To this day, if I hear any snippet of, “I have a dream,” speech, this is what happens.
Where were you when you heard it the first time?
Meeting John Lewis: A Life-Changing Moment
I don’t remember. I’m sure I saw pieces of it on the nightly news. There were three news channels and everybody tuned in at 6:00, I think it was, to watch news.
Why did it touch you so?
This is a new thought, too. This is part of why I’m a therapist, I think. I can relate to any marginalized person. I know what it’s like to be marginalized. Now, I don’t know what it’s like to be a Black person. I don’t know. I can’t imagine because I’ve talked to people about their experience of having people watch you when you go in a store or being pulled over by a police officer. I’ve been pulled over by a police officer. Not once did I ever think, “This could be the way I die.”
I can’t know what that’s like, but I know what it’s like to be beaten down to the point where you just can’t get up. Those things that just popped in my head one day was, “I’m going to go meet John Lewis.” I’m like, “Where’d that come from?” I quickly had a thought. It’s like out of all the living people in the world that I admire, or how they lived their lives, forget his politics. How he’s lived his life. There’s John Lewis and Jimmy Carter, and I’m like, “I’m going to go meet John Lewis.”
I picked up his phone and I called his office. I was like, “Hi, I’d like to bring an appointment with John.” At the time, I lived in his district, so he was representing me. They were like, “What do you want to speak to him about?” I’m like, “I just want to shake his hand and say thank you.” They were like, “Okay.” They set up a meeting and it got canceled because he was in jail., which I thought was pretty cool. Getting in that good trouble.
Finally, my wife and I are sitting in his waiting room, and I’m hearing a couple of lobbyists talking about their meeting with him, and they’re talking about real stuff. I’m and I’m like, “They’re going to meet with him after me, so it’ll be like something on The West Wing. They’re going to move me in and move me out.” We’re sitting there and John Lewis walks into the waiting room. He says, “Are you Eddie and Helen? Come on back.”
We sat there, Billy, and we must have talked for hour and 15, 20 minutes, hour and a half. Not once did he feel rushed. Not once did he not pay close attention to me. What I wound up talking about after I got through thanking him and how much I admire him, I think the first Bush was president at the time, so there was still a good bit of division. There was something that people talked about, the divide. I’m like, “I don’t know anything.” I told him, “There’s just so much division in our politics today, and there just seems to be so much animosity. To be honest with you, sir. I’m losing my hope. I love politics. I got into it when I was in high school. It fascinates me.”
“I’m losing hope. Knowing what you’ve lived through, knowing what you do every day when you sit in Congress and the things you must hear that’s got to be weirder than what I know about, how do you hold on to hope for a better life, a better political life?” He goes, “You just never give up.” For a guy who was beaten and left for dead, to say that, in my mind, like, he’s telling me the truth. I don’t know how many years ago that was. It was quite a while ago.
I’ve come back to that moment a lot in my life and it’s really funny, but about maybe twenty minutes into the conversation, he goes, “I want you and your wife to come up to Washington, have lunch with me in the Congressional dining room. Will you do that?” “Yeah.” At the time, I had a client who had been a congressional staff member and I said, “I’ve got to ask you a question. I met with John Lewis today, and he invited me to come to Washington and have lunch with him in the Congressional dining hall. Is that a normal thing?”
Understanding Eddie’s “Beaten Down” Perspective
He goes, “No, I’ve never heard of anything like that.” He must have seen something in our conversation. We wound up in Washington and meeting with him and in his office there in Washington. Same thing, except this time he’s got a staffer coming in. “Representative Lewis, we got it.” He’s just like, “Guy, I’m talking to Eddie now.” Just a wonderful man. Back to what’s touching me is part of why I’m a therapist.
I know what it’s like to be beaten down. When a client comes to see me, I don’t know that they really consciously know this, but they’re here because they’ve been beaten down some way, somehow, and like me, they’ve spent decades trying to overcome that not good enough thing. They wound up in my office because all the things they did that seemed to work, they wound up with a good job and a decent life, and maybe married and kids. In their mind, they did everything right. They usually frame it as, “Why am I not happy?” I want to sit with people in that arena of even beaten down, I’m going to help you learn that you don’t give up.
You get back up and you find a way to turn your life into something that is no longer about being good enough, because that’s just a waste of time. For me, John Lewis. Jimmy Carter represents you, and however you do it, go be of service. I think that means go be kind. We talk about this in the show from time to time. It’s kindness, it’s compassion, it’s understanding to look at the people whom you struggle with or don’t like, or believe or doing things that are going to negatively affect you or someone else. See in them somehow that they were beaten down too.
We mentioned this a couple of episodes ago about how Germany handles pedophiles. They were beaten down too. They were told they weren’t good enough. I really want for the world, and I hope I’m a small part of that when I sit with clients, or even when I talk to strangers and do what I can to inspire them or uplift them a bit.
I want everybody to realize that in that way, we’re all the same. We all faced awful things. It’s just a waste of time to compare them because the nervous system interprets it the same way. If your version of being beaten down was your parents had no idea how to foster your emotional development, which will do a number on you and you’ll wind up in the same place, that you’re not good enough, that people aren’t going to like you. You’ve got to make up for that. We spend our whole lives trying to make up for that. You can’t. If we could all just look at each other as, “Here’s somebody else that was beaten down, and they’re doing their damndest to overcome it.
For the most part, they don’t really know how because what we’re taught in our culture is you overcome that by being enough, be good enough. That will never, ever happen. Thirty-eight Nobel prizes, $100 billion in the bank, admiration from millions of people, you’re going to be with your own thoughts at some point and go, “This can’t get it all to work.” The whole world, I think, runs off of that.
We’re taught in our culture that you overcome things by being enough, being good enough, but that will never happen.
It’s why our economy does what it does. It’s why we go spend money, make money. When I think it’d be nice to just spend your time building a barn for your neighbor. What do we start off talking about? Me telling you about me. The essence of me, I think, is that I know how it’s like to suffer. Once I figured out what being a therapist really was to me, which I learned from being on a therapist’s couch for over three decades, all I want to do is ease that suffering and show people how you give up on trying to overcome it and befriend it.
Get to know it. I had a bit of a session with a relatively new client. The way we’re framing it is he understands. He has a sense of feeling of shame that he is not good enough and just how he runs away from it all the time. I said, “I want to help you learn to stop running and to turn around and befriend it to see it, get to know it, hear its story because when you do, when you hear the story ofthis is what happened, and this is what it did to me, and this is how I really feel about myself, unless you’re a sociopath, you are going to have compassion. You’re going to feel kindness. You are going to want to help. We need that in the world. That’s a little bit about who I am.
Wrapping Up Part 1: Vulnerability And Ripples Of Kindness
Thank you. We’re going to pause. I’m not going to say this one’s over because it’s not. I have questions I’m sure our audience do as well. To recap, we learned a little bit about where Eddie was born, the house he grew up in, the family, his exposure to Atlanta in the ‘60s, and college in the ‘70s, internships, first jobs, career opportunities. How he was influenced to go to college, the feelings he has as a result of that influence, the gratitude he shared for the woman who recommended that he go to college, the caregivers who were African American and removed any ounce of prejudice and racism that Eddie may have had, had that not happened.
We learned about how he was introduced to therapy, behavioral science, psychosis, psychology, and how that completely changed. We heard about John Lewis, and for those of you that don’t know the story of Mr. Lewis, I encourage you to spend some time on Google and youtube. This is a man who not only represented his constituents here in the Atlanta area but Eddie referenced being beat down and left for dead. The stories in and around the civil rights movement for which John Lewis was walking lock step with Martin Luther King and the group of change makers.
I think we’re all grateful for some of us, more so than others. If you’re not familiar with John’s story and good trouble and his career in public service, I encourage you to look into that. You will be enlightened, and if ever you make your way to Atlanta, I encourage you to visit the places in which the Civil Rights Movement some of the Civil Rights Movements were defined. Selma’s not that far away either. There’s so much history down here and it’s not all bad.
Yeah, we have Stone Mountain, but we have John Lewis too. We have Ambassador Young, we have Jimmy Carter, which, on the date that we record this, according to his son, his days are numbered, as we all know. Regardless of your politics, no one could argue the humanity and the man that is Jim Carter or his late bride or even his brother. You can look that up too.
Anyway, I think what we learned about Eddie is that he is of the South. He is the South and a Southern gentleman and a compassionate capitalist who just so happens to make a living, helping ease the suffering of others. That, my friends, is absolutely beautiful. We’re going to continue this conversation. Our next episode is going to focus on the years from the mid-‘90s to now, which, as we record this episode, is 2024.
I think we did basically part 1 and we’re going to have part 2 where we’re going to talk a little bit more about Eddie and his profession and his view of therapy and how he’s set up and runs his practice and why his clients and patients love him so much and why I love him so much. We’ll get into that next time, and I’m looking forward to it, but I think this is a really good way to pause.
On behalf of the entire audience, Mr. Reece, I would like to express sincere gratitude for your willingness to give us a peek behind the curtain and bare your chest in a way that is an example for what it means to be truly strong and courageous enough to get weak and get vulnerable. That is, in my opinion, the true mark of courage and strength. You’re an inspiration to me, and I just want to let you know how much I appreciate it.
Thank you, Billy. Right back at you. I appreciate you creating the relationship that you’ve helped create here that makes me feel safe. It’s not really that, it’s more than that. The experience of making these episodes with you is, as you know, a realization of it’s more than a dream that I had. It’s a realization of being able to share with other people that I would never get to otherwise. To maybe touch them in some way, give them something that they didn’t have before they tuned in. I truly believe that when we share some kindness, there’s a ripple effect that lasts until the end of the universe.
I love that idea. My time with you is a way to have bigger ripples, I guess, than I have. It means world to me. It really does. We’ve got a long way to go in. Thanks for the folks that tune in that we don’t know yet, that you would take the time to read this means the world to both of us. We hope it does help you in some way. I’m so excited about our launch. It’s right around the corner.
I look forward to really interacting with our audience and helping to put things out there to make a world a little better place than when than when we got here. We want to leave it a little better than it was. I’d do that all over the place. Lord, have mercy on you golfers. I pick at least 40, 50 ball marks every round. I want to leave the world a better place than what I’ve found. Thanks, Billy, for giving me this opportunity. I’ll see you next time. I
It’s our pleasure. All right, folks. Thank you so much. We’ll talk to you soon.
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