Episode 40 of Wellness Me Up — Wellness Me Up Diary Entry
with Neuroscience & Positive Psychology Coach Dr. Robb Kelly
Written and hosted by Amanda Reece, founder of Wellness Me Up.
Dr. Robb Kelly died twice on the streets, was homeless for 14 months, and has been sober for 33 years. He now runs a neuroscience coaching company with a 98% success rate. This one covers childhood trauma, sobriety, identity, authenticity, and why the only thing standing between you and everything you want is a single letter T.
🎧 Listen to the episode here:
▶️ Watch on YouTube
🎵 Listen on Spotify
🌍 Listen on Your Favourite App
Who Is Dr. Robb Kelly?
Dr. Robb Kelly is a neuroscience and positive psychology coach who uses somatic experiencing, brainspotting, breathwork, and NLP to help people rewire their brains and reclaim their lives. He writes for Harvard University's psychiatric hospital and Oxford. He has worked with over 12,000 clients in 25 to 30 years. He has a 98% success rate — which he will back up with a full refund if it does not work.
He also died twice on the streets. Was homeless for 14 months. Was a full blown alcoholic. Had his daughters taken away for 30 years. Lost everything.
And has been sober for 33 years.
He came in like a freight train and did not slow down once. I was nodding along so hard I nearly gave myself whiplash.
Everything Starts in the Subconscious
This was the first thing Robb said that made my brain light up and it set the tone for everything that followed.
Fear. Anxiety. Depression. Worry. All of it runs from the subconscious brain. And most of us have no idea that is what is happening. We think we are just like this. We think this is just who we are. And we spend our whole lives managing the symptoms instead of going back to find where it was installed.
Because it was installed. By someone. At some point.
Babies are not born afraid. Kids are not born believing they cannot be a professional footballer or start a business or be the best version of themselves. Someone planted that seed. A parent. A teacher. A family member who said do not be so stupid. Do not be so ridiculous. Who do you think you are.
And that seed grew. And it ran the show. And nobody told you it was there.
That is what Robb goes back for. He goes back to find the seed. And then he removes it.
Drop the T.
This is the moment that made me want to put it on a t-shirt immediately.
Robb was describing what he does in the first session with clients. He gets them to write I can't do that on a whiteboard. And then he asks — if you could take one letter off that sentence what would it be?
They all say the T.
I can do.
That is it. That is literally all he is asking for. Remove one letter. And watch what happens in someone's eyes when they see it written there in front of them. When they realise that the only thing standing between where they are and where they want to be is a single letter that someone else put there.
I am only asking you to take a T out. That is all.
He also does not believe in plan B. If you have a plan B you are already halfway out of plan A. Commit. Get a plan A. Make it happen. Because being good at something is just doing it over and over again — that is the basal ganglia in the brain — and the more you do something the more it becomes automatic. You do not have to be great every morning. You just have to show up every morning. Greatness follows.
Everybody Has Childhood Trauma. Everybody.
Robb said this directly and I want every person reading this to actually hear it.
If you think you do not have childhood trauma — your brain has probably blocked it. Because everybody has it. And the guy who comes in saying he grew up with everything he ever needed and got a Porsche on his seventeenth birthday? Robb digs a little deeper. Turns out dad was only available on Sundays between noon and two. Turns out mum was sick most of the time. Turns out there was abandonment all along dressed up as privilege.
Trauma does not always look like the obvious things.
Robb shared his own. Being dropped off every Friday night at a couple's house while his parents went drinking. The Run Around Naked game that he did not understand was sexual abuse until he was grown up. The priest. His mother's reaction when he told her. No supper. Sent to bed.
And the shoes. Two pairs a year. Cardboard soles cut out and stuffed inside when the holes wore through. Walking two miles to school in the snow with soggy cardboard under his feet while his parents spent their weekends at the bar.
His therapist asked him one day whether his mum and dad had holes in their shoes.
He started crying and never really stopped.
The three steps he came up with from all of this — uncover, discover, discard. Go back. Find the scene, the sentence, the action. And then discard it. Because if you do not discard it you will never live your life to the full. And you deserve to live your life to the full.
It Is Not Your Fault. And It Is Your Responsibility.
Robb said both of these things in the same breath and I want to hold them together because they need to coexist.
What happened to you was not your fault. The adults who were supposed to protect you let you down. The things that were normalized around you were not normal. The seeds that were planted in your brain were not yours to plant.
And.
What is your fault is not addressing it sooner. Because now you know. And now you have a choice.
That is not harsh. That is the most loving thing anyone can say to a person who has been waiting for someone to blame. Because blame keeps you stuck. Responsibility gives you power.
You cannot change what happened. You can absolutely change what happens next.
Validation Is the Unlock
This was Robb's answer to what tends to crack things open for people in that first session.
Validation.
The number of people who have come to him carrying something they have never spoken to anyone about. Something they were taught to be ashamed of. Something they buried so deep they had almost convinced themselves it did not happen.
And then someone says — that was real. What happened to you was real. It was not your fault. You do not have to carry that anymore.
He described it as holding a glass of water out at arm's length. By itself it is nothing. Hold it there for three or four hours and your arm gives out. Drop the glass. Get rid of the fear and the shame and the remorse and the guilt. Because it is not yours to carry anymore.
When validation lands — really lands — the tears start. For men and women. And then the lights come on.
He has watched it happen thousands of times. And it still gets him every time.
The WTF Wheel Question: What's Your I'm Fine Lie?
Robb went quiet. And then honest.
When someone comes for his family or his dogs. That is when the I'm fine comes out. That is when he goes very quiet and in his mind he is plotting things he will never actually do. And then he moves on.
But the bigger point he made is this — I'm fine hides everything. It is the default answer we give when we do not want to unpack what is actually going on. When the person asking is not the right person to hear it. When we have been trained to keep it together in public. When we have been through so much that explaining it feels like more work than we have energy for.
I jumped in hard on this one. Because yes. All the uncover discover discard work I have had to do — and then someone says something that pokes the thing and you say I'm fine because what else are you going to say? How are you going to explain the entire iceberg when someone is just passing in the corridor?
Robb also talked about authenticity. About trusting people until they give you a reason not to. About the moment someone comes to him saying oh I heard something about you from so and so — and the question he asks is get curious about why they felt so comfortable telling you that. Because that is not about me. That is about you.
Side note — squirrel thought. This hit me in a very specific place because I used to be that person. That was sometimes my role in the enmeshed family system I grew up in — to keep the secrets, to be the soundboard, to absorb everyone else's information and carry it around. And I would ask myself why didn't I speak up? Why wasn't I more boundaried? Why did I keep participating in those conversations?
The answer is because that was the role I was trained to play. And unlearning it took years.
I remember one specific blow up. My mother — we are now estranged — was really worried about my biological sister's health. She kept pushing me to go and talk to her. To be the one to have the conversation. To carry her concern across the family and deliver it to someone else.
And guess what? I wasn't boundaried then. I did it. I went and had the conversation. My mother and I were on our way to pick my biological sister up — driving up north — and my mother wanted me to have the conversation in the car on the way. So there I was. Trapped in a moving vehicle. Being the messenger for someone else's worry while my mother sat in the driver's seat having orchestrated the whole thing.
My biological sister blew up at me. Swear words flying. And here is the thing — she was right. It was none of my business. My mother had weaponized that entire scenario and I had walked right into it. My biological sister has never spoken to me since. We saw each other briefly a couple of times after that. There are more complexities to that story that I may save for another diary entry or podcast one day. But the core of it — the triangulation, the manipulation, the role I was playing without fully understanding it — that is what I am talking about here.
For years my mother operated this way. Making me feel like it was somehow my responsibility to fix things, to deliver messages, to have conversations that were never mine to have. Making me feel like I was being helpful when actually I was being used as a tool to avoid direct accountability.
I want to be clear — I say this with a lot of reflection and a lot of therapy behind it. I am not sharing this to villainize anyone. I am sharing it because the manipulation and triangulation that happens in enmeshed family systems is something I have unpacked extensively in therapy and still find new filing folders for in my brain. It is layered. It is subtle. And it is incredibly hard to see when you are inside it.
And so when Robb asked — why are people so comfortable telling you this information — I felt that question in my whole body. Because I know exactly why they were comfortable telling me. Because that was my role. I was the one who absorbed it. The one who carried it. The one who never said this is not mine to hold.
I stopped participating slowly. And then I chose to walk away entirely. If you have read other diary entries or listened to other episodes you will know I was raised in a family with addictions and the enabling of those diseased states. It would take a lifetime to give a full picture of what goes on in households like that behind closed doors — and honestly I am still finding the words for a lot of it.
For the longest time I wanted to think I was exempt from addictions because I saw that chaos around me. Surely I would never end up there. I had watched it. I knew what it looked like. But guess what? I was also addicted to alcohol, drugs, and pain meds. Another layered story. Another filing folder. Another thing I had to uncover, discover, and discard.
And one of the hardest things I ever did? For the longest time I used to say I can't. I can't leave. I could never leave my family. That is not something I am capable of doing.
And when I was finally done — when I had nothing left to give that system and everything left to give myself — I sat in therapy and said I don't know how I am going to do this but I need help walking away from my family of origin. Because I was not going to be able to heal in that environment. I would always be made to feel guilty. Shamed. I would never be able to learn accountability, to find my life, to feel more well. Not while I was still inside it.
So I dropped the T.
I can.
And so can you.
And so yeah — when Robb asks what is it about you that makes people so comfortable to say those things to you? That is not a judgment. That is an invitation. Time to go and do some fucking work. Because the path out of that family and into the incredible life I have now started with one shift. From I can't to I can. One letter. One decision. Everything changed.
You Are On the Playlist
This is the story I am going to be thinking about for a very long time.
Robb was a kid in Manchester. His parents could not afford much. But they got him a little transistor radio because he was a musician. And on Sunday afternoons he would listen to the Top 40 countdown and you could call in and request a song.
So he called in. Nervous. Heart pounding. Asked for ABBA.
They told him — it's on the playlist. We just do not know when.
He ran upstairs. Listened. And then — this goes out to Robbert Kelly in Manchester.
ABBA played.
He said it is the same with whatever you believe in — God, the universe, your higher power. Put your request in. You are on the playlist. It is going to happen. You just do not know when.
I could not speak for a moment after that one.
The Phone Number
Before we wrapped up Robb gave out his personal cell phone number on this podcast.
Because if you are in a one bedroom apartment somewhere thinking about doing something stupid — and he means end of life stupid — he wants you to text him. Tell him you saw him on Wellness Me Up. He will text back within ten minutes. He will organize a fifteen minute call. And he says that fifteen minutes will change your life. He is so sure of it that if it does not he will send you a hundred dollars.
I am putting that number in the comments so everyone has it.
📞 214-600-0210
Text him. He means it.
What Wellness Me Up Means to Dr. Robb
Living the dream instead of dreaming of living.
He said it. I wrote it down immediately. Because that is it. That is the whole thing.
Wellness is not just the gym and the food and the sleep. It is the mindset. It is waking up every morning and saying fuck yeah let's go. It is deciding you are a ten today and not letting anyone tell you that you cannot be. It is dropping the T and discovering what you are actually capable of.
Wellness Me Up to Robb means you are on the playlist. Get up. Kill it. Drive. Inspire people. Compliment three people. Give yourself permission to be happy.
Mic drop. Go get the crow's feet.
Want to work with Dr. Robb?
Dr. Robb Kelly is a neuroscience and positive psychology coach offering a 98% success rate and a full refund guarantee if it does not work. He is taking clients now.
👉 robbkelly.com
📱 Find him everywhere — search Dr. Robb Kelly
📞 Personal cell for anyone in crisis: 214-600-0210 — text him. He will respond.
If this one lit something up in you... drop the T. And subscribe to Wellness Me Up wherever you listen.
🎧 Listen to the episode here:
▶️ Watch on YouTube
🎵 Listen on Spotify
🌍 Listen on Your Favourite App
