Ep22: Turn Your Setbacks into Comebacks: Lessons from a Brain Injury Survivor | Beckett Johnson | Mindset Reinvented

Overcoming Traumatic Brain Injury: Beckett Johnson's Inspiring Journey

Jack Trama: I'm excited to welcome Beckett Johnson to the show. In 2014, Beckett survived a traumatic brain injury that gave him just, ah, a low chance of survival. And with no health insurance and limited resources, he had to reinvent himself from the ground up. And fast forward to today. Beckett is an intuitive life coach. He's a podcaster, and he's an artist. And he's revolutionizing the personal development space through what he calls Becketing, which is his unique method of authentic truth telling. And he's taken his darkest moments to become a beacon of hope for others. And he's here today to show us how to turn our challenges into opportunities for real personal growth. Beckett, I couldn't be more excited to have you here, buddy.

Beckett Johnson: Thank you, man. I appreciate it. That was quite the intro. I'm excited to be here and talk to you about it. Yeah.

Jack Trama: And I love that this is our second opportunity to chat, and your story to me is, uh, fascinating. And, uh, you're very blessed to have overcome what you've overcome and to do the things that you're doing, especially going from a traumatic brain injury and surviving that, to reinventing yourself to being who you are today and a guide to many, many people. So I find that incredible. Can you take us back to that moment of what happened to you that caused that brain injury to begin with?

Beckett Johnson: Yeah, I mean, I don't remember it. Um. And that's your brain's way of protecting you. So I've been told. Um, and the doctors have also warned me, don't try. Cause then you'll have PTSD. So it's kind of fascinating in and of itself what the brain does to protect us. But I was, um, coming in out of town. I was living in Calgary, Alberta, in Canada. Had come into Charlotte, North Carolina. Was gonna wrap up some loose ends and. Cause I used to live in Charlotte before I went to Calgary, so I needed to wrap up some loose ends, take care of some things. I was gonna stay with a friend.

We went to a storage facility, mine, to get my bed, to bring it to my friends. And apparently, um, my best friend showed up in her pickup truck. I jumped on the back of it for whatever reason. I don't know. Um. I'm guessing we were goofing around, and she gunned it. And I flew off the back, and they said you could hear my head crack against the pavement over the truck like the sound of a baseball bat breaking, and it stayed what they call a closed wound. So I would have been actually better if it hadn't stayed closed because the back of my head was the size of a cantaloupe from, you know, the blood that was coming.

And they just said. The pressure within my brain was building, so I was rushed immediately. I had, I guess, apparently not to be graphic, but blood coming out of my nose. Then once they said, it started to come out of my ears, they're like, we got to go. Um. And so I was in ICU that night with a 1% chance of survival and hoping that the pressure stopped or they were going to have to. They came out and I told my. My wife at the time, if the pressure doesn't stop, we're gonna have to drill. Um, hopefully it stops. And then they had warned all my friends and family that the person that went in and the person who comes out probably won't be the same. And they need to prepare themselves for that.

Jack Trama: My goodness. And so a lot of that you don't have any memory on?

Beckett Johnson: I have no memory. I don't even have memory of coming into Charlotte. The last memory I have because I had driven from Calgary to Charlotte was we stopped in Asheville and got lunch. That's the last solid memory I have of that day. And then anything after that was like, flashes. Like, I have flash moments of being in ICU and seeing my wife, but I didn't know that was my wife sitting in a chair sleeping. Or flash moments of being. Getting ready to be put into a CT scan because they thought they had me in a neck brace. They thought I broke my spine, so they were concerned. So they, I guess, had me in a neck brace that I kept trying to take off because they weren't sure that I hadn't, you know, severed that and what was going on. So it's only flashes, and even I never had a moment, uh, where I woke up in the hospital and went, uh, what am I doing here? What happened that didn't happen.

Jack Trama: So with such a low survival rate, then obviously the doctors intervened. You had a lot of probably good fortune and good luck that things didn't go in a different direction for you. But what then occurred? So how long were you in the hospital for? And then when you recovered, or at least the journey to begin recovery, uh, what was that like for you? And how did you overcome some of the challenges about that?

Beckett Johnson: Honestly enough. And when I tell people this, they get shocked because I didn't have healthcare coverage. They only had me in the hospital four days. So the minute when they released me, I still didn't know what year it was. It was 2014. I told them it was 1983. Um, I didn't know my name, I didn't know my friend. I didn't recognize anything. And so they released me because I didn't have healthcare coverage. So I was in ICU for two days. Once the pressure stopped, miraculously, it stopped. They never had to drill. Um, but I still was not knowing, and they pretty much was like, well, he's alive, and there's not much else we can do with it. Bye bye.

Jack Trama: That's a really sad set of affairs, that our healthcare system will expel somebody that needs, uh. Obviously, you needed more care than just four days. And to expel you out of the hospital. Because you couldn't financially afford it is, um. Is a travesty.

Beckett Johnson: Yeah, it really was. And even my mom was like, what do you mean? You're letting him, like, he doesn't even know his name. And they're like, well, there's nothing more we can do. And really, it was nothing more they were gonna do. And what I had found out later was I should have had a whole team assigned to me and working with me, which didn't happen. And that's why, if I didn't have my friends and family there, I would probably be a homeless person and not cognitive enough to even know, to take care of myself or to eat. You know what I mean? Like, there's. So there's a part of me that wonders, like, how many homeless people, and I think I read a statistic somewhere where they've. They're learning, have brain injuries, because they literally would have wheeled me out and went, bye bye, have a good day. And I didn't even know how to function.

Jack Trama: Yeah, well, and so you had. You had a good support group around you, people that cared about you and loved you, to be able to. To guide you. So at what point did you start to regain your sense of, okay, I know who I am. I know the people around me, who they are. And then you started piecing some of the things together. Do you recall what that transition looked like to you?

Beckett Johnson: This is always a hard part to tell people because it's not super clear. It's like you kind of come out of this fog. You know what I mean? Daily. Because, uh, when they released me, they had told me, you can't take more than 15 minutes of stimulation a day. A day and stimulation when people don't realize this, that's lights, that's voices, that's not only your screens, it's talking to people. My brain at that point was between, uh, like, around a three year old, zero to three. And so. And if I had overstimulated it, it was going to do more damage. I slept a lot, and then I started. So if you and I were talking for, like, five minutes, I would have been in the bed for five days. Just from five minutes of conversation.

Jack Trama: Is it the energy that you're putting forth that the brain is not able to handle? Okay.

Beckett Johnson: Yeah. Because people don't realize, like, even driving takes so much brain stimulation. Right. Because you're on the gas, you're making sure, no, you're looking at other cars you're driving, you're trying to figure out where you're going. That's a lot of energy and stimulation to the brain. So whenever your brain has to process, it's too much stimulation. And so for me, it was very minimal. So I just realized, like, that would slowly get less and less, and so I would slowly start to come out of it and go, okay, now, it doesn't take me five days after talking to you for five minutes. It might take me three.

And that's good. Months. I mean, it took months of me just. There, uh, was times where I would look back at the first few months and go, I don't even know how I got through that. I don't know how I was living. And luckily, a friend of mine where I was going to stay ended up letting me stay there for over a year, you know what I mean? To help me get back on my feet and I. And get back into life. So it was a weird reawakening to life, and you're trying to figure out nobody. I didn't know what a traumatic brain injury was. I never heard of it. And so I wasn't a. Even supposed to be on the computer. And I just started searching traumatic brain injury. And at that time there wasn't a lot out there. And I found one group and they happened. It was talking about yoga and brain injury and I didn't care about the yoga, but I was like, maybe they know something that can help me because I don't know what I do from here. You know what I mean? How do you live now?

Jack Trama: Well, you're playing your own doctor out of necessity. Doesn't seem like you had any medical, nobody checking in on you from a medical perspective since you left the hospital. So Doctor Google becomes your new source of insight on what not to do. Of course the doctors say, don't use Doctor Google because it'll make you crazy and a lot of information out there is not accurate. So then it took you a while to regain your sense of self and really everything about where you were and your sense of purpose. So what then are some of the lasting effects that you have right now from that brain injury? I remember when you and I were talking last and you had indicated one of the things that you don't have a sense of anymore is taste.

Beckett Johnson: Yeah.

Jack Trama: And is that 100% of the way or is it part of the way?

Beckett Johnson: Uh, the only thing I can taste is berries. I, I have no taste or smell.

Jack Trama: Oh, you don't have smell either? Okay.

Beckett Johnson: No, I lost, out of that injury, I lost 90% of my hearing in my left ear because I hit my temporal bone, so my inner ear shifted, so I have to wear a hearing aid. I lost my taste and smell completely. Outside of berries, is it any kind.

Jack Trama: Of berry or is it just.

Beckett Johnson: Yep, any berry. Blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. And in the beginning I couldn't tell you what berry it was. I just. Or cherries. I got flavor. Now I can tell you what berries they are, but it doesn't matter what kind of berry I can at least. Like when I recently come, about a year ago, went to Montana, in Wyoming, Yellowstone, they had huckleberries and I had never tasted that. So it was like, woohoo. I was excited because it was like a new flavor and a new taste. I could have that, you know. Eleven years, you, you know, if I didn't have to eat, I wouldn't.

Jack Trama: Uh, so many questions for you about this because we take for granted the things that we, by design, we all have a great meal and we taste it and we feel satiated. We hear, most of us out of two ears. Uh, those are blessings that we all take for granted, is the fact that taste is limited to berries, is it due to the tartness of it?

Beckett Johnson: They don't know. They don't know all of us. That's the interesting thing about brain injuries, is they're all different. And I've met hundreds of people, I've worked with hundreds of people of brain injuries, and I think I only know of one other person that lost their taste. Yet he had a. His smell. So there's another conundrum. Cause technically, right, medical, they tell you if you can't smell, you can't taste. Yet he can smell, but he can't taste. So it's. They don't know why. They don't have any idea. And that, you know, both of my neurosurgeons, when I finally could get back and get some help because I had to move and all the things they were like, I'm gonna learn more from you than you're gonna learn from me.

Jack Trama: Yeah. Oh, I'm sure of it. But having lost both of those, the sense of smell and then the sense of taste, if I had a choice between the two of them, and neither one are great choices, I probably would want to keep my taste and give up my smell.

Beckett Johnson: Yeah.

Jack Trama: Do you feel that way, too?

Beckett Johnson: I actually. It's a struggle for me, especially having experience. Cause smell was a big deal for me. I love, like, fresh cut grass or a campfire or your partner's perfume or. You know what I mean? Like, you don't realize how much these things play into our society. So for me, people have asked that, and I said, I don't know. You know what I mean? Because both have their place and for food, a lot of people are like, it's taste. But I don't know, uh, I struggle with that one because sometimes I'm like, I would want my smell back.

Jack Trama: Yeah. Well, the good news is that you don't have to smell anything. That's foul.

Beckett Johnson: True.

Jack Trama: So there is a silver lining to all of this, right?

Beckett Johnson: There is. My nephew doesn't like that. You know what? He tries to be, you know, do the whole jokey thing and to come over and do something and fart or whatever, and I'll be like, that doesn't work. And he's like, try again, buddy. You need to do something different because you're not going to get under my skin with that.

Jack Trama: Right. And he forgets. He's like, uh, doesn't work. So that's a blessing.

Beckett Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. And, uh, I'm thinking in my mind, I'm like, if I lost my taste, to me, taste is so incredibly important. And I know it's important for you and for everybody else, but it. If I had to choose between the two, it's fascinating because if I didn't have taste, then that would mean I could actually eat foods that don't taste good but are actually healthy for you. So plant diets, they're down.

Jack Trama: Yeah, but you think that everybody says that it must be so easy. I go, it's not. Because here's the thing. You still have cravings. Your body still craves food. You just can't satiate it, and you become texture based. And even that now has gotten boring for me. Whereas a lot of the healthy foods don't have great texture, there's not a variety of textures. So you get bored, do you know what I mean? So people don't realize, they think it's just the taste that you're involved with eating, but it's really not. And even one of, um, my friends, who's a nutritionist and an herbalist and all the things made me realize that one of our retreats was, you know, right before you eat, when you smell food, that triggers the enzymes in your digestive tract to start because it knows you're getting ready to eat.

Jack Trama: Mhm.

Beckett Johnson: Well, I don't have that. So my body isn't triggering. So people don't realize that, yes, it's taste, but it's texture and it's smell. And it's all those things that are making you enjoy that meal beyond just the flavor.

Jack Trama: The senses. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. So, so before moving, and this is a topic I could probably do a full podcast on with you, because I absolutely love it. But we do want to cover some of the things. But. But in my mind, there is absolutely no taste at all.

But I get, like, the salt, the sweet, the bitterest, but I'm just getting the basics. I'm not getting any of the nuances. So if you gave me a steak, I would taste the salt. I would taste the bitter of the char. But I wouldn't taste the meat. I wouldn't taste the juiciness. I wouldn't taste any of that.

Jack Trama: So you're getting the basic sensations on your tongue, but not the actual flavors of the food itself.

Beckett Johnson: Correct. And even those are very muted. Like, if you gave me something salty, I would have to have a lot of salt on it to even register that it's salty.

Jack Trama: Wow. That's fascinating. And so, moving on from that, because we could spend a lot of time on that topic. But you've taken this experience and you've turned it into something positive. You've created a method called Becketing. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is and how you use your experience to help others?

Beckett Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. So Becketing really came out of my own journey of healing and self-discovery after the brain injury. It's a method of authentic truth-telling and personal development that I developed. The core of it is about facing our challenges head-on and using them as opportunities for growth.

One of the key aspects is what I call "truth bombs" - these are moments of brutal honesty with ourselves and others that can be uncomfortable but lead to breakthroughs. I encourage people to dig deep into their experiences, even the painful ones, and find the lessons and strength within them.

Another important part is what I call "reframing" - looking at our struggles from a different perspective to find the hidden gifts or opportunities. For me, losing my sense of taste and smell forced me to find joy and meaning in other aspects of life. I help others do the same with their challenges.

Becketing also involves a lot of mindfulness and self-reflection practices. I guide people to really tune into their thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations as a way to gain deeper self-awareness.

Ultimately, it's about empowering people to take control of their own growth and healing journey, just like I had to do after my injury when I didn't have much professional support. It's a very personalized approach - what works for one person might not work for another, so I help people find their own unique path.

Jack Trama: That's really powerful, Beckett. It's amazing how you've taken such a difficult experience and transformed it into a way to help others. Can you share an example of how you've seen Becketing make a difference in someone's life?

Beckett Johnson: Absolutely. One client I worked with had been struggling with severe anxiety and depression for years. Through Becketing, we uncovered that a lot of her issues stemmed from childhood trauma she had never fully processed. 

We used truth bombs to help her confront some of the painful memories and emotions she had been avoiding. It was tough at first, but as she learned to face these truths, she started to feel a sense of liberation.

We then worked on reframing her experiences. Instead of seeing her anxiety as just a burden, we explored how it had actually made her more empathetic and intuitive with others. This shift in perspective helped her start to value parts of herself she had previously rejected.

Through mindfulness practices, she became more aware of her thought patterns and how they were affecting her emotions and behaviors. This awareness allowed her to start making different choices in how she responded to stressful situations.

Over time, she not only saw a significant reduction in her anxiety and depression symptoms, but she also developed a much stronger sense of self and purpose. She even started volunteering to help others with similar struggles, which gave her a sense of meaning she had been missing.

It's stories like these that really show the power of facing our truths and transforming our challenges into strengths. That's what Becketing is all about.

Jack Trama: That's incredible, Beckett. It's clear that your method is making a real difference in people's lives. Thank you for sharing your story and your work with us today.

Beckett Johnson: Thank you, Jack. It's been a pleasure to be here and share my journey. I hope it can inspire others to find the opportunities within their own challenges.