How a Wounded Army Veteran Rebuilt His Life Through Therapy

They don't really take that time and consideration and turn you back into a civilian.

“It messes with you when you get out of the military.”

Going through that, trying to do that myself, I worked and I created a non-profit trying to help other veterans. Kenneth Doyle is a compassionate, experienced licensed mental health counselor and founder of the brainspot PLLC. In a U.S. Army veteran, he combines professional expertise with personal experience to help

others navigate mental health challenges. You went from a journey of that soldier saying, "Let me die because I don't think I can deal with the aftermath of being an amputee vet." To now, having lived through all that trauma and that pain to now becoming a doctor, on the verge of becoming a doctor, it actually kind of was a rebirth.

I went through my recovery in the hospital that was challenging, getting out of the hospital

trying to read just to civilian life.

Recognize that I wanted to do more than mental health went back to school and graduated my master's degree and I've been working as a therapist ever since. That work with a lot of clients who have experienced trauma in their lives intense traumas, I have some who have survived cults, some who were trafficked as a child. And so just these horrible stories of what these people have been through, but helping them

work through and process that trauma. So it's harder to treat, but you can't treat it. The living your legacy podcast for those who live to leave a legacy. Hey, welcome back everyone to another episode of Living Your Legacy Podcasts. I'm your host again, Jay Slang, and we're here at the Sunny Miami Beach Studios.

And yeah, we got the opportunity to talk to some of the best entrepreneurs from around the country and the doctors and contractors and today we got a special guest for our show Operation CEO and wow, what an amazing story. And yeah, I'll have them introduce yourself. What's your name?

“What's your, where you from and what's your business?”

I'm Kenneth Doyle, I'm originally from Miami, but I'm living in North Carolina now. Okay. My business is the brain spot, PLLC, in Hickory, North Carolina. Okay.

So I was Hickory, North Carolina, is a city town like I'd never been there.

It's a smaller type city, nowhere near Miami, but qualifies as a city. Okay. Okay. Nice. And so yeah, Operation CEO, tell us, you know, I guess what branch of the military

were you in? What was your position and where were you out in your missions and deployments? I went into the United States Army as explosive ordinance disposal. And in 2012, I was deployed to Afghanistan and did that for, well, until August when I was injured out there.

Okay.

“So 2012, who was the president back then?”

Oh, I think it was Obama. Okay. Okay. And so yeah, you're an FKF Afghanistan, tell people what IED stands for. So IED is the explosive, sorry, improvised explosive device.

Okay. I got homemade bomb, homemade bomb, right? And from my time here at Operation CEO, kind of interviewing others, I guess what they do is they hide one metal piece and then another metal piece and then when you step on it, the two metal pieces connect and then boom.

Yeah, that's one of their, that's one of the different types of IEDs that's called a pressure plate. So once you put some pressure on it, it connects the circuit. Okay. and so that runs to the battery once the explosives and then boom. There's other ones, there's remote controlled IEDs where they have like a cell phone and

they'll call the cell phone and it'll explode. They have ones that just have wires that run and they're hiding in the bushes and they'll set it off. Gotcha. Gotcha.

And so you're, you're training for this, right? And you know, through training, you're like, oh, this is kind of cool because I make it look like not a big deal, right, but then your friend is like, hey, you got to check out this movie. Right.

Yeah. So what movie, I mean, there's a lot of war movies out there, but yeah, during when I was giving you the interview, you said the movie, I looked it up, it's got a high score on rotten tomatoes. Yeah.

Yeah, what was the movie? It's a, the hurt locker. The hurt locker.

“All those EOD team and in the first couple minutes, the EOD team leader is killed by an”

ID. Yeah. And so that was a little weird to watch after I signed my paperwork for the contract. So you feel like, oh, all right, not as cool as they were saying, but so you get, you throw it into Afghanistan, 2012, and you know, I guess it was all going good until three

years into it, I guess, right. And then, yeah, everything kind of life changing moment, tell us, go into that.

So our mission, we were assigned to work with third group special forces, which was also

based out of Fort Rage, so we acted as their personal bomb squad unit. And so we went out on all their missions with them if they ever found an ID or a booby trap, we could take care of that for them. So on August 15th, 2012, what I'm told is that, because I have no memory of the event, what I'm told is we went out for a simple mission.

We were just collecting evidence off of an ID that went off in the village. And then while we're there, another one went off, and what we went to collect evidence off of that one, a third one went off. And so when we went down there to collect the evidence on that one, they had apparently been watching us as we were conducting these missions, and they had a secondary ID placed

in the last hole of that third one. Yeah.

So when we went down there, that was like the mobile phone one, yeah, you're going to talk

about. Yeah, it was a remote control one. And our equipment was malfunctioning by that time, which we had been out of day. Yeah. And then, Kabum.

Yes. Yeah. Big Kabum. Yeah. And then, what happened, right?

Well, my team leader was standing directly in between me and the ID while he was trying to work on it.

And his body shielded me from most of the blast.

And he did not survive that. I was thrown through the air, landed on my head. I shattered the front of my skull, my face. It was an experience. My arm nearly amputated, but as I was going through getting stabilized, they had to just

cut the rest of it off. And wow. Yeah. And so the ones that are the people that are listening, maybe not the video, yeah, he's an amputee, right?

“So I guess you say three quarters of your arm was taken?”

Yeah. It was the main injury, maybe like halfway down my forearm is what I'm told. And it was infected with E. coli because it's a filthy, filthy country. And so they had to keep taking more and more off when I was in the hospital so that they could get ahead of the infection.

So now I'm above the elbow, which I mean, it is what it is. Yeah. And so yeah, I mean, but it's also your right arm, right? And you are right, right handed and right everything, right? Everything, right?

Oh, so yeah, I mean, so I did your episode, right? Yeah. I know a lot about it and it's intense. But you were three years in the hospital, right?

“Kind of like waking up, thinking it's the matrix, like what's real, what's not?”

And you're going to have to tune into the episode to hear all about that, right? But I'm going to get into some a little bit of other stuff, right? But we didn't talk about how's it like losing your your main arm of use, right? You said that, yeah, you had to, you learned to write left handed. I cannot, I could barely write now because we type so much with my right hand, but to

write my left hand, oh man, that's that's horrible, like yeah, it was a big adjustment. I think one of the biggest things that that has been a challenge with my left hand was a dexterity, I'll still like today, try to grab a pen and the pen will go flying because I can't really grab it too well. But I mean, I can do pretty much everything except for not drop things when I'm holding

them.

Is there a sense of that ghost arm that you feel like it's still there and you kind

of just go for it? And then you're like, oh, yeah, that for a while, there was a lot of phantom limb sensations. Yeah. So I could feel like my arm was still there because I had had it my whole life. Yeah.

And a lot of the nerve endings that are connected to like your hand and everything, they are still there, they're firing, so they're like, oh, your hand should still be here. And so because it's not and they have nowhere to go, it just resulted in intense pain. Yeah. And yeah, it's something in the movies and it's something that we see going around time

to time.

“But you just hate to see it is, you know, amputeed vets, right?”

And you kind of told yourself, really sad story that before you went in, you told your brothers, like, hey, if it ever happens, you know, and, you know, I lose a limb. I guess take your time to come and rescue me and let me just go, right? And you went from a journey of that soldier saying, let me die because I don't think I can deal with the aftermath of being an amputee vets, right?

To now, you know, having lived through all that trauma and that pain to now becoming a doctor, right? Yeah. On the verge of becoming a doctor.

So, tell us that amazing journey of just being reborn, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It actually kind of was a rebirth, you know, I went through my recovery in the hospital. That was challenging. And then getting out of the hospital, trying to try and to read just to civilian life.

Now, he just boiled down a two year, you know, story of being in the hospital, going through depression and being, I mean, and much more tune into the episodes to hear all that, but into one word challenging, right? Yeah. So, I just want to tell people, yeah.

It's a two year story, that challenging, right? There's many challenges throughout that. But yes. Okay. Challenging.

Yeah. It was challenging for sure.

It was something that I had never experienced before.

Yeah. So, that in and itself was kind of life-changing. And then getting out of the hospital, trying to reaclimate to civilian life, it's difficult because, you know, the military, they spend a whole lot of money to turn you into a soldier and a killer.

They don't really, or at least they hadn't when I was going through. They don't really take that time and consideration and turn you back into a civilian. So, that really, it messes with you when you get out of the military, but through going through that, trying to do that myself, I worked and I created a non-profit, trying to help other veterans, recognize that I wanted to do more than mental health, went back to school

and graduated my master's degree, and I've been working as a therapist ever since. Amazing. Amazing. Well done, and I applaud you for that, and I applaud you for your service. Thank you so much, right?

Thank you. I hope the people that listen to operations, CEO, that have a new understanding of what goes down, and it gives them an appreciation of, you know, the freedoms that we can take for granted. But, yeah, thank you, my guy.

“And so, now you're a therapist, what's your focus in your practice?”

My main focus is treating clients who have experienced trauma, and also complex trauma, which it differs between PTSD and complex PTSD. Yeah, so, when you have a traumatic incident that happens to you, you get assaulted, somebody robs you, you are in a natural disaster, or you're in a car accident, something that's traumatic that happens to you.

You may start to develop symptoms of PTSD, like panic attacks and flashbacks and nightmares feeling healed and shame. So, that's like a single incident, maybe. Right. Okay.

Complex PTSD is more of having these traumatic incidents over the course of your life time, long-term, like childhood abuse, sexual abuse, these things that people do to you without really caring, and it changes the way your brain functions. So, it's harder to treat, but we can't treat it.

“And so, yeah, what kind of, so you specialize and focus on complex PTSD?”

Right, my, one of my main focuses is complex PTSD because not a lot of counselors, especially

in for trauma counseling, and my counselor wouldn't touch that.

They just wanted to be hoping skills. That's kind of rough. Right. That would be a rule of a counselor, not being able to deny someone, but they can. Yes.

If they think that that's out of their limits of what they know how to treat, kind of have to refer out. Gotcha. Gotcha. But just the way they go about it, like, I'm not doing trauma work with you because

I don't know how to. Yeah. I can see that.

“If they're not qualified, if they're not fully into it, right?”

Then they should be seeing that person anyways. Right. Right. So it's not the fault of the therapist or whatever, right? But it could feel a bit, you know, disheartening for the patient.

Yes. So then they refer to you, right? So what kind of people are you talking to? Client ones? Client ones.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, I work with a lot of clients who have experienced trauma in their lives intense traumas, I have some who have survived cults, some who were traffic does a child. Yeah.

And so just these horrible stories of what these people have been through, but helping them work through and process that trauma. Yeah. Yeah. That's so crazy.

And for someone that knows the other side of, like, the horror stories, right? The horror stories that, you know, we know are out there, right? Maybe we know them from movies, right?

“But you have to talk to the actual people, like, does it, does it, does it, you're a father”

of four, right? Does it scare you more? Do you have your kids out there in the world where you've heard some of the crazy stuff that goes on? Yes.

I can't imagine my kids going through some of this stuff that I've heard from different clients. I try to protect them and I try to shelter them. But sometimes that could be detrimental as well. Somebody who's very much sheltered from the world around them, and then they go live on their

own, and they don't know how to function as an adult. Yeah. So it's a balancing act for sure. Yeah. What's crazy is how the world has changed so much, right?

My parents, like, they sent me when I was, what was it? Nine years old, to, like, Belgium by myself.

“I don't know when you get your, first holy communion, right?”

Yeah. So, like, I went on a plane to Belgium by myself to go visit my family, right?

But you would never put your kid on a plane by themselves these days, you know?

But like, yeah, all the air hostesses they took care of me, you know, and I had someone along the way to pick me up, right? Or, once again, when I was 16, I went to Japan by myself, right? And that was thing with, like, you know, kind of exchange, like, we had, we had Japanese students that stayed with us, right, and I stayed with those families.

But they were like, you're 16, and they were like, okay, well, we got to go to work. Here's a train ticket to just go around all the Tokyo, you can check out the map, we'll see you back at dinner time, you know? Wow. Yeah.

And then, but these days, I'd be like, if that was my own kid, if I were had a kid, you know, I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, not these days, you know, it's like not even sending them to the bus stop, like, we also go into the bus stop every day by ourselves, you know, like, I feel like now, maybe with the internet, and you're so much more open to what goes on, it's like, I wouldn't even let my

kids say it a bus stop by themselves, you know, you know, just a different world, growing up with my mom, if I ever missed the bus, she would make me walk miles to school. So it is a different world now.

I would never, never think of letting my kids do that exactly exactly, right?

Um, so that's, that's an amazing transformation, you know, from, from, I mean, yeah, I mean, you had, honestly, just tuned into this episode, he unpacked so much, right, and goes into that transformation, but, um, because of the time limits, I do it, I do ask everyone, what are you most excited about right now, you know, are there special projects that you got cooking, what's on the horizon, or anything at the forefront of your industry that

you're involved in? You know, what, what you got cooking? Um, so just recently, I moved into a bigger office space, okay, on a couple other clinicians, and so we're, we're working on treating a lot more clients, which is fantastic. Yeah. And so they have their own focus on what they're working on, you know, they're not, they're not working specifically with trauma that some, one of them's working with children, okay, one of them's working

with older adults, um, but still with the same goal in mind to help them process things

that you entered with? With me, there's, uh, two others, okay, but I have rooms for another

“one once we, uh, all right, so you're trying to form like the justice league of therapists”

to help people, right? That, yeah, that's actually a great idea. The Avengers, you know, we're going to help people mentally. Absolutely. All right, I need to think of a cool name for us.

Yeah, totally, totally, right? Um, well, that's amazing, right? Expansion, new, uh, and you're almost

“a doctor, right? Yes, yeah, absolutely. I just have to, uh, do my, finish my dissertation.”

Okay, and then yeah, and then it's Dr. Doyle. Yes. All right, it's all great,

congratulations. And, uh, how do people find you, man? Um, well, I have a website out, uh, it's called, uh, WWW,

dot the brain spot PLLC.com. Um, if you Google the brain spot PLLC, you'll come up on our,

“our page, uh, all five star reviews, which is fantastic. Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.”

It's as boring, some boring. Yeah, absolutely. Um, all right, well, thank you so much for for joining us, and thank you for the work that you're doing, uh, to help the other veterans and to help people that go to this, you know, intense, intense lives, you know, a lot of them get left behind, but uh, you're not one of those people that live in behind. So thank you so much. Thank you. Is a pleasure being here. All right, man. So, and thank you guys for joining us. Yeah, like I said,

man, operations CEO, it's where I hear some of the most intense stories for the people that come through, uh, the studios here in Miami, but, uh, you know, they use entrepreneurship to enter this civilian lives and succeed and thrive, right? Uh, and, you know, CEOs and entrepreneurs, they got some of the best stories, but, you know, you add the military background to that, and you get some really intense stories, uh, like Kenneth, uh, like, like Ken's here. So yeah,

tune into his episode when it airs. And thank you for joining us for another episode. And we'll see you next time, everyone. Cheers.