The Hallucination Was Truth | Spiritual Trauma & Healing Father Wound Podcast

True Life Story

Show Notes: Bob's Story — A True Account of Rejection, Labels, and Soul Pain

This podcast is about the true story of Bob — a man diagnosed with OCD and bipolar disorder, who lived much of his life in institutions. He wore a helmet to protect himself after multiple suicide attempts by trying to put his head through windows. Institutionalized from a young age, he was later moved into the community during a shift in society's view of mental illness — from outcasts to human beings deserving dignity.

Catherine met Bob as a middle-aged man and worked closely with him for over a decade, until his death. One day, she witnessed something the medical team could not explain: Bob would reach his arms out and softly say, “my little boy, my little boy.” Psychiatric professionals dismissed it as a hallucination. But Catherine saw it differently — as a buried wound, a spiritual scar from a deeper truth.

This moment became illuminated when Bob’s mother, terminally ill with cancer, came to see him two weeks before her death. After her passing, his father arrived with a blanket she had knitted — her final gift. When Bob held out his arms as he had done so many times before, his father stared and said coldly, "Daddy? Daddy? I have no son. I have never had a son."

With those words, the meaning behind Bob’s so-called psychotic behavior became clear. It wasn’t madness. It was memory. A soul never seen. A child never claimed.

Bob's father severed all remaining ties and disappeared with a much younger woman. The rejection Bob felt throughout his life was not imagined — it was lived, over and over again. The diagnoses — OCD, bipolar, retardation — may have been coping mechanisms. Were they real, or were they survival strategies against unbearable pain?

Institutionalized as a child, Bob endured years of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse. Society, the system, and his own family labeled and abandoned him. The trauma was never spoken. Only expressed through behaviors, misunderstood as madness.

He didn’t change after this final heartbreak. He continued as he had, reliant on medication. Not long after, he passed away in a tragic, symbolic way: while at a summer camp, he snuck into the kitchen and gorged on leftovers. In his last moments, he choked — on food, on sweetness, on what he was never allowed to fully receive in life.

His friend Mary, who had grown up with him, grieved deeply. She often soothed him by stroking his hair — a rare gesture of gentleness. After his passing, she would say to others when they overate: "Don’t do a Bob." A strange phrase, yes, but to her, a painful reminder of love, of loss, of how little this world offered those like him.

She went on to live into old age, her body softened by time, her hair graying, and her spirit seasoned by the ache of those who leave us too soon.

Reflection

This episode invites us to reflect: What do we call "mental illness"? What is trauma, and what happens when society mistakes the wound for the person? Bob’s story asks us to look again — not with diagnosis, but with presence.

🕊️ Thank you for listening. May we all learn to see beyond behavior, into the soul.

Read more mystical stories like this in our Mystic Inspiration blog.