Biography



Eric Arauz is considered one of the best pure orators in the United States.

His style is extemporaneous and full of complex ideas and literary metaphor. 

His energy is kinetic and his pure use of language is mesmerizing.

An MD at one of his Keynote speeches described him as  an "Existential Philosopher on Fire to share the secrets and meaning of life that he garnered after his suffering in restraints for over 24 hours."

Eric Arauz suffered extensive child abuse at the hands of a father with mental illness that attempted to murder him  when he was 12.

Eric served in the United States Navy in Operation Desert Shield on board the USS Briscoe DD-977, a Spruance Class Destroyer, and was discharged in 1994 and in 1995 was institutionalized in the first of three maximum security psychiatric wards in New Jersey.

In 1996, Eric was institutionalized in a Veterans Administration Hospital's maximum security ward for months and held in restraints for periods over 24 hours. 

Upon release from the VA Hospital, Eric started to build his life back with Chronic Bipolar 1 Disorder, Alcoholism and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) from long-term hospitalization.

He saw no reason to believe he would make it to this life but he kept moving forward.

Since 1996, Eric has received a BA  in American Studies from Rutgers University with High Honors and a Masters Degree from the Rutgers Graduate School of Management of Labor Relations.

In 2006, Eric saw Rutgers University upset Louisville in a nationally televised football game. He rushed the field and stood on the large Scarlet "R" at mid-field with his wife and decided if Rutgers could chase their dreams so could he.

Rutgers University saved Eric's life.

During his American Studies career he found a way to use books to save his own life. He had no internal language to describe the Hell he had been living in since a child. He had been speaking to himself in a language of 'self abomination' and suicide since his youth.

He found a way to transgress his "Existential Illiteracy" with various works in the Rutgers University curriculum. Books now stopped speaking TO him and started speaking FOR him.

He would need the life advice from 10,000 years of experience to save himself. And now he had the Rosetta Stone of understanding that is buried in every book every written.

If people could use religious and recovery books to find the answers to their lives then he could use every book ever written as an "Existential Cookbook".

He could finally author his own life.

He would become an "Applied Existentialist".

All libraries, bookstores and essays contained in them the advice from authors from the last 10, 000 years on how to live the best of life. They showed how to transcend yourself and see behind the illusion of division and decay now pulsating throughout American culture.

More important, they show how to see behind the "Veil" that hangs between the reader and their preconceived biases.

 Now literate to his suffering and life, Eric could face the various fears of living a life he thought was over when he was 12. 

The Rutgers win served as an example of real life effort usurping embedded biases. It reached into the disconnected soul of Eric Arauz and lit him 'On Fire' to Change the World.

 After the Rutgers win, Eric  left a corporate job and took a mental health advocate job for 800 dollars a month speaking in State Psychiatric hospitals to the patients about the harms of over-smoking and tobacco addiction.

He drove all across the state of New Jersey. He was finally using his passion to find those suffering from the disconnection and darkness of his disease and any other ailment that takes the zeal for life away from its victim.

He had found something to live for and in his sharing of his lifelong  suffering he could die to his past and find "Utility in his Suffering".

In 2006, he also founded Arauz Inspirational Enterprises LLC..

 That is where it all began and now Eric is the most sought after Resiliency and Behavorial Health speaker, consultant and trainer in the United States.

 He has won national awards, been the featured Keynote speaker throughout the United States at numerous venues, made multiple lectures at Yale University, Purdue University and other colleges, been on ABC, been nominated by his Governor for appointment to the NJ Governors Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse and has most impressively been awarded a faculty position as an adjunct instructor in the Dept. of Psychiatry at UMDNJ/Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

 He has created an International Trauma Training, presented in Canada and the United States, that focuses on the continuum of Trauma from lethal child abuse at the hands of a mentally ill parent TO his own diagnosis and treatment TO the non-linear recovery inherent in serious mental illness, addiction and PTSD from the trauma of his treatment.

 Eric proposed to use the experiential language of Trauma to usurp normal clinical language used in mental health treatment.

Clinical language makes the patient a problem, an other, an object.

Eric believes using this language of trauma can re-introduce the life-long patient to themselves. Give them a vernacular for their insular horrors and at the same time bring the patient and treatment provider together in a common and non-obstructionist operating language.

He uses all his own original concepts to educate people nation wide.

 He is the creator of the "Dante and Virgil Model of Recovery".

It is based on the relationship between Dante and the Great Poet Virgil from the literary epic, The Inferno.

Dante is lost in the hell of himself, burning to death beneath his skin.

Dante survives the ordeal because the great poet Virgil is traveling with him, guiding him. Virgil is from the underworld of Limbo and meets him in the icy flames. Virgil can lead Dante out of hell because he is used to burning in the dark circles of insular existential persecution.

It gives Dante the ability to transgress himself viscerally and return to the world.

 Eric believes he is a "Virgil" traveling the country into Universities, State and Private Psychiatric Hospitals, corporations, leading federal organizations etc. reaching his hand out to people inwardly blind and lost to themselves and offering a life that proves that even though it seems "Unbelievable it is not Unliveable!"

Eric will forever travel the global landscape into the darkest parts of the world looking for survivors- No one suffers alone on his watch. 

 Keep your hand out if your are lost and on Existential Fire, Eric is coming and he will not stop until he finds you.