Conscious and Trauma-Informed Leadership: An interview with Kelly L. Campbell
Curt and Katie interview Kelly Campbell about her work with leaders. We explore the ways in which trauma can impact leaders, their teams, and their organizations. We also look at what trauma-informed leadership coaching can look like, including overarching goals for trauma-informed and high conscious leadership.
Click here to scroll to the podcast transcript.Transcript
An Interview with Kelly L. Campbell, Trauma-Informed Leadership Coach
Kelly L. Campbell (they/she) speaks and writes about trauma, leadership, and consciousness—”The New TLC.” The author of Heal to Lead (Wiley, April 2024), Kelly is a Trauma-Informed Leadership Coach to emerging and established leaders who know they are meant for more. Kelly’s vision is to empower more than half of humanity to heal its childhood trauma so that we may reimagine and rebuild the world together.
In this podcast episode, we explore trauma-informed leadership
While writing her book, Kelly Campbell reached out to Curt and Katie to connect with a previous interviewee, Dr. Sidney Stone -Brown. We loved that she is talking about trauma-informed leadership, so we invited her to come on the podcast to talk with us about it.
What is trauma-informed leadership coaching?
“If we don’t really process and deal with our past trauma, how can we become and be effective leaders in the world?” – Kelly Campbell, Author of Heal to Lead
- Recognizing that past traumas can impact how someone leads a group
- Identifying impacts of trauma on a client’s ability to perform the tasks of leadership
- Working to shift dynamics within leaders (and their teams) based on impacts of past trauma
What are the common impacts of trauma on leaders and their leadership skills?
- People-controlling behaviors (like micromanagement)
- People-pleasing behaviors (like not holding people accountable)
- Lack of trust
- Impostor Syndrome
- Attrition of employees
- Lower profitability (as a lagging indicator)
What is the goal for trauma-informed leadership?
“So what’s in it for leaders [i.e., dealing with their trauma] is, they get to wake up in the morning, knowing that they’re doing everything within their power to work on themselves for the benefit of themselves, others and the planet.” – Kelly Campbell, Author of Heal to Lead
- High conscious leaders
- Vulnerability and trust
- Healing the impacts of trauma on the workplace
- Refraining from people-controlling or people-pleasing behaviors
- Modeling a new way of being to shift the company culture
- Self-advocacy, clear boundaries, and improved communication
Resources for Modern Therapists mentioned in this Podcast Episode:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below may be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Kelly’s website: https://klcampbell.com
Kelly’s Book: Heal to Lead, Revolutionizing Leadership through Trauma Healing: https://klcampbell.com/heal-to-lead-book
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kelly.l.campbell
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellylcampbell
Substack: https://kellylcampbell.substack.com
Leadership Quiz: https://klcampbell.com/leadership
Healing Resources: https://myhealingmenu.com
Conscious Capitalism:
https://www.consciouscapitalism.org
Conscious Leadership:
What is Conscious Leadership? – LinkedIn
The Incredible Impact of Conscious Leadership – LinkedIn
A Guide to the 15 Principles of Conscious Leadership – Indeed
Relevant Episodes of MTSG Podcast:
Therapy for Executives and Emerging Leaders
Seeking Purpose Beyond Accomplishment: An Interview with Kasey Compton
When Your Clients are Wealthy and Well Known: An interview with Dr. Holly Daniels, LMFT
Are Therapists to Blame for Ineffective Workplace Wellness Programs?
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm, LMFT
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University and CSUN, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, former CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making “dad jokes” and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: http://www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy, LMFT
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also a former President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt’s youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: http://www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch with Curt, Katie, and the whole Therapy Reimagined #TherapyMovement:
Consultation services with Curt Widhalm or Katie Vernoy:
Connect with the Modern Therapist Community:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide Creative Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano https://groomsymusic.com/
Transcript for this episode of the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide podcast (Autogenerated):
Transcripts do not include advertisements just a reference to the advertising break (as such timing does not account for advertisements).
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Announcer 0:00
You’re listening to the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide where therapists live, breathe and practice as human beings. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, here are your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy.
Curt Widhalm 0:15
Welcome back modern therapists. This is the Modern Therapist’s Survival Guide. I’m Curt Widhalm, with Katie Vernoy. And this is the podcast for therapists about the things that go on in our world, the types of clients that we work with, ways that we vision things kind of all working out as old people and all of the various aspects that come along with that. And today we’re talking about trauma and leadership. And we are joined by Kelly L. Campbell, they/she; speaks and writes about trauma, leadership and consciousness, the new TLC, the author of heal to lead. Kelly is a trauma informed leadership coach to emerging and established leaders who know they are meant for more. Kelly’s vision is to empower more than half of humanity to heal its childhood trauma so that we may reimagine and rebuild the world together. And thank you very much for joining us today.
Kelly Campbell 1:07
Thanks, Curt. Thanks, Katie. I’m really excited to be here.
Katie Vernoy 1:09
We’re excited to have you. We found out about your work based on you reaching out to us about another interview that we had done with Dr. Sidney Stone Brown, and I started looking into your stuff. I was like, Oh my gosh, that’s exactly the type of stuff that I love. We’re just really excited to have you. And we’ll we’ll start with a question that we put to all of our guests. Who are you? And what are you putting out into the world?
Kelly Campbell 1:31
Yeah, who am I? Well, I guess I would say that I’m a change maker. I’m here to use my voice and what platform I have to, you know, just bring a message. And that message is one I think that’s been missing from the leadership conversation in particular, which is if we don’t really process and deal with our past trauma, how can we become and be effective leaders in the world. And I think that this disconnect, or this siloing of trauma is something that you work on, as an individual, as a person, as a human. But we definitely do not bring that into the leadership realm. I think that that’s a missed opportunity. So really, that’s what the book is about. That’s my way, what my work in the world is all about.
Curt Widhalm 2:18
At the beginning of a lot of our episodes, we asked a question: what do therapist get wrong about this? And we asked this not as a like shaming therapists kind of out there. And I know that you’re already kind of speaking to this, that this isn’t just kind of a private aspect that only happens in the therapy room. To help maybe some therapists not make the same mistakes that you’ve seen in how they even conceptualize working with, trauma with leaders. What are the mistakes that you see therapists making with leaders or as it comes to kind of conceptualizing trauma and leadership?
Kelly Campbell 2:50
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question, because many of the coaching clients that I have are also in therapy, right? Like there’s a very clear delineation between leaders who have a therapist, they’re working on, their unpacking their childhood trauma, and maybe they are talking about some of the things that are coming up inside of their businesses or their organizations. Most therapists in general, who are not accustomed to working in like the organizational realm, they’re not as familiar with workplace dynamics. But the thing that I think a lot of therapists, again, just from my experience with my clients, a lot of therapists that they’ve been working with, tend to stay in the realm of talking about past trauma to the point where it almost re traumatizes the person, right. So, I think focusing so much on the details of what happened to you, let’s unpack that, let’s really process it, let’s really get in there and have have someone going through the accounts or the recounts, of every single little detail of what happened to them. Versus what some people in more of a coaching seat might do, which is okay, we know that there were things that have happened. Let’s correlate that to how that’s impacting your current leadership style, or your current life, how you’re leading, living, loving, and what changes are you committed to making and holding that person accountable? So I would guess I would say it’s the potential retraumatization of someone in therapy, and then maybe not leaning as much into the commitment and the accountability piece.
Katie Vernoy 4:37
With the discussion that it sounds like you’re having with your clients related to past trauma and the impacts on leadership, what are the what are the questions or the places that you’re going to identify impacts of those past traumas on the leadership space?
Kelly Campbell 4:54
Yeah, so if it’s not a situation where the leader is entirely self aware, right, they’re not necessarily seeing the signs in themselves. They might be coming to me and saying, I’m not sure what’s going on here. But in meetings that I’m leading, it seems like I throw a question out to the group and no one responds. I wonder if they don’t feel safe are comfortable to do that? It seems like I’m always the one proposing solutions, and I never get any pushback, what’s going on there? Right? Could this be something that I’m doing wrong? Or I find that I don’t trust other people enough to do a job so maybe I’m micromanaging them? And I wonder, you know, like, is that the right way to do it? Sometimes I just don’t have the time. So I end up leaning into micromanaging. And like, what what happens there? Of course, my answer is, well, you’re disempowering the other person and telling them, essentially you’re signaling that you don’t trust them to do the right job. So there are I think, external signs and signals that the leader is then coming to me and saying, This is what’s happening inside of my organization with the people that I’m leading. They’re getting that feedback, either directly or indirectly. And then wondering why those things are happening and wondering how to change them.
Curt Widhalm 6:17
One of the conversations that I hear a lot kind of in this space is you’re a coach, we’re therapists, and Katie and I are maybe more accepting of kind of the over cross between those two professions, a little bit. But for some of the listeners who might be well, you are only a coach, how do you get into kind of this conversation as far as what you do with the trauma, rather than just being like, go work on that in therapy? Like, well, what is your role working with your clients that this way?
Kelly Campbell 6:49
Yeah, so the way that I talk about that is, it’s not my job, or my role to unpack your past with you. That is the job of the therapists that you are working with. What we want to do is make the correlations on the connections so that you see how that’s impacting your leadership style. And then, you know, we’re focusing on the change, or we’re focusing on, you know, how do we recognize these things? How, what are you doing to integrate your trauma, right? I can provide resources and things like that from that standpoint. But ultimately, it’s really more about that behavioral change and the commitment that the client is taking, like the commitment that that they have to their own change. And then my job is really asking good, poignant questions, getting them to the point where they’re empowered to make their own decisions about what changes they might make inside of themselves and their organizations, and then holding them accountable. So that’s really like, Okay, so now that we are addressing this particular situation, how do you want me to follow up with you about that? Okay, I’m going to email you next Tuesday to make sure that you emailed Mark and right, so it’s like, very, very specific from the accountability standpoint. Yeah, I mean, and, and coaching and therapy are very, very different things. I think, you know, therapy, in my understanding, having been in therapy for many, many, many years. But not being a therapist myself, you know, it, I really see them as two completely separate things. One is a little bit more, not a little bit is more diagnostic in nature, it’s more assessment based, you know, there are things that are needing to be repaired in some way, right with that individual. And my take is a little bit different as a coach. I come in thinking, and believing that my clients are whole and perfect exactly as they are, they’re not broken, there’s nothing to fix here. And they’re really wanting to make some changes in their life. And that’s really what’s my role is to is to help them and empower them to do that for themselves.
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Katie Vernoy 9:05
So if we’re looking at the change, and the things that are going through in that way, right. That they’re, they’re making these behavioral changes, or making these mindset changes, whatever these things are in the workspace, how does that impact the collective that kind of is working with them, whether it’s the leadership team or a lot of direct reports, or whatever it is, you know, like, what do you see is that change, like when someone is actually aware of their trauma and and doing these things that you’re talking about? What does that actually look like?
Kelly Campbell 9:40
Yeah, so it could be making a change that there’s, you know, the leader is no longer saying I don’t need help. The leader is no longer having an inability to delegate. Right, so that leads to less burnout and less overwhelm. That makes them a little bit more reliable. If they are being be more vulnerable, right, through this behavioral change, then it’s giving permission for other people in the organization to also be more vulnerable, where they can feel more comfortable to express concerns, maybe bring up risks or threats or things like that, that they see within the organization. It stimulates often more collaboration, right? More trust amongst the team. Though, I think in general, the more human that you are, the more approachable that you are, the more more that you embody vulnerability as the way that I say it in the book, in the second fundamental, the more that you embody that vulnerability, you’re creating more of that trust, you’re creating a culture that’s very, very different than a dictatorship, if you will, right. An authoritarian sort of leadership style, where the boss is always right, the boss has all the answers, the boss doesn’t need help, you know, and that there’s a very much a people controlling type of leadership style, that can show up that way. On the flip side of that there can be a people pleasing leadership style, right? And so that is no more effective, right? Because a people pleasing leader is going to say yes to everything, is going to have terrible boundaries, is also going to be seen as unreliable. Because they might say yes to everything, but then not deliver on it. And now, you know, it’s like, well, how can I trust you to take this off of my plate if I know that you’re overwhelmed, and you’re not going to deliver upon it? Right? People pleasing leaders are often conflict avoidant, so things go unresolved. It both of these ways of being a leader, rooted in trauma, are ineffective, right. So there are so many ways that we can look at and so many examples that we can see. And we’ve all had, regardless of what our positions are, what our professions are, we’ve all had bosses or leaders like this.
Curt Widhalm 11:55
Do you notice a difference in kind of the size of the organizations that people lead based on the kind of leadership style that you’re talking about? It would seem like those people pleasing kinds wouldn’t get to really large organizations that they’re leading. And I’m wondering if in those larger organizations if the more dictator types are harder to work with, because it’s been so successful for them?
Kelly Campbell 12:22
That is a very insightful question. Yeah, really fascinating. So, most of the leaders that I work with, historically, this is new now. But historically, they have been leaders of smaller organizations. So, maybe the founders and executive director of a nonprofit, a manager inside of a government organization, creative agency leaders, you know, things things in that realm. So smaller, for sure. The people pleasing aspect, you’re right, it it, absolutely, it doesn’t get them as far, this is a weird way to say this. But the larger the organization, I think you’re on to something here, the larger the organization, the more cutthroat, the more authoritarian the style is of the leader. Now, that’s not to say that we don’t have high conscious leaders of large organizations. And in the book, I give a whole list of lots and lots of high conscious leaders of very large organizations. Xerox, SAP, Chobani, IKEA, there are lots of people amongst the leadership team, and even in CEO positions that are very high conscious, very secure, very, you know, not people pleasing, not people controlling but very much sort of in the middle of that spectrum. So, it’s not that they’re not out there. But by and large, I think most of the leaders that we see, politically, from a corporate standpoint, most of them really are more on that people controlling end of the spectrum.
Curt Widhalm 14:00
You’ve talked about some of the signs a little bit that people might be picking up on in their businesses that might indicate, hey, something’s not working here. I imagine for a lot of leaders that that kind of starts with, well, what’s wrong with my company and management style kinds of things? So I want to dive in a little bit on that willingness to step in and look at is it me as a leader that might be causing this? What does that process kind of typically look like?
Kelly Campbell 14:30
So most of the time, it’s some of the those kinds of signs or signifiers. I don’t even think that’s a word. But some of the things that that might point to that are if there’s a high level of employee attrition, right, so if there are a lot of your top performers or your your great employees who are leaving, that could be a sign that you’re creating or you have created some kind of toxicity in the work place where they feel like they’re going to have a better experience, feel more psychologically safe, they’re just in general, they’re leaving for your competitors or other companies or other organizations. So that could be a sign. It could also look like client attrition as well. So, if your employees are not happy and not productive, and maybe, you know, there’s there’s a lot going on internally, where the culture is being impacted, clearly, that’s going to impact the work itself. And then clients are not going to be happy because they’re not getting the product or the service that they were promised. So it could be either one of those. There are many, many signs, you know, profitability, a lot of people ask about that; profitability, yes, but as a very lagging indicator. And here, obviously, from a profitability standpoint, we’re not talking about necessarily government and nonprofit because they think about more revenue, they’re not thinking about profit margins as much. But, you know, the profitability for corporations and small businesses, that is a lagging indicator, and but that can be tied all the way back up to the leadership and the style, and all of that. Which, you know, this was why it was so important for this book, to sit in the business leadership or the general organizational leadership spot versus self help, right. Because it’s easy to put a book like this and self help, but that’s actually not what this is. And I think that’s, that’s a big difference.
Katie Vernoy 16:31
So there was a thought that I that popped into my head as you were talking a question ago, and so it’s a little bit of a back, backtrack, so I apologize for that. But as I’m thinking through these things, and looking at layered corporations, layered organizations, and thinking about more emerging leaders, and folks who are willing to do this work, but they’re within an environment, they’re middle managers, and they’re within an environment that they don’t control, like a CEO or Executive Director, whatever founder does. How does that shift the work?
Kelly Campbell 17:10
Well, it’s the ripple effect, right? So no matter where you are, emerging leader, manager, middle manager, director, or C suite, you doing the work on yourself, only impacts your communication style, it only impacts how you’re showing up in the world, how you’re leaning in to support other people, how you’re responding versus reacting. Other people respond to these things, you know, from an energetic and a very direct standpoint. So, you doing the work on yourself, regardless of where you are in the hierarchy, or the layers that you’re talking about, it ripples out and not just in the organization, it ripples out into your personal life, right? Your relationship with your spouse, your kids, your friends, your community, all of it, it really impacts that. I actually had a conversation with a client the other day, who is a middle manager in a nonprofit. And it was like, you are actually, I know, this sounds a little uncomfortable to hear, but you’re changing the world by doing this work, right. And we started talking about the nuances of that ripple effect. So you’re doing it for yourself, it’s impacting other people, you’re giving permission and modeling this new way of being. And it does change how other people will operate. Now, it also may be very activating for some people who are like, No, I liked you the way before, though, how you weren’t before. And even in that activation that’s really good information. Because now we know, well, there are certain people we have to enact stronger, healthier, clearer boundaries with. So it’s all all helpful in all of these realms.
Katie Vernoy 18:53
I think to get more specific with the question I was asking is, I see a lot of folks who over function, who will micromanage because things are moving so quickly, they don’t have time to delegate, they don’t have time to really fully become the managers they’re meant to be because of the pace of the environment. And because of the culture, you know, the kind of the hustle culture or the 24/7 culture that can happen. And so it’s it’s figuring out kind of how does that person carve out that space? Because the environment is reinforcing their people pleasing or people controlling trauma. And so it’s looking at, you know, I know what I do, but I’m just curious kind of how you navigate that when they don’t when they can’t completely change their work environment. They can’t change the pace of the work. What does that look like when you’re actually getting to the nuts and bolts of it?
Kelly Campbell 19:48
Yeah, I hear that. So again, this just comes down to you can’t control what’s happening externally. You can only control what’s happening internally and how you show up, right. So when I hear things like, well, the the culture is very much a hustle culture or I don’t have time to do XYZ. To me, those are just poor boundaries. Right? So it’s self advocacy. That’s what we would be working on together. How do you make sure that you’re communicating to a superior inside of your organization? I can, you’ve asked me to do these three things that adds to my list, what would you like me to deprioritize? Right. So nuts and bolts and practicality in terms of self advocacy, and just Yeah, erecting those real clear, healthy boundaries around what’s possible, what is acceptable, what you’re able and capable and have the bandwidth to do. Taking your wellness and mental health days as needed, you know. So it’s, it’s all of that it. But all of this comes down to boundaries, which goes back to self worth and self values and detail, like deservingness. Right, which, again, comes back to how we, you know, correlate some of these things from how we grew up, and some things that have happened during our formative years. So it all ties back to that past trauma.
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Katie Vernoy 21:12
This seems like a really big lifelong commitment. That that doing this work as a leader would be both more challenging even than just taking on the leadership role, right? I need to know how to do stuff, I need to know how to manage people, like the way that we’ve traditionally talked about leadership that just seems hard for a lot of folks. And then there’s this additional work of I’m going to be healing this woundedness, I’m going to heal this trauma. And so what’s in it for leaders? Like why would they choose to do this work? What’s what are the benefits? What’s the ROI of, of doing this type of work?
Kelly Campbell 21:48
Yeah, ROI is a very interesting question, right? It’s like we are in a society where we have to prove a metric on being in integrity. So what’s in it for leaders is, they get to wake up in the morning, knowing that they’re doing everything within their power to work on themselves, for the benefit of themselves, others and the planet. Full stop. What’s in it for their organizations is that we go back to some of the signals that we said before, less employee attrition, more loyalty, more productivity from the employees. Because we’re treating them well, we are leaning into supporting them, we’re being very compassionate to what’s going on in their lives. Less client attrition or customer attrition, right, better referrals from clients and customers. So when we think about, you know, if we value other humans, and we lean into this sort of People First approach of leadership, which really is rooted in your own trauma integration, as the leader at the helm, the cycle that that follows will ultimately come down to the bottom line. So that answers your ROI question. If we really want to look at the ROI of this, we look at, let’s use a corporation as an example. They care very much, shareholders care very much about profitability, and you know, what, what are they going to get? What’s in it for them? If their CEO is doing this work, and leading in this way, as a high conscious leader, they’re going to be very happy about what happens in their bank account. Right? So the ROI of that, even though it’s a lagging indicator, and it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s absolutely the benefit. It’s what’s in it for everyone, right? Because in what I’m proposing, or not even proposing, I didn’t make this up. What I’m highlighting, right, because there are lots of organizations that already run like this. What I’m highlighting is that everybody wins in this situation. It’s not about a disconnect, and a polarization between the leadership and the workers. Right? And that whole 1% 99% thing. And everybody wins in a situation when you lean in and you support people and you quote unquote, do the right thing. Everybody wins. You know, and that could sound really fluffy to some people. And I think that when conscious leadership, the idea of conscious leadership came out about a decade ago, or, you know, conscious capitalism came out about a decade ago, and then that led to conversations about conscious leadership. I think a lot of people thought, well, that’s very utopian. It’s very fluffy. It’s very etheric, you know, that’s not going to work. But we really do see it inside of so many organizations. And again, if you need the ROI, and you need the financial metrics, the lagging indicator is definitely a higher profitability.
Katie Vernoy 24:57
Healthy organizations have healthy pocketbooks.
Kelly Campbell 25:00
That’s it. Really great encapsulation.
Katie Vernoy 25:04
One final thought that I have before we run out of time is I know that there’s so many different things that impact how someone is traumatized and how they live their life. And I see folks who are multiply traumatized, you know, the kind of chronic developmental trauma, chronic trauma. As well as folks who are also marginalized or oppressed for their identities. It seems I think, can get very complex. What thoughts do you have about how that might play into this work?
Kelly Campbell 25:33
Yeah, so impostor syndrome is also something that I talked about in the book, and specifically to your point about intersectionality and marginalization, people who are women, bipoc, LGBTQ much, much higher based on the research much, much higher levels of reported impostor syndrome, right. And we think about that from the just societal idea and reality for them that there is like a lack of or a, or a lower sense of belonging, right, because of that marginalization. So it makes all the sense in the world that when you take that, and you put that inside of an organization, especially in a leadership role, that of course, that’s going to rise even higher. Then on top of that, you put these people inside of leadership teams, where if they’re inside of the team, or at the helm, they’re surrounded by by people who are sis, white, you know, heteronormative. So, there is then even when they reach that sort of, quote, unquote, pinnacle, there’s an additional marginalization that’s happening. So, they’re constantly fighting, right, there’s a constant proving of oneself, and desire for belonging in spaces where they have historically not felt that way and not been, you know, there’s a reality. So it’s not just the feeling. So yeah, much higher levels of imposter syndrome. And there’s, you know, some more research about that, particularly in the book.
Katie Vernoy 27:06
And I think the complexity of that does to kind of tie this back to what we’re talking about, as I feel like when that imposter syndrome comes in, there’s this element of it then exacerbates the people pleasing, or it exacerbates the people controlling because they don’t want to be found out, you know, whether they’ve been told they are a token, or if they feel that they have been pushed into that space by their their peers, they feel like they’re constantly proving themselves. Or maybe maybe we should say, we feel like we’re constantly proving ourselves. And I think there’s that element of that where being able to push through that and get to, you know, kind of the trauma healing, I think, can sometimes feel a little bit more complex, but it very much flows together.
Kelly Campbell 27:46
110%, because the more that we feel like we need to create that sense of belonging for ourselves, the more we just put on mask after mask after mask, right. And so, if the idea of trauma saturation is de masking or unmasking, then we’re taking off a lot more masks than people who are not marginalized. Right. And so the work is deeper, harder, longer. And I’m going to posit that because we have probably been facing more adversity in our lives, we lean in a little bit more to this. Right. So most of the people in the examples that I give in the book about who are high conscious leaders, very unsurprising that the majority of them are women and people of color.
Curt Widhalm 28:41
You’ve mentioned your book several times, can you tell us more about it, and where people can find it and find you?
Kelly Campbell 28:48
Yes, so the book is Heal to Lead: Revolutionizing Leadership through Trauma Healing. And it is available right now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And people can learn a little bit more about it. And also links to any other independent bookstores that will you know, come back online at my website, which is klcampbell.com.
Curt Widhalm 29:12
And we will include links to those in our show notes over at mtsgpodcast.com. Follow us on our social media, join our Facebook group, the Modern Therapist Group to continue on with this conversation as well as any others. And until next time, I’m Curt Widhalm with Katie Vernoy and Kelly Campbell.
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