Naming Career Trauma In Therapy with Khara Croswaite Brindle

The moment someone said, “Just write the note and get back to work,” we knew this conversation had to happen. Kara returns to help us put words to the wounds so many clinicians carry in silence, Adverse Psychological Events that hit confidence, corrode safety, and quietly push talented therapists out of the field.

We dig into six APEs Kara is tracking through an anonymous multi-state survey: client violence, client suicide, client sudden death for other reasons, subpoenas, grievances, and professional betrayal. The stories are raw and real, from tragic headlines to everyday micro-injuries that add up. We talk about why the highest-reported harm is client violence, how a predominantly female workforce experiences unique pressure under patriarchy, and what happens when leadership responds to loss with productivity demands instead of protection and care.

Rather than selling quick fixes, we focus on meaning-making and practical change. We unpack why “take two days” and a massage is not recovery, and we lay out concrete shifts leaders can make now: delay non-urgent emails, create opt-in critical incident debriefs, budget paid recovery time after APEs, and set real caseload limits. Kara shares insights from The Resilient Therapist—an upcoming book that refuses tidy endings—and explains how honest storytelling can reduce shame and build community. We also explore the likely intersections between early-life adversity and career trauma, challenging the myth that prevention alone can sanitize human work.

This is a candid, compassionate guide for clinicians, supervisors, and anyone who wants mental health care to remain humane. If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it just me?”—it isn’t. Join us to name the harm, protect the helpers, and keep compassion alive in our workplaces.

If this resonated, subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review. Want to contribute to the ongoing APE survey or learn more about Kara’s work? Check the links in the show notes and tell us what real support would look like for you.

Confidential grief/free download of current research findings: https://croswaitecounselingpllc.com/confidential-grief

Link to APE anonymous survey: https://forms.gle/w1ajyJZ3t3nCLj4EA

A Hero's Welcome Podcast  © Maria Laquerre-Diego & Liliana Baylon

Transcript

Kara Returns And Sets The Stage

Liliana 0:35

Welcome, Basque listeners. I'm your co-host, Marila Caradie Diego, and I'm joined with the co-host I Can Always Make Laugh.

Maria 0:48

And we're here with Kara. Kara, we're so happy that you're here. We had the pleasure of having you in our season one, and now you are here in season three. Can you reintroduce yourself to our audience?

Defining Confidential Grief And Career Trauma

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Yeah, I mean, gosh, I'm still just stuck on like it's been you're in three season three. Like, wow, so much time has passed. So I'm Kara, I'm a serial entrepreneur. So for listeners, I wear lots of hats. I tend to wear a hat around financial therapy, which we narted out over last time we came together. And I also work with confidential grief. So that speaks to what our topic is today: adverse psychological events, as I call them, or career traumas, which is a little bit more approachable for folks. And so I create safe spaces for clinicians to heal from those career traumas. And that's been very rewarding and as you can imagine, also very heavy. So I kind of swapped out EMDR therapy with my typical clients, a workaholic perfectionist, and now working mostly with therapists in all different capacities and love what I do.

Maria 1:46

Yeah. So Liz name it, because we've been discussing with so many therapists, the burnout that we are approaching again almost like when we went through COVID. But this time, um, even though we have the same theme of collective trauma, is because of what we are witnessing in regards to what yeah, I'm gonna fucking name it, what this current administration is doing to individuals based on race or language. And we as therapists are witnessing that every time that we turn on into that we turn on the TV or we turn on social media, we get exposed to or the therapists like me who are working with that population and there's no escaping it because we see it in our rooms and then we see it in the public and it's just ongoing. So let's talk about how do we talk about between us therapists about the trauma that we are carrying in that our feel tends to give us shame for carrying them.

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So much thought, so many thoughts here. Even just like naming it out loud is I think part of the equation, right? Of like confidential grief was this term specifically for clinician survivors of client suicide. I've expanded that to say here are all the traumas that we don't get to talk about. And so for folks who aren't familiar even with that terminology of confidential grief, it's this concept of we can't talk about what happened. Some people, it's because the client work is still confidential after they die, but also this idea of we can't talk about it because of the shame and the judgment that comes from our field. And so now we're moving our way into like leadership trauma and professional betrayal and some other things that are part of this like bucket of career traumas that I've started to take a deep dive into. And so just talking about it, getting language to it, I think is the first step. So I love that we're having this conversation because we've got to. I mean, that's part of the problem, is people aren't talking about it.

Workplace Harm And Leadership Trauma

Liliana 3:46

Yeah. Absolutely. We used to joke when we when I started a group practice here that a lot of us were survivors of a very particular employer here in our town. And it was just, you know, we would joke that we were a survivor group, but that I mean, it was true. And it as the employer, it came across in ways that I found surprising. And I was thankful that I had team members who were felt safe enough to be like, hey, when you send me an email on Friday, I panic all weekend long. And like, and it was like, oh, it was just because Friday was my no client day, and so I do a lot of admin stuff, but like, oh, I I traumatized you and you stayed in that space all weekend and like and beyond to be able to feel like you could tell me, don't do that. Right. And it wasn't that I I was just re-triggering, but they had had terrible experiences with previous employers of, you know, bad news on Fridays or, you know, just the unending ask and the never-ending trauma from employers that we don't get to freely talk about.

Maria 4:56

Yeah. So I'm wondering, Kara, how can we talk to therapists to normalize that we are containers for trauma?

Naming APEs And The Six Types

SPEAKER_00 5:05

I mean, I feel like we've got the words vicarious trauma slash vicarious healing, we've got compassion fatigue, we've got the word burnout, which originated in the workplace. But I feel like it's expanding more. And maybe that's why you wanted me to come talk about this topic in particular, but like these career traumas, Liliana, you were one of the, you were part of one of the first two conversations about this back in 2023. I think is when we first like put our own words to it. Like, what is this thing that most of us have coming out of community mental health that we're gonna throw shade? Let's throw it there, even though I've learned so much as a clinician coming out of community mental health, like, goodness, there's so much trauma happening out of that system. And so at that point, we were like brainstorming like what are the typical career traumas of the mental health field? And I called them adverse psychological events. I wanted it to sound like ACEs, right? Adverse childhood experiences, because the ripple effect is the same of like, if we have multiple APEs, are we now at higher risk for burnout? And I think the short answer is yes, we are, because without a system of support in place, we're gonna leave the field questioning should we even be therapists. That's what I'm hearing from folks who have multiple APEs. And so the six APEs that we decided to like conceptualize this include things like client violence directed towards us. Now I'm not a researcher. So for your listeners, like this is my my growth edge, one of them, is that I was like, okay, I'm not gonna pull this apart. And now I would. But back in 2023, I was like, all right, client violence, including psychological, physical, and verbal violence, right? So I kind of lumped it all together. And as I tell you what we learned, that's my mistake. I should have probably pulled it apart. So that was one of them. Client violence, client suicide, of course, is on the list of significant career altering event, client sudden death for other reasons. So things like overdose, car accident, cancer, like things that you know, like we as humans invest so much in our clients. Of course, that's gonna have an impact on us. And then we have things like subpoena, grievance, and professional betrayal, which Maria you were naming of like, oh, there's like this like leadership trauma stuff happening, and our nervous systems are are being conditioned to stay in that hyperactive um, you know, hyper arousal state. So those are the six. I'm gonna pause there. What is that like to hear from me to you? Here are those six things. Validating.

Liliana 7:22

I think I think one of the I think one of the things is like, yes. And if you are collecting this data, it wasn't just my experience. I wasn't a bad employee, I wasn't doing it wrong, because I that is my initial like experience of like leadership trauma was like it was never good enough, I was never good enough, I was never available enough, like whatever it was, right? Of like, and it and it just felt very personal, like it was a personal failing. I myself wasn't a good enough clinician, fast enough at writing notes, available enough, whatever the case might be. And so just to hear like this is being talked about, these are being identified, then it's like, oh, it's not just me. That's nice to know.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Definitely, and that's been the most beautiful part of this is people go, oh, okay. So the fact that I'm even collecting data on this as a I don't know what to call myself, like amateur researcher, here, let's do that, amateur researcher. But right now, at the point of this recording, we have like 215 clinicians over 28 states, several countries that are telling us, yes, I've had an APE. And so, in that, of all six of them, the highest reported of those 215-ish people is client violence. And because I lumped it all together, I have so many more questions for them, which it's an anonymous survey. I cannot follow up and be like, hey, was this verbal? Was this psychological? Was this physical? Liliana and I go way back and we come from a system where we weren't in people's homes for therapy. And I tell my students that now, and they have the deer in headlights, what the heck are we doing? What was that? And so I think there's an assumption when we work in that kind of system that we're gonna have physical violence. And I can't speak for Liliana, I can only speak for myself, which is I never had a client ever violate that boundary. But the more I put this content out there, the more I hear those stories of like, okay, this could have been physical, this could have been sexual, this could have been psychological. And so I feel very impassioned to keep talking about this because 215 people is not enough. And the fact that those 250 people even came into an anonymous survey is amazing. We have so much more we need to talk about when it comes to systems and grad school and leadership and how we actually take this info back to them and say, change this, fix this, make this better.

Liliana 9:39

Well, and I think it's important to note that at the time that this recording dropped, it'll have been a couple of months, but we just had a very nationwide story about the therapist who was shot and killed by a client in the state of Florida, you know, and that's and in my my town, it was just uh or in my area, it was just a couple of years ago that we had a massive shooting at a psychological and psychiatric provider office that took, you know, ended the life of the provider there as well. So it's not as uncommon as we would love to believe it to be true. And yeah, we need to talk about it. We need to talk about it because it it does feel, you know, it's it's easy to go, well, like, well, what did they do wrong? Or, you know, what could they have done differently, or you know, whatever the case is. And I I, you know, we were processing it with our team, and I, you know, I keep reminding them we work with messy humans who have messy lives, and we have our own messy lives. Like, there's not a clear cut, do this, then this will never happen to you, because that's just not that's just not possible.

Safety, Systemic Risks, And Vicarious Impact

Maria 10:50

Let's also name, right? Because we're specifically talking about mental health, but tell me what career is safe. Doctors, lawyers, nurses, like uh, and I can go on and on and on. Most professionals, when we're dealing with humans who are driven by emotion, eventually, depending on the stressors that they have, the trauma that they have, they may snap and personalize something. So I'm not trying to dismiss minimize or dismiss it. I'm just talking about how do we name this? Because yeah, I I also I have said, like, I I never thank God, never had any of those experiences. However, I was taught from the beginning, like, never sit here, like always do this. But like it's it's all these things that we took precaution for because I was entering houses or motels when we provided those services. So in talking about this, right, even when you say client violence, I was like, yeah, but client violence, we're thinking, we're thinking from a client to a professional. I'm seeing it as my clients are going through violence. My clients are going through this. I get to hear stories about discrimination, about assault, about fear of stepping out, about, and when they're there, my brain does not recognize that's not your story. My nervous system is with them in the failed sense of the danger that they go through. So I have to be working constantly by disconnecting, which that's a privilege or access that I have that my clients do not have. So sudden death when you are working with a population. Why do we attract clients where we're going through things? I have no idea. But three years ago, I've been very vocal about my health care. And since then it's been ongoing. So guess what started showing it in my session people who were preparing for death. So then that has been ongoing. I could have said no or I could have told my therapist, I'm gonna need you two three times a week because this is what we're going through. But even talking to therapists now, when we talk about leadership trauma, I don't think there's a comprehension of what it is and how systems work. When we're talking about confidential grief, I don't think there's still an understanding and in how to go about it and what you can share in your own therapy or what you can share with your colleagues. So all of this is really helpful. I love that you're talking like that. There's like around the UAGU would expand it, but I don't think back then, Kara, you know what you know now. And I think this is uh also a beautiful example of how we always have to make adaptations. Most researchers are talking about how every five years they have to go and edit their work. They have to either rewrite a book or they have to rewrite their research and then they add uh addendums to it. So I think this is one of those things that you're gonna have to do because the world is just not the same. What we're experiencing is not the same. And the shame from leadership of, and unfortunately, we're coexisting with uh older leaderships. We're like the bridge between them. And they still have the mentality because they're in those positions of this is this you have to pay your dues. And that's not going nowhere. Or we have the new generation that is talking about healing, and that words come from curranderismo heal, when in reality, how many of you, and I'm gonna ask you you two, are going back to therapy because something resurfaced, like EMDR has told us before. Where you're like, damn, I thought I was done with this, and then you're back. Is it just me? I'm looking at both of you.

Liliana 14:50

I can't, especially in the world that we're living in right now. I feel like, you know, it's just it's it's a constant barrage. But I do care, I do think that this is systemically sustained, right? Like I also did home-based services. Let's be really transparent. Most of our field are females. Yes. I was the youngest in my program, and often we are like we go straight through to grad school, right? Excuse me, whatever.

Maria 15:23

You I don't think you don't know what age care and I were when we're providing home services.

Liliana 15:27

In my program, which I only share because it was made a big deal. I had to fight my way into the program because I thought I was too much of a baby, too young. But we are predominantly a female and and more often than not, Caucasian female. And it is not an uncommon experience for our generation of clinicians to have been doing home-based services, which we now, yeah. You talk about new clinicians and saying, like, we oh, yeah, we, you know, we used to go to the home, and they're like, What are we doing? What? Who thought that was a great idea?

Maria 16:05

But let me get an Uber and I check the license.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Right.

unknown 16:10

Yeah.

Gender, Patriarchy, And Attrition

SPEAKER_00 16:11

So it really does speak to how things are shifting and changing like every three to five years. And two of the points you both made. Well, one, yes, I'm still doing therapy. I wouldn't say it's ongoing, I would say it comes in waves. That's the image for me of like it just smacks me in the face and like I'm in it and back in therapy. And then I take a break and I'm back in therapy. So let's normalize that that we're all doing our own work. Yeah. Um, but with the data we collected around the six APEs, we saw the biggest hits to competence and confidence. And I think there's a connection here when we talk about a female predominant field, younger, whatever race, ethnicity, but like just the female gender being like, oh yeah, I don't know if I'm a good clinician when this happens to me. And Maria, you said that earlier of like, I thought this was on me. I wasn't good enough. I made mistakes, I am not worthy. I'm putting those words. Hopefully that's okay. Yeah. To kind of summarize that. And that was what we saw with our respondents on the survey is they're like, no, immediately I was questioning if I messed this up, if I could have done better. We were taking on responsibility for all the things that happened to our client, even when it was things that we had no control over, i.e., cancer, as one example. And it's just like, it just gets me fired up of like, oh, no wonder we're leaving the field in droves. Like, no wonder the average LPC leaves in seven years after they get their master's degree. Because they're like, I mean, lots of life stuff happening, as you both named, but now it's what's wrong with me? I'm not good enough to be a clinician. I'm not a good enough helper.

Maria 17:33

Well, there's two things that you just mentioned because MFTs are actually reducing. We don't have a lot of MFTs. They're actually not even following through with their licensure because we are trained to work with systems. So LPCs are leaving, MFTs are not even entering the field as an MFT. And then, two, when you mention because the majority of the clinicians are females, then let's add the patriarchy here. When we are made to believe men don't question themselves, but from the patriarchy believe that we are trying to question ourselves and our competence. And then we truly believe that a man will do it differently or they know better. How that is in graded in our system. And we learned this during COVID when we all were, I'm making the sanction that we all were reading about social justice and patriarchy, and which is all over here again, and how men move to the world independently on how they sexually identify, they move to the world differently. So even the gender aspect here that we're not naming yet, it is also part of this burnout because we're not even we're not we're not naming it how it is different. The more that I read, the more that I cannot unsee it. And now I see it everywhere.

unknown 18:53

Yeah.

Maria 18:55

I can imagine.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah.

Liliana 18:57

I'm wondering, is that something that you guys are looking at in your research? Like, are you collecting like demographics? And then not so far. Okay. But I should say.

The Resilient Therapist And Scarcity Of Data

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, yeah. And so all of this transmuted into a book. So we have a book that's about to come out on this topic. It's called The Resilient Therapist. And so my co-author, Ashley Charbonneau, who's a social worker, a licensed social worker, she's like the academic to my social brain. And so she's like, Let me go find all the data on violence, on professional betrayal, on all the things. And no surprise, there was minimal data, minimal. Like when we had our feedback from the beta readers and the publisher saying, hey, like, I want you to expand on this. It's like, there is no data. Like, this is the first of the data. We had people say, Tell me if you're more susceptible to an APE in these systems versus private practice. And it's like, well, our data is saying that doesn't discriminate. You can have an APE in any system in private practice, outpatient, in a hospital, in a community mental health center, in a nonprofit. But it was interesting because they wanted us to make sure we talked about discrimination and all these other layers that you both have named, which we did our best to do. But both being white females, that is something we also named, like, hey, as the authors, this is something we're going to point to other researchers and other books for that piece. But in my mind, APEs don't discriminate, and the leadership is perpetuating a lot of it, of like making us feel shame when it happens, of like, oh, um, this is a perfect example to fire up your listeners. So a client dies by suicide, this person, this clinician's in shock, and they go, just write the damn paperwork and get back to work. That was literally the quote of one of our clinician survivors of how her leadership responded, as in, let's minimize this experience. Let's not account that you're human first, professional second, and let's just go back to work as if this is the everyday norm of working in a co-occurring disorder treatment center. This is more prevalent there. But oh, just write the damn note and get back to work. And that just breaks my heart that that is the first response we're getting from an APE of any kind of this is normal. And Liliana, you said it earlier, like this is just part of earning your stripes and doing your doing your time. I'm like, what? That's pretty.

Maria 21:22

Apparently, we're in jail. We just didn't uh yeah.

Liliana 21:24

No, I I mean I psychological jail. I can share it's been years in since I've been in this position, but I was in a leadership meeting where the the clinicians stated like they were notified by the the local PD that their client was found and then is no longer alive. And the leadership response was so you have an opening for an intake. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:46

Yep. I believe it. I totally believe it because I keep hearing these stories the more I open up the conversation. Yeah. No wonder we're burning out.

Dehumanizing Responses And Systemic Burnout

Liliana 21:54

Like, are you serious? Yeah, I always feel like we need a better word than vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue. I think there's there's something more when the systems themselves are perpetuating and demanding continued, you know, APEs and violence in different ways against their clinicians. It's bigger than just vicarious trauma where hearing those stories is altering our own chemistry and our own okay, you know, our own capacity. It's bigger when we're doing that in a system that is also just dehumanizing us. Yeah.

Beyond Burnout: Language And Lived Reality

Maria 22:34

And when we're talking about burnt out, which is what I'm experiencing, and by the way, some of my supervisees work for big agencies here in Colorado. That do work in schools or you know, so on and so forth. And a lot of the times they're like, well, they told me to take two days self. And I was like, oh, okay. But if you're in private practice, if you don't work, you don't get money. If you are in an entity, there's no humanizing, they're like, go take care of yourself, go get a massage or something. So now they're talking about something that is gonna cost the supervisee. And can let's be honest, self-care is not just a massage or official. Can we stop linking those because that's not what it is? And then also this idea, which I think is very ironic, and I've been talking to my clients about it when we talk about healing. And again, it's very ironic because the name of my agency is healing relationships. I know I'm gonna have to change it. But this idea of healing, like there's something wrong with us. And I know that most of us talk about it because it we're some with the medical model, but healing implies that there was something wrong, that I can arrive at something and then it's gonna be gone. When the three of us are discussing that because we're humans and we go to stressors, milestones, or events, which I love, which is the title of your ace, you know, adverse psychological events. We go through events where we may regress or something may surface because we have capacity to see something that we dismiss. So the idea of healing also sets our clients and our clinicians to believe that we have a destination. And once we arrive, we're gonna be okay. When in reality, you're human and this is gonna be ongoing. So, how do we talk to our field about stop using that damn fucking word? There's no healing. It's not like I went through surgery and then I'm done. Or if I have a headache, I take this medication, then I'm healed or I went to this trauma, which by the way, clinicians, I always been out loud. I don't know of those clinicians who said, like, we work on this trauma and it was solved and they're healed. And I'm like, where are you getting those clinic, those, those clients? I mean, I can you send me the directory? Because if it's just the one trauma, like I went in, those are not my clients, and those are not your clients, Kara, and those are not your clients, Maria. So, how do we change the conversation as we're learning in our field, even how words change, right? We went from cultural competence to cultural humility. I just learned a new word and I was trying to remember, someone just coined a new word for culture and then combined cultural humility and cultural competence. It was beautiful. And later I can, if you send me an email, I can send you guys the meaning because it was in one of those research papers. But if we know that our field is evolving because of what we're learning through the nervous system, through the brain, and and we're learning and we're utilizing and we're becoming less purists. And we are organizing that in our field, our clinicians, thank you for your job, care here. Like our clinicians also not only because they're persons, they're humans, they have their personal stuff, but then the professional stuff is being added with with this six adverse um psychological events that you just mentioned. And and can we say that how do we help them change that that there's nothing wrong, that there's no arriving destination, but an ongoing journey. And we normalize that we're humans and we ask systems to provide ongoing support and what would that look like for the clinician, not for them. Because as a system, I may have an idea of what you may need, but as an individual, I may not know that that's that that may not work for me. Right. So, how do we invite of evolving with our feel, evolving with these words, evolving with what we're learning every year? And information is coming like crazy. I get it. But how do we have this discussion as a collective?

Rethinking “Healing” And Ongoing Work

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Yeah, I mean, I'm chuckling in my head because the word healing is very much all over our book, because I think it's like, okay, this feels painful and we want to transform, evolve. So the words are reflecting backwards, I heard you say. Yeah, right. But what's I feel like you're both just validating because right now we're in the midst of editing the book and for finishing, like putting finishing touches on, and we made some changes. And the things that people liked so far of the manuscript included like, here's where the clinicians are now, and we didn't put their stories as like this is finished. We didn't say this is done with a nice little bow on top. Like some people left the field in our, I think we had seven or eight clinician stories woven throughout the book to like say, here's how this looked for them when they experienced violence or death or whatnot. And that was the feedback we got loud and clear is like, thank you for not making this look perfect because that's not how this looks, it's not done.

Maria 27:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

And for those folks, it's not done in a year. I mean, it's like looking at someone in grief and saying, You're gonna be fine in those three days' bereavement, right? Like you're gonna be back to normal, right? Or oh, you need six months and then you'll be fine. Yeah. Um and so what strike what strikes me, what's so loud right now, is this meaning making. And that's what I'm all about is like, I want to help the clinicians that come to me that feel safe to come to me, find meaning whenever that is. There's no timeline to that. It could be six years from now, it could be six months from now. But for a lot of these folks, it has to have a little bit of space, a little bit of time to like zoom back out and be like, this is what I learned from the experience of being assaulted by my client. This is what I learned when my client died, this is what I learned when I was grieved by a colleague or whatever it is. So meaning making is the the terms that keep coming up to your question. I don't know if that resonates with the interview, but that's I love it.

Maria 28:21

No, the meaning making for me, right? Like that's what I learn about me, what I learn about, because it's about the I, because if the client committed suicide, obviously there's other conversation that we can go, but when your client commits suicide, what is it that you learn about yourself in that moment? What is it that came out for you? And even Kara, the the healing, you know me, I'm such an ethical therapist. I went back to school. Um I'm in school in a non-traditional program, and and we're being taught how right now being a non-traditional therapist is like the thing to make money. And so there's a lot of them out there. So because I'm reading stories, because I'm reading books, because I'm learning from others, not just from the US, but outside the US, they are teaching me about how it's being misused just to be monetized here in the US.

Liliana 29:15

Yeah.

Maria 29:16

Which it makes sense. You see it and you see the pictures and you see how people are selling you an idea to make money. That's all it is.

Meaning Making As A Path Forward

Liliana 29:23

Yeah, Karen, I think I think you're you're taking a large step in the right direction in terms of giving language to what we've been experiencing in silos, yeah. Giving community to that, it is not just an individual problem that needs to be quote unquote solved. And my brain also, because I am not a researcher, that is not mm-mm, no thank you. But my brain went to oh, Kara, at some point, I'm gonna be really curious about how ACEs and APEs count like connect, right? Because I think there's gonna we know, we know that clinicians in our field, we we a lot of us come with some ACEs, which guides us to doing what we want to do. That that old saying is still very true and accurate. Yeah. And so I'd be really curious to see how those interplay with APEs and the decision to either stay in the field or to leave. Yeah. So, you know, when you whenever you run out of ideas and you have free time on your hands, um, I've got some projects for you.

Maria 30:39

Loving time with the younger one at home. I want to know how you have free time.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, you know, you know, a listener might feel inspired, like, hey, I'll take the torque from here. I'm like, please, please do. Yeah, so many thoughts on that because I I do. I think there's like the connection between what brings us into this field, and then of course what makes us susceptible to an APE. Interestingly enough, some of our readers of the manuscript were like, Well, how do I prevent them? And Ashley and our like, how interesting do you think these are preventable? As Liliana's face just shows me. I know listeners can't see our faces at this moment, but like, how interesting that the academic reader of said manuscript is like, how do we prevent these? And I was like, that is part of the problem right there. It's like the messages, do this on your own. So we said, okay, here's some tools for doing this on your own, here's some tools to do within community, and here are some tools for leadership to fucking get it together and stop re-traumatizing us. So just stay tuned for the book on that end because all three of those buckets are hit. I'm like, no, no, this is not a in siloed, you fix yourself thing. There's lots of ways we can make this better.

Liliana 31:41

Also, can we just say that if we were able to control other people's behaviors to not be violent or apples, that we would have done that a long time ago and put ourselves out of work? As we stated, most of the field is females, this would have been done.

ACEs, APEs, And Prevention Myths

Maria 31:57

Done. Yeah, yes, yeah. Coming back for all of you who are listening, you know, and Kira mentioned she she does offer a leadership trauma. Do you call it is it a workshop that you call it, or is it a it is a workshop, not a webinar, conference?

SPEAKER_00 32:12

What do you call it? I've done a couple different things. So right now I'm doing mostly retreats for therapists to come in and do the nervous system stuff. But like I've done workshops, I've done talks, and I've done these podcasts to like help people understand it. But even defining leadership trauma was interesting because I think I put the definition out in 2023 as well. So we had to like make a distinction between professional betrayal, which could also happen linear with like colleagues and peers, versus leadership trauma, which is like, hey, someone over us is making us feel less than. And so I think I put words, I'll have to find the definition from back then, but something like leadership trauma is when you're made to question your worthiness because you've been burned, betrayed, or made small by someone in power, right? Some manager, boss, leader. And I put that on social media, and people are like, oh my God, like there's the language I've been missing. I was like, oh, again, in my own little brain, in my own little world, I was like, this is my experience. I've done and been through leadership trauma. Other people have this language, and like, no, Kara. And they were like screenshotting it and sharing it. And I was like, oh, I've hit some nerve. And then the professional betrayal was like, and here's the linear, like colleague to colleague, peer-to-peer, you grieving me, me grieving you, nonsense that's happening in our field right now, too. And so both those things, those buckets of dynamic, I think are helpful for people to sit with. Of like, if that's what this podcast is about, is giving language to stuff. Here's some more professional betrayal and leadership trauma.

Liliana 33:32

So maybe if we do have people in leadership listening, being curious about how they may be perpetuating it, right? Like, I also want to extend some grace. I became a leader without additional training, but because I was the last person standing in the position, right? So it was like I was doing what I knew I didn't need done, or I was doing what I needed to have done but wasn't done for me. So to extend some grief, but like be curious, maybe you are unintentionally sending emails on a Friday and your team is just regulated all weekend and you don't even know. You know, but but being curious and and being willing to like look at our own pieces of the puzzle if you are in leadership, because yeah, I mean, I don't think we do it in I want to believe we don't always do it intentionally. I know there are some people in positions of power that do. But if we're not doing it intentionally, let's be curious and let's take some steps to shift that because Lord know I would like to retire one day, but I can't do that unless we have like clinicians coming up in the ranks behind us, right? And if they're quitting after seven years, I'm never gonna get to retire.

Defining Leadership Trauma And Betrayal

Maria 34:51

See, that's the difference between you and me. I'm like, zia. Yeah. But let's do it because you you speak and you and I have this have this discussion multiple times, Maria, which is how our feel since COVID, since the social movement back then, because a lot of people retire, they went and said, You, you will become a supervisor now, you, you will become a so-and-so. So then we have people not only with no experience in leadership, which no one wants to go and train. Why? I have no idea. And then they are perpetrating this trauma because it was done to them, because that's what we do when we're dysregulated and we regress, we regress to what is familiar. So you have this training to uh, Karen. What I want to say to listeners is uh do not think of that doesn't pertain to me because I'm not a leadership. You do not know when you will go um into this role or if it is and if you do seek out trainings, the AMFT, if you're an MFT therapist, has an 18-month program to become a supervisor. 18 months. You have to supervise, you have to write papers, you have to do a thesis, like the amount of work that we go do, and then we have to refresh and then seek out other trainings. Leadership is not just something that you think I can do this, it is an ongoing work from what you are writing, Kara, to trainings that we're seeking in order to become better humans who hold titles because that's what we do when we say leadership. That is a title that someone gives you or you aspire to get. But can we learn to be better humans?

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Beautifully said. Yeah. And so I think as I think about where this work is going with the book coming out and the survey still being active. So I hope listeners will also feel empowered to share if they have an AP or have experienced one anonymously on the survey. But for the book, what we're hoping is that people, Maria, you started the conversation here, just feel seen of like, oh, it's not just me. There's some stuff here that we can do better. We're not in the book. I mean, I'm a little feisty because I get that way when we're talking together. But like in the book, we're much more gentle and give the grace of like, hey, you might not know what you don't know. Come at it with curiosity and compassion. And here are some ideas, right? Not the this is the end all be all, but like, here are some ideas to fill in the gap of like, if we don't have access to leadership trainings, here are some things you might ask yourself, here are some questions you might ponder. Um, I'm a good, I love journal therapy. So I'm like, let's journal out some responses to this and see how this goes. And so the book's gonna have some of that in it as well of like, here are some appendices at the end with some things that might help people start that journey. Because you're right, it's title, and for some of us, it's an identity of like if we're truly in like healthy leadership, there's an identity piece there too. Of like, I want to be a healthy leader, in contrast to what I might have experienced, but we're never done growing, we're never done learning. And that's what you both echoed.

Invitations For Leaders To Do Better

Maria 37:57

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for what you're doing in our community and and for organizing giving language for clinicians to say me too. And then, you know, hopefully they'll take the the next steps to take care of themselves, that they have a right to put boundaries, they have a right to say now, and then do what is needed for them and what speaks to them and to follow their wisdom while making.

Liliana 38:27

Yeah, Kara, thank you so much. This is so needed, and I'm hoping people walk away going, Oh my gosh, yes, there's a language, I am not alone. I need that book to come out so that I can get some of these tools, and we'll include your contact information and a link to the survey so that if people are interested in taking it, we can continue to share that. But thank you so much because again, this research, no, thank you. So thank you for doing it because it needs to be done. Obviously, it needs to be done. There isn't enough research for you guys even to pull from. So thanks for getting our field started down this path. Yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:09

Honored, honored to hold those stories for folks. And yeah, I hope it does take off and we can actually have more conversations with the grad school level because I think that's where I'm headed in my next season of my career. Is like, oh, I'm gonna go in and like shake that stuff up. But yeah, the data will speak for itself. So I appreciate you sharing that with folks. Thank you. Thanks for watching.

Maria 39:28

All of you, the links will be um attached to this podcast. Please go and fill that so that we can get more voices. And thank you, Kara.

Liliana 39:35

Thank you for having me. Yeah, till next time.