Kelly L. Campbell on why leaders need to integrate their trauma, and how to go about it

Whether you had a rough upbringing or look back fondly on what you recall as a perfect childhood, we all have some trauma that we’ve carried over into adulthood. It’s inevitable. There are experiences that we all have as children that our nervous systems simply weren’t ready to cope with at the time. These get stored in our bodies, and it’s up to us as adults to recognize and integrate them, says Kelly L. Campbell, a certified trauma-informed leadership coach and author of Heal to Lead, a guidebook for leaders to return to their innate wisdom.

Whether it’s “Big T” trauma (categories like abuse, growing up in a war-torn area, having parents divorce, or losing a caregiver) or “small t” trauma (feelings of humiliation, abandonment, rejection, or betrayal), they can show up in unexpected ways in our adult lives. One is not more impactful than the other, Campbell told BOSS, and integrating both is important to leading a healthy, sustainable life and career.

Importance of Integration

Life is constantly throwing out challenges, and no matter how protected they are, children are going to come up against something they’re not ready for. To process that as adults, “really, it’s about integrating these things that their nervous systems are unable to cope with at the time,” Campbell said.

In order to do that, we have to recognize the trauma.

“That requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness,” they said.

If you as a leader notice, for instance, that you get defensive upon receiving feedback, your response could stem from feelings of inadequacy or “not-enoughness” adopted in your formative years.

“You might think about what that feedback is actually pushing on in terms of a button, a soft spot, a tender spot that may correlate to something that you went through in childhood.”

If your reaction is outsized in comparison to the reality of the situation, that could be a sign that it’s a trauma response.

“It’s not the wise adult that’s running the show at that point, it’s the wounded child,” Campbell said.

As children, we crave a safe, stable environment. When we don’t have that, we tend to blame ourselves. It can’t be the environment that’s the problem, we tend to think, because we so desperately need the comfort of safety. So we turn inward, deciding we must be deficient in some way. It takes a lot to overcome those feelings.

“Recognition is definitely the first part. How do we integrate it? That’s where the healing work comes in. It’s for the rest of your life, there isn’t a magic bullet or pill you can take.”

Getting Started

Cognitive behavioral therapy is a good start, what Campbell jokingly refers to as a “gateway drug,” but it’s not enough to integrate trauma.

The trauma is stored in our bodies, and it needs to move through our bodies for us to process it. Somatic practices like meditation, nature bathing, and exercise start to allow us to release the trauma from our systems.

Campbell’s myhealingmenu.com offers an array of healing modalities to get started with. Broken down like a restaurant menu, it starts with “appetizers,” things like books, podcasts, and forums that provide an introduction to healing. “Sharing plates” are types of therapeutic and integrative work like art therapy, journaling, and reiki (Campbell is a Level III practitioner). “Entrées” get the body involved, with things like cryotherapy, martial arts, and gardening providing a release. For “dessert,” there are plant medicines and psychedelics like cannabis, ayahuasca, and psilocybin.

Some people see these as a magical bullet, she said, but they are better at providing a rich and limited experience.

“You’re not going to be doing things like ayahuasca every day. That said, there can certainly be an argument made for doing things like microdosing psilocybin, which I know a lot of leaders – especially in organizational leadership, myself included – do, not on a daily basis, but on a schedule.”

At such a small dose, there’s no psychedelic effect, but it helps foster a sense of connection with other people in the organization and can boost creativity and productivity. These desserts can carve new neural pathways, giving leaders a more expansive view of their organizations and making them more open to and curious about different viewpoints.

“There’s no prescription here, it’s just the general idea that in order to get these stored traumas out of our body, we need to be moving and we need to be looking at this as a lifelong commitment to our own healing,” she said.

High-Conscious Leadership

Following these precepts can enable leaders to be more positive in their decision-making instead of operating from a wounded place of fear and anxiety. As a result they can build more trust and collaboration throughout the organization, become what Campbell terms “high-conscious leaders.”

“They are making decisions that are for the good of the whole, and they’re able to do that because they’re actively doing their own healing work.”

That’s especially important in a mental health epidemic where overwhelming anxiety and “not-enoughness” pervade.

“As a leader, you know there are a lot of difficult decisions to be made, and never are you going to make a decision where every single person is happy,’ they said, “but making a decision that is good for the people you are stewarding, and making sure you’re thinking about your role as a steward of their lives and their development, not solely for the purpose of profit, is what high-conscious leadership is.”

Conscious leadership – placing people, profit, and planet on equal footing – is no longer enough. Leaders have to re-examine how their organization affects the whole of society.

“If we are so caught up in our wounding, it’s really difficult to see beyond your leadership role, beyond your organization. This whole conversation is about opening up to realize there’s a bigger play here. Leaders have the power and responsibility to think differently.”

It starts with increased self-awareness. How are your complaints as a leader reflective of how you’re showing up? What responsibility do you bear for the situation? What negative contributions might you have made? After reflecting on that, take action.

Engaging with our trauma is hard. That’s why so many of us avoid it. But leaders should contemplate the impact of not doing it.

“If you want better relationships in your personal life and in your organization. If you want to feel more grounded, not out of your element or out of your depth as a leader. If you want to be more vulnerable and not feel like you have to mask all your emotions and have to show up as one person at home and another person at work. And if you want to run a more fiscally sustainable organization, those are all benefits of doing this work,” Campbell said.

You’re doing it not just for yourself, but for all the people around you, and the ripple effects can be tremendous.