Expand Your Fempire Podcast #159 Transcript

From Trauma to Empowerment with Karen Robinson

Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.

[00:00:00]Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I’m your host, Caterina Rando. I am blissing to be with you today. We have an amazing guest, the fabulous, phenomenal, big hearted, Karen Robinson. Her specialty is helping women on a mission, just like you, holistically heal their trauma so that [00:01:00] you can bliss and thrive more in your business.

Karen, welcome, welcome, blissing to have you here.

Karen Robinson: Caterina, it’s, it’s such an honor to spend time with you and your audience today.

Caterina Rando: Karen, you and I are friends. We’ve known each other for a while. We love to hang out and be together. What I love about you is that you are such an uplifting person and that you help women entrepreneurs with a challenge area, which is addressing their trauma.

And I feel this is a very important topic for women entrepreneurs. Because, sometimes when we haven’t healed or we haven’t addressed certain things that have taken place in our life, it holds us back, it has [00:02:00] us be more in our fear than in our freedom.

Why do you feel this is important for us to talk about today?

Karen Robinson: Yeah, a really important question. What I know about trauma, is that women are exposed to it over and over and over during the course of their whole lifetime. And my specialty is exactly that. I specialize in complex trauma healing.

In complex trauma, what that means is that your trauma may have started in childhood. It could be from being bullied in school. It could be that your family wasn’t safe or there was a lot of chaos in your family. Maybe there was domestic violence between your parents or substance abuse of any kind. Complex trauma starts at childhood and then it could be a sexual assault later, you know, it could be a really unhealthy or toxic [00:03:00] relationship where there’s emotional abuse, financial abuse. And then it could be sexual harassment in the workplace.

When I worked for the Department of Defense, I had to file 22 EEO complaints. And it took an act of Congress to remove someone that was sexually harassing me. You know?

Wow.

I should be able to go to work in peace. Right?

Caterina Rando: Right. Every woman should be able to go to work without the threat of harassment. And my friend, I’m sure that’s why some gals have started their own business, so they didn’t have to.

That’s just gonna say that. Exactly. Let’s talk about this, if we may.

You have your own business. You do amazing summits for women to heal from trauma. You work with people one-on-one. You lead groups, you lead retreats, and I am wanting to talk to you about what you [00:04:00] see with women entrepreneurs as some of the things that have come up that we wanna shine the spotlight on today.

Karen Robinson: Yeah. How trauma can show up in your workplace is when you may not feel confident, or I shouldn’t say your workplace, ’cause again, a lot of women when they’ve dealt with harassment… and a lot of women too, have problems with authority in general because they feel like they’ve been under someone’s thumb in some way or another.

So the beautiful thing about being an entrepreneur is you get to decide when you’re gonna work, what projects you’re gonna do, you get to decide a lot of different avenues, and that is very freeing for any survivor of any type of oppression.

Caterina Rando: And also we get to decide if somebody gives us the creeps or somebody is inappropriate with us in the initial contact with them, we don’t have to take them on as a client, which is [00:05:00] great. That is some of the freedom.

And I know that women with J-O-Bs unfortunately don’t always have that freedom to stay away from the ones that, intuitively, we know are not safe, or we have a whiff of not safe.

What I wanna ask is, for women that have had, as you say, complex trauma or they’ve had experiences in the past, how does that impact us as we are wanting to do business today?

Karen Robinson: Mm-hmm. The, the biggest words that come up for me in that is self-sabotage. I am someone that’s struggled with that a lot as well, and I recognize that in many, many of my clients and how that looks like, ’cause you mentioned, you know, that, my intelligence.

A lot of the women or most of the women are really [00:06:00] creative and brilliant at what they do.

But marketing and, and as you know, the sales piece, there’s a lack of confidence, or they’ll make brilliant plans to do X, Y, and Z, and then they allow anything and everything to get in the way.

Like I could come up with some very creative excuses for just about anything. And so it sets us back when we allow that to happen.

We also struggle with taking care of ourselves, our self- care. We put other people before ourselves. We put all our clients and our customers, and then we wonder why we’re, we’re feeling a little haggard, right?

So those are a couple of things is the self-sabotage, which isn’t always conscious by the way. It’s a subconscious or an unconscious process that goes on because of unhealthy beliefs you may have about yourself that are deeper within us.

Caterina Rando: Let’s talk about that. You said [00:07:00] unhealthy, unconscious beliefs we might have about ourself. Oh my gosh. How do we combat that? Because Karen, as you say, I meet a lot of women, super smart, very talented at what they do.

Oh my gosh, I can’t get them to focus on inviting people to talk to them, to be their client. They want to, they want to grow their business, but they’re so afraid. Maybe it’s unconscious of rejection that they, and maybe rejection equals not feeling safe, and so they’re not discussing the possibility of offering someone their services, they’re not pursuing opportunities. What are your thoughts?

Karen Robinson: Well, I am at times that woman, right? So I do have a lot of thoughts about this.

[00:08:00] And I think it comes to doing the things that help you feel confident. You know, that’s the superficial level, I would say, and maybe the easiest thing to do.

So it could be doing some energy. Like our friend Elaine, like when I did some public speaking, she would help prep me by doing the woman warrior poses and stuff like that help pump you up and they work, right? So those things can be really helpful.

It might be just putting on a lipstick that you love. It might be, you know, wearing your favorite color. So just having those little things that can help with your confidence. That’s a quick fix.

A deeper fix is really working on your belief system and you know, doing some detective work on figuring out how you got them in the first place.

Sometimes it’s easy to find out, like if, if you were in second grade and your teacher [00:09:00] said, “Well, that was stupid of you. Of course three plus three is six. Like, what’s wrong with you?” That might have really just kind of hit your heart and you never let go of it. And so even though you might have gotten a PhD in X, Y, and Z, that “I am stupid” belief may be in the background playing right?

It never went away. So you doubt yourself, you become uncertain.

So I work with a lot of women on looking at their belief system, where the injury came from and then learning how to heal that. I use some analytical tools and a type of therapy that that’s called is cognitive behavioral therapy.

And some of the analytical tools I use is a like deep dive questions on

if that belief is true, why is that so upsetting?

Is this belief useful to you? Like how is this belief helping your life be better?

Are you able to achieve your goals with this belief?[00:10:00]

Are you getting along with others well because of this belief?

Are you feeling good about yourself because of this belief?

And if you’re not, that’s a sure sign, like, okay, if this belief is useful, could you be ready to let it go?

So sometimes we do visuals like I’ll, I’ll have them put that belief in the wheelbarrow and we wheel it to the dump. We dump it out. But what works even better is to have a substitute healthy belief.

So if your deep seated belief is, ” I’m stupid,” and maybe you have a learning disability, so we don’t wanna be too Pollyanna and say, “oh, now I’m Einstein.” We want something believable and healthy. Like “I’m capable of learning, you know, I’ve accomplished a lot. I am accomplishing things every day.”

You know, something more healthy and believing. And then I have women practice that belief, that affirmation, that counter over and over and over.[00:11:00]

I get them to put it on index cards and decorate them. I ask them to look at it the first thing, the first thing, when you open your eyes in the morning, look at your card, read it out loud, feel the card. This is kinesthetic learning. You know, ground your feet in the ground, look in the mirror. And then hear with your voice, your affirmation.

And you do the same process before you go to bed, and you also do it throughout the day.

It takes no time to do your affirmation. It takes a few seconds, so over and over and over, and I promise one day you’ll wake up believing what you’ve been practicing, but it’s not overnight. It really does take time.

Caterina Rando: What you’re talking about, Karen, is part of our mindset and our self-talk, and that is so important for women in business for us to master our self-talk and pay attention to those things [00:12:00] that come out of our mind, or even thoughts that we have that are not serving us, and to do as you’re suggesting, and give them replacement beliefs that do support us. Essential.

Karen, I wanna ask you, because you’re such a kind, sweet, loving person who’s so wonderful to be around, how did you decide that trauma and helping women with trauma was gonna be your entrepreneurial focus?

Karen Robinson: I love this question because if you think about it, it’s really not the most uplifting career to have, right? To be, but working with trauma survivors. But I feel like it’s my purpose. I feel like I’ve been called to do this work. I am also a complex trauma survivor.

I had a really, really difficult childhood, and that [00:13:00] childhood to this day can still impact me. I’ve done a lot of healing work. I’m continuing to work on my healing journey.

But how I decided to really make this my career is because I’m just simply good at it, you know?

When I work with women and a few good men, I like to say because I, I do take men individually as clients as well. The, the feedback I often get from them is that they feel heard. They really, truly feel heard. And that engagement, that relationship is the most important piece of working with someone in their healing.

But also now I also get it personally and now as a professional, with 25 years in the field, I have gotten all the certifications in trauma. Like it’s hard to find someone that’s more than an expert than I am. They are out there, but they’re the ones that are writing the big research books and stuff. And that’s not what I decided to do.

But I, I’ve taken [00:14:00] all the trainings and done all the things, and so I know a lot about how to heal trauma holistically. It doesn’t mean I’m everybody’s best fit. Right? Like if you want EMDR, I’ve been trained, I just don’t like it. I don’t like the finger, the waving. So I do the things I like as I help heal people.

Caterina Rando: Well, that’s what we want, right? It’s your business. You get to do the stuff that you like, my friend.

Karen Robinson: That’s right.

Caterina Rando: Lemme, lemme ask you this. What makes, even though you’re in the trauma business, what makes you bliss in your business?

Karen Robinson: Mm-hmm. Seeing people get better. I see people heal almost daily. You know, it’s a journey, right? And we celebrate little wins.

We work on the small “Ts”, the little traumas first, so people can learn to trust me and trust themselves with the healing journey. And then we go on to the bigger “Ts” when they feel like they can really regulate themselves and not be too distressed as they work through it. So [00:15:00] seeing people heal is what’s rewarding.

Caterina Rando: That’s a great strategy. Start with a little “Ts”. Karen, let me ask you this, because some of our listeners, i’m sure they’re thinking of their lives as we’re having this discussion. And of course we know that women encounter all kinds of trauma, not just from their family of origin, sexual trauma, et cetera, but there may be women who have said, “Hey, I haven’t had that experience that I fortunately didn’t have a family where there was substance abuse, or I didn’t have a sexual assault,” but they probably had some trauma too. Would you agree my friend?

Let’s talk a little bit about the small Ts that some of us have encountered.

Karen Robinson: Yes. So one of the things I will say, as someone who’s had a lot of small T’s and Big T’s, I don’t really like [00:16:00] the statement “we’ve all had trauma.” Because it lumps us all together and it maybe discounts to the women who’ve had significant trauma. Right?

But I also do agree that most of us have small Ts from some point. You know, and it’s also perspective and what happens. It also, your culture, your financial status.

Like COVID is an example where that was a big T for some people and a little T for some people.

And then there’s other people who completely thrived. You know, they were able to pivot and they were okay. A lot of people were completely derailed, like if you lost a few family members. And I, I consider grief part of that trauma too.

So when you look at the whole scope of trauma, you know, did you have a surgery that went wrong, like a medical trauma? Were you part of a National disaster where you felt unsafe? Were you in a major car accident where you [00:17:00] had a concussion? Well, that’s trauma.

So there are multiple, multiple ways to have a traumatic incident.

I think some people just, it’s too painful to talk about or think about, so they kind of stuff it down. And they stuff it down by overworking, over drinking, overeating, overshopping.

You know, there’s lots of different ways where we kind of cope. And of course some of those are a little healthier than others.

But what I would recommend is to really cope in a healthy way by doing deeper self-care practices like meditation, prayer, journaling, reading healthy, positive content like some devotionals. Things that will lift you up, you know, motivational chats on YouTube. Do the things that will really be healing and soothing, instead of those unhealthy things that will help [00:18:00] you get better too.

Caterina Rando: I’m gonna tell you my comfort tv, Karen, is I watch Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote, and that always makes me feel good, even though there’s a murder involved.

At least one, if not two. But at the end she’s always laughing at the end of the episode. That always makes me happy, and she’s super smart and very fun.

I think it is good for us to find healthier ways to cope and you know, I am with you in our Thriving Women in Business Community and I would say that community I think is a very important part.

And I know you have your own community, being in a community of amazing women, either all working together on something or even simply being together is very healing. What are your thoughts on [00:19:00] women and community as it relates to healing?

Karen Robinson: Well, research proves that it’s way more effective.

And what I am now seeing about healing and community, ’cause I’m doing a lot of energy work right now as well, is that healing in community is taking your healing on a quantum leap.

Think about it, when we do something on our own, that’s one brain. And you can be really smart, but you’re only gonna go so far with your one brain.

But when you’re in a collective of women with the same goal or the same healing journey, we have all those collective brains, right?

So you have the coach or the the therapist, the leader with their wisdom. Every woman in the room has been on a journey and there’s a lot of wisdom there. They come from different backgrounds, different experiences, different families, even different education.

Like in my membership, there’s lawyers, teachers, [00:20:00] musicians. There’s homemakers. I have two other therapists in my community. You know? It’s, and it’s just beautiful to see how we all help each other.

Caterina Rando: And uplift each other. Yes. A rising woman lifts all the women around her. Bing, bing, bing.

Amen.

And that’s definitely you. Karen, I know that you have a gift for our listeners. Do you wanna take a moment, tell ’em about that?

Karen Robinson: Yes. So my gift is really thick. It’s a digital download. It’s called The Healing Planner. What’s really unique about it is it has checklists on different symptoms you can have, there’s habit trackers. And there’s also more than a hundred journaling prompts. There’s self-care ideas. So it’s a really robust product that I usually charge for in my boutique. But for anyone listening to us we wanna gift you this today, you know, for being a customer of Caterina’s or a [00:21:00] follower of Caterina’s. I just wanna bless you with this gift.

Caterina Rando: Thank you, Karen. What we’ve done today in our time together is we’ve explored everyone listening to begin to think about what has interfered, perhaps, with them blissing and thriving in their business. My friends, I wanna encourage you to go to the show notes on our podcast page and you can download Karen’s free gift for you.

It’s at www.healththrivedream.com/healing-planner. You’re gonna wanna get that. Karen also has summits for women that you can attend to support you on your healing journey. Please connect with her. She’s an amazing woman who will uplift your life.

Karen, I’m blissing to have you with us today on the Expand Your Fempire podcast. Everyone, [00:22:00] I wanna encourage you to put attention on healing so you can thrive even more. This is Caterina Rando encouraging you to join us again for another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. Bing, bing, bing.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.