The Intersection of Trauma & Business with Nicole Lewis-Keeber
We can’t separate the personal from professional, and why should we? In today’s episode, Katie is in conversation with The Business Therapist Nicole Lewis-Keeber who helps us better understand the profound connection between our emotional wellbeing and our business endeavors. She shares insights on the unique relationship between trauma and entrepreneurship, including ways past patterns can echo through professional interactions, and practical steps to healing and growth through self-awareness and self-compassion. Adding to this rich dialogue, Nicole brings her experience training with Brené Brown, applying frameworks such as Dare to Lead to advocate for vulnerability and strong ethics in business. Throughout our conversation, we'll unpack the myriad ways in which trauma-informed care can revolutionize not just how we lead, but how we live, promising an inclusive and empowering future. Join us as we explore the liberating power of integrating trauma consciousness in leadership, the workplace, and beyond, paving the way for a future where trauma-informed care becomes second nature. This promises to be an episode that speaks to the heart of transformation in both personal and professional spheres.
Learn more about Nicole:
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her) is The Business Therapist, Author of How to Love Your Business, and creator of the Do No Harm Program for Trauma Conscious Entrepreneurs. She’s passionate about the impact of small “t” trauma on businesses and combines therapeutic processes with business coaching to help entrepreneurs build emotionally sustainable, financially stable businesses. Nicole has a rich and varied experience as a therapist. She’s trained and certified with Brené Brown’s Dare To Lead™ methodology and has also been featured on numerous media outlets including Fast Company and NPR for her work in breaking the stigma of mental health and business ownership
Connect with Nicole:
Website: https://nicole.lewis-keeber.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicolelewiskeebercoaching
People/Things Mentioned In This Episode:
Show Transcript:
Katie Kurtz (she/her): If we are leaders and entrepreneurs, we are showing up not just within our professional role and lens, but we are also showing up with our personal histories, lived experiences and identities. So it's impossible to extract the two and separate them. The personal is professional. The professional is personal. Today on the podcast I am very eager for you to listen to this conversation with my colleague and friend Nicole Lewis Keeber. Nicole is the Business Therapist, author of "How to Love Your Business" and creator of the Do No Harm Program for Trauma Conscious Entrepreneurs. She's passionate about the impact of small T trauma on businesses and combines therapeutic processes with business coaching to help entrepreneurs build emotionally sustainable financially stable businesses. Nicole has a rich and varied experience as a therapist she's trained and certified with Brene Brown's Dare to Lead methodology and has also been featured on numerous media outlets, including Fast Company and NPR for her work in breaking the stigma of mental health and business ownership. I love this conversation with Nicole. We have very similar backgrounds as fellow social workers and coaches, and you're even going to experience me, have some real life aha moments. As we have a conversation about the importance of being trauma conscious as entrepreneurs and leaders. Let's go ahead and get started.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Hi, everyone, and welcome to a Trauma Informed Future podcast. I'm your host. Katie Kurtz. I am delighted to be joined today by my colleague and new friend, if I can say that Nicole Lewis Keeber. Welcome, Nicole. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm truly excited about our conversation today and welcome.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Thank you for having me. Definitely new friend and colleague.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I am curious how you're arriving just in this space we're sharing today.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): I'm arriving with a heart that is heavy and also a lot of anticipation and excitement for getting to talk to you.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, a big me too to that. I think, we're, this podcast is being recorded in late October of 2023 and there is a lot of just hurt and harm and heaviness happening right now that is, it's hard to extrapolate ourselves from and simultaneously.
I don't know about you, but it's also extraordinarily hard to witness the lack of care and empathy by our fellow humans. And it's a lot to hold. There's just a lot to hold. And dare I say too much, and not what we're supposed to be. And it's complicated, right? It's complicated. I don't believe, and I know you and I have talked about this, we don't have to have experienced directly Certain atrocities or trauma to feel the impact of it, but also simultaneously acknowledging it's different for people who are directly experiencing it.
I Appreciate you being here and I think this conversation today is so important. I always remind myself during these times how the work we do in trauma and trauma informed care, this social impact work is so needed right now. And, It's so helpful, and I know I'm so grateful to have colleagues and community like you who's in this work too, because like I always say, it's a long game and it's hard to show up, especially when we're surrounded by collective trauma.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, I agree with every word you said, and we need more trauma informed leaders as you have mentioned and shared before, and these really difficult. In intense times, we need more trauma informed leaders.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Nicole, you and I share a lot of things. One being that we're both social workers.
And I feel like whenever you find a fellow social worker, there's just an instantaneous oh, you get it, right? There's this weird. Just little shared experience bond that occurs. And I'm curious if you could share a little bit about how, what brought you to where you're at today with, having started off in social work and where you're at now.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah. I think I love other social worker because I know where your heart. The biggest part is when you make the decision to become a social worker, no matter what your tract is, I think it's the, like recognizing the social worker in me.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I bow deeply. Yes.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Because what we've been told it means to be a social worker, which is not always true.
I was someone who I think, I feel was a deep feeler growing up. I, I grew up in a. Relatively, dysfunctional family. I think we still call it that at least we did in the 80s. We called it dysfunctional family. And so it really put a desire for me to understand how family systems work and why people do what they do and I always just had such a big heart.
I was just someone who wanted everyone to be okay and everybody to have a seat at the table and everyone to get invited to the party. That just was always who I was. And it led me to. Value this exploration of people and how it all works. And so when I found out what that meant in a career, because I didn't know what that meant when I was a kid, and I learned about social work, I was very drawn to it and wanted to study it.
And I always knew that I wanted to be in a therapist capacity. So I chose my, my my track in social work to be more of a clinical track so that I could be a therapist or, work as a clinician in some way. And so that's what I did. My training was all clinical, got my license and then my clinical license over time and have worked in almost any capacity you can think of as a social worker except for children.
It was too tender to my heart to work in children's work, but from, hospital, social work to military to, direct work, medication, assisted therapies. I've done it all. And because I had done it all at about 18 years, I ended up leaving doing therapy and direct practice because I was very burnt out by it, because the systems around social work and service related Professions do not teach you how to take care of yourself, nor do they value any attempts to do and so I was so burnt and ended up leaving the field and I still wanted to work with people if people are. I love, and I learned about coaching and started a coaching business. And that's what I've been doing for the past eight years. It didn't go the direction I thought it would go after I got certified to do money mindset coaching.
I began to see that, my clients didn't have money mindset issues. They had trauma responses that were playing out in their money. And so we were off to the races at that point with what I do now, which is help people. Recognize and begin to unravel the impact of childhood trauma on their business, which never thought I would be doing that.
But, I had to bring my therapist hat to this coaching world. You can't unsee what you've seen. So all that long story to say that right now I am a coach for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders. And I do a lot of work at the intersection of trauma and entrepreneurship.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I love it.
Thanks, Nicole. I think one of the reasons why I feel Excuse me, such a connection with you is because such similar paths, right? I. It's very typical for social workers to have a very diverse career path because the work we do is so hard and intense and emotionally intensive, and because we work in systems that are designed to not actually help people.
And it's not uncommon for us to move from different job to job and then eventually burn out because it's, it is it's like we're working against something that was designed that way. It's like it, there's a lot of good things and a lot of great progress that comes from social work, but there's also a lot of burnout.
And you're right, like a whole other podcast could just be on how we're burning out helping professions and I feel very passionate about that and especially as we see a dwindling mental health workforce and I really appreciate you also sharing because I think this is a common myth. I find myself busting quite frequently is that a lot of people.
Think either social workers can't be therapists or they think every social worker is a therapist It's very common on a daily basis for people to assume I'm a therapist and I always gently remind them that I'm absolutely not a therapist and just explain that we actually Can do many things under our social work license.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): A lot of things. I, I know that our profession has a lot of things that are problematic, historically. And I still really appreciate our profession because it is so diverse and there are so many things that you can do with it from, macro. Systems, and looking and in government and policy and research developing theories when it comes to clinical practice.
I really do love, what is available and what represents us as a profession. It's 1 of the reasons why. I really love, I personally very much love Brene Brown as a mentor because of her social work status. She's not a therapist, and she'll tell people that I'm not a therapist, I'm a researcher.
I just happen to share what the research is with people when we make, we create practices and frameworks around what we think might help people. Yeah I really am proud of what we can do as social workers.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. Okay. So you got to tell us about your connection to Brene Brown because I know there is one in some way, at least.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah. Was following her for a while because again, she's one of those people that you're like, Oh, she's a social worker. You can do this as a social worker. And she was just, really inspirational to me to see that, that our degree, we could use our profession, our degree to do so much more.
So she lit a fire for me before I even left the field but that I was able to train with her in 2019, I think it was, they put a call out for people who wanted to, train with her directly on how to facilitate her data lead frameworks that she wrote about in her book there to lead and what she created from her research and all the many years she had working, in corporate industries is what dare to lead is geared towards and I applied and got selected and was 1 of 700 people who went through that program with her and have been facilitating her work.
Ever since and have been doing some other projects with her and her smaller projects with her and her team over the past six months and we'll do some next year as well. So it's been really cool. Really cool journey.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I'm so jealous. I wanted to do that training so badly and I think I like just missed it.
So I love and I've always wanted to meet somebody who. Who was a Dare to Lead facilitator because there aren't really any in my area, my local area. So when I found out that you, you do that, I was, like, really excited, and then I started meeting a bunch of people. So it's just I love that. I love Brene Brown.
She's influenced a lot of what I do. And I know there's a lot of varying opinions about Brene right now. But I think in essence, I agree. It was really, I found a lot of hope in seeing a social worker do what she does and just really resonate with the things many of us know and have known for a long time, but just the way it's delivered.
I think for people to be talking about vulnerability and connection and emotions even in the workplace has been amazing. And. Love that. I love that about you, too, that you think this work.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, I agree. I really do wish that people could see what I see where she's where her integrity and leadership is.
But, that doesn't always get shown out to the world at large. So let me just say that she is someone who walks or talk. And is always learning about how to evolve the work. So I couldn't be on board if that was not true.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, I was gonna say, I really respect you and your ethics and your integrity.
And I feel like that that means something to come from you for sure. So Nicole, let's talk about the personal and professional, because what you shared Just with your own career journey of seeing, in your social work career, seeing how it was starting to impact probably your professional life with burnout and then switching gears and becoming a coach to actually then help people see how their professional world is or their personal life is then impacting their professional world with it.
Roots of trauma or toxic stress impacting how they show up in their business or their entrepreneurial endeavors or their leadership. So I think in our brains, I talk about this a lot, our brains love either or thinking, right? It keeps us alive every day. And so we always like to think, and I know I was taught as a social worker, you keep everything separate.
You have your personal life, your professional life. You have your social work identity, you have your personal identity, you keep everything very far apart. And what we know is that. It's not that easy. And also, who is that always benefiting? Yes to boundaries. Yes to ethics. Always. But also, what happens when we lose our humanity and all of that.
So I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about this inextricable tie between our personal and professional and vice versa. And how especially that may show up when we're doing business, when we're leading projects, when we're putting our art, whatever art is, into the world.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah. Anyone who thinks that I laugh anyone who thinks that we are, we separate ourselves from our business or, we go to work and we leave our emotions at home.
Anyone who thinks that is true and possible has never been a manager supervisor because it is so not true or possible. Even in the most regimented, workplaces, I think it's, you're still seeing these things work out. So no, it's not possible. It's a nice idea and it's a nice idea from a system that would like for us to be dehumanized, I think.
But yeah, it doesn't really come out in the wash that way. And this is where I think my social work career, has really informed my work now is that, I remember, even when I was working I was a clinical supervisor in a methadone clinic and which is a medication assisted therapy for people who have opiate dependence.
And I would work with, these clients and also my counselors and it would get, I get so frustrated because I was like, why are we always treating the symptoms as opposed to the origin story here? Because every single one of those people had trauma of some kind, right? But we were approaching, we were like emerging onto the interstate, strictly from the, opioid dependence problem.
And I just would always say, I was like, we are, we're treating the wrong problem. We're talking about the wrong problem. Is it any wonder, that they keep coming back through the door. They're having all these issues. With family systems and work and all these things. And that's just been something that I have been upset about most of my career is that we are trying to solve the wrong problem most of the time.
And so when I started working with these small business owners and entrepreneurs, and I wanted to be a money mindset coach, and I realized really quickly that, mindset is great and all. But if you have a traumatized nervous system, it hijacks your ability to do mindset work. And I kept asking myself, I'm a key word solving that we're trying to solve the wrong problem here.
And so I think what. It's challenging about that is that we bring all of who we are into what we do, whether it's when we open the door to start our 9 to 5, when we start a business. We are human beings. We are complex. We are wired for connection and we want to make meaning of things. And so we cannot compartmentalize ourselves.
We do not drop our baggage at the door when we start a business or when we open up our office door. We bring all of who we are. And so we need to know that we were tackling a business problem that there's probably some other underlying emotional need that's not being met. And so that is what began to percolate for me in my business was I was recognizing my clients don't have money mindset issues.
They have trauma that has impacted their relationship with money and their relationship with how they value themselves. And so I started to dig a little further, and it became clear to me that trauma with childhood trauma, those experiences were actually impacting their businesses and how they ran their businesses.
So just kept, shoveling and digging. And it's, it just became very clear to me that this narrative that we have about, don't bring your emotions with you. Don't share anything personal, even in our spaces with our clients that we're supposed to be robots with no emotions, no lived experiences to share that.
None of that works very well when we want to drive connection and humanize our experience with each other. So that's a long way of answering that question that, and I could answer more specifics about how trauma packs the business, but I wanted to pause in case you had something.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, I just I'm so grateful you named that and also focus on this because It's so true, and I think just even starting being in social work, I always felt very inauthentic at times because I felt like I had to uphold these very separate boundaries, and what happened very quickly although it felt like a long time, was it started to chip away at my humanity because we weren't able to acknowledge feeling Feelings at all after hearing a client disclose something awful, or, seeing yourself in a situation or, again, appropriate self disclosure.
There was just this fear of God put into us that if you do anything human, you're going to lose your license or something's going to happen. And so at least that's how I was taught and brought up throughout my social work career. And then to enter the entrepreneurial space similarly, about eight years ago into the coaching industry, I was like, It's the opposite.
'cause there is no regulations, there are no real ethics. I acknowledge some people do and some groups do, but there is no overarching anything and there's no huge consequence.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Even if there are some regulations, there's really no big consequence. Really.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. There's no accountability.
And there was a lot of people. now having been in the coaching industry for about eight years, most people who end up coaching are, they've coached themselves through it. So they're using their lived experiences, no matter what they are, to now help other people, which I find fascinating. I find, I, I love the coaching industry.
I should say it's that I love coaching as a practice in art. I don't love the coaching industry, but I find it fascinating. I've just have found it fascinating and that. I never knew about it pre finding it, eight years ago. Something that I love about what you do and the work you focus on is I had those exact same issues as somebody who grew up near poverty and always with it being very cognizant at a very young age of scarcity and your livelihood being lost, your essential survival needs of food, house, housing and water being quickly, potentially gone, that didn't occur to me that it would be so connected as an entrepreneur.
And so I always joke with a lot of fellow entrepreneurial friends, and I'd love to hear your take on this is how much healing work I've had to do as an entrepreneur because of my own. lived experiences of trauma and stress and how entrepreneurship has extracted that and has put the like spotlight on those things.
So tell us more, Nicole why, like why does this happen and what do we do about it?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, I always say that it's a high dive into personal development when you start a business, whether you like it or not. 100%. It brings up your stuff.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): 100%.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, I think. I think one of my theories around this is that personally for the, from what I've seen over the past eight years, and also my personal experience is that many of the entrepreneurs that I have worked with or business, small business owners or leaders, they had some experience that was very impactful to them when they were younger, whether it was, like you said, being close to poverty, having, an event happen in their family, having the systems that don't support them. So they always felt other like there was something, some experience that they had where something changed in them, or they made even an unconscious choice or vow to themselves to say, I'm never going to feel this way again.
This feels awful. I never want to feel like I'm out of control again, or that I don't have options or that I don't feel safe or that I don't have money. I And we can almost always track back to an impetus, a motivation to be a small business owner, to be entrepreneurial, that is connected to that moment where they felt unseen, unsafe, unheard in some way.
And so then having a business or being an entrepreneur is the effect of that. Experience that they have. So it impacts the motivation. It then impacts the way that they run their business. So if you want to be safe and seen and heard, and you create a business, then your business now has a job of helping you feel safe, seen and heard.
But if you don't know that's what your business job is, you spin your wheels keeping, still trying to feel safe, still trying to feel safe. One more keynote, one more six figure launch, like whatever that may be, because you don't know what the emotional needs are for you, that your business is trying to solve for you.
And, let's be honest, people who have had, who are hitting those ACEs scores, that, that can create an amazing skill set. and toolkit for being an entrepreneur or small business owner. An amazing skill set. But without understanding that there's that connection there, that is how I see people burn out in their business or they are, they create the relationship with their business to now be one more abusive entity in their life that they feel out of control in.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Okay, I'm sorry, but like insert exploding head emoji here. I've never heard anyone explain it like that. And it makes so much sense. I'm always, I don't know about you, but I always feel the more I'm in practice around trauma informed care, the more I'm like, of course, that makes sense. All of this just makes sense.
And yeah, like that's I can't wait to listen to this podcast again and sit with that more because it, it makes so much sense. And when I think about my own entrepreneurial journey it's so apparent. It's of course. I think about all the evolutions and the evolutions I continue to be in, and the areas where coaches, other coaches, I said that's a mindset shift, right?
But we can't mindset shift our way out of trauma. It's not possible. And I also think about, which I know could be a whole other rabbit hole of a podcast episode, is how then we also may fall into traps of working with unaligned people, whether it's coaches or other people, where we then End up feeling harmed because there it's there's something there.
And I know I personally have fallen into that where I end up working with somebody thinking it's what I need or what they're offering is what I need. And then I get into the space or the program and it's oh, this is not it. And then. Insert shame or guilt or whatever. And that's so common in the coaching entrepreneurial online business space.
And yeah, okay.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, it's almost like we're ripe for it. It's almost for me, a lot of the origins of coaching, I think, and again, I'm 52, so I've been around for a minute, but a lot of the origin stories I see around the early coaching industry, it is predatory towards trauma stories. In a lot of ways, so I haven't looked to a other podcast just on that, but we are ripe for it in that way, and probably more likely to absorb it.
But, my theory is that when you start a business, you enter into a relationship with that business, that it is not, you are not your business. It is something outside of you that you are creating and relating to. And therefore, it has this unique. Opportunity to either be a fantastic and loving relationship that maybe you've had for the 1st time in your life, or it can be really easy for us to replicate the roles and relationships that we've been in that have been harmful to us in our lives in that your business can now be something that you use to create that pattern of self abuse.
And it can be demanding and demeaning and. It could be your mama, like it was my mama. My relationship with my business the first two years was definitely my mom. Yeah, so it's, there's so many ways that, I see that there's the motivation, the relationship, and then the practice of the business that can be very much connected to those experiences.
And that's why I always talk about being trauma conscious, because being conscious of your own experiences and how they motivated you to be here, I think is really key.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, let's talk about that a minute, because I love that. That concept and, I talk a lot about the different levels of trauma competency, but I love this concept of trauma consciousness because it has, it's more about this internal self awareness, being conscious, self conscious of our own lived experiences and how that may Impact our professional work and business and also, vice versa, like thinking about I think about all the components of running a business.
There's so many and the areas that I personally am like feel really strong in and then the areas that I like I don't feel good in or I just straight up avoid. And thinking about it from this way of it's direct connection to past lived experiences, especially in early childhood. Again, I'm like, Oh, yeah it first makes sense.
And then it also almost. Disarms the shame and guilt that can come up this cycle that or self doubt and like self distress that can come up in this entrepreneurial cycle. And can you talk to us a little bit about what do we do with this? Like, how do you support people who, to become trauma conscious and then once we have consciousness, what do we do with that?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, so I do a lot of education to start off with, because I think by design, many of us were walking around with traumatized nervous systems without understanding that's what the experience was that we had because we tend to minimize and diminish and dismiss trauma for people like we only allow a very small definition of trauma to be real for us, I think, as a society.
And so therefore, there's a lot of people walking around with traumatized nervous systems, feeling shame, feeling like their experience isn't big enough to be seen as trauma. And as you've heard me say a million times, your nervous system doesn't give a shit what you call it. What the label is, sorry for cussing, but it doesn't care.
It doesn't care. It is what it is. So I think what I do with a lot of education and there is such a lightness and liberation that happens when. Someone can recognize that, oh, this isn't just me being me again. It isn't just, why do I keep falling, seeing myself in this pattern?
You're like, why do my employees keep leaving? Why can't I be nicer to them? Whatever it is, they recognize that this was actually a trauma that they experienced and that they are, replaying either the adaptation to that experience or the pattern, the replication of that pattern. So a lot of education initially.
A lot of self compassion. As well, we do what I call an emotional sustainability plan where we start to map out what are some of the patterns and emotional challenges that they seem to be having their business over and over so that we can put a plan in place to recognize.
Okay. So that's a trigger. Let's work with it. Let's see what happens here. And. Again, like I said, tons of self compassion, but one of the things also that came from the research I was doing, because I've had a thousand or more conversations with entrepreneurs at this point, once I got this germ of, okay, trauma showing up in their business, no one's expecting to find their childhood trauma in their business, so of course it just blooms and grows and creates the backbone of their business.
No one's looking for trauma there. There are some pretty distinct categories that showed up in those conversations about where it can show up with. So we'll go through that. Together too to see where we might be able to put some scaffolding and provide some support. Because if they understand why they started the business in the first place, and I call it your deeper why, like your real why, 'cause you wanted someone to finally see you or to feel valid, and they can recognize that and see how it's showing up in their business.
They can adapt, they can change, they can put a pla, their plan in place and all of those aspects become much more gentle. And kind and they, their inner child work that they can do around that because your inner board of directors usually have most of your inner kiddos. On that as well. So I lost track of what I was saying.
But anyway, that's the work that we do is I see it as a liberatory practice so that if you can understand if you're trauma conscious about who you are, why you are doing this thing. Where this, what their origin story was and how your business can cooperate with you, then you can be more clear about, okay, so my employees not just trying to be a jerk today.
There could be something coming up for them, right? Or we can be clearer about how systems are playing out, how the relationship with the employees, the contractors, the clients that I have could be replicating some of these patterns as well, because we always have to do. Thank you. You first, I think that's what we, I teach in my daringly trainings is that self leadership is the first step to daring leadership.
And so that's how that works.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah. As you were talking, the, we're very familiar with thinking about trauma from this lens of it's not, what's wrong with you, but what happened to you. And as you were talking, I was like, wow, that, that takes on a whole new meaning when you think about it through your business lens of, when we have to do the taxes and the sales and the launching and the marketing and like, why isn't this working?
And like all the things it's very easy, especially as a solopreneur. Speaking from experience, being like, what is wrong with me? Like, why just can't, why can't I just focus? Why is this so hard for me? Why do I keep avoiding? Why am I this? Why am I that? And it's, if we pause and really look at those areas, like you said what are those areas where maybe feeling triggered or whatever it may be, it's not why what's wrong with us, but what happened to us that's causing us to show up.
In that way, and I am just having this little aha moment with everyone here on this podcast because it makes, again, it makes so much, of course, it makes so much sense. Yeah. Nicole, let's shift a little bit here because I would venture a guess. That this is very front and center and entrepreneurial spaces, but what happens?
It has to be relatable into a more like a company or leadership like leaders having their trauma impact their leadership if they're working, if they're working for a company or corporate or whatever. So how does this also translate into those spaces?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, it absolutely does. And that's why I use the term trauma conscious.
And, a lot of the frameworks that we use in the Dare to Lead trainings are about understanding how do I get hooked emotionally on something? How am I working out my own stuff on my, the people that I manage or my employees? hOw is my lack of communication skills or the way I communicate shutting down connection and keeping me from getting the true story that I need to get from my partner or my employees.
If you understand that 1st of all, you wanted to be in the top 1 percent of sales in this particular company, because your dad told you would never amount to anything. That's really important to know, right? Because when you get to that top 1%, then what? That is when I see the biggest collapses is you reach that goal that came from this trauma experience that you had.
Then what? So I think it's important for leaders to understand that you're in a leadership position, your deeper why as to why being in a leadership position is important to you, how you tend to work out emotions, or how comfortable do you feel with them? And what kind of relationship have you built with the people that you are leading?
And unfortunately, I think a lot of the times that ends up being what we call a power over relationship, because that's what we've been taught in the systems, or that's because what we think we may need to feel like we're in control, because control is something that I need to feel safe because of the experiences that I had, being trauma conscious and trauma informed as a leader, I think is the game changer for leadership in the future. It will be required. It will be necessary. It will make huge change. And I just, I think that's the key for what we, what I want to see leadership to be in the future is to be trauma conscious and trauma informed because it always starts with you.
It really does always start with you.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): I couldn't agree more, obviously, that's why I have a podcast, on this exactly, and I think what I love about it so much too is, I, when I teach about trauma informed care, I obviously always encourage people to start within, to look at themselves and to see themselves, and it's not uncommon.
It's actually quite common for me to begin with shared language and understanding to, of expanding that definition of trauma and people for the first time seeing themselves or introducing ACEs, the Adverse Childhood Experiences, and I teach the pair of ACEs, so Wendy Ellis work around adverse community environments, and I do it very delicately because it's not uncommon for people to realize, oh my God, I didn't realize that I experienced all these things.
I didn't realize it. And that's a very tender moment for people to Awaken to their own trauma, and I am not in I'm my scope of practice in that moment is as a trainer, not as a therapist. And so I love that I can refer people to you and that we're in community because that is an area that I certainly could explore, but it's not what I choose to.
And that's why I think it's so imperative that especially with leaders in of any kind, really are looking at both. Developing that personal trauma consciousness while also simultaneously building a trauma informed practice because they go hand in hand. And the trauma consciousness is, although very similar, very different in that it's it takes a different pathway.
I'm, I think this is something, though, that when we think about teaching both of these practices, I, you and I sit at the intersection of a lot of industries and both come, though, from social work and have coaching backgrounds and traditionally helping people. Human care helping professions where trauma informed care or even trauma consciousness is more understood.
I will not say it's, we're there yet. We have a long way to go, but it's a little more understood, a little more accepted. So I know, and I know, too, how necessary. this practice is for all industries. We're just starting to create some movement around mental health awareness. And how long did that take us?
Forever? And I I just want to be like, are we aware yet? Did we reach awareness? Where are we going after awareness? Like, where are we? What's next? I'm glad everyone's so mentally aware, mental health aware, but like, where do we go from here? Let's talk about bringing this work into spaces that people have never used the term trauma, or you know they get the cringe face, or they think it's a bad word, and like, how can we, if we want to create a trauma informed future, how are we going to bring this work into those spaces where they don't know they need it?
They don't want to know they need it or they're just not sure what to expect.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): I feel like I've been doing that for the past eight years because when I first started talking about this I was told by my business coach, don't use the word trauma. You'll scare people. And I said, words matter and we have to call a thing.
And I said, this is what this thing is. And much just like with Brene, she's we have to call it shame because that's what it is. And I think the more we use the language and call a thing, the less stigma it'll have, and the more clarity and understanding people will have about what trauma is, that it's not just, what happened to you in your household, that it is systems around us that we don't have a lot of power over at this point and so I think when we can appeal to people's Need for information, because our brains love information, right?
And they love story. So when we can, our brain is wired for story. So if we can help people fill in the gaps where this is concerned, the word trauma comes into focus. For them, and, I have not been beyond appealing to the greed of a CEO or someone in a company to say there is a return on investment here.
There's an absolute return on investment here. So I think. Education, I don't want to normalize trauma because me who wants to normalize trauma, but normalize that trauma is happening and you know what it looks like for each 1 of us matters and that it's not just a personal thing that this actually a systemic thing as well.
I think the more that we can do that, the more people will open up to it. I'd like for it to be faster, but those industries do adjust and they do open and they do evolve when they're. Is evidence that there is a benefit. So we've got to figure out what the evidence of the benefit is for it to be a little bit faster, I think, but I feel very confident that it will happen.
And I think the future of trauma and being trauma informed is that at some point that language gets dissolved into how we just operate. Yes.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): That is the goal. A trauma informed future. The future of trauma informed care is that it. We don't need the term trauma informed anymore, that is just the way we show up.
It's the way we human, it's the way we lead, it's the way we work, it's the way we relate. It's gonna take a while. I don't think we're being Pollyanna to think that, but it's, I don't know, I don't know about you, I think there's been significant shifts in Even just the last few years, sadly because of the pandemic, but a huge shift, and I agree, I don't know how many people who continue to this day tell me not to use the term trauma.
Ooh, could you use a different word? No one knows what trauma informed care is. And I just generally remind people that's the whole point. That's the whole point. It's not a bad word. It's actually, when we pause to think about trauma, it's our bodies brilliantly doing exactly what they're meant to do to keep us alive.
That's what trauma is. And we just Connotate all of these negative images, which yeah, trauma often does manifest into really awful things, but I think that's where I so appreciated Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown. Just the work around language is so key, and that's why I think shared language and this understanding of shared language means shared meaning is where we have to begin with any of these people.
And I'm curious if you would be willing let's talk about the ROI because I've been talking more about that recently to appeal to people who just don't see the importance of understanding trauma, people's humanity, which includes all the things, right? What, if somebody is listening to this podcast that still isn't convinced, they're still not sure.
This, a lot of times what's very natural happens is we other, right? We say, Oh, that's not us. That's those people. What would a return on investment look like? I have an idea of what I say, but I'd be really curious from your perspective, because I really appreciate your perspective.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, it depends on who I'm talking to.
If I'm talking to the CEO, the founder and CEO, the return on investment. It's very personal, like we're personalizing it to them in that they will be able to actually hire someone to help them and allow them to do their job as opposed to continuing to interfere. The return on the investment for them is that they get more time to be envisioned of the business as opposed to micromanaging because.
Trusting relying on someone is the behavior of trust. So if they've had a breakdown of trust, it's impacting their business and how they do things. If we can help them develop some trust and allow them to have employees or a right hand person that they can rely on and give them that relief and that release the R.
O. I. S. that they get to take their company in the next direction. They get to vision out what comes next. They can make more money, they can have more time for themselves, as opposed to having to have their finger and every little thing they can streamline what it means to be a CEO and not the CEO, the CFO, the CEO, like all the things, and helping them improve their being able to feel connected to the people that they're working with in a real way so that, we can regulate each other with our nervous systems. We can't tell it not to do that. When we walk in the door, it's already doing it. We're already doing that. Understanding that we build these connections and we build these spaces where, as a CEO, I can look at, my partner or my VP or the people that I'm working with and see them as.
Yeah. We're all the system that's all working together. And if the more that we're connected, the more that we can work together, the more the more I don't know what the word I want to use right now is. It's basically we're all working in alignment. Because me as the leader, I have done my work to allow them to do their work.
So if I'm talking to a CEO, that's usually the direction that we're going in. But also, if we're looking at it for a company, is that the more connection we can build between employees and managers, supervisors, the more common language, as you said, because common language is it's such an adhesive and it's such a beautiful way.
So what is that common language? What is it? You know that we can bring to this company. The more in step we are in a way that feels good to the nervous systems of the people in the room, you're going to have more productivity. You're going to have more longevity of employees. You're going to have more desire to stay and be a part of a company as you're building something.
We could go on for days on this and They do much harder things in corporate structures than this every day, right? It seems so simple to me. I don't know why Katie.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): It does. No, I so appreciate you. I say that every day, maybe multiple times a day that it's not that complicated. I think we overcomplicate it.
And again, I think the thing, I take that back, I think the thing that does complicate it, especially for applying this approach in a more corporate or business setting, is the fact it's always going to come back to the systems we exist in. So capitalism, patriarchy, oppression, all of these systems of oppression we exist in are always going to tell us we can't do this, that it is complicated.
And because we're entrenched in these isms, it's complicated. It's that's why it's taking so long.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, they benefit off of our time.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. They absolutely do. There's a reason why the health care system still has not adapted this approach. It is not. It should absolutely be the standard of care in health care and it's Most health care systems don't even know what it is because they make a lot of money off trauma.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, they do. It has to be said. Yeah, they all benefit from, the systems around us benefit from our trauma and us not knowing we're being traumatized.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Absolutely. And it's always, I always love those moments, though, when you do introduce trauma informed care or, and I'm sure with trauma conscious care as well, these Oh.
I'm already doing that. Or I didn't realize it was communication skills or expanded empathy. It's yeah, these things are, this is human skills. These are like, this is just how we do humaning here. It's not, it, empathy can be hard if you lack it or you never learned how to develop it.
Absolutely. And of course, in corporate America, there's a lot of people who lack empathy. And that's going to be harder for them. And I doubt. They may reach this level of care, but most people do care. We've seen a tremendous amount of movement with, B Corps status and like people, leaders and companies dedicated to ethical standards.
I would love to see trauma informed care be added to a B Corps status. If you're listening to this, please contact us. We would love to help you incorporate the human part of an ethical company is looking at your impact on the humans. you're working with. It makes sense, right? And I, that's why I so appreciate being in a trauma informed community with folks like you, because we do very similar work, but it's also very distinctive.
And it's I feel so comforted to know. That we have people to lean on because it is especially right now we're existing and we're witnessing collective trauma, like compounded layers of collective trauma unfold. We're not even consenting to see it. It's just popping up videos and horrific things are popping up on our phones.
And there's this term that my, my good friend, Sass Petherick. Use today that I read about empathic distress. This we can't like we feel like we can't do anything. And I'm there often. Sometimes I'm there several times a day where I'm just like, Oh, what am I doing anything? And what should I be doing?
And then I'm reminded that caring for my nervous system is doing something that showing up and Tending to my healing of my own trauma is doing something and that leading with a trauma informed lens is absolutely doing anything. We don't know the ripple effect of trauma informed care. We don't know the extensive nature of the ROI of trauma informed care because it's so big and it's, there's so many possibilities from it.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah, that's why I'm so dedicated to what I do when I pat myself on the back. That's why I'm so dedicated to continuing to. I would love to teach a course in entrepreneurial incubators on this topic and why I want to spread the word around this more and more is because. If I can help small business owners be more trauma conscious and trauma informed, that business is going to then create employees that are treated differently.
If I can work with entrepreneurs around this and the entrepreneurial ventures that they have, they're going to be trauma conscious and trauma. So I see that we can build. From here, which is why I keep doing what I do. Yeah.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): And you should, because I think it's absolutely doable. It's doable.
It will take some time, but it's absolutely doable. And I think we're starting to see you've seen all the impact it's already had with the thousands of people you've worked with. And I've seen it too. I've seen count and I heard countless stories of people's impact of adopting trauma informed care into not just again, and this takes us full circle.
It's so common for me to hear, like I train people in the same spaces, right? Entrepreneurs. providers, companies, they're there for their own professional development. But how many times do I hear people say, Oh, I didn't realize this would impact my marriage or my parenting or my caregiving or my citizenship or my community endeavors?
Yeah, because we can't extract the personal from professional. Like we just came full circle back to the beginning of this conversation.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah. Everything is everything.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yeah, as Lauren Hill taught us. Absolutely. Yeah. Nicole, just love being in conversation with you. Thank you. Is there anything else you want to talk about that we didn't cover?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): A million and one topics, but we're good for today. Awesome.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Awesome. So I want to do our gentle spritz questions, and then I want to have some time for you to share just what you're offering, how people can connect with you, your book all the things. But first, let's do our gentle spritz. This is my different choice of a rapid fire, which I know Brene does a little rapid fire, and I was like, I love that.
And also, How can we make it trauma informed? So yeah, so this one's always hard for me because I'm a person that can't choose one thing. I need at least three to five options, but if you could describe trauma informed care in one word, what would it be?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Holistic.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Love that. No one said that yet. I love that.
What is your current go to nervous system care practice or tool?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): I have two. I am trained in EFT tapping. So if I need support on particular things, I will use EFT or tapping. anD the other is I have a very diverse and long standing conversation with my inner kiddos. So I do a lot of work with them.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Great. I don't have an inner child. I have an inner adult. So it's not as fun, but I love that. And then what does a trauma informed future look like for you?
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): I think similar to what I said earlier is that for me, a trauma informed future looks like a world where we don't use that language anymore.
It's just the practices that we do. That our goal in any meeting, is to do no harm and understanding that even if we think we're not in a space where we're tasked for being trauma informed that we are because we're working with human beings and that we just need to, so I, for just to be more intuitive and less of okay, here's our check in the box.
We're going to do our trauma informed training. No, this is just who we are and how we operate.
Katie Kurtz (she/her): Yes. Integrative, embodied, just the culture. Love that. Yeah. Nicole, tell us how we can connect with you, work with you, be in your orbit.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Yeah. So I always tell people that a great place to start is to read my book.
It's called How to Love Your Business and it is on Amazon. So my website too, but it's on Amazon. You can follow me at nicole. lewiskeeber. com, which is my website, and there is a free master class on my website on the trauma and entrepreneurship connection that you can watch for free, which I always think is a great place to start as well.
And if you like to talk, I'm on there at the Business Therapist
Katie Kurtz (she/her): yes. Everything's linked in the show notes. I think all of those are great starting, starting points to all your other offerings. And what a unique and beautiful space you're holding that I know many entrepreneurs and people in the business world and leadership are looking Listening to this podcast.
So I hope people connect with you and gain a lot from this conversation. I know I'm walking away with a lot. I know I'm going to go download that masterclass. I can't believe I haven't already. So thank you so much for being here. And I'm sure you'll be back for more conversations, but appreciate this one, especially.
Nicole Lewis-Keeber (she/her): Wow. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
