The Resilient Therapist
Some podcast guests need a formal introduction. Others have been part of your professional life for so long that introducing them feels a little ridiculous. Khara Croswaite-Brindle falls into the second category.
Ashley has known Khara for years. She's a friend, colleague, and co-author of The Resilient Therapist. She's also been a mentor to Morgen for years. In fact, Khara is the reason Morgen and Ashley know each other in the first place. So having all three of them together on the podcast feels full circle.
Khara is a licensed professional counselor, clinical supervisor, professor, consultant, entrepreneur, and author of multiple books. Basically, if there's a professional credential or project available, Khara has probably considered adding it to her résumé. And despite all those accomplishments, she's one of the first people to acknowledge that being a therapist can be really, really hard. In this episode of The Art of Being a Therapist, we talk about something the mental health field doesn't discuss nearly enough: What happens when the people trained to help others experience trauma through their own work?
Plot Twist: Therapists Aren't Immune to Trauma
We spend years learning how to recognize and treat trauma in our clients. But what about the trauma therapists experience while doing their jobs? Khara and Ashley explore six career-altering events in The Resilient Therapist:
Client suicide
Sudden client death
Client violence (directed toward the clinician)
Professional betrayal
Subpoenas
Regulatory grievances/complaints
Khara refers to these experiences in her research as Adverse Psychological Events (APEs), a term intentionally reminiscent of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). And because we love a good acronym, naturally, APEs became part of our vocabulary. It's pronounced A-P-Es. Unless you're Ashley, who occasionally forgets and pronounces it like apes (as in, the animals). Khara hates it! Jokes aside, the concept matters. These experiences can profoundly affect therapists' confidence, professional identity, relationships, and willingness to remain in the field. And, many of us were never taught how to navigate them.
When the People Who Are Supposed to Support You Cause Harm
One of the most meaningful parts of the conversation focuses on leadership trauma, a term Khara has used to describe the psychological harm that can occur when someone in a position of authority undermines our sense of worth or professional competence. Khara shares an experience from graduate school when a supervisor questioned her readiness to enter the profession because she was supposedly too composed and needed to cry during supervision. That experience shook her confidence, but it also shaped her commitment to creating healthier supervisory relationships.
Morgen shares how Khara helped her process her own experience of leadership trauma. Ashley reflects on experiences in toxic workplaces, including how difficult it can be to recognize just how harmful an environment was until you've left it. Sometimes the most damaging part of a workplace experience isn't the event itself. It's how leadership responds afterward. Blame. Shame. Invalidation. Silence. And sometimes, healing begins when another professional simply says, I believe you. Therapists deserve psychologically and physically safe workplaces, too. Apparently, that still needs to be said.
You Can Love Being a Therapist and Still Want to Quit
Here's something we don't say often enough: Considering leaving the mental health field doesn't mean you're a bad therapist. Khara shares how career trauma has influenced her own professional pivots, from community mental health to supervision, consultation, teaching, and entrepreneurship.
Khara, Ashley, and Morgen also discuss the identity crisis that can accompany burnout. When you've spent years earning degrees, developing expertise, and building a career around helping others, what happens when that career starts hurting you?
Ashley remembers the first time she seriously considered leaving the field: It felt like failure. But what if changing roles, establishing boundaries, or stepping away isn't failure? What if it's recognizing that your well-being matters just as much as the work you're doing? They also challenge the idea that private practice automatically solves burnout. Spoiler alert: It doesn't. Sometimes it just means you're the one scheduling yourself from 6:30 in the morning until 9 at night.
Healing Also Involves Pancakes
Because this is Khara we're talking about, Ashley and Morgen couldn't end an episode without some practical tools, memorable metaphors, and additional acronyms. Khara shares her self-disclosure short stack, a three-pancake reminder for therapists:
What's the purpose of the self-disclosure?
Can you keep it short and succinct?
How did it land with the client or supervisee?
She also introduces her Reuben sandwich approach to DAP notes. Yes, we've officially reached the point where clinical documentation involves deli meat! But that's part of what Ashley and Morgen appreciate about Khara: She takes complicated professional experiences and makes them understandable, approachable, and less isolating.
Join Ashley, Morgen, and Khara for a personal conversation about leadership trauma, career-altering events, burnout, supervision, professional identity, and finding a way forward after difficult experiences. We don't have to pretend that our careers haven't affected us. We don't have to normalize unsafe working conditions. And we certainly don't have to navigate difficult professional experiences alone. We can love this field, acknowledge its shortcomings, and work toward making it better for the clinicians who come after us. And if you've ever questioned whether a difficult professional experience was really that bad, this episode is especially for you. Listen to Leadership Trauma and the Courage to Heal on The Art of Being a Therapist: The Space Between Training and Real Life.
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