EP 126: Authenticity in Action: Speaking Up, Holding Nuance, and Leading with Courage with Dr. Jamie Marich

The Unburdened Leader

Given our political situation in the United States, you may be hearing a lot of people–myself included–talk about living your values. Not just professing them, but really living them, even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s hard work that requires a lot of internal fortitude.

But we so often default to acting against our values in order to protect ourselves and those we love from real or perceived danger–to our jobs, our reputations, dignity, physical safety, and more. We try to protect ourselves with compliance, while our silence does real harm to others.

Those who have a history of relational trauma are especially likely to fear speaking up, even as they know their values and moral expectations are being violated. This collision of relational trauma with moral injury reinforces beliefs that the world is unsafe and that people in power cannot be trusted.

My guest today is a survivor of abuse and cultish communities. She leans on her experiences of relational trauma and moral injury in her writing, teaching, and advocacy. The ongoing healing of her relational and betrayal wounds allows her to lead with courage and clarity, especially when it is not easy or convenient.

Jamie Marich, Ph.D. (she/they) speaks internationally on EMDR therapy, trauma, addiction, dissociation, expressive arts, yoga, and mindfulness. They also run a private practice and online training network in their home base of Akron, OH. Marich has written numerous books, notably Trauma and the 12 Steps: An Inclusive Guide to Recovery and Dissociation Made Simple: A Stigma-Free Guide to Embracing Your Dissociative Mind and Navigating Life. She has won numerous awards for LGBT+ and mental health advocacy, specifically in reducing stigma around dissociative disorders through the sharing of her own lived experience.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Jamie learned to have more compassion for her mother as the bystander in the course of writing her memoir
• How asking can I make a change here? can aid in deciding when and how to speak up
• How binary judgments of healthy or unhealthy, healed or unhealed devalue the lifelong journey and process of healing
• How to deflate your own judgments about where others are in their own journeys
• Why leaders in health and wellness spaces need to be wary of one true way thinking
• How Jamie unpacked the concept of forgiveness from her religious childhood and made space for compassion and letting go
• How growing up pretending everything was fine made Jamie value authenticity more fiercely as an adult

Learn more about Dr. Jamie Marich:

• Website
• Redefine Therapy
• The Institute for Creative Mindfulness
• Instagram: @drjamiem, @traumatherapistrants
• TikTok: @traumatherapistrants
• YouTube: @DrJamieMM
• You Lied to Me About God

Learn more about Rebecca:

• rebeccaching.com
• Work With Rebecca
• The Unburdened Leader on Substack
• Sign up for the weekly Unburdened Leader Email

Resources:

• Hidden Brain | Marching to Your Own Drummer with Sunita Sah
• Jonathan Shay, MD, PhD
• Francine Shapiro
• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, Richard Schwartz Ph.D.
• The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World, Desmond Tutu and Mpho Tutu
• EMDR Made Simple: 4 Approaches to Using EMDR with Every Client, Jamie Marich
• Harvey Milk
• Parable of the Sower, Octavia E Butler
• I'm Not That Girl
• Wicked
• Rainbow Brite
• Cats