Trauma-Informed Leadership: How Unhealed Trauma Impacts High-Achieving Leaders

My unhealed trauma made me a good leader until it didn’t.

For years, I was praised for being organised, responsive, detail-oriented, and “on top of everything.” I wore those labels like badges of honour. But beneath them was a nervous system working overtime to keep me safe. I wasn’t leading, I was coping.

Understanding Trauma in Leadership

When most people think of trauma, they imagine big life events: tragic accidents, illness, natural disasters. These are “Big T” traumas—undeniable, overwhelming, and visible. But trauma is not always loud. It doesn’t always look like crisis.

“Little t” trauma is quiet, subtle, and accumulative. It might be a parent who was emotionally unavailable, a teacher who repeatedly dismissed your worth, or years of being praised only when you performed. Over time, these experiences leave a mark on the nervous system one that can shape how we show up as leaders.

How Trauma Showed Up in My Leadership

I didn’t feel safe in stillness. I controlled outcomes to create a sense of inner safety. I micromanaged, not because I didn’t trust my team, but because I didn’t know how to feel safe unless I was across everything.

It worked. Until it didn’t.

As I stepped into more senior roles, the strategy that once kept me “successful” started to fail me. I couldn’t do it all anymore. Delegation wasn’t optional it was necessary. And when I let go of control, the anxiety I’d buried for years began to rise.

That’s when I realised: what I thought was high performance was often hyper vigilance. What looked like leadership was a nervous system stuck in fight or flight.

My Turning Point

Over 15 years ago, I sat down one Friday night, wine in hand, ready to relax and couldn’t. I told my husband, “I need to fold the washing, make a list… just do something.”

That moment cracked something open in me. Within weeks, I discovered how trauma locks us in the sympathetic nervous system, where we’re wired to stay on high alert.

Especially if you’ve experienced childhood trauma, your baseline becomes “on guard.”

From there, I dove deep into the world of nervous system regulation, somatic healing, mindset, and trauma-informed leadership.

Healing Tools That Changed Everything

• Breathwork for stress relief: Simple techniques that brought me out of the fight-or-flight loop and into a place of calm presence. Nervous System regulation is no longer a nice to have, it's a must have for any leader.

• Somatic Experiencing: Learning to listen to the messages my body had been storing for decades. It’s not just the mind that remembers our bodies hold it all.

• Human Design: This added another dimension showing me how my energy type and decision making blueprint uniquely shaped my trauma informed leadership and stress responses.

• Executive Coaching: Trauma informed coaching gave me space to unpack the protective patterns that no longer served me. It helped me rebuild from the inside out.

The Takeaway: Awareness Precedes Change

My unhealed trauma made me a good leader, until it no longer did.

True leadership starts with self-awareness. And self-awareness leads to healing.

You don’t have to lead from urgency, anxiety, or over achieving. You can lead from calm, connection, and clarity.

Healing trumps hustling.

If you’ve been running on adrenaline, chasing external success while craving inner peace, you are not alone. And it’s not your fault. But it is within your power to shift.

Your nervous system isn’t your enemy. It’s your guide. When you learn to listen, regulate, and align you lead differently.

You lead from wholeness.

Book your Human Design coaching session to discover your signature nervous system blueprint and learn to lead from alignment over control:

Human Design Session with Kathryn

Love Kath VDS xx