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

 

Transcript:

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Dr. Jamie Marich: Perhaps I value transparency so much because I spent so much of my childhood having a veneer. I still remember being talked to by both parents on the way to family functions or whatnot saying, like, “We can’t show them that anything’s wrong.” I just spent probably the first full 22 years of some degree of my life trying to put on airs or, again, the veneer. For me, authenticity has been the ultimate higher power, that the more authentically I allow myself to live, the better I feel.

[Inspirational Intro Music]

Rebecca Ching: Hello, Unburdened Leaders! Welcome to the latest episode of The Unburdened Leader podcast! Before we dig into the show, I want to encourage you if you have not subscribed, left a rating or a review for the show, I’d love for you to do so, and I’d be honored if you also shared this episode with someone you think may benefit from it. That really helps us get this show in front of more people, and I’d be honored if you shared it with them.

Okay, onto the show! You’ve likely heard the term “the past acts itself out in the present.” Many people commonly use this phrase in helping professions, yours truly, particularly psychotherapy coaching and the like. Difficult life experiences, relationships, jobs, experiences in communities of any kind inform how we show up in the present. What happened in the past informs us, but how we respond to what happened to us also informs us in how we lead and love and care for ourselves and others in the present moment, especially when tensions and vulnerabilities show up.

2:02

Many study and have studied the space between when we feel triggered and when we respond to the trigger. And depending on your story, your capacity and ability to pause and have agency over how you react when you’re hurt, offended, or asked to make a choice outside of your values, and integrity varies, an uninterrogated past often diminishes that space between trigger and response, leading us to make choices that protect us at the moment but only further exacerbate our relational wounds. And these burdens can also lead us to protect ourselves in ways where we make choices outside of our values, leading us to feelings of moral injury because we protect in ways that betray our integrity.

I’m so excited to introduce you to today’s Unburdened Leader guest, as she models what it looks like to live your values instead of just going along to get along.

I’m Rebecca Ching, and you’re listening to The Unburdened Leader, the show that goes deep with humans who navigate life’s challenges and lead in their own ways. Our goal is to learn how they address the burdens they carry, how they learn from them and become better and more impactful leaders of themselves and others.

I recently listened to one of my favorite podcasts called Hidden Brain hosted by the incredible Shankar Vedantem. And while driving my kids, running errands, I always get caught up on my podcasts, and I know I’m not the only one that uses car time to get caught up on their shows, right? And this happens every time I listen to Hidden Brain while I’m driving because I wish I wasn’t because I want to take notes. It’s such a good one, and I want to make sure that we’ll link it into the show notes so you can access it too. But this episode feels — I mean, all these episodes feel timely, but this one felt keenly timely right now as it covers a very common struggle that I know many people face. We silence ourselves in the name of following the rules to be perceived as good rather than bad, disruptive, right?

4:18

There’s so much conditioning here, and they get into that in the show. It’s wild how so many of us, especially women and women of color, protect ourselves with compliance even if it goes against our values. Along with many others, I often discuss the importance of living your values, not just professing them but living them, and that’s hard work and requires a lot of internal fortitude when the stakes are high, when the risks are high, when there’s something to be lost. We quickly default to protecting ourselves and the others we care about at the expense of our values to stay safe. And this podcast really touched on how we’d like to think we’d do this really well, but we fear, like, “Will we really be able to live our values?” Because I see how we can quickly default, understandably, to protecting ourselves and others we care about at the expense of our values to stay safe in the name of protecting our jobs, reputations, physical safety, dignity, and more. And in a world that loves Monday night quarterbacking other people’s behaviors and choices, and holding everyone to a higher standard without doing the same for themselves, yeah, I’m a little annoyed with this, yes, for good reason, right? I have a lot of compassion for those who waver in the face of really challenging situations, especially ones that tap into the echoes of old relational wounds. And I also believe in accountability and staying silent while others are harmed does harm, hard stop.

6:00

In my work, I see time and time again how the hardest betrayals to heal from are not from the perpetrator but from those who were bystanders to the harm being done and did not stand up to those who bullied and abused power. And my training helps me understand how we can all end up silencing ourselves as a form of protection instead of moving into more discomfort, more healthy conflict, and maybe even more consequences by saying what we want, what we think, what we need. And I love this quote by Brené Brown on integrity. She says, “You can choose courage and comfort, but you can’t choose both at the same time.”

Listen, we all need to find comfort and respite because leading from courage all the dang time takes a toll. But in light of what we’re seeing right now in The United States and what leadership is asking federal employees to do, for example, seeing elected officials betray their vows to the constitution, I see how the interaction of relational trauma collides with moral injury, which is different than everyday stress or a trauma response. So psychiatrist Jonathan Shay coined the term “moral injury” back in the nineties when he was doing work with combat veterans. And he says, “Moral injury occurs when a betrayal of what’s right by someone who holds legitimate authority in a high-stakes situation.” And he emphasized in his work that moral injury differs from PTSD, and I would even say any kind of acute stress response, as it centers unethical violations rather than the common anxieties and fears, disconnection, overwhelm caused by trauma.

This is really kind of my brain exploding a little between because when you have a history of relational trauma, especially betrayal, abandonment, neglect, abuse, you’re particularly vulnerable to moral injury too. So when leaders, institutions, or communities violate your moral expectations, it retraumatizes you, reinforcing deeply-held beliefs that the world is unsafe or that people in power cannot be trusted.

8:13

And my Unburdened Leader guest today is a survivor of abuse and cultish communities and leans heavily on her lived experiences in her writing, teaching, and advocacy. I have witnessed her utilize the ongoing healing of her past relational and betrayal wounds to lead with incredible amounts of courage and clarity, especially when it’s not easy or convenient. I see how she lives in her values, leans on community, holds space for her own story and the collective, while using her truly prolific gifts to move everyone forward towards healing, even when healing feels illusive. And I really value how she honors nuance and complexity.

So let me introduce you to someone who’s become a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Jamie Marich. There’s so much I could list here, right? She began her career as a humanitarian aid worker in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 2000s teaching English and music, and she travels all over the world. Every time I look on social media, she’s in some cool place teaching on topics of trauma, EMDR, expressive arts, mindfulness, and yoga. She’s the founder of The Institute for Creative Mindfulness and the developer of Dancing Mindfulness: Approaches to Expressive Arts Therapy.

Jamie is an incredible, prolific author too. There are a ton of incredible books and resources she’s offered for clinicians and laypeople alike. But to name a few, EMDR Made Simple, Trauma and The 12 Steps. But man, the one that I really want to highlight is her most recent book, and I’ll make sure in my show notes to list all of the names of the books that she wrote.

10:03

Make sure to look her up. But her most recent book, You Lied to Me About God: A Memoir, which relays Jamie’s personal journey with spiritual abuse. It released just in 2024, and it is powerful, to say the least. Jamie’s been featured in The New York Times and has won many awards for her advocacy. The Huffington Post published her personal story as being out as a clinical professional with dissociative disorder. Jamie just does so much of putting out herself and her story while helping others learn how to do the same in a way that I really have not seen in the field of mental health. And our conversation is more of a conversation between colleagues than a formal interview as Jamie kept generously asking me questions, so it was more of a back and forth, and I hope you find some needed courage and inspiration in this conversation. So now, please welcome Dr. Jamie Marich to The Unburdened Leader podcast!

Jamie Marich, welcome to The Unburdened Leader podcast! I am so glad to be having this conversation with you today.

Dr. Jamie Marich: I am doubly glad. I just value what you put out in the world and value your friendship, and we had some technical hurdles getting this started today, but here we are, so yay!

Rebecca Ching: I know. We were joking like, “How many therapists does it take to start a podcast?” And we overcome!

There is so much I want to talk to you about. You are very prolific in what you create and what you put out there. But I want to kick off by starting talking about your latest book. It’s a memoir called You Lied to Me About God, which is really worth a read for anybody who has been through spiritual abuse, spiritual trauma. And one of the things that stood out to me is you write about the silence of one of your parents while the other parent abused their power in your life, and I’d love for you to share how that experience shaped both your healing journey and how you define healing today.

12:13

Dr. Jamie Marich: So, just to give a little context to the question, I grew up with two very religious parents. They were both technically Christian, but they were religious in two different denominations. And so, there was a lot of squabbling in my house over who was right, who had the more correct interpretation. And even though both denominations — one was Evangelical, one was Catholic. Even though both denominations could be pretty, in my view now, toxic with some of their theology, especially towards queer people, and that was my experience from when I was very young. I did have one parent who I would code as worse, my father, because he converted. His new religion gave him this feeling of more power and authority to lord over us, which connected with some other forms of abuse.

And as I look at my mother, the more silent parent, it was an interesting experience writing her for this memoir, because now as an adult looking back, I have a lot of compassion for the position that she was in. She was a fawner. I can be a fawner, as somebody who was socialized female in very patriarchal structures like the church and in larger society, and my mom very much had an attitude of, “I don’t want to create conflict.” And on one hand, I could throw her under the bus for that, and I think I have in a few places in the memoir, but I always try to reflect it back on, and this is something I have done too. Is it learned from her? Is it learned from larger society? I think it’s a little bit of both.

Healing, for me though, has meant really taking a look at all of my patterns and where they come from. Even when I think things have been healed or addressed, life reveals more.

14:04

I don’t think that means earlier forms of healing were negated in any way. I think my healing process has been one where I have been able to look at what I am supposed to look at at any given time. And writing this memoir, especially after having so many different kinds of therapy and spiritual healing practices done on me and with me through the years, there was nothing quite like writing this memoir to really take that deep dive into all of the stories and all of the threads that make me me, and the process of both writing it and getting to read it for the audiobook was really the coolest form of insightful exposure therapy, if you will.

Rebecca Ching: Insightful exposure therapy. That’s a take. Well, the reason why I wanted to start off with this question is in my work, in my clinical work, and I think I’ve seen it in everyone, that the most challenging healing is around not the person who harmed as much as those who stood by and did not intervene or stand up or say something.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes.

Rebecca Ching: And I’m just wondering how that’s impacted your healing journey.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Exactly. For a lot of years, I would say the biggest source of my resentment was towards my mother for, part of it was doing nothing, but I think then the other part of it was her belief she worked from that she had to keep the family together. I think part of that was her Catholic theology. The joke I make in the memoir is, “Even though I grew up with all this religion, my mom’s primary gospel is the gospel of what people think.”

Rebecca Ching: Oh, wow.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And so, I don’t know, because looking back, she would still say that she did what was best for myself and my brother by keeping the marriage together even though it was in high conflict. She said, “I think you’ll get more hurt by divorce.”

16:02

Whereas I was kind of begging her for one, even when I was as young as ten years old. And I would say this is a place where I’ve come a long way. In looking back at her, I could say, “Who’s to say if she did the right thing or not?” There have been a lot of years in my life where I wish she did more, where I wish she did differently. Yet, even as I say that, I know that I have now been in those situations, in unhealthy marriages, where the fawn response has been strong with this one. Did I learn that from her? Again, yeah, that’s a lot of what I have maybe had to unpack, but I think if anything, she may not see it this way, but I have more compassion for her having written the memoir as the kind of standby parent.

Rebecca Ching: And there is just a strong — that fawn response is easy to kind of — especially from our training, right? You and I are both trauma experts in the clinical space, and it’s easy to kind of judge that in hindsight. But that shutdown, protective response is powerful, but it also can leave others high and dry. I’m just thinking too, we’re recording this conversation at a time where we’re going into a year where a lot of folks are like, “Do I want to speak up, or do I just want to shut down?”

Dr. Jamie Marich: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: And so, I’ve just been thinking about that in terms of healing, and I’m curious. You are a teacher and a trainer in a modality called EMDR, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing. That’s a mouthful.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes!

Rebecca Ching: I said that clearly! I enunciated that one! And so, you’re leading teams. You’re working with participants. You’re also in a lot of different spaces teaching and educating, and I’m wondering how do you recognize and address silent complicity in leadership spaces or in relationships in those dynamics?

18:00

Dr. Jamie Marich: That’s a hard one because, on one hand, there’s a part of me that wants to say, “I don’t tolerate it, period,” and it has to be called out.

Rebecca Ching: Right. Right.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yet that would be dishonest, because I know that I have engaged in it as well as a leader, as somebody who’s in community. And sometimes I have done it with this notion that I am somehow keeping the peace, or a line I’ve told myself a lot is, “I’m enacting change from within by tolerating a lot.”

So when we talk about silent complicity, “Do I speak up or do I not?” I have a lot of compassion, Rebecca, for a lot of people out of safety who feel that they can’t. Like, I’m a person with dissociative identities, as you know. It’s a part of what I’m very out and vulnerable about, and there were a lot of years where it did not feel safe for me to be out, especially as I built my career. And even now, a lot of people consult with me over wanting to speak up, using that terminology of wanting to be out but feeling like, “There’s still a lot at stake for me if I do.” And I think the very idealistic parts of me want to be like, “Take that risk! That’s what we need for change.” And then perhaps the gentler, more compassionate parts of me can hold the both/and, that two things can be true at the same time. And so, I encourage people to speak up where they can, to make differences where they can, and to constantly be looking at, “Where may I need to take a risk here?”

Something I teach when I do a course on self-disclosure is that all advocacy comes with a degree of risk. And I don’t know, one day I may look back at my life and think I didn’t do enough to speak up in certain contexts, and I also know that there’s a lot involved with that. So even as we’re having this conversation, I’m kind of being challenged to hold the both/and.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, I think hindsight, right?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

20:00

Rebecca Ching: We can always look back. But I think as you say that, I’m like I want to look back, and even if I wish I would have done more, I want to feel like I did the best I could with what I had in the moment. I’d love to feel that way.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And, I don’t know, as I’ve grown as a leader, I’ve tried to look at where are the times in my past I wish people had spoken up, and now that I have more privilege, can I speak up in similar situations? I don’t know, this is a tricky one. This is a tricky one because I have friends, for instance, who have completely walked away from the mental health establishment feeling like, “This whole thing is an industrial complex, and I won’t be complicit to it, and I’m gonna find other ways to make change in the world.” And there are some days I’m right there and that feels like the right thing to do.

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: And there are other days when I know, I see evidence that I am making change in small ways doing what I am doing within institutional structures. Granted, I’ve been a little more creative in how I can do it. I don’t know. But what I do hope I can do is learn. Like, if I see somebody truly being harmed from me not speaking up, I want to be able to look and adjust and say, “Can I make a change here?”

There are so many places I can go with the question. That’s such a good question because another area where I look at all the time with this is the continuing education industry as part of this mental health industrial complex. And I’ve done a lot to speak up in this area. And yes, the big parts of me really do want to burn it all down because I think the way we educate therapists is horrible. And I also know that American therapists are still working within a system where they need continuing education units to keep their license and training is pricey and getting those credits to keep a license is pricey. So even though I can go off and do my own thing with trainings without playing some of the rules to get things accredited, that I’m harming people who still need to access training for their life.

22:09

So there are just always so many complexities here. And as I say that, there’s my nine-year-old part that’s like, “You’re making excuses for yourself!” I don’t know, you know? I don’t know. But you know this about me that I believe there’s always a holding the both/and. Yet I never want that to be an excuse for me if I really see that my not speaking up is causing continued harm.

Rebecca Ching: To me, it’s about the relationship. Earlier today, my daughter, I heard her kind of crying in the room. I said, “What’s wrong?” She’s like, “There’s so much going on in the world.” And I said, “Oh, you’ve got to zoom back in, girlfriend. If we look at it all, we’ll all burn. We’ll all burn. But what are the next steps right in front of you? How do you want to make a difference? How can you make things better than they were by your presence?” And so, I kind of bring that to if we zoom out and kind of want to take, like you were talking about, the mental health field and aspects of training and kind of maintaining our license. I guess this brings me almost to my next question.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: Because you did this reel.

Dr. Jamie Marich: [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: I’ve been wanting to have you on the show for a while, and I’m like, “Okay, this is it!” You did this whole reel kind of about the healing police, and there’s almost this purity culture aspect that I think kind of draws on some of that aspect of Evangelical or fundamentalism that you write a lot about, that I’ve worked with a lot of people with over the years to heal from, and there’s almost this, “Are you good enough?” like your worthiness and safety, and it’s not even the person who’s not feeling well. It’s other people speaking and telling you, “Are you healed?” I think it can go with activism too. And so, I’d love for you to walk me through what you meant by the term “healing police” before we dig in a little bit more.

24:00

Dr. Jamie Marich: So I have heard this in three corners of my life where I’ve operated: in the therapeutic professions, in church and faith settings, and in yoga settings. This idea that, “You’re not healed enough,” or “Real healing is available to you, actual healing is available to you. Yeah, what you’ve done so far has just been coping or it’s just been putting a band-aid on things, or you haven’t fully surrendered yourself yet to what you really need to do.” And in certain communities within all of these contexts, I’ve heard this elitism, this snobbishness, this thing I call the healing police, and I go to the words of Dr. Francine Shapiro, who created EMDR, or a teaching of hers that I really held dearly that this idea of labeling things even as “healthy” and “unhealthy” can be a bit of a value judgment.

And so, she leaned into the terms “adaptive” and “maladaptive” to describe things with the understanding that what is adaptive to me may not be adaptive to you. And a lot of trans and non-binary folks have challenged adaptive and maladaptive even further to say, “That could even get a little binary and judgy. So maybe we talk about things as helpful and less helpful.” That idea has stayed with me, that coming up in 12-Step Recovery, in the church, well, mostly 12-Step Recovery I would hear things like, “Well, that’s not healthy. That’s not a healthy relationship.”

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And I could look back at a lot of the relationships of my life now and be like, “Yeah, of course, those weren’t healthy,” and at the time, that’s what I had the capacity to hold. And I just get concerned when we beat ourselves up for simply being in process with our healing.

The story I tell is I first studied EMDR therapy in 2004, and it worked as well as it was going to work at the time being where I was at in my goals and intentions for life because my hope was to reconcile with my family and have a healthy family myself.

26:05

The EMDR worked for me at that period. It really did help me to get the healing I was supposed to have at that time, but life has continued to happen. Life has continued to reveal more, and the word I use in my book is it’s been a pilgrimage, it’s been a process.

So yeah, I just get concerned when I hear a lot of leaders in all of these different fields really have that elitism about, “Oh, yeah, you’ve done that therapy, but you haven’t had it really until you’ve done this therapy,” or until you have given yourself to God more, like in the religious context, or gone on this cleanse or have adopted this diet. And that is something that I see in all of these fields that I think has really concerned me, and I know I’ve been guilty of it, Rebecca! I’ll call myself out. [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: Me too. Now, I think me too because that’s what I was taught. To me, there’s a power piece here.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: And I’m curious, what do you think fuels so much of this judgment around what constitutes healing, especially health, wellness, faith-based and helping profession spaces? What do you think fuels all that judgment?

Dr. Jamie Marich: I think a lot of the human condition as feeling better about ourselves when we can lord something over people.

Rebecca Ching: Dangit.

Dr. Jamie Marich: That’s what happened with my father when he converted to his Evangelical faith when I was about five years old. It got his power needs met, and I see that in activism spaces too. “I have it figured out. I am the ultimate white liberal here who follows the textbook on all of these causes that I’m supposed to be following,” without having any appreciation for individual experience or nuance or whatnot. Yeah, I think it helps us to feel better about ourselves is what a lot of it is about. Yeah, that’s my short answer.

28:05

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, I mean, there’s also a lot of money to be made in people feeling like they’re broken.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: I just see that so much with, “If you’re still broken, then you need this course, this supplement.” And I think it exploits people who are genuinely, especially those who are chronically suffering physically, emotionally.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And you know the number one rule of marketing, which is, “What are their pain points? How do you appeal to people’s pain points?”

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, I know.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And that’s the thing, that you have not healed yet. There’s still more for you to be had.

Rebecca Ching: You know, but I think that’s the piece is I don’t expect to be fully healed until I breathe my last breath. There’s so much moral meaning around being healed and healthy, and whenever there’s moral meaning there’s shifts.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes, yes.

Rebecca Ching: Whether it’s in activism, whether it’s in health, whether it’s in our field, how we heal and are we healed enough. And I work a lot in the Internal Family Systems spaces, and early in that community, I would hear some people go, “Oh, they’re just in their parts.” And I was like, “Ew.”

Dr. Jamie Marich: “They’re not in Self,” yeah.

Rebecca Ching: “They’re not in Self.” And I was like, “Oh, shit. This is not how –,” you know?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: But it was judging that, and so, I’m grateful Dick Schwartz came out with his book No Bad Parts, you know, all parts really are welcome. It doesn’t mean that they’re helpful or we like them, but there is something where if I have any compassion or curiosity or any kind of bridge with difference with other, I’m either condoning I’m less than, I’m like them. There’s just this — there’s so much fear around it too. And so, there’s something with the healing police that it others. “I am not like them.” You know, obviously, there’s a monetary piece there and a power piece there.

And I actually want to bring this up with respect because I sometimes can be flippant with it, but the Making America Healthy Again, the more I sit with that movement, and as a parent myself, I still feel like this pursuit of healthiness has this intersection of orthorexia, a subclinical eating disorder (the obsession with being healthy), and then purity culture, and it’s particularly around women, right?

30:22

Because purity culture, you know, “Are you clean? Are you pure? Are you tainted?” And that morphs with our identity. And if it’s around our kids, you know, there’s just so much that just goes for such tenderness.

And so, this healing police conversation, even in leading spaces, if someone has a bad day, if someone’s just not at their A game, instead of, “Oh, they’re just not well,” or “Maybe they’re not appropriate for this role,” we go to that judgy place versus, “Ooh, this is not like you. Tell me more. What do you need?”

Dr. Jamie Marich: Here’s, perhaps, a solution. But yeah, I just love what we’re talking about here because I think we need to name this more in mental health spaces. Money and power, yes. Feeling like we’re getting our ego needs met by lording things over people, I think that’s another part of it. And it’s not to say — because I think this is, again, where the both/and comes in as part of the answer. I don’t think there’s anything wrong, at a fundamental level, with setting an intention that I want to be healthier, like I want to —

Rebecca Ching: Totally.

Dr. Jamie Marich: — eat in a way that nourishes my body more or I want to keep working on things, because I, too, believe I’m never gonna reach this pinnacle of healing. Something my first AA sponsor taught me from one of her clients was that when a flower stops growing, the only place it can go is wilting after that. I am more of that model of we’re always recovering. We’re in perpetual growth and healing, and I think a lot of other folks are in this, “You’re healed,” and it’s not an issue anymore. And even as an EMDR trainer, I call out a lot of the problems with some of the marketing around EMDR and the specialty protocols that, “Do this quickly, and you’ll be fixed, and it won’t be an issue ever again,” and that’s, to me, just nonsense, but maybe that’s because I came into my journey through this idea of recovery and that we can always be working on ourselves.

32:23

So yeah, that’s part of the both/and, and I’m thinking of something that one of my dear Reiki teachers taught me. This was about ten years ago. She was kind of calling this out too, that in energy spaces (yoga, lightworker spaces) there’s this, “Ugh, they have bad energy.”

Rebecca Ching: Yes!

Dr. Jamie Marich: “They have good energy.” And she said, “Maybe their energy is just not compatible where mine is at right now, and we’re not supposed to be working together.”

Rebecca Ching: Damn!

Dr. Jamie Marich: Because yeah, as a trainer, as a business owner, as a leader, I often have to make decisions about whether I think a person, a facilitator is a good fit for my organization. And I know I can get into that, “Oh, they’re not healed enough,” or whatever, and it’s like, “Shit, there are so many days I don’t feel healed enough to be doing this work.”

Rebecca Ching: True.

Dr. Jamie Marich: But I followed Valerie’s advice (the Reiki master) of trying to look at is this energy, you know, where they’re at in their “journey,” is it compatible with where mine is at right now, is it resonant? And that also helped me to take so much of the value judgment out of it because in their own energetic space, they may be doing their own good in the world, you know?

Another thing I’ve had to do as a leader of a large training organization is when people want to go and sever from my organization, I need to let them. There were some earlier times in my career I probably didn’t handle it as eloquently as I could have or as elegantly as I could have. But now I ‘ve just really learned that people will make change in the world when they’re able to live in their authenticity. And if that is an energy or a level of healing, and I don’t even want to say level because that’s a metric —

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

34:04

Dr. Jamie Marich: — a quality of healing that is maybe not compatible with what I’m offering right now, then that’s okay. Literally, go in peace. [Laughs] That’s a line from the Catholic mass. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Go in peace to do your healing work in the world.

Rebecca Ching: There’s so much freedom in that surrender —

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: — versus holding on tightly. I was thinking as I was preparing for these questions and talking about the judginess around healing, I realized, for me, I use my judginess as a metric because the things I am most judgmental about are the things I care the most about, right?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: My family —

Dr. Jamie Marich: Ooh.

Rebecca Ching: — my profession, the work I do, my faith, that can send me 0 to 100. So I’m curious, what do you find yourself getting the most judgmental about these days?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Sobriety.

Rebecca Ching: Ooh, say more.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Sobriety, yeah. Yeah, that was coming up for me even as you were talking. So I’ve been 22 years clean and sober from drugs and alcohol. I have had some self-injury relapses over the years, and I’ve addressed those as those have come up. But my sobriety is so important to me.

I got sober at 23, and I don’t believe I would have had anything close — I don’t think I would be alive if I didn’t get sober at 23. That’s the kind of trajectory I was on. And yes, I did come in through an abstinence-based path, and I do believe that is the path for me. Over the years, I had one properly-monitored psychedelic experience to kind of see what everything was happening in that world and to see if it had anything to offer me. But other than that, I guard that sobriety so tightly. And I know I can get judgy, and I keep an open mind more than a lot of people do who came in through the 12 Steps with, yeah, maybe psychedelics is part of your journey, or maybe there are some medical properties of cannabis even if you’ve had an addiction history, that is open.

36:02

So yeah, I’ve had to work on some of that judginess where, because I have had such benefit from abstinence, feeling like, “Oh, well, yeah, that’s good you’re doing what you’re doing, but…” So I’ve got to let that go, but I think why it does get me is because it’s so important to me. I’ve had to do a lot of work over the years about why I have — wow, okay. You just helped me hit at something. [Laughs] And I write about this in the memoir, so it’s connected. Why have I chosen addictive partners, even as somebody whose sobriety is so important to me, and is that because I’m trying to prove to myself I’m not judgy? I’m gonna look at that.

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Leading is hard. It feels a little crazy to say because you’re like, “Duh, leading is hard.” Leading is also controversial (oh, my gosh, it’s really controversial right now) as you navigate staying aligned to your values, your mission, and your boundaries. Does it feel like sometimes they all just get blown up when you’re just trying to figure out how to take the next step, right? But navigating the inevitable controversy can challenge your confidence, clarity, and calm, and there’s no time like right now when that’s happening. I know you don’t mind making hard decisions, but sometimes (right?) the stakes seem higher and can bring up echoes of old doubts and insecurities during times when you need to feel rock solid in your plan and action.

Finding a coach who gets the nuances of your business and leading in our very complex and polarized world can help you identify the blocks that keep you playing it safe and small and even staying silent even when it’s not aligned with your values. Leading today is not a fancy title or fluffy bragging rights. It is brave and bold work to stay the course when the future is so unknown and the doubts and pains from the past keep showing up to shake things up. Internal emotional practices and systemic strategies are needed to keep the protector of cynicism at bay and foster a hope that is actionable and aligned.

38:17

When the stakes are high and you don’t want to lose focus, when you want to navigate inevitable conflict between your ears and with those you lead, when time is of the essence and you want to make hard decisions with confidence and clarity, then Unburdened Leader Coaching is for you and where you’ll deepen the capacity to tolerate the vulnerability of change, innovation, and doing things differently than you were taught as we go through some of the core pillars of unburdened leadership. I call them my Capacity Catalysts. Isn’t that shnazzy? So, to start your Unburdened Leader Coaching process with me go to www.rebeccaching.com and book a free connection call. I can’t wait to hear from you!

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: I’m curious, then, as an educator, teacher, leader in kind of the healing space, how can those of us, even if they’re not in clinical spaces, how do you see those in positions of power, how can they avoid perpetuating harmful narratives around healing?

Dr. Jamie Marich: I don’t know if this is the answer, but I’ll tell you what I do. Part one, day one of EMDR trainings, obviously, I’m training this modality because I believe so heavily in it, because I’ve benefited from it, because I’ve seen it work wonders in people’s lives. But I preface every training with saying, “This is not a panacea. It may not be the answer for everyone.” Yet, it’s what I believe and what I am sharing, and I welcome you here, and my expectation is never that you’re going to become fully invested in the EMDR approach to therapy. If you want it, it’s here for you.

40:00

But I think even as somebody who is pretty dedicated to her modality, I recognize the beauty in other modalities. I like to say, as an EMDR trainer, “EMDR plays well with other modalities, if you let it.” And that is something that feels just way too, “Ahh,” scary to some other people in the EMDR world who can get really regimented about, “Well, if you just follow the protocol,” or “Research shows that this specialty protocol is showing, so if we just follow these steps, we don’t need to water it down with all these other modalities.” I’m like — maybe, Rebecca, it’s because I grew up religious and being impacted by religion so heavily, that when I hear these themes happen in therapeutic spaces about, “Our way is the way,” come on.

Rebecca Ching: Danger, danger. [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: No, but I was that person with theory, and I think we can do it with politics. We can do it with faith. We can do it with types of working, you name it. Like, “If you really are good, are you a purist?” Those are conversations I would hear around my former team around theory. “Are they a purist?” I’m like, “Oh, my gosh. How about are you human? Are you human?” And being with humans is messy and complex. There’s no manual, protocol, a decision tree. The thing what I love that you pointed out about, “This is what works for me. It may not work for you,” so many people have built healing brands and platforms based on, “This is what I did. Now this is what you can do.”

Dr. Jamie Marich: “It worked for me. It can work for you.”

Rebecca Ching: And that’s led so many people to facedown moments in my office. [Laughs] So I appreciate — it’s so great to be open about our sharing story, but to say, “This is for me. It doesn’t necessarily have to be for you,” I think that is a great place for us to watch how we communicate our stories of healing or our expectations around healing.

One thing I want to get your take on too is, at least for me, I’ve just been thinking about this a lot lately, is the intersection of healing and forgiveness and how they come together in, at least for me, it’s been very complex. How do you navigate the space between healing and forgiveness?

42:15

Dr. Jamie Marich: I’ve been asked this question a lot.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, have you?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Because I do have a section in one of the chapters called “The Paradox of Forgiveness” —

Rebecca Ching: Oh, that’s right.

Dr. Jamie Marich: — and what forgiveness has meant to me because growing up in the church, the churches I did, anyway, forgiveness was this very convenient theology that abusive systems would use to essentially wash their hands of wrongdoing. It was, “Well, if you can’t move past this, you have the unforgiving spirit.”

And forgiveness was put out there as this incredible virtue, but it got people off the hook. So I grew up with a really warped view of forgiveness. And, as I’ve shared, there was a time in my life where I did a lot of surface-level forgiveness, because that’s what the church told me I had to do. But then as I got into more of my own therapeutic work, I realized there’s digging to do here, there are feelings to feel here. The funny thing is I believe right now I’m at a place where I have forgiven both of my parents. They wouldn’t see it that way because I’m talking about these things publicly, but I’m truly at this point in my life where what happened, happened. I can see even the places they acted from with a lot of compassion. And so, some people may say that’s more acceptance than forgiveness, that I realize I can’t change the past and I’m moving on from it.

But I don’t know, to me, forgiveness is such a theologically-loaded word that when a client even asks me a question like, “Do I have to forgive in order to heal? Do I have to forgive in order to move on?” I try to unpack it as, “Well, what does that even mean for you, forgiveness?”

44:02

Because I think it can mean different things for different folks if they grew up in the church or the churches or institutional religion, it certainly means potentially a lot of different things.

So I don’t think you have to forgive, in a theological sense, to heal and move on. However, I would ask, “What are you doing, as part of your healing, to actively keep that or to let go of that poison?” if you will. I don’t know if there’s any sense in that because I think, if anything, my answer shows how complicated my relationship with the term can still be. But I like the idea of a pardoning as well, like, “Hey, what happened, happened. I’m not going to let the stuff you did to me impact me going forward,” and if you want to call that forgiveness, great. If you want to call it something else, great.

I’m curious, if I can turn the question back on you, how you see forgiveness.

Rebecca Ching: Well, I share a lot of similarities in my journey with it, feeling this pressure, and that if I really forgave, I wouldn’t be saying anything “negative” about my true lived experience. And that really did a number on me for years. And then reading Desmond Tutu’s book on forgiveness, this concept of forgiveness is 90% about me and 10% about the other, and the 90% is about freedom from what was done or said or the harm caused, and that it doesn’t mean forgetting and that it doesn’t mean I don’t have — forgiveness is not re-entering back into my life as things were.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes.

Rebecca Ching: And that just felt like, “I could do that.” That just felt liberating. It still was messy because it’s enforcing that, you know? And there’s like, “Wait!” The expectation, especially with folks who have positions of power in our life, in our family lineage, and I think in the church too. I saw many spaces where it’s like, “Forgiven! Hugs! Yay! Alleluia!” And then I would have a hard time because I’m an occupational hazard. I know a lot more that’s going on behind the scenes, and I’m like, “This is performative.”

46:20

Dr. Jamie Marich: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: And so, I think also for a while I was just rejecting it, but once I realized that it’s an internal process for me and that it was releasing me and there was differentiation that happened, I unblended, I became less enmeshed with the person and the harm done, and then that really was freeing to me, and it just kind of gave me space. And then also just not forgetting, and the remembering with forgiveness is pretty powerful. It’s empowering, I’ve found, and it’s messy, totally. And then the boundaries piece is really — and I know we throw these words around a lot, but, you know, what’s okay and not okay, as Brené Brown says. You know, “This is okay moving forward.” It doesn’t mean everyone’s gonna agree with me. I think that was the piece that was the buzzkill of, “Oh, wait. Not everyone thinks that I am where I know I am.” [Laughs] But then kind of releasing that going, “All right,” you know, and just focusing on moving forward.

But I know that when I am still embittered, I fall into self-righteousness, and I know that I’ve gotten some more forgiving to do, and those are kind of some of my data points when I’m resentful or self-righteous, that I need to move forward.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And as we’re talking about this, something that’s clicking as probably what’s been most helpful for me over the years is a concept I learned in 12-Step Recovery on how to work with resentment, which is you pray for the person or thing you resent, and if you’re not a praying person, I think loving kindness meditation is a really good way to, essentially, send well wishes to the people who have harmed you. Now, that’s hard because even in 12-Step work, there’s this idea that if you can’t pray for the person you resent, maybe pray for the willingness to start praying for them.

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]

48:21

Dr. Jamie Marich: And I have tried that many times, and for me anyway — I’m not saying it’s gonna work for you. I’m not promising this as a quick fix — I have found it to be incredibly effective. And so, it’s really this whole idea of how do I neutralize resentments. I think that’s the concept that I have resonated with the most and probably over a term like forgiveness.

Rebecca Ching: Yeah, and going back to what you were referencing earlier around energy and kind of the Reiki concepts of energy, I think just, “What’s my energy around this?” That’s something I kind of check. What am I putting out there? What am I feeling? Yeah, to be able to acknowledge that harm’s been done or a breach of trust and still stay connected within and without. Yeah, but sometimes I need to convalesce for a long time. Sometimes I’m in timeout for a while. So I think that’s the game: permission. Permission to have time out.

Another thing you touched on a little bit, and when I first came upon your work, you have an Instagram handle called @traumatherapistrants.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes.

Rebecca Ching: And I felt like it was like my own, “Hallelujah,” choir singing when I was like — you make these reels, and I was like, “Damn! She said that! Damn, she went there!” [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: “I’ve been thinking of this for so long!” you know? I just was like, “Oh, my gosh!” And I’m sure you’ve heard that from so many people, and one of the things, as I’m going on my third decade of, you know, just around 21 years of doing the clinical work, what I’ve been doing coaching and mentoring and consulting, all that stuff for this time. But you have such a high value on transparency in a field that says, “This is not about you, it’s about the client.”

Dr. Jamie Marich: Mm-hmm.

50:06

Rebecca Ching: And so, I’m curious, what motivates you to stay transparent and do all these cool reels where you’re saying the things that so many of us are thinking even when it feels risky?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Perhaps I value transparency so much because I spent so much of my childhood having a veneer. I still remember being talked to by both parents on the way to family functions or whatnot saying, “We can’t show them that anything’s wrong.” And I just spent probably the first full 22 years of some degree of my life trying to put on airs or, again, the veneer. That’s always the word that has meant the most. So, for me, authenticity has been the ultimate higher power, that the more authentically I allow myself to live, the better I feel. It’s really as simple as that.

And of course, I get it. I do a whole course on this. I’ve had to do a lot of this work for myself, understanding the professional ethics around when you don’t want to overload a person with self-disclosure, etcetera. Because I think what happens in the client space is fundamentally different than what we might do in the public forum. Yet the reason I’ve — and the more privilege I’ve built, I’ll be honest, it’s made it easier to speak out I think. Yeah, I don’t know.

When I first came in the field even, there were a lot of feathers I ruffled, especially in EMDR circles because I just had this sense of, “This isn’t right, what we’re doing, and I’m not going to go back to church again.” And I have, since my first book EMDR Made Simple, I’ve written about how the therapeutic world can feel like religion in so many ways. And yeah, I love that line from the movie Jerry Maguire when he writes the memo: “The things we think and do not say.”

52:11

And that’s just always been very important to me, and I know I’m still probably holding back on some other things too, but as the necessity comes to speak up, I think I will. It’s not lost on me that a lot of people don’t like what I have to say. But to hear someone like you say, “Yes! Somebody’s saying it!” I’ve just had enough feedback of gratitude that it’s inspired me to keep moving on.

Rebecca Ching: What role does the motivations behind transparency play to you? I ask because there is this big, “Be authentic! Be vulnerable! Be real!” to leaders, like, “This is how you connect!” And it’s almost a box to check. I’ve realized when I work with the leaders that I work with and they talk about this, I’m like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow the roll. If your agenda has a motive to change people or wanting to move people versus connect on a deeper level. What is your agenda there? Because if it’s trying to manipulate, that’s not vulnerability, that’s not transparency.” So I’m curious how you discern and check your motivations when you’re rumbling with what to share that’s transparent.

Dr. Jamie Marich: I mean, I go back to something that I did learn in my — and I don’t know where exactly I learned this in my clinical training. It was probably from my recovery sponsor, honestly, who was also a clinician. “Is there a good reason for me to be sharing this?” So, you know, that goes to your question about motivation.

So in the client space, I always will ask, “Am I doing this to make it about me because I like talking about myself, or by sharing this thing about myself, will it create a point of connection that will truly be helpful to the client?” And that’s where I like this EMDR idea of you stay out of the way as much as possible, and you intervene only when needed.

Rebecca Ching: Mm-hmm.

54:08

Dr. Jamie Marich: Now, more of my public forum life, I don’t know, I may have to think on that one a little further because this did not all happen at once. It’s been a progressive process for me. And I think a lot of what motivates me is continuing to see the therapeutic professions, in many ways, missing the point. It’s a both/and for me because I value EMDR therapy, obviously, and I also have concerns about some of the institutionalization around it. So I think my speaking up, even coming out about a person with a dissociative system and being a dissociative system, the reason I did that is I felt that a lot of the establishment teaching on DID is very pathologizing, and I saw that trickle into the EMDR world, and so, my speaking up clearly came with this reason of, “Hey, me too.” This shit you’re talking about people with dissociative disorders, we are amongst you. And so, I think it is, if anything, like a coming-out process.

And I’ve been long inspired by Harvey Milk and his advocacy as the first openly gay mayor of an American city. And he very much, as mayor of San Francisco and mobilizing people in that city said, “We have to start coming out because our families, our neighbors won’t just know how common this is or how many of us are amongst them,” and of course he took some backlash for that because some people felt it wasn’t safe to come out or didn’t know if that would do any good. But when I first saw Sean Penn deliver that teaching in the movie, it was this boom of, “Yeah! That’s how we enact change.” In the corner of the world I occupy, in the therapy professions, being a bit of a misfit but a bit of a beloved renegade amongst certain people, I do what I can to be out.

56:10

Rebecca Ching: And one thing that struck me by watching and learning from you and just being in relationship with you is it really is guided by values, and I think that’s one thing I’m taking away from this kind of choosing to be transparent, leading with your values, and there’s a lot of thought. It’s not reactive. You really rumble with that, and I’ve learned a lot watching you navigate what to say publicly, what fights to pick, which ones to kind of say, “This is not my rodeo.” But yeah, I really think transparency when I show up, if I’m gonna share something that is personal, maybe even private, is it aligned with my values, or is there an agenda there. And I think that’s kind of what I’m flushing out as I’m hearing you talk and thinking about when we speak up, especially we’re gonna have a lot of opportunities to decide where do we need to be transparent. And there’s something — that connect of, like, “Okay, right now I don’t have it in me to speak up, but they did,” and there’s a gratitude in that. And other times we can be in that and that role to be transparent.

Dr. Jamie Marich: So the word agenda is an interesting word because I think it’s one of those words that can have a pejorative connotation, but it really is fundamentally a neutral word.

Rebecca Ching: Ooh.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And I grew up hearing the gay agenda as this pejorative, right, in the church.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, gosh.

Dr. Jamie Marich: And I really like some of the memes that have been made and commentary that, “Yeah, the gay agenda is to stay alive.” I always say motive is another word like that. Motive can have a pejorative connotation. “What’s your motive?” It just means push. Agenda means you have a list of things you want to get done, so I don’t think it’s bad to have an agenda, necessarily. My agenda is —

Rebecca Ching: So then what’s our agenda? Then what’s my agenda here?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yes. Correct.

Rebecca Ching: Okay, I appreciate that a lot.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah! Yeah, I’m just like, “What’s the agenda here? What’s my motive?” And if my motive is ever to get my ego needs met, I’m in dangerous territory.

Rebecca Ching: You know, Jamie, you’re right because we always have frickin’ agendas, and we always have motivations.

Dr. Jamie Marich: [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: There’s always something.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Right.

Rebecca Ching: And underneath that is to get needs met, so how are we going about that. So yeah, this is a good rumble. I appreciate that. Oh, my gosh, Jamie. I think I’ll probably have to have you come back on the show to talk about so much more.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Oh, I love talking to you!

Rebecca Ching: Before we go, I’d love for you to partake in our traditional quickfire questions that I ask.

Dr. Jamie Marich: I’m so excited to do these!

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs] I’ll start by asking what are you reading right now?

Dr. Jamie Marich: I am reading Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower.

Rebecca Ching: Dude.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Someone recommended it to me as a good dystopian thing that was written in the nineties, and yeah, I’m glad I’m reading it right now.

Rebecca Ching: What song are you playing on repeat?

Dr. Jamie Marich: “I’m Not That Girl” from Wicked. Cynthia Erivo’s new version. One of my theme songs, especially as I go through this season of grief.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, my gosh. What is the best TV show or movie that you’ve seen recently?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Wicked.

Rebecca Ching: Hello!

Dr. Jamie Marich: [Laughs] Right?

Rebecca Ching: Hello! Now I’m gonna have “Defying Gravity” going through my head the rest of the day, which gladly can take up rent.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Of course!

Rebecca Ching: What is your favorite eighties piece of pop culture?

Dr. Jamie Marich: I have to pick just one? Ugh, you know, I came of age in the eighties, so Rainbow Brite. I had a Rainbow Brite doll.

Rebecca Ching: [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: She is a protector figure for me. Yeah.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, Rainbow Brite. I haven’t thought about her for a while.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Mm-hmm.

Rebecca Ching: What is your mantra right now?

Dr. Jamie Marich: I don’t know if I have just one. That I’m not gonna let the fuckers win.

Rebecca Ching: Ooh. What is an unpopular opinion you hold? I’m cracking up as I ask you this. [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: Just one?

Rebecca Ching: Just one! [Laughs]

1:00:06

Dr. Jamie Marich: Okay, because I share a lot of my unpopular opinions in the field, in pop culture, I actually lived the film version of Cats.

Rebecca Ching: Oh, jeeze. Dang, that’s gutsy of you! [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: I know! [Laughs]

Rebecca Ching: Dang! [Laughs]

Dr. Jamie Marich: I thought it was — yeah, I liked it.

Rebecca Ching: Well, Taylor was in it, right?

Dr. Jamie Marich: Yeah!

Rebecca Ching: So maybe that’ll get it some props. [Laughs] Who or what inspires you to be a better leader and human?

Dr. Jamie Marich: This is not just to kiss up but I’m going to say you.

Rebecca Ching: What!

Dr. Jamie Marich: I always say whoever I’m sitting with is the person that is my teacher in that moment.

Rebecca Ching: Aww.

Dr. Jamie Marich: Because I’m very big about don’t just have one teacher, one guru, and whoever you are sitting with is your teacher in that moment. So I’m gonna say you!

Rebecca Ching: Well, that’s an honor. That’s an honor. Thank you so much. Well, before we go, where can people find you?

Dr. Jamie Marich: So a lot of places! My best centralized website is just www.jamiemarich.com. That’s the English version of my name. Sometimes I’ll stylize it the Croatian way. But www.jamiemarich.com. I also have a resources site called www.redefinetherapy.com. And my training company for EMDR is www.instituteforcreativemindfulness.com. You already plugged @traumatherapistrants. It’s on both Instagram and TikTok, and I also have a pretty big YouTube presence, so if you search my name you’ll find me!

Rebecca Ching: Wonderful! We’ll make sure to link to everything. Jamie, thank you for taking the time and coming on the show. This was a real honor to talk with you today!

Dr. Jamie Marich: A great pleasure. Thanks, Rebecca!

[Inspirational Music]

Rebecca Ching: Before you go, I want to ensure you take away some key nuggets from this Unburdened Leader conversation with Dr. Jamie Marich, and Jamie shared how healing meant looking at all her patterns and how life continues to reveal what needs to be healed, even when she thought things had been healed and addressed.

1:02:10

That is such a common sentiment I have heard both in my clinical work and my coaching work. It’s like, “Why am I still struggling with this?” And I just love that Jamie noticed life just keeps revealing things. And she noted how activism comes with a degree of risk. I think that’s something I hear from folks these days too that want to stand up and want to do more. “I want to do the right thing, but I’m scared,” for really good reasons. And Jamie reminded us of all the tensions, of holding the both/and, of perspectives and sides and issues, but I love how she said, “I don’t want to lean on that as an excuse not to speak up, especially if staying silent does harm to self or others,” right? She encouraged us not to beat ourselves up for not being perfect in our very human desires to be helpful.

So I’m curious, what stood out to you in this conversation? What support do you need so you can make courageous decisions instead of self-silencing or becoming complicit? And how do you look at your own healing practice after listening to Jamie share some of her story?

Now, I also really value how Jamie noted that we can make the most impact in the spaces we live and lead when we’re not masking and hiding but living in our true authenticity, and this authenticity is what she called her ultimate higher power, and that the more we live into that, the more we connect with our personal power and our ability to really make an impact around us. And this is truly the ongoing work of an Unburdened Leader.

Y’all, thank you all so much for joining this episode of The Unburdened Leader. You can find this episode, show notes, and free Unburdened Leader resources, along with ways to work with me at www.rebeccaching.com.

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1:04:03

Don’t forget to sign up for my new  Substack called (surprise, surprise) The Unburdened Leader. So I hope to see you there so we can talk a little bit more about this podcast and some things going on real time, so I hope to see you over on Substack. And I want to thank the amazing team at Yellow House Media who produced this episode! Thank you so much for listening, and don’t forget to leave a rating, review, and share this episode with folks you think might benefit from it. I’m so glad you listened today. Thank you for being here!

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