How Trauma Affects Your Entrepreneurial Brain

How trauma affects your entrepreneurial brain isn’t just emotional — it’s neurological, and it’s impacting your business more than you think.

You’re not stuck.
You’re just full and need to be flushed (yup, we talk about your brain and how it’s compared to a toliet during this episode)

Full of stories you weren’t ready to face at the time.
Full of thoughts you never meant to repeat.
Full of coping skills that helped you survive — but are now sabotaging your future.

Sound a little too familiar?

If you’re the kind of woman who is smart, self-aware, emotionally intelligent and still feels stuck in her thoughts or patterns…

This week’s episode of The Unstoppable SheEO Podcast is REQUIRED healing.

And yes—we’re talking real healing here.
Not “journal this real quick and manifest your next breakthrough.” I mean healing through therapy. Real conversations. Safe people. New neural pathways. The actual work.

🎧 Listen to Episode 3 | “The Trauma Loop: Why You Keep Attracting Chaos (And How to Finally Stop)
” → [LINK]

But first, let me walk you into what makes this one of the most powerful episodes we’ve released.

Let’s just get it out there: therapy gets a bad rep

For years, therapy was seen as “what you do when you’re falling apart.”

So we talked ourselves out of getting the help.
“I’m strong. I’m good. It’s not that deep.”
Or worse…
“If I open that door, I won’t recover.”

But the truth is…

The strongest women need therapy the most.
Why? Because we’re not just living in the present.

We’re carrying:

• Old beliefs installed in childhood
• Identity-wounding moments that never got processed
• Coping patterns we called personality
• Stories that got stuck because our body never fully felt safe again

And you know what happens when you never deal with it?

It leaks everywhere.
Into your business.
Into your parenting.
Into your boundaries.
Into the stories you silently tell yourself every single day.

That’s where healing through therapy comes in.
And that’s exactly what today’s episode is about.

Meet Leshana — my actual therapist

Today, I invited someone very special behind the mic — my own trusted therapist: Leshana Morris, licensed marriage and family therapist with over 27 years in trauma recovery.

We talk about what happens when trauma isn’t processed, how it shows up in your patterns, and why EMDR therapy is one of the most powerful (yet misunderstood) tools for healing.

She breaks it down in a way that makes sense—using analogies we’ll never forget. (💩Let’s just say there’s a toilet metaphor and it actually hits.)

You’ll hear:

• How trauma actually gets “stuck” in the brain
• Why healing doesn’t mean reliving it — it means releasing it
• What most people confuse about coping vs healing
• What EMDR really does to move pain through the body and brain
• And how one client memory literally brought me to tears mid-session

How Trauma Affects Your Entrepreneurial Brain (Even When You Think You’re “Fine”)

Let’s sit on that for a minute.

Because it’s honestly one of the biggest ah-ha moments from this episode.

Your trauma didn’t break you.
It gave your brain a moment it couldn’t fully finish. And when the moment didn’t integrate? It stayed stuck—looping through your nervous system, crafting a story, trying to keep you “safe.”

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) helps you go back to those moments safely, in the presence of someone trained, and finally process what your body never got to release.

It’s not re-living.
It’s re-naming what happened — from truth.

You get to say:

I wasn’t wrong. I was scared.
I wasn’t broken. I was surviving.
I wasn’t weak. I was never given the tools.

And in doing this?

You free up space in your brain and body to…
Think clearly.
Create from purpose.
Lead from peace.
Love without fear.
And finally know what it feels like to be you — not just your defense mechanisms.

How Trauma Disrupts Your Leadership and Mental Clarity

It’s about thinking better as an entrepreneur

Another jaw-dropping moment from the episode? When Leshana explained that most of us are operating on outdated, unchallenged stories formed decades ago.

90% of the 60,000 thoughts we think each day… are repeated from the day before.
And 80%? Negative.

You might have heard:

“You’re not a leader.”
“You’re too much.”
“No one cares what you have to say.”
“I wouldn’t ever do it that way.”

Here’s what you didn’t realize…

Those weren’t just words.
They became actual beliefs—hardwired neural pathways that now run on autopilot in your brain.

So when you go to step out in business? Build that program? Hire that team?
Those thoughts flood your body with fear and hesitation… before your logic ever has a chance to respond.

Healing through therapy creates space to interrupt those loops—and replace them.

You learn to see those thoughts for what they are (unprocessed stories), instead of who you are.

The Brain-Business Connection: How Unhealed Trauma Sabotages Growth

Leshana shared that one of the most powerful components of healing isn’t the technique.

It’s the safe space.

That might wreck you a little, because…
Some of us have been waiting for decades just to feel safe enough to say things like:

• “That hurt me.”
• “I’m not okay.”
• “I don’t want to feel this way forever.”

And in the right room, with the right person?

That moment alone can begin the healing.

So step one isn’t “figure it out.”
Step one is get in safe relationship, where you’re held with compassion, not judged by performance.

And if that feels terrifying or too vulnerable?

Welcome to that safe space community, girl.

How Trauma Affects Your Entrepreneurial Brain Even When You Think You’re “Fine”

Listen, I’m not here to sell you on healing just so you feel better on the inside (although that’s enough!).
I’m here to tell you it TRANSFORMS how you show up in every area of your life.

Especially business.

Leshana has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs who were silently tormented by toxic thought patterns—and didn’t even realize it until they were burned out, bitter, or bawling in their car between meetings.

You know what most of them shared?

That fear of rejection, self-doubt, or imposter syndrome wasn’t really about the business.
It was early pain.
Early rejection.
Complicated family dynamics.
Internalized lies about safety, identity, and success.

When you heal?
You get access to your full mental bandwidth again.
You get to lead people without reacting from your own wounds.
You get to see yourself clearly—for maybe the first time.

A final truth to sit with: The Silent Ways Trauma Impacts Your Success as an Entrepreneur

🎧 Tap here to listen now
Or binge it later when you ugly cry in your car. I won’t judge.

Ready to start your confidence journey?

Here’s what you can do right now:

1. Grab the Free Confidence Journal

It’s not woo-woo. It’s not fluff. It’s filled with powerful prompts to help you start replacing the lies you’ve been repeating—so you can walk in truth.
👉 Download yours at TheUnstoppableSheEO.com

2. Reach out to LiveWell Counselors

Leshana and her team provide therapy and coaching for women exactly like you—ambitious, tired, and ready for root-level transformation.
You can work with them via Zoom from anywhere.
👉 Explore support at LiveWell.Counselors.com