Leading Through Burnout, Trauma and Stress

🎧 Episode Synopsis

In this deeply human episode of The Workplace Therapy Podcast, we’re joined by renowned trauma clinician and leadership mentor, Anna Pinkerton. With over 30 years of experience helping high-performing leaders recover from chronic stress, burnout, and emotional collapse, Anna invites us to look inward—at the patterns of self-cruelty many of us carry silently through our professional lives.

We explore Anna’s frameworks of inner brutality and emotional palette restriction, the link between unresolved trauma and leadership dysfunction, and the grieving that often accompanies healing. If you've ever felt like your harshest critic is yourself—or if you're leading others who are quietly suffering—this episode offers a compassionate roadmap forward.

📝 Show Notes

Key Themes:

  • What Anna calls “inner brutality”—and why it’s more dangerous than a simple inner critic

  • How unprocessed emotions and self-haranguing stall leadership development

  • Why grieving lost years is a crucial (and often missed) step in healing

  • The consequences of restricting our emotional palette—and how to reclaim it

  • What leaders must understand about emotional intelligence if they want to lead people, not just performance

Timestamps:

  • 05:00 – The moment Anna discovered “inner brutality” and how it shows up in professionals

  • 17:40 – Why most adults only use a fraction of their full emotional palette—and what we lose in the process

  • 30:35 – The grief that comes with realizing you’ve spent years mistreating yourself

  • 35:00 – How organizations perpetuate emotional suppression (and what to do about it)

Guest Bio:
Anna Pinkerton is a trauma specialist, leadership advisor, and the founder of Kindness Incorporated. She’s the author of Smile Again and My Kind of Life in Leadership, and a globally respected voice on kindness-informed leadership. Her mission is to help people heal—and lead—without emotional self-violence.

Resources Mentioned:

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