We watch leaders crash & burn all the time.

We watch with morbid fascination as leaders fall out of grace because their unaddressed pain led them on an unsustainable path of poor choices–even dangerous and deadly choices–to avoid feeling the vulnerability of rejection.

Those times when you experienced the pain of rejection leave their mark because rejection hurts. Like, physically hurts. Neuroscience teaches that this kind of emotional pain is processed similarly to physical pain.

The burdens of social rejection of any kind can become all-consuming in an effort to do whatever it takes to never go through that kind of pain again.

But stepping into leadership means stepping into rejection and being misunderstood. It is just a part of the physics of leading and putting yourself out there in any capacity.

If you are stepping into the title, the power, and the access of leadership as a way to bypass the pain of rejection, it will not go well.

My guest today is an expert–personally and professionally–on addressing the trauma wounds of rejection versus bypassing the pain of vulnerability.

Dr. Frank Anderson is one of the nation's leading mental health professionals as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. Committed to promoting compassion, hope, healing, and non-violence in the world, Frank specializes in the treatment of trauma and dissociation and is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the Internal Family Systems model of therapy. He also travels around the world as a proponent and instructor of the IFS modality.

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