episode
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Inner Healing

Healing Trauma— How to Break Cycles, Heal From Trauma, & Restore Your Faith With Trauma Therapist Kobe Campbell

Episode Notes

Do you struggle to let go of pain from your past?

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If so, you don't want to miss today's episode! Kobe Campbell is a trauma therapist and the author of Why am I Like This? She joins me today to discuss her own journey through healing trauma and insight from her work as a trauma therapist.

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Here’s what we cover:‍

1. Kobe’s personal experience with trauma

2. The burden she picked up as a twin

3. How she found a therapist

4. Can you heal from trauma?

5. Kobe’s favorite tools for healing trauma

6. How to advocate for yourself with a therapist

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‍Thanks to our sponsors:

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‍Additional Resources:

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Related Episodes:
  • Episode 97: I Shouldn't Feel This Anxious—Insights on Trauma & Healing with Monique Koven
  • Episode 4: What Do I Need To Know About Trauma?

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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik

© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.‍

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Transcript:

Alison: Hey everyone. Welcome back to this week's episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am thrilled that you're here for this series where I'm getting to talk to some amazing therapists and mental health experts and thought leaders at the intersection of faith and mental health.

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This is so fun for me. I love this intersection. You all know that I talk about it every single week and it's really a treat for me this summer to bring to you the benefit of so many others out there who are providing some great resources in this integrated space.

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Before we dive in, remember–if you have questions about a specific area of therapy, a specific issue, a specific diagnosis, or a specific approach to therapy, please leave us your questions. If you have any questions based on these conversations we're having with different experts throughout this series, please leave us your questions. You can find me on Facebook or Instagram @DrAlisonCook and leave a comment for me under any post.

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We'll also link to The Best of You Podcast question form in the show notes. So you can leave your questions there, or you can email us at info@dralisoncook.com. We are always looking for feedback from you about what you want us to address, what questions you have, and how we can help you on this healing journey. 

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Today's guest is Kobe Campbell. She's an award winning licensed trauma therapist, a bestselling author, and she's also got a really helpful and insightful Instagram account where she shares wisdom from her years of work as a therapist. Kobe's first book is called, Why Am I Like This?: How to Break Cycles, Heal from Trauma, and Restore Your Faith.

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As you'll hear today, she brings such genuineness, kindness, and wisdom to everything she does. She's got some really helpful insights into trauma and into how she helps her clients heal from trauma. She's so real about her own journey, her own experiences, and how they inform her work as a therapist. I'm thrilled to bring you my conversation with Kobe Campbell.

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Alison: Kobe, I am so thrilled to have you here with us today. I got my hands on a copy of Why Am I Like This? It's a great book. Thank you for coming on to talk with us today. We're in a series talking to different therapists on therapy, and I was so intrigued by how you opened the book with your own story. You talk about your own pain and your own trauma, and I want to get into that a little bit for the listener.

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It almost got the best of you in a pretty dark moment in your life. I was highlighting and highlighting this part, because I was so grateful for the way that you phrased some of these things. You said, “my head knew the truth of God's love for me, but my heart had forgotten its touch”.

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Kobe: Yeah.

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Alison: That was so beautifully stated. Then you talked about how it's not that you hadn't been trying. You say, “I would change for a few months or weeks at a time, but I'd find my way back to the old patterns that made the truth of God's love feel like a dream I was chasing rather than a reality I was living in”.

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So put the listener back in that pretty dark moment where things came to a head, where you had a faith background, and yet the pain of your life and your experiences and the stories and the trauma had caught right up to you. Talk to us a little bit about that.

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Kobe: Yeah. I wrestled with whether I wanted to start the book that way because I felt like it was too vulnerable, too intense. I hadn't read many therapy books that started that way. for me, I realized I clicked with the clients and really felt a deep connection to and a really a deep sense of service to clients whose stories mirrored mine.

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One thing I found in common is we all felt like we're asking the same questions internally, but we're not allowed to say them out loud. I wanted to start my book by saying the things out loud that a lot of people didn't feel like they had permission to say out loud that I love God and I'm still depressed.

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I love God. I still feel anxiety. I'm going to Bible study. I'm reading my Bible. I'm praying. I'm seeking the Lord. I know God's love is real and present. But I am struggling to experience it right now, and that there's some people who find themselves wondering, does God really care about me? Does my life really matter? 

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I know I had reached that point because it felt like all the answers people were giving me were answers that made me feel like I wasn't feeling right. If you worked harder, if you did more, if you were more diligent... I started off by sharing my own story because I wanted the readers to know, I'm in this with you.

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Sometimes when you're talking to a therapist, people, especially when people have no concept of what therapy is, you can feel so nervous. If this is an expert who's never gone through anything, how do I convey my pain in a way that is honest, but doesn't make me feel “crazy”?

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I've had clients say that before. I was like, this book, I pray reaches the people who want to go to therapy, but are really skeptical. If they're skeptical, they need to know that I'm a person too. That I was first in the same seat as them before I was in the seat of a therapist.

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Alison: That's exactly right. We're fellow pilgrims on this journey. As therapists, we have our own pain that we bring to the table. I loved it. I thought it was really a powerful story. I can imagine it was very vulnerable to share. As therapists, we're trained in a way, not to bring forth our own stories. So that adds another layer of dissonance sometimes, about sharing from behind the scenes. I really appreciated that you did that. It's really powerful. 

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One of the things you talked about was what it was like growing up as a twin. I thought this was so interesting, Kobe, and I wanted to touch on it because we often think of trauma in the context of our families of origin.

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I thought it was so interesting that sometimes these sibling relationships, even siblings we love, can evoke feelings of shame and trauma inside of us. You talk about being the “bad twin" and how it was almost sanctioned by that narrative about you. There is a moment you describe where some family members, it was your aunts, even verbally are like, yeah, you're the bad twin. 

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You know what I thought? Oh my gosh. It's just, it's one of those things that's so relatable. I know so many of my listeners are like, yeah, I was the scapegoat. I was the bad one. And that creates this narrative in our mind. Talk to me a little bit about how that affected you and how that damaged some of your own internal self concept.

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Kobe: Yeah, absolutely. I talk to my clients about the ways that we find ourselves aligning with things that people say; my clients may say something like, oh, I'm not allowed to do that. I can't do that. I'll say, whose voice is that? They'll be like, what do you mean? I'm like, if you weren't saying that to yourself, who's the first person that comes to mind who would say that to you? We forget that we absorb the voices.

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Alison: Yeah.

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Kobe: I found out at 25 that I know all the words to Shania Twain's song. I'm like, oh, I guess I have heard this so many times that my brain just learned it. I didn't even know. I wasn't sitting down to learn the words.

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I absorbed it because my brain was hearing it and my brain kept it. And that's how it was for me being labeled the bad twin. I had absorbed that. Also, when you have two people who have similarities in every way, people love dichotomy. People love a hero and a villain.

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People love yin and yang, good and bad. They love that differentiation. I was the loud, excited, athlete, theater kid. My sister was a little more quiet and reserved and artistic. I started to live, and I say this in the book, that we live in the stories we tell ourselves, but the stories we tell ourselves are often stories that were told to us first.

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I was told the story that I was a bad kid. Then I started regurgitating to myself that I was a bad kid. Then I started living out what I thought a bad kid would be. Yeah.

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Alison: It's so true. Even listening to you, I have an older sister and we weren't twins, but there was a narrative around, she was the writer. I still remember to this day, I've now published several books and it's still, “I'm not a writer. This isn't who I am”. Because the narrative in our family is that she was more literary. I love what you're saying. Whose voice is that? Whose voice is that? Because sometimes we don't even know we've subconsciously absorbed and believed the story and it feels so true. 

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Kobe: Absolutely. One of the examples I give to my clients is, if I say twinkle, twinkle, little, and I stop there, I said what happens? They're like, my brain says star. I'm like, yeah, your brain filled in the blank before you had time to even think about the fact that there was a blank. If I asked you, when's the first time someone taught you that song, you probably couldn't remember.

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Alison: Yeah. Powerful. Thank you.

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Kobe: That's how those narratives work.

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Alison: Yeah, it's just, I'm the bad twin. It's almost subconsciously, you could fill in that blank and it's hard to take that out and examine it for the truth of it without first becoming conscious that you even have that belief hidden in there.

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Kobe: Yep.

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Alison: So you become a therapist. What was that leg of the journey? Like, how did you decide I want to not only heal, but I want to study this so that I can help others.

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Kobe: Do you want the honest answer? I feel like I found out I wanted to help people after I got into grad school. I knew that I wanted to help people, but I was in a space where I was like, maybe I'll be a campus minister. I want to help people. I didn't know exactly how. So I was like, God, I'm going to apply to grad school. I only applied to one school, Gordon Commonwealth. I was like, if I get in, it's a sign. 

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So I got in and I was like, oh, okay. I loved my program in many ways, but I really struggled finding a therapist who understood my African context, who understood my black context, who understood my Christian context.

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So it felt like I had to choose. I had to choose either a Christian therapist or a black therapist. I couldn't find any African therapists, and I felt like I couldn't find someone who I didn't have to spend time educating. I thought, you know what? I will be one, I'll be one more person in this space that people can come to and know that there is someone who understands the nuances and the complexities of what it means to be all these things, including a twin. What it means to be all these things. 

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When I got into the field, I knew that I wanted to learn diligently, but I also knew that I didn't want to lose who I was as a person. The book really demonstrates that. I was like, I loved therapy and sometimes I felt like I had to pull the personality out of my therapist. Are you a human? Are you connecting to me? Do you see my pain? Does this hurt you too?

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I knew I wanted to be that therapist. I wanted to be a therapist who obviously honored all the ethical guidelines and all the legalities and stuff, but I wanted to be a human being. I knew that was something, even when I look at my African background, I look at my Christian background, stories are core to trust building and core to community healing.

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I knew that in the way that I did my work, I would put part of my story as a tool and maybe not in the clinical settings all the time. I sometimes reflect off clients' experiences. But this book was a really great way for me to be able to do that in a way that honored my boundaries as a therapist, but also helped serve in a way that aligns with my personal values.

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Alison: I love what you're saying. I'm a human as a therapist, right? My whole self is in this. The book reflects that. There's so many different ways you reflect in the book, those different elements of your story as a Christian, as a Black woman. You talk in the book about how specifically for your client case studies, as we know, when we write up client case studies, composites are composites.

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We are always very careful. But one of the things you said is, I'm going to intentionally use African names for my clients as a way to honor that part of my heritage. I loved that. There were so many ways. It's all those threads. We bring all of that. I love that you're doing that. I love that you're creating that space for other people. That's so beautiful. 

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One of the things you're saying is so important for the listener to hear. Sometimes we have to work for that. Sometimes we have to wrestle for that person who really gets us. It's not sometimes so easy to find a therapist; sometimes we have to work for it. Internally we might be like, oh, this isn't really a fit or they're not really getting me. 

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There's a little bit of wrestling, and sometimes it can take a minute to find that person where we're really like, oh, this person gets me. Along your journey, whether in graduate school or after, have you found some folks who have stood out in that landscape and what was that like for you?

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Kobe: You know what's really interesting? I found those people, but I found those people only after I accepted that maybe the most important thing is that my needs get met. They didn't always fit the bill. I was like, I want a therapist like me. I was sent therapists that were completely opposite of me in thought, in, in religious belief in race, in all of it. 

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Those were the people that were so powerful for me. It was like, I had to get desperate enough to say, is this person qualified to help me process trauma? Yes. After going, I realized it was rewriting the internal narrative–maybe I don't need all the things that I keep telling myself I need.

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Maybe all these rules I've set on myself to make healing possible and accessible are really barriers to me getting well. When I started accepting that someone does not have to meet all of my specific criteria, I started finding the right people at the right time in my journey. I found the right therapist for when I really needed to process some trauma.

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I found the right therapist for when I really wanted to navigate the nuances of marriage. I found the right therapist when I really wanted to process what it meant to become a mom, the right therapist as I built my business, and It was really cool. Sometimes even in those different stages, those therapists evolved with me, which is really cool.

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Therapists get training and they try different modalities and it was cool to be on the receiving end of that, even as a therapist. But I love the fact that my therapists were not always the people that I thought I needed. And yet they shifted the trajectory of my life in ways that I can't express because I was willing to be open.

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If anyone's listening, I would say put the first thing first. Put the first thing first. If you're really struggling with anxiety, find someone who specializes in anxiety and let yourself be surprised. If you're surprised in a way that you don't like, it's okay to change your mind.

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Alison: I love that. It is first and foremost, a relationship, and then first and foremost, it is about the specific thing that you're struggling with. There is an expert, there's someone there who's trained. People always ask me if you should only see a Christian therapist.

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All I can say is, in my experience, it really depends on the topic, but one of the therapists who's been the most helpful to me does not share my faith background at all. What's been so helpful is she can actually see the ways in which I can defer that subtle spiritual bypassing, using, “oh, wait, now, wait a minute, let's examine that a little bit”. 

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It's still very respectful of my beliefs. It's always been really interesting to me, to your point, sometimes help comes in the places we least expect it.

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Kobe: Yeah, I tell my clients who ask similarly oh, I'm only looking for a Christian therapist and I'm like, I'm sure it'd be great to have a Christian therapist, but also let's say you're looking for a therapist and they're not Christian. How do you know if they're a good fit for you? I said the best, the most powerful marker of someone who could truly help you is their humility and their curiosity. Are they willing to believe you? That you're the expert of your experience?

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Because I'll say, sometimes, that can be hard for Christian therapists. Sometimes we're like, oh, I know the spiritual answer to this in Mark chapter eight. We have to remind people that, like I mentioned in the book, my greatest breakthrough in my walk with Jesus at that time was with a therapist who did not believe in Jesus at all.

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She was like, Oh, Jesus is so kind. Why is he always mad at you? If he's so full of grace, how come every time you talk about him, like he doesn't sound very graceful? We're doing EMDR and she was like, do you want to invite Jesus into the room? I was like, yeah. It was a moment that literally shifted my entire life and my entire way of doing therapy.

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And she was not a believer.

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Alison: What a powerful story. I love that. She held up the mirror to you about your own beliefs and challenged some underlying assumption there that wasn't really about Jesus, but it was about, again, to your point, these messages that you had picked up.

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Talk to us a little bit. About your understanding of trauma, how you talk about it with clients, how you understand it, how you look for it as a clinician.

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Kobe: Yeah. We love to talk about trauma nowadays, especially on social media, but I come from a more subtle point of view. There's a lot of people who experienced trauma who do not recognize it as trauma because it's not a car crash, it's not an assault, it's not a tornado. I tell my clients, trauma is any past event that affects how you show up in the present and how you perceive the future. 

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I differentiate between something that hurts and something that's traumatic. Something that hurts does not shape the way you live your life from that moment forward.

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Alison: That's good.

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Kobe: It does not create a sense of anxiety, worry, fear, or self-loathing from that moment forward. When we experience trauma, it really is us experiencing a level of distress that far surpasses the skills we have to manage that distress. So your body is reliving, not remembering, it's reliving those experiences from the past in the present, which is why you have distress in the present.

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I try to help people understand that trauma are these wounds. In Greek, the word trauma translates to the word wound; they are wounds that need to be healed and tended to, and some wounds heal up perfectly and you can be good as new and run as fast as you did before. There are some wounds that will leave scars and some wounds will leave a little bit of a limp, but there's always healing that can happen. 

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That's something that is really important to say. It sounds so simple, but as much as we have educated people about trauma online and in our work, we have not educated them that you can heal from trauma. There is a world in which you can not meet any of the criteria for PTSD. 

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I remember one of my clients' faces. We've been working together for three years and I was like, hey, let's go through your treatment plan. I said, how do you feel? She's like, I feel like a new person. I'm going through all the things. I'm like, you no longer meet the criteria for PTSD. She was like, what do you mean? I was like, you no longer meet the criteria for PTSD. 

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This diagnosis is no longer current. She was like, I thought when you're diagnosed with something, you have it forever. I said, there are some things that are on the more chronic side, but no, there is a resolution to trauma. There can be a resolution to trauma. Anytime I talk about trauma, I promise myself that is something I will say out loud. Trauma can be resolved the same way it can be inflicted. It is the same way that it can be resolved.

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Alison: Yeah, that's really good. I really appreciate what you're saying. We had a psychiatrist on the podcast last week and we were going back and forth on the value of diagnoses. One of the things he said was, it should help us mark the path toward healing, as opposed to putting a label on, this is my identity.

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To your point, sometimes we have a diagnosis that will be with us for a long time, but it should help us. I love what you're saying there, especially about PTSD. We want to name it. It's so important to name it for what it is, so that we can get on the right healing path therapeutically, but not so that we have to just live in it for the rest of our lives. It's so hopeful.

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Kobe: Yeah. It helps us see exactly what is being healed.

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Alison: Yeah.

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Kobe: I no longer have flashbacks and I had flashbacks. I no longer have nightmares and I had nightmares. That has been healing for my clients. They're like, wow, because when you're along the journey, sometimes you miss the ways you're being healed. As soon as one thing is restored, your mind is like, now we need to focus on this. 

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Sometimes it's so good for you to look back and be like, wow, these are all the things in the last three years of therapy that I once carried that I no longer carry as a daily experience.

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Alison: I love that. I love the intentionality with which to pause and look at that. Because if we don't do that, life is challenging, and new challenges will come up. We'll have new relational challenges. Our kids will go through stuff. We're always going to have stuff, but to pause and go, in this particular part of our healing, look at how far we've come.

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That's really beautiful. In both your personal experience and in your work as a clinician, what are some of your favorite practices or modalities or your favorite ways to get into the deep tissue work of trauma work?

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Kobe: Yes, this is one of my favorite questions. I love psychodrama and sociometry. 

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Alison: I love it. Yeah.

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Kobe: Because the world is virtual, there's a lot of adaptation and we don't get to go as deep, but I truly believe that imagination sometimes gives us access to a heavenly reality that already exists, but we haven't had the courage to access yet. Pretend you're not yourself. Pretend you're somebody else. Pretend you could go back. 

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It is such a powerful reminder that the trauma is in the present because the moment I set up the room and we pretend like you're back there, you're actually back there. Your body feels that way. The tears are there, the feeling, the shaking, and we can go back with the resources of the present to the wounds and apply them to the wounds of the past. 

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We can take the wisdom of the present and apply it to the wound of the past. I love that about sociometry and psychodrama and gently, skillfully replaying some moments that are deeply wounding and giving people a chance to do it again.

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I had a psychodrama moment with a client who got to go back and say goodbye to her father who passed away. She missed that moment and she went back and said goodbye. It did something. Movement, action–healing is holistic. It's not something we think ourselves into. It's something we move ourselves into. I can talk about this forever, but my favorite is seeing people access the reality that play and imagination are our core to healing.

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Alison: It's one of the things I love about IFS, the internal event where you can go back to that. But I love how in the book you actually talk about your own experience in a group.

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Kobe: On site. Yep. At on site.

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Alison: Even when you said that right now, I could feel in my body, some things I'm working through with some family of origin stuff, even at my age, with older aging parents. When you said it, I could feel it in my body. Oh, wow. That's what's going on. I'm back in that 10 year old self where it's like, oh, I can't say this. I can't do this. I can almost feel the tears come to my eyes. 

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Because current situations and different life transitions bring up those old memories, those old emotions, and to have that opportunity, like you're saying, to go back with someone else witnessing you. It's so powerful. It's so powerful.

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Kobe: Yes. Even thinking about the reality that community is such a powerful context to heal in. But that doesn't mean we always have to heal in community in the way that we've always been taught. So for that client, they were really struggling with the reality of, I can't break down because this other person in the room needs someone to be strong. All the strings were attached to my reaction. 

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But when you go back to psychodrama, there are no strings attached to your reaction. You get to become more aware of the strings attached to your reactions, into your emotions, into your expression. But when it's time for you to really release, there are no strings attached.

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These are strangers. We'll never see each other again unless you want to keep in touch. This gets to be about you, in the context of your unresolved pain, without you having to carry the burden of how other people will think and react.

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Alison: Man, I love what you're saying about community because you're right. Coming out of church backgrounds, it's so different what you're describing. I want people to read that part of your book where you talk about your own experience at Onsite. It's with anger. It is powerful and it's a different layer. It's not talking, head-confessing all these things. You were in it. You were in it. 

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Kobe: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. It's my favorite thing. I had a retreat this year in February, where we were in the Charlotte area and I did a psychodrama trauma intensive. It was in a beautiful lakefront house and we were screaming and crying and it was great. I loved it. It was amazing. It was so fun. Sometimes people think, but I can't do that. No, you can, but you're right about the fact that it's not safe to do it in that context.

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Alison: Yeah. Yeah. You couldn't do it then. Here's a different context in which, what is it like to experience that with people in the room who can hold the bigness of it? Of what you're feeling and of who you are in this moment, all those fears? I love that. So now you are, man, you're, you've written this book, you're speaking, you're seeing clients, you've got two kids.

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Kobe: Babies.

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Alison: Babies. There's so much going on in your life. What practices are you personally engaged with that help you, because as you and I both know, the process of healing is a journey, it's a practice. So what practices help you stay grounded, stay inwardly attuned yourself, to your own needs in the midst of all that matters to you?

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Kobe: I try to make sure that every morning I read my Bible and pray and do some breathing exercises. The Dwell app. This is not an ad. The Dwell app has been incredible for me. They do guided meditations, Lectio Divina, breath prayer, and I facilitate that with lots of clients. But you can't facilitate it for yourself as easily.

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Sometimes it's nice to be led. So I try to do that in the mornings, get outside, drink water, and take my vitamins. I also go to therapy. I love my therapist. She is in many ways a lifeline for me. I have my therapist and I lean into my community. There's something really cool about having a community in which no one carries everything.

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There is a time, especially as a church girl, you can be like, oh, I have my small group and they are my community and they hold everything for me. Or my husband holds everything for me, or my best friend holds everything for me. But there's been a powerful shift for me, where I've been able to say, nobody has to hold everything for me.

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It's been cool to be able to say, I have to hold some stuff for myself. I have an incredible husband who holds things for me. I have incredible friends who show up for me and I love showing up for them. I have a therapist, I have a church community. So I have been really leaning into the season being connected because I think, honestly, I'm still dealing with some of the effects of COVID-19 from 2020. I know it feels long ago, but I was pregnant the entirety of COVID. I found out I was pregnant with my son two days before the lockdown started.

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I was so excited. I was like, yes, a two week break. This is going to be so great. Remember when we were excited? Lord, we didn't know. We did not know. I was so excited to have that break turned into a season of anxiety, of fear, of all the things. Reinvesting back into community and giving of myself to community and letting myself receive community has been the biggest ritual for me.

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Alison: I love what you're saying about not putting it all in one place, diversifying in a way, making sure there's different pockets. I also think you're making a really good point. I've noticed this as well, to not underestimate the ripple effects of that shutdown. Especially on our rhythms of community. 

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There have been so many changes, even the virtual space and all the things, so we shouldn’t underestimate how we continue to work through that. I'm curious, we have this category when we think about therapy. I don't know if the listener is aware of this, but we tend to think of, are you in maintenance, which means you're essentially doing well, but you continue to see a therapist to stay tuned up, versus when you're going because you need a very specific targeted intervention. Do you keep up a maintenance approach to therapy for yourself?

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Kobe: Yeah, absolutely. I realized that by the time I'm realizing something is wrong, something's been wrong for a while. So the way that my brain naturally works is that you definitely know what it means to have book deadlines and see clients and you're showing up on social media, you're engaging in your personal community, you're trying to engage your online community, you have a family, like you have your own world outside of this digital world.

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Probably two years ago, when writing my book, if I am like, whoo, something's not right, I need to talk to someone. It's probably not been right for a little bit.

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Alison: I love that self-awareness. This is a proactive thing I can do, to keep having someone check in on me. I agree with you. I've got to have someone asking me, because yeah, you're right. By the time you're asking for help, it's an emergency.

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Kobe: Things change so quickly. Truly things change so quickly. We've seen this week, and current events, and I've realized it is much better to go to therapy and have nothing to talk about than to have to reestablish a therapeutic relationship and see if a therapist has an opening.

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As a therapist, my books are full. Some of my clients have been discharged and decided not to do maintenance. Sometimes when they want to come back, I would love to, but there's no time on my schedule. So part of it is also protective, like knowing that I always have access to support whether I feel like I need it in a dire way or not.

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Alison: Oh, that's wise. There's so much wisdom in that. I would say to the listener, if you find someone, especially someone that you connect with that really can help you, that's a relationship. I understand there's a cost, there's expense. That's hard.

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Kobe: I'm cosigning you. Don't let ‘em go.

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Alison: And you can talk to them about that. Say, I want to keep this relationship. Could we go to monthly? Could we go, especially if there's a financial burden to that, talk that through with a therapist and ask about that. 

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Kobe: Don’t be afraid to advocate for yourself. I had a client who was like, can I do 15 minute check-ins? Can we prorate it to 15 minutes? I was like, sure. So now we do 15 minute check ins. When we started realizing that the 15 minutes was getting a little tight, she was like, can we do 30 minutes? I will. 

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I don't typically advertise 30 minutes, but we've built such a longstanding therapeutic alliance. I've been seeing this person for years and that's also the benefit of working in private practice. I'm able to add things based on people's needs. Then it was, hey, can we go back to a full session? Yeah, we can go back to a full session. 

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So don't be afraid to ask once you've built a relationship with your therapist. Don't be afraid to ask if they're willing to accommodate the way they provide services to meet your needs. Because sometimes the answer is yes.

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Alison: That's right. I love that. Advocate for yourself. I love what you're saying. Because I've had that happen where I'll be like, oh, I need a little tune up. Then suddenly I'm like, oh, we'll be doing some major deep work for months.

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Kobe: See you next Tuesday.

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Alison: Yeah, exactly. We are all in that boat. All right. So I am so thrilled for you joining us. I have a few questions I like to ask all my guests, but before we go there, I want to ask you, where can people find your work? I know all my listeners are all going to want to come work with you. So where can people find you? At least they can get your book because it's so good.

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Kobe: Absolutely, you can go to kobecampbell.com. All my social media handles are kobecampbell_. So YouTube, Instagram. TikTok, all of those spaces. Unfortunately, there are a lot of fake pages and I'm not verified on all platforms. So remember it has an underscore at the end of it.

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You can get my book, Why Am I Like This, really anywhere where books are sold. Target, Walmart, Amazon, Books A Million, Barnes and Noble. Yeah, you can grab it in any of those spaces.

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Alison: Such a great resource. Strongly encourage everyone to check it out. It's so good that you go really deep into what some of these interventions look like and how you apply them. The ACEs, you talk a lot about the history of trauma, how it's been understood.

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It's a really great resource. All right, Kobe, what would you say to that younger 20 ish girl who you opened up the book with, what would you say to her now, if you could spend a little time with her?

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Kobe: I would say to her, “you have no clue what that seed of courage created in your life, that life gets so much better, and even though this moment feels so big, there are going to be some days where you forgot it even happened”.

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Alison: I love that.

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Kobe: And you go girl. Add that in there too.

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Alison: I love that. I'm so happy for her that she has you.

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Kobe: Thank you. Me too.

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Alison: Yeah. What is bringing out the best of you right now?

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Kobe: What is bringing out the best in me? Talking to my friends. Friendship is one of the relationships that we forget also needs maintenance. It's been so cool to, as my career has evolved, to let my friends into different nuances of the career. Because I realize that I published the book and none of my friends knew what publishing entailed.

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When I was stressed out about deadlines and editing and stuff, they didn't know how to comfort me because they didn't know. It's been cool, saying this is what I do and this is how I do it. This is why it stresses me out sometimes. This is why I love it. That has been great and moving my body. Moving my body and deciding that there does not have to be a limit or a goal.

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Kobe: Five minutes dancing, walking, whatever it is, it's about moving my body. Reminding myself that I'm alive, reminding my body and my limbs that they're still needed and not about achieving any goals.

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Alison: I love that. I love that. I love what you're saying about updating your friends and bringing them into your professional life. It can be easy to create a dichotomy there, I know I've discovered, so I love what you're saying. Sometimes our friends don't know something over here has changed.

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It can happen with vocation. It can happen when you become a mom. It can happen in different seasons of life where our friends don't necessarily know, to take the time to go, hey, I want to let you into this. I love that. That's beautiful.

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Kobe: Yeah.

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Alison: Last question, what needs or desires are you working to protect?

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Kobe: Oh, that's a good question. I'm protecting my need to rest. I'm rediscovering what rest is. I recently went on an eight day vacation and I brought my laptop and I realized that my idea of rest was being able to work without interruption. 

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Alison: I relate to that.

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Kobe: Every time I tried to open my laptop, I couldn't do it. The entire eight days, it was probably the first eight days of my life since summer break in high school that I did not work a single moment. I was like, whoa, like it was mind blowing.

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I was like, oh, this is rest. Then protecting that, like I'm discovering that rest. It's truly delighting in the present without a constant need to try and work for what I need to be reaching for in the future. I'm trying to protect that. I got a lot of self-talk of, it's okay if this doesn't happen. This being book two. If it doesn't happen in this time, it means that you are a better person when it comes out.

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Kobe: If you're healthier, if you're more well. I’m trying to present the best. 

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Alison: That's good. I love that. I love that. I honor that in you. The both-and. The part of you that strives and the part of you that's okay. Good for you. I love that. I love that. That's beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your time and presence and talents and words of wisdom with all of us.

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Kobe: Thank you for having me. It's great talking with you.

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