Five Books that have Shaped my Mental Health Leadership Identity

Books give us the gift of language to our own experiences, which serves to support our self-of-therapist development. I truly believe we are never done growing and we are ever-evolving, so it was meaningful to reflect on the books I most identify with as a professor, supervisor, and consultant to therapists and counseling students. As a passionate mental health leader, here are books that have had a profound impact on how I show up with the therapists (and clients) I serve.

Trauma Stewardship by Laura van Dernoot Lipsky (2009). An oldie but a goodie, this book was one I discovered only after I was in professional burnout for two years. I remember wishing someone had introduced this book to me in graduate school. Written compassionately, I felt so seen and hopeful that burnout recovery was possible.

Moving from ALERT to Acceptance: Helping Clinicians Heal from Client Suicide (2024). My own book, this was the hardest one to write out of the 11 (soon to be 12!!) published books out in the world. It was the book I needed in 2021 when my client died by suicide. I continue to lean into the abundant compassion and zero judgement woven throughout the content and although it’s life altering to be a clinician survivor, this work has helped me serve and build communities for other clinician survivors, which has brought another rich layer of meaning and purpose to the work I do.

For the Love of Therapy by Nicole Arzt and Jeremy Arzt (2024). This book celebrates authenticity in the therapeutic relationship which is a cornerstone of what I teach students in their clinical mental health education. A heartfelt, fast read, I love how the authors speak to the inevitability of rupture and the beauty of repair—the very thing students are most afraid of when they start working with their clients. 

The Art of Money by Bari Tessler (2016). Engaging this book in my own money healing prior to becoming a Certified Financial Therapist was crucial prior to engaging other clinicians in the same emotional and vulnerable process. I love how Bari invites folks to slow down and notice what’s going on with their body when it comes to money, and I happily recommend this book to therapists coming into financial therapy work with me as a starting place of curiosity around the money beliefs and behaviors we each hold.

The Resilient Therapist by Ashley Charbonneau and Khara Croswaite Brindle (coming Fall 2026!). Another book I was seeking personally and professionally after several significant career traumas over the last sixteen years, this book is meant to support the healing process for clinicians to find resilience after career-altering events within our field. It is an invitation to feel seen in experiences of client violence, client sudden death, client suicide, professional betrayal, grievance, and subpoena (what we call Adverse Psychological Events) and feel validated for what you carry, alongside discovering the strength to continue forward.

What books have had a significant impact on how you show up in this field? I’d love to know!

A Letter to Professional Helpers

Hello fellow helpers! I’m so excited that you’re considering my new book Helpers with Hashimoto’s: The Rise of Thyroid Conditions in Professional Helpers and What We Can Do About It.  Written for professional helpers experiencing compassion fatigue, stress, burnout, and so much more, we have a calling to help others that, in turn, feeds our soul. We breathe it. We embrace it. We live it. 

We want to make a difference and an impact in others’ lives! As a mental health therapist for more than a decade, this resonates with me. It’s the starfish story. If you haven’t come across this poem before, I hope you’ll search for it! I get goosebumps and teary eyed almost every time I share it with someone new. Of course, we all want to make a difference for each starfish/person we help. But we also struggle to slow down and take care of ourselves. How do we do both? Can we help that starfish then sit on the beach, digging our toes into the sand and feeling the sun on our faces? How do we learn to breathe it all in? Can we remain helpful without running ourselves into the ground?

As a therapist, I discovered I was suffering from burnout in 2017. I had symptoms for years before then and pushed through them. In the words of Petersen, How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation, “Like other type-A overachievers, I didn’t hit walls, I worked around them” (2020).

It’s awkward to admit that as a professional, I didn’t really register what was happening. Even though my hair was falling out, I had gained weight, and I was experiencing mood swings where I fantasized about quitting my job almost daily. I’d ignored the puffy face I didn’t recognize in the mirror between meetings. I’d feel depression symptoms in the morning and bounce back to feeling like myself by lunchtime. It was wild. I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s in late 2018, being told by the doctor that as long as I wasn’t planning to have kids anytime soon, I would just live with the symptoms as they were.

No thank you. Suffering through symptoms isn’t good enough. Not by a long shot. With thyroid conditions on the rise, there is more overlap between chronic stress, burnout, and thyroid functioning than we’d previously realized. Folks are being diagnosed with anxiety and depression who actually have a hypoactive thyroid. One in eight people have a thyroid condition now, most often women. And since women are also more likely to choose helping professions, I started to see them more frequently as clients in my therapeutic work. I could no longer ignore my own thyroid condition. My clients were paralleling my journey of desiring a better quality of life and I wanted to help them achieve it.

Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune condition that attacks one’s own thyroid and kills it over time, is the culprit for a lot of my symptoms. It contributes to fatigue, weight gain, anxiety and depression, and creates pregnancy challenges for some women. As I saw more and more professional helpers in my therapy practice, I realized they were being given the same messaging as me. Deal with it. Push through as is. This is your life now.

I refuse to accept this messaging and you should too. This book serves as a guide back to wellness. It is a journey of four professional women, myself included, who fight for the quality of their lives so they can remain impactful helpers and healthy individuals. Like Briana, who went through several doctors before she found answers as to why she’d gained 60 pounds within months. Or Liliana, who works through a checklist each month to explore if her symptoms are due to her thyroid, burnout, or something else. And Amy, who is still adjusting her diet in response to thyroid flare ups and gastric distress years after her diagnosis. Or me, a burnout consultant who questions if I’m doing enough for my clients while not wanting to ignore my own body’s needs. It’s a daily balancing act.

If this resonates with you, I’m glad you’re here! As professional helpers, we need to better understand our susceptibility to chronic stress, burnout, and resulting thyroid conditions. Join me in exploring the contributing factors of helping professions that make these challenging experiences more likely. Let’s begin our journey of reprioritizing your health as a professional helper. Grab the book on Amazon in paperback and Kindle here.

Warmly,

Khara

Emotional Valet and Elevated Antibodies

What if thyroid antibodies become elevated as we hold stress for others? It’s one of the many questions I explore in my soon-to-release new book Helpers with Hashimotos. My inspiration was my clients and colleagues over the years. And of course my own journey to find answers.  Clients were coming to my office with thyroid problems, anxiety, and depression, in some ways paralleling my own personal journey with Hashimoto’s. Then a fellow helper shared that her antibodies climbed dramatically while she was doing her own trauma healing work and a lightbulb went off.

Is it possible that our vicarious trauma and holding of space for others as professional helpers is adding to our risks for developing a thyroid condition? Is one of the ways this shows up in our body increased inflammation and antibodies? Is this adding to why 1 in 8 people have a thyroid condition, including 1 in every 5 women?

So many questions and not enough answers! Yet it all starts to make sense when we think about caregivers, called to helping professions, who put on the superhero cape daily at the risk of their own compassion fatigue and burnout. Becoming an Emotional Valet for others. What’s the cost? An increase in thyroid antibodies and resulting thyroid diagnoses in helping professionals, I suspect.

Intrigued? I’m excited to share more later this year in Helpers with Hashimotos: The Rise of Thyroid Conditions in Professional Helpers and What We Can Do About It. Exploring a relationship between helpers and thyroid conditions, it’s time to embrace strategies to get us back to wellness so we can continue to do what we love!