Dispatches from the front lines of trauma healing.

I’ve been writing about trauma healing, PTSD, CPTSD, and wellbeing for almost 15 years, exploring what it means to be a high-performer making impact in the world — without sacrificing health or happiness.

How To Create a Daily Meditation Practice
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

How To Create a Daily Meditation Practice

Three minutes is the Minimum Viable Practice because everyone has three minutes a day to meditate. Everyone. New mothers, CEOs who live in business class, my friends on humanitarian assignment in Mozambique. In all my teaching, I have found this to be true.

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Belonging
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Belonging

Exclusion and belonging are part of the same dynamic, and at the core is a need to be seen and cared for, as a member of a group. On an animal level, I don't think we realize how much connecting to other people means to us and how valuable it is for our long-term well-being.

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Post-Traumatic Stress is Not a Disorder
PTSD and CPTSD Elie Losleben PTSD and CPTSD Elie Losleben

Post-Traumatic Stress is Not a Disorder

Trauma is simply a stressful event that gets stuck in the brain and body. There is nothing “disordered” or “not in order” about it. It is an orderly, predictable and very natural response to an event. Calling our body’s response to trauma a “disorder” creates shame and keeps our options in the shadows.

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The Problem with "Deserving"
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

The Problem with "Deserving"

Assuming we "deserve better" means that something in inherently unfair. You're being treated badly by someone or something, which immediately takes away your power and puts you in the stance of a victim. We say it about a situation or a person, but either way, "deserving" invokes the idea that we live in a fair and just universe, that has somehow failed to deliver to us what we are entitled to.

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Why Social Media is Making You Depressed (and What to Do About It)
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Why Social Media is Making You Depressed (and What to Do About It)

Recent research now indicates social media actually causes depression — as in, there is a cause (social media use) and an effect (depression). The study, published in this month's Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, shows that limiting social media use to no more than 30 minutes a day significantly reduces loneliness and depression.

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How to Sleep: A Leader's Guide to Daily R&R
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

How to Sleep: A Leader's Guide to Daily R&R

Learning how to structure your rest and align with your sleep cycles will give you the foundation you need to feel good the rest of the day. Your mental alertness will contribute to emotional self-regulation, which means you're more resilient and adaptable when stress comes your way.

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How the 7 D’s are Disrupting Leadership-As-Usual
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

How the 7 D’s are Disrupting Leadership-As-Usual

Rapid technological change is fast creating a society that is going to be vastly different than the one we experience today. This is why leadership is so massively important. I want to explore just why exponential technologies are disruptive to leaders, because this can be deceptive.

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Accountability and Exploitation in Aid
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Accountability and Exploitation in Aid

As leaders and changemakers, I'd like to explore the idea of community accountability when exploitation happens. I'm speaking specifically here to people who do service work in challenging places, because the power dynamic that I’m exploring is the same in the aid industry as elsewhere.

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5 Ways to Navigate Leadership on the Edge of Chaos
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

5 Ways to Navigate Leadership on the Edge of Chaos

We know the old tools aren't working. That's why, unless we do something about it, we're stressed out of our minds and unable to sleep, much less relax. Our to-do lists and obligations take us so far outside of ourselves that we spend the day rushing on our feet, forgetting to eat or drink, let alone rest or enjoy.

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An App to Help Sexual Assault Survivors Access Emergency Medical Care
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

An App to Help Sexual Assault Survivors Access Emergency Medical Care

Trauma-informed care for sexual assault survivors is available from only the most resourced health centers in a few places in the world, with no clear way to scale. So since 2015, I've been working with a coalition from around the world to create a mobile app resource to help sexual assault survivors navigate the health system. We call it the Rape Crisis Counseling app.

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Supercharge Your Self-Care
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Supercharge Your Self-Care

I hate to say it, but in a list of priorities, we changemakers are way too used to putting ourselves last. I hope you see that for us to be successful in this work, for us to make a dent in the future, how we treat ourselves must change.

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A Leader is Someone on Purpose
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

A Leader is Someone on Purpose

It's a gift to witness ourselves and each other at near-breaking points. To stand beside a grieving friend or a colleague struggling with the right thing to do is a kind of leadership. I don't think, as leaders, we give ourselves nearly enough credit for the work we do of supporting each other. It's as vital as the work we do of service in the world.

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Your Path on Purpose
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Your Path on Purpose

Learning to voice our needs with confidence is crucial for changemakers. We're often people-pleasers in the extreme and somewhere in our programming, decided that others' needs are more important than our own. Re-orienting ourselves around self-care and our right to be healthy and happy allows us to claim our power that much more deeply.

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The Highly-Sensitive Changemaker
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

The Highly-Sensitive Changemaker

High-sensitivity means that our nervous systems are more acutely aware of and receive more external stimulus, compared to others. It's a trait that shows up in about 20% of animals and it’s a finely tuned adaptation mechanism for herd survival.

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Making the Mind an Ally
Leadership Elie Losleben Leadership Elie Losleben

Making the Mind an Ally

On a personal level, when we look to the mind to solve our problems, the very beliefs and structures that we use to make sense of our world can make it almost impossible to find a real solution, much less help us out of the increasing stress response we feel.

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