The Invisible Tornado: How Avoidance and Awareness Shape Leadership

In this deeply personal episode of Aspire for More with Erin, Erin shares a raw reflection on her upcoming keynote and the lessons that built it. She unpacks how trauma, avoidance, and over-functioning quietly shape leadership—and how facing our discomfort is the real path to growth.

You’ll hear:

• Why 34% of the senior living workforce carries trauma that impacts communication and performance.
• How avoidance and over-functioning masquerade as productivity.
• Why “100%” is not a metric—it’s a mindset.
• The choice every leader faces: react or respond.
• The hard truth that what we avoid will eventually control us.

This episode is a reminder that growth isn’t about perfection or hustle. It’s about awareness, reflection, and choosing to believe you are enough.

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Transcript

squadcaster-8597_1_10-16-2025_130541: 1:05

Hey y'all. It's Erin. Thank you for joining me today. This is the week of my big presentation for the National Senior Living Conference of ACA and Cal. I am a closing keynote for National Center for Assisted Living Day, and I am so thrilled, so honored. So excited, so nervous. So all the positive and all the negative things. Honestly, truly my presentation is about growth, about what gets in the way, becomes the way. It's about post-traumatic growth, and I highlight lots of stories. Stories of my own failures. Literally, I am going to talk about the worst failure I ever experienced as a leader, as a good leader, But I have worked through so much shame in my life and I look at. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, and fear of judgment. so differently that standing on the stage and talking about a choice that I made to engage and match energy of an associate that was irrational, that wasn't even appropriate for the conversation And really gonna dissect what caused me to do that. And there's something so empowering about doing it. You know, the main point of my presentation is, is the things that we avoid in our life. The things that we choose. Too numb instead of no notice. When we subconsciously or consciously make a choice to build an identity around experiences from our childhood, the pains that we, the wounds, the unhealed wounds that we have in our life, that we cloud, our ability. To live a successful life. A sustainable life. We're gonna talk about trauma, but not trauma for trauma's sake, not clinical trauma, but we're gonna talk about that invisible energy that's inside of our community that we don't know how to name. Becoming aware of how all the problems that we face, all the emotional tornadoes, the invisible battles that are constantly colliding with everybody is just people trying to protect themselves. There was a study done by Care, a staffing company that is not comparable to any other kind of staffing company. they did a trauma and resilience study, and one of the big data points that stood out to me was that 34% of the care force that they have access to both licensed professionals and caregiving heroes. 34% of the people who were in the study has a ACEs score of four or more. Now, ACEs is adverse. Childhood experiences, things like being a victim of abuse, neglect. Being, raised by a parent with addiction problems or mental illness, like really some significant trauma in their life, right? And these adverse child experiences. If you don't receive any help, if you choose to, to function instead of feel, if you choose to numb instead of notice. If you aren't given an opportunity to express or talk about all these things and all these experiences build up. They create barriers of success in your life. you're going to have mental and physical health challenges. You're going to struggle to work in an environment and cope, connect and communicate well. And did you know that 34% is double the general population? That is why. Senior living is an emotional tornado that we're never prepared for. It is a constant collision of people's emotional wants and needs and invisible battles they are facing and they're colliding with yours. They're colliding with your families. They're colliding with. The residents because it's not just the, the team that's dealing with these invisible battles, it's the families of the residents that you're moving in. It's the residents, and that's why inside of our communities, we feel this energy and if we can't stay on top of it, the energy will take over. But sometimes we don't know how to name it. And I didn't know how to name it for a long time, and if I'm honest, I knew how to name it with other people. I didn't know how to name it within myself because I didn't realize, even though I don't have an ACEs score of four or more, the ACEs score that I do have had a negative impact on my life and I built an identity around those wounds. And I avoided the pain at all costs and my numbing agent was caregiving and my numbing agent was solving people's problems. And my numbing agent was being available all the time, some more extreme cases than others, but resting in an identity of you can always depend on me. I'm going to be here because it's my responsibility. when you start thinking, if I don't do it, it won't get done. When you feel like everything depends on you and when your first instinct is to solve fix. Carry rescue or control. That's not true leadership, that's management. And it really depends how far down the spectrum of management. It could be micromanagement or, and it could also be a trauma response because of the pain that I was avoiding. The pain that I was numbing was the fear of being rejected. It was the fear of being judged. It was the fear of failing. And I built so many coping mechanisms around protecting those wounds of mine. That it limited my growth because I was avoiding the very thing that was in the way of reaching my full potential because everything filtered through a lens of protection and pain. Trauma can be a taboo word because we don't feel equipped to face it. And so when we don't feel equipped to face it, understand it, to work through it, we avoid it. And the number one thing that stops our growth and growing our capacity and innovating inside of our community is avoiding. But the thing is, is that we don't have to solve people's problems. Like our goal is not to manage other people's emotions. Our goal is to bring awareness to ourselves and grow ourselves because when we grow, we become better at handling hard situations, recognizing when somebody may be needing some time off. Understanding patterns and being able to create new ones, understanding our own capacity, understanding our own boundaries, our own limitations. That's what growth does to us. And if we're not careful, if we say we're too busy we stay stuck. Life shrinks us because we're avoiding what's actually the root cause of being stuck, which is you, your own capacity. We truly think that if we try to control others, put all these rules in place and manage them accordingly, that our lives will change, but they don't. The real change in life. Comes when we become aware of ourselves, our own limitations, our own strengths, our own desires, our own pain points. cause when we become aware of those can change from the inside. And in order to sustain success on the outside, you have to change on the inside. I can't change. Sally and her reactions. I can't force her to go to therapy and change. I can't do that. But what I can do is understand my reactions to them. I can become aware of my duty to pause and respond to them. It's a choice. And the greatest freedom in life is when you realize you have a choice. To respond or to react, and we all do, but sometimes we don't feel like we do, and that's because we've been triggered, right? That's because we're in survival mode. When we choose to react, when we allow people to walk through a boundary, when we are so resentful at somebody because they're not doing what you're doing. And we react to them in a negative way. That's on us. We think if we control enough, people will change. But the truth is when we try, to control something that we don't trust. And if we don't trust it. We'll feel like we'll have to be there all the time answering the problems, fixing and rescuing them all the time. When our responsibility as a leader is to be present, to be steadfast, to be steady, and to steward ourselves, our energy, our boundaries, our communication, and to grow other people to see the vision and to grow it. And we get so lost in controlling and over-functioning. That's why we're burning out. We've lost the plot. We have lost the plot. 100% is a metric. It is a goal, and I want the most residents I could ever have living inside of my community and us impacting them in a positive and meaningful way. But I want it. With a hundred percent mindset that I can do this in a sustainable way. What gets in the way becomes the way, and usually that's us. Are you trying to control people to change or are you growing yourself to better understand, adapt and equip people inside of your community. That's the question. my fundamental belief is a community is just a community until a good leader steps in and creates a great place to live and work. You can see communities cycle through administrators with the same team there, and then a leader comes in and is able to turn everything around, and that's because the leader understands what it takes to be successful. The question is, can the leader do it sustainably and successfully on the inside from a place of. Stewardship and not a place of authoritarianism control, a place of influence. See, I did that, but I also did it from a place of survival, which is why after 15 years of being an executive director, I couldn't do it anymore, and it was because of me. It was because of survival mode. It was because I got tired of protecting the pain and I needed to face the pain because 100% was never enough because an NOI goal hit was never enough, and I needed for something to be enough. And you know what was enough? When I realized and I decided that I was enough, that's when enough becomes enough, and that's a powerful realization. It's a choice in believing I'm enough. It is a choice in believing 100% is great, but the mindset of 100% is far more greater than a community of a hundred percent. In my 100% leader program we met last night and just having them reflect on some of their aha moments, I realized just how powerful awareness. Is and how zero control that we as facilitators have to drive a certain point home because people are going to hear what they need to hear and to reflect on it the way that they need to reflect on it. humbling. But what's fascinating is how awareness really is the beginning stages of growth. Of change of success, but it's just the beginning. In order to keep going, you have to become comfortable with uncomfortable through the lens of being enough, through the lens of this is what growth is. Through the lens of I'm never going to find stability and growth at the same time. It's a cycle, right? Like we go through survival mode, which is probably the first six months of a new brand, new executive director, right? Or a brand new director in general. And then you can find somewhat of stability because, oh my God, I understand patterns and rhythms inside of a community. And then you're gonna get to strength, but then you're going to want to improve on that, which is going to be discomfort. But if we're never okay with accepting discomfort and we wanna stay in stability or expect everything to be perfect or close to it, you're never going to grow. The expectation is misplaced because your community and your company is full of humans and they are complicated. And my God, 34% of the people that are working inside of our community. Have an ACEs score of four or more. That doesn't even count the people that have one, two, or three that have not done any work to understand what drives their decision making, what drives their reactions, what drives their desire to want to work in a community. If we're looking for perfection, we're never going to find it, which is going to cause us to be A person who over function. Maybe it's not trauma that's driving you, Maybe the need for perfection is just protecting a vulnerable part of you. But when we think about trauma, which is purely subjective, and we think that our pain is so unique because I know I did, but the truth is pain is not unique. if we continue to believe that our pain is unique. We're never gonna reach out and ask for help. I used to think that nobody would understand what I went through. Well, maybe not exactly what I went through, but then I found like group coaching, and I'm speaking to a lot of people these days and I'm like, wow, we really are all the same. We just don't reach out and ask for help. So when I talk about trauma or. Stagnation and, and growth. I'm not talking about it just for fun. I'm talking about it from a perspective that this is why burnout and over-functioning get in the way of the growth that we are working so hard to achieve and why I believe senior living is stuck and why it takes so. Much time to move the needle. It's because everybody is looking for perfection and they're so scared. They, they are managed in fear, they're operating in fear, and that they, they feel like they can't fail. They can't make a mistake, so therefore they avoid the discomfort, which means that our growth is minimal It's also the solution. It's what gets in the way. None of your families or residents want you to be perfect. Perfect is so boring. What they want you to do is to be responsible to take accountability and to communicate. And the more CEOs. And leadership inside these companies that I talk to, the more they want their leaders to take accountability and responsibility and to critically think and to grow and to communicate why they tried it and why it failed and what they learned from it. And if we don't understand that, we will stay stuck because what we avoid will control us. What we avoid will be the cap on our growth. And inside of our community is an emotional tornado colliding with everybody's wants and needs and invisible battles. And when we can realize that people's reactions are just communication. They're not even personal vendettas against us. They're just ingrained in them. protection mechanisms. We can look at them differently and we can say, I need to take a pause here and get real curious as to why this is happening. Because when we react, we stay stuck. We get nowhere, absolutely nowhere, but when we respond. We can actually see someone else's perspective and try to grow from it. And when your team sees you do that over and over and over again consistently, they will trust you. And when they trust you, your life becomes infinitely better when they feel safe around you. And that's why your growth is the only guarantee that your tomorrow is going to be better than today. So in short. I'm so excited about this presentation and if you are going to ACA in Cal, in Las Vegas, please come and see me Sunday at three 30, and Monday at 8:00 AM I'll record another podcast for next week and talk about the presentation, that I'm doing on Monday morning

20:50

Here are a few takeaways, A few aha moments I want you to think about from this episode.

squadcaster-8597_1_10-16-2025_130541: 20:55

avoidance. Is the enemy of capacity that life doesn't shrink us. Our refusal to face the discomforting parts of our life is what shrinks us, keeps us playing small. Protecting the pain doesn't reach your highest capacity. if you don't understand the value of pausing to respond because you're avoiding noticing the hurt and the pain that's causing you to react, that avoidance will hide. Every good intention that you do, every good thing that you do will be lost in a reaction. That you may or may not regret in the long run, growing your capacity isn't about hustle. It's about the wisdom, the experience, the reflected experience, and the rhythms and inside of your community. Just because you have 20 years of experience does not mean that you have 20 years of wisdom, and that is the one thing. That I'm taking away from this group coaching session and my one-on-one coaching clients is that hour that we spend together is an hour of reflection, and that is priceless. That's where wisdom is created and where momentum is built. Your growth is your responsibility. And it truly is the only guarantee we have in creating the future that you truly want because you define success for you and you create and understand how to get there. So please remember what you avoid will control you. You will not grow past it. The more external success you want, the more internal strength you're going to need. Do not, again, do not avoid the discomfort and do not get discouraged by things that you cannot control. Your greatest gift is grace, humility, and authenticity, which is stewarding you because when you change and you grow and you lead everyone around, you will rise. Thank you for your time today. You are enough. And this close to 30 minutes that you just invested in your own growth proves it always aspire for more for you knowing you are enough.