From Trauma To CEO

“I’m just not creative.” “I’m not a natural leader.” What if that isn’t a fact about you, but a job you were handed as a child? Every family hands out roles: the clever one, the responsible one, the strong one, the funny one. In this episode, chartered psychologist Farya Barlas looks at what happens to the talents you set aside because someone else in the family already had them. Psychology calls...

Why does one person irritate you far more than they should? Chartered Psychologist Farya Barlas explains shadow work, triggers, and what that irritation reveals about your visibility and your business. In this episode, Farya takes the conversation somewhere business content rarely goes: into the shadow. Drawing on Carl Jung’s original idea and on parts work, she explains why the shadow isn’t the d...

You leave the summit certain that this time you’ll go after the thing you’ve been putting off. Six weeks later nothing has moved, and you’re eyeing next year’s early-bird tickets. In this episode of From Trauma to CEO , Chartered Psychologist Farya Barlas explains why the high from motivational events, seminars and big-stage summits fades so quickly. She also covers why high achievers keep chasing...

We're told the answer is more confidence. Back yourself. Know your value. And so we build it, launch after launch, win after win, until we're the most confident woman in the room. And still, somehow, we don't believe we deserve to be in it. In this episode, Farya draws the line most high achievers never see: the difference between self-confidence and self-worth. Confidence is earned...

We were rewarded for it from the very beginning. Being the reliable one. The capable one. The one who anticipates everybody's needs, fixes the problem before anybody asks, and somehow always finds a way to carry more. It got praised at home, it got praised at school, it got promoted at work. So of course it came with us into the business. And at some point, what looks like exceptional leaders...

We have all done the money work. The mindset programmes, the books, the courses. Most of us can narrate our family's relationship with money in detail, and still say a price out loud and soften it half a second later. Still add something to the package nobody asked for. Still avoid looking at the bank account on certain days. In this solo episode, Chartered Psychologist and trauma expert Fary...

We like to think we choose our businesses consciously. After more than two decades as a psychologist, Farya Barlas has come to understand something different: our businesses are often unconscious biographies. They reflect our nervous system, our unmet needs and our values as much as our skills. What looks like strategy from the outside is very often adaptation on the inside. Farya is joined by Lin...

Most ambitious women don't have an information problem. They have read the books, listened to the podcasts, taken the courses, gone to therapy, worked with mentors and filled notebooks with insight. And still there is an enormous distance between what they understand and what they are actually able to live. In this solo episode, Chartered Psychologist and trauma expert Farya Barlas names the...

We think visibility means people seeing us. So we put our ideas out into the world, and we assume that makes us visible.  In this episode, Farya draws a distinction most of the business world has collapsed into one word.  Exposure is how many opportunities people have to see you. Visibility is what they actually get to encounter when they do. You can dramatically increase the first while changing...

Why do high achievers override their bodies until it costs them? Farya Barlas and body-mind coach Ruth Cummings decode the physical signals behind overwhelm, overthinking, and the success your body can't yet hold. In this episode, Farya is joined by her friend Ruth Cummings, body-mind coach, speaker, and founder of Athletic Touch Therapeutic Massage and Coaching. Together they trace how high...

There's a season that arrives without warning. Nothing is wrong. Your life might even look good from the outside, you've built the things a younger version of you once longed for. And yet something has gone quiet. The goals feel strangely flat, the old motivation has thinned, and when someone asks what you actually want now, you find you don't know. We don't have the language f...

Why do qualified prospects say "let me think about it"? Farya on the Projection Principle, how self-distrust leaks into your sales and quietly stalls your deals. We treat indecision like a personality flaw. You go in circles on the decisions that actually matter, the offer, the price, the pivot, the hire, gathering one more opinion, sleeping on it one more night, and you conclude you&apo...

What if the person you believe yourself to be… isn't actually who you are? In this episode, Chartered Psychologist Farya Barlas dismantles the idea that we are born with an identity. Rather, we build one. And most of us are running our adult lives, our businesses, and our leadership through an identity constructed by a child answering one question: Who do I have to become to be loved, to belo...

In this episode, Farya sits down with Anna Lozano, serial entrepreneur and brand builder for a conversation that never stayed on the surface. Anna has built companies, exited one, spent three years in what she calls the void, and is now raising capital to launch her next venture. She has done the inner work. She is self-aware, articulate about her patterns, and still, in a live session with Farya,...

We all know the story we're supposed to tell about success. You hit the number, you celebrate, you build on the momentum. So when the opposite happens, when the best month of your business leaves you flat, exposed, or crying somewhere private, you assume something is wrong with you.  And when your revenue quietly slides back to its old number a few weeks later, you reach for the only explanat...

There's a visibility challenge sweeping the internet. It has made its creator around six million dollars, and it asks one simple thing: film yourself, every day, and post it. In this episode, chartered psychologist Farya Barlas, twenty-three years in the field, explains what is actually happening in the body of the woman who cannot press record. Farya turns her clinical eye on the biggest vis...

There is a version of success that looks completely put together from the outside  and is held up entirely by pressure on the inside. In this episode, Farya is joined by Ashley McDonald, therapist, speaker, and host of Shamelessly Ambitious, for a conversation about what ambition actually is underneath the achievement. Ashley shares her own story from a traumatic, chaotic childhood to becoming a s...

We're told to keep it professional. Leave your personal life at the door. Don't let what's happening at home bleed into the business. And we repeat it like it's obvious, without ever asking whether it's even true. In this episode, Farya takes apart the myth that your personal relationships and your business are separate things. Through the story of a high-achieving finance...

There is a particular kind of success that looks extraordinary from the outside. Book deals, national television, Oprah, Forbes, a growing audience, an expanding business. And underneath — grief, medical crisis, a death that reshapes everything, a body quietly unravelling while the social media feed stays curated and bright. This episode is a conversation about what happens when the very qualities...

After 23 years of clinical practice across seven therapeutic modalities, Farya shares what she has not said publicly before, the personal story of her own disillusionment with individual modalities, and what she discovered when she stopped choosing between them and started combining them.  This episode names the structural gap in the coaching, therapy, and personal development industry that leaves...

The advice has been everywhere for years. Charge your worth. Know your value. Just raise your prices. And for a certain kind of individual, capable, intelligent, already successful on paper, none of it lands. The pricing stays the same. The contraction stays the same. The private question stays the same: why can’t I do the thing I know I should be able to do. In this episode, Farya reframes the en...

Visibility is often sold as a strategy, the right pitch, the right platform, the right followers. But underneath every visible business is a person deciding whether it’s safe to be seen. In this episode, Farya is joined by Gloria Chow, award-winning PR strategist, former US diplomat, and founder of a movement helping overlooked founders land features in outlets like Vogue, Oprah Daily, and Busines...

We  hear these self-development concepts everywhere, burnout, boundaries, self-care, work-life balance. And we adopt them as universal truths without ever asking: does this actually apply to me? In this episode, Farya challenges the habit of borrowing frameworks without self-understanding first. Through a personal story about being called a workaholic, she explores why two people can look identica...

In this episode, Farya shares the full story of why she built The Method. After training across eight therapeutic modalities and over two decades in clinical practice, she kept seeing the same gap: healing alone didn’t lead to expansion, and action alone didn’t address what was actually keeping people stuck. Through one client’s story, she reveals what happens when intergenerational programming ru...

What happens when reinvention isn’t a branding decision, but a survival strategy? In this episode, I sit down with my dear friend Tracy Matthews to explore what it really takes to evolve when your identity has been built around resilience.  We talk about: Growing up in chaos and becoming “the responsible one.” How early trauma can turn into high-achieving drive Losing a multi-seven-figure business...