Addressing the Root of Burnout and Trauma in Healthcare Providers: Dr. Rola Hallam, Founder of CanDo and Trauma and Burnout Life Coach
This episode of Raise the Line offers a powerful conversation with host Lindsey Smith and her guest Dr. Rola Hallam, who shares her personal journey overcoming the trauma she experienced providing medical care in Syria and other war-torn areas. She’s now a trauma and burnout coach devoted to helping health professionals who, like herself, spend years carrying the weight of their experiences without seeking help, or who pursue ineffective remedies for relieving it. Key insights include treating trauma and burnout as nervous system dysregulation, not mental illness; the critically important distinction between empathy and compassion, and how empowering frontline workers to heal their trauma can uplift individuals and empower entire communities.
Raise the Line · Dr. Rola Hallam, Lindsey Smith
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Show Notes
"Burnout and trauma are not mental illnesses. They live in your physiology. They live in your biology. They live very specifically in your nervous system,” Dr. Rola Hallam says with a conviction rooted in her own successful journey to overcome the effects of chronic stress she accumulated during many years on the frontlines of humanitarian crises in Syria and other conflict zones. Out of concern for the multitudes of health professionals who, like herself, spend years carrying the weight of their traumatic experiences without seeking help, or who pursue ineffective remedies for relieving it, Dr. Rola -- as she’s known – has shifted her focus to being a trauma and burnout coach. Among her offerings is Beyond Burnout, a twelve-week program that includes multimedia content as well as live coaching and teaching about developing nervous system awareness and regulation. “Most wellness initiatives fail because they're not rewiring the nervous system to come out of survival mode and back into what is called the ventral-vagal state, which is our state of social connection and of healing and repair.” She also stresses that healing is not an individual pursuit, especially for providers who work in a relational field, and teaches about the benefits of borrowing from a colleagues’ state of calm and offering them the same. Don’t miss this insightful and giving conversation with host Lindsey Smith that covers Dr. Rola’s wrenching experiences providing care in desperate conditions, the critically important distinction between empathy and compassion, and how empowering frontline workers to heal their trauma can uplift individuals and empower entire communities.
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