Karen Robinson: The Power of Community in Healing Trauma

Group healing gets recommended constantly and explained rarely. Karen Robinson's version of why it works is the collective wisdom in the room: working with one professional gives you one perspective, and a room of survivors with different histories gives you all of theirs.

Karen Robinson has been a therapist for 27 years, with an LCSW, and works as a coach as well so that geography does not limit who she can serve. She runs healing retreats and four summits a year, and she has built the business as a mother-daughter operation, with her older daughter editing and her middle daughter handling design. She describes herself as a complex trauma survivor: a childhood with domestic violence, child abuse, poverty, and food insecurity, being stalked by a boyfriend after running away from home, and two marriages before her current one that involved power, control, and emotional abuse.

In this episode Karen and Lisa talk about how to choose a community rather than fall into one. Karen curates hers around survivors who are working on their healing, using the principle of naming the trauma but not claiming it, alongside accountability for your own recovery. Lisa describes how the same idea plays out in BTGO's weekly legal abuse support group, which combines male and female clients on the grounds that abuse is a human issue, and which stays on strategy rather than on the system being broken.

Karen also lays out what to look for in professional help. She distinguishes a trauma informed therapist, which can mean a class or two, from a trauma competent one certified in the evidence-based modalities. She covers the holistic pillars she works across, spiritual, emotional, energetic, relational and mental health, and the bottom-up practices that sit underneath them. Her advice on fit comes down to trusting your intuition, asking a therapist directly what training they have done, and giving yourself permission to keep looking until you feel heard.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why people tend to recover faster in a group than in one-to-one work alone
• Naming the trauma without claiming it, and taking accountability for your own healing
• Red flags for a group that keeps its members circling the same story
• Why a support group that mixes male and female members can work in your favor
• The difference between a trauma informed therapist and a trauma competent one
• The holistic pillars: spiritual, emotional, energetic, relational, and mental health
• The questions to ask a therapist about their training and certifications
• The simplest test of fit: do you leave the session feeling heard

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Coach or therapist, and why Karen wears both hats
3:00 Karen's own story, and the case manager who got her wrong
5:00 Why people heal faster in a group
6:00 Red flags: groups that keep you circling the same story
7:00 Naming the trauma without claiming it
8:00 Trauma competent, not just trauma informed
9:00 The holistic pillars and bottom-up practices
10:00 How to tell if a therapist is the right fit
11:00 Where to find Karen

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Karen Robinson at Heal Thrive Dream: https://www.healthrivedream.com/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.