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Hello Trauma: Leading with Care in a High-Performance World | Hillary Cauthen, , CMPC

🔥 Excerpt

“Real resiliency is I’m choosing intentionally to chase after this. And I embrace whatever comes with that.”

⚡ TL;DR

Dr. Hillary Cauthen shares how high performers can stay sharp without losing themselves by building consistent coping routines, clarifying core values, and designing team cultures that treat care as a performance asset, not a crisis response.

📄 Show Notes

Leading with Care is not a soft idea. It is a disciplined choice to protect the human behind the role while still honoring the mission. In this episode, Dr. Hillary Cauthen explains how she supports elite athletes, founders, and teams through a continuum of care that blends mental health with mental performance.

We talk about the real tension of high achievement: being fully committed to the work while trying to stay present with family, health, and relationships. Hillary frames life in buckets, then checks the levels without shame. Some seasons demand more travel or more grind. Other seasons demand more home, more recovery, and more margin. Leading with Care means you stop measuring yourself by guilt and start measuring yourself by alignment.

Hillary also challenges how we talk about trauma. She defines trauma as a response to a stimulus, not a contest of suffering. When leaders understand that, they build systems that reduce harm and strengthen trust. She shares practical tools like five minute mind, off ramps between roles, and consistent coping so disruption does not erase your stability.

If you are building something and carrying others, Leading with Care becomes a leadership standard. It helps you think clearly, stay emotionally grounded, and keep performance sustainable. That is the heart of a relentless pursuit that still has integrity. Leading with Care is how you keep winning without losing your humanity.

✅ Key Takeaways

Clarify your core values, then build your schedule around them
Use buckets to notice what is depleted before it becomes burnout
Practice consistent coping so hard moments do not reset your life
Use five minute mind and off ramps to shift from pressure to presence
Leading with Care creates teams that perform well and recover well

👑 Host Info

Rick Meekins (https://rickmeekins.com) is a serial entrepreneur, strategic business disruption advisor, podcast guest, and host of The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast, where he explores what it actually takes to build, lead, and sustain meaningful businesses. With over 30 years of experience working alongside founders and leadership teams, Rick focuses on helping companies develop and implement disruptive advantages and developing platforms to explore and distribute human insight.

Interested in working together, having Rick speak, or partnering with the show?

Start here: https://rpowpodcast.com/contact/

🧭 Chapters

00:01 Welcome and why this conversation matters
00:35 Hillary’s continuum of care for high performers
02:13 Identity, pressure, and resource gaps in sport
05:24 Buckets, values, and releasing guilt
10:47 Health, training, and family integration
13:27 Consistent coping when life hits hard
15:02 Presence, five minute mind, and regulation
21:14 Building companies, partners, and role clarity
40:44 Hello Trauma and the leadership call to action
47:47 Relentless pursuit as an intentional choice

Biography

Dr. Hillary Cauthen is a clinical sport psychologist based in Austin TX. Hillary was a division 1 college track athlete, before embarking on a career focusing on the mental health and mental performance dimensions of high performers. She studied and competed at the University of New Hampshire, and Miami, Ohio, before completing her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, in Los Angeles.

Dr. Cauthen is the Founder of Texas Optimal Performance & Psychological Services. Formerly served as the Director of Organizational Wellness & Performance for Austin FC and the performance psychologist for the San Antonio Spurs, where she developed their mental performance and wellness programs. Dr. Cauthen has developed private businesses that bring mental wellness curriculum to school districts across the nation, as well as an analytics company that helps predict the behavioral risk factors in players for teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and Premier League. Her work with high performance is breaking down stigma across communities which is highlighted in her book, “Hello Trauma, Our Invisible Teammate.”