Introduction to the Play Big Queen Podcast
Welcome to the Play Big Queen podcast.
This is for the woman ready to lead with power, move with confidence, and own your Play Big self.
For my newly minted or late blooming, neurospicy visionary babes who are waking up to your power and unmasking your brilliance.
For the sovereign leader building success on your own terms.
I am your host, Kate Bailey.
I am the Play Big Queen.
My name is my title and a command for all women, Play Big Queen.
I invite you to claim this title for yourself and coronate your Play Big Self too, so it can serve you.
This is a space for bold embodiment, radical reclamation, unapologetic leadership, and a business that works with your wiring, not against it.
Your voice is meant to be bold and heard and your brilliance is here to be claimed.
You are already powerful.
I am in service of everyone fucking tired of the people pleasing grind.
We go deep, we get real, and we play big.
It's a new era for women on the Play Big path.
Long may we reign.
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There’s something wild that happens when you reach out for help, especially when you’re sitting across from someone who’s labeled “the expert.”
A therapist, a doctor, a mentor, a coach.
We’re taught to see expertise as authority.
But expertise doesn’t automatically make someone the authority on you.
And that’s what I want to talk about today.
Power dynamics in healing relationships, and the courage it takes to stay in your truth when you’re in a room with someone who’s supposed to have more answers than you do.
Recently, I had an experience with a therapist that brought this to life in a really personal way.
I am starting EMDR therapy again.
and the truth is, I’ve been to EMDR before,
but past providers… weren’t that great at it.
They either didn’t really understand trauma at a nervous system level, or they weren’t attuned enough to catch what was actually happening in my body.
So when I found someone who specializes in complex trauma for over 25 years that delivers the therapy over telehealth, I was hopeful because EMDR, when it’s done right, is life-changing.
And I say that as someone living with cPTSD and a high rate of dissociation.
For me, dissociation doesn’t just mean zoning out, it’s memory loss.
There are massive gaps in my timeline.
Whole chunks of my life are just gone.
Some of that is trauma.
Some of it is because I’m AuDHD, and my brain literally short-circuits when it’s overloaded by sensory stimulation.
And some of it is just the way I’m wired… it is physically harder for me to stay in my body.
And this is a major reason why embodiment work matters so much in my life and why it has been made my life’s work.
Embodiment… is how I practice staying.
Staying with myself, staying with others and not disassociating.
It’s how I intentionally come into presence.
and that work, is also why my presence is so powerful in coaching sessions with my clients.
It’s the same reason why so many people who have overcome darkness or things like addiction have so much capacity to experience life, and joy and pleasure.
When you’ve experienced the opposite and have come back from that, you find your capacity for the positive in any given area that you’ve done work on, is so expansive.
So embodiment is how I practice staying in my body.
Staying when things feel overwhelming.
Staying when my nervous system wants to check out.
Staying when I’m uncomfortable, but when I’m actually safe.
So here’s what happened.
I had an appointment scheduled, and I realized I needed to set a few boundaries around time because my time availability circumstances for the day of the appointment had changed.
I booked this appointment 3 months in advance not knowing that my accounting final was going to be on the same day.
The provider also asked if I could meet an hour earlier in the morning, which meant I would lose an hour of sleep on my final exam day.
I had so much to study for and the last thing I wanted to do was drudge up trauma right before testing… even just filling out all the onboarding therapy forms can be a bit triggering where they ask you about your life and your history…
So I reached out to the provider, clearly and respectfully, to communicate that I need to reschedule.
I explained about my capacity challenges with school, how I need extra time and how it would actually be more helpful to schedule a couple of weeks out because I had a massive school bill I had to pay and it would just make more budgetary sense to push it out a couple of weeks.
I have a PPO healthcare plan, I should be fully covered but they’re out of network which means cash up front and hundreds of dollars per session plus additional funds for equipment I will need for these sessions.
And it’s so worth it, but it was — on so many levels — just poor timing with everything that was going on with school.
And the response the provider sent was deeply triggering and riddled with red flags.
Here’s what the therapist said in the email:
“Katie, it is normal to feel anxiety before a first session.
Had you thought that it might actually help you study better and be in a better head space?
You have I think probably had the opposite experience with talk therapy in the past where you may feel worse after a first session. Is that a fair guess?
Of course it is up to you but avoidance like this is part of what maintains trauma.
Let’s not keep kicking the can down the road.
It actually may contribute to more anxiety if you postpone.
It is only an hour of your time :)
I understand you are feeling a bit frazzled.
I hope to see you on zoom tomorrow.”
So how is this problematic?
This is something that we see a lot in the coaching and therapy spaces when providers are coming more from a place of business and trying to land the sale.
They are not, in this moment, coming from a place of being trauma-informed. They are not collaborating with the patient or client, and they wind up gaslighting and pathologizing a person and compromising their authority.
Let’s go over identifying specific red flags from this conversation so you can identify them quickly if you find yourself in the same situation.
Red Flag 1: They pathologized my boundary.
I clearly expressed two legitimate, practical reasons for rescheduling: an academic obligation (my final exam) and a financial strain.
They reframed that as avoidance that maintains trauma.
That’s inaccurate and invalidating.
A trauma-informed clinician should respect self-knowledge and pacing, not label it as avoidance when it’s actually resourcing and boundary-setting.
Red Flag 2: They assumed my emotional state.
They told me what I “probably” experienced in past therapy and implied I was “frazzled.”
That’s not only presumptive but subtly patronizing.
They were also patronizing by calling me Katie — a super familiar and infantilized version of my name.
I never told them my name was Katie. I go by Kate or Kathryn.
Red Flag 3: They dismissed my autonomy.
“Let’s not keep kicking the can down the road” and “It’s only an hour of your time :)” These sentances completely minimize my emotional and financial considerations.
I clearly explained why rescheduling would help, and they discounted that reasoning instead of collaborating with me.
That’s a power dynamic issue, and a trauma-informed therapist should know how to communicate to empower autonomy, not override it.
To completely deny economic or energetic circumstances is just not trauma informed care.
Red Flag 4: They didn’t address my financial timing concern at all.
I was direct about my financial circumstances with school bills, which is crucial to safety and trust. They completely ignored that and focused entirely on session psychology. That avoidance of practical concerns can make clients feel unseen and unsafe and prioritizes making the sale over the patient’s wellbeing.
So all these red flags left me feeling disappointed and gross.
My self-awareness around my circumstances as someone already doing something challenging — paying to go back to school at 44 — was a boundary that got reframed as avoidance.
My communication was interpreted through the lens of a provider who is frustrated with patients not showing up, rather than a reality lens.
As a result, they pathologized my self-awareness and ability to adapt and create new boundaries by saying, “Avoidance is what maintains trauma.”
And I get that.
I understand the logic through the lens of a therapist or coach who has a bad habit of being quick to label anyone and everyone through the lens of trauma or attachment theory — calling people anxious or avoidant.
But the over-pathologization of avoidance in coaching and therapy spaces needs to stop.
Personally, there are lots of things I take immediate action on — it’s leftover from working in EMS and part of my hyperactive ADHD and how my anxiety manifests.
If I know it needs to be done and I can see how to do it, I do it immediately.
I’m really type A that way.
And this therapist couldn’t know that after one call. They didn’t know me.
I knew me.
But they were acting like they knew me — basing their interpretation of my boundaries on their past clients.
My wanting to reschedule wasn’t avoidance. It was a boundary.
It was me saying, Hey, I’m human. I have limits. I’m managing my time, my energy, my resources.
And that’s where the power dynamic shows up.
Because when you ask for help, and the person you’re asking interprets your boundary as pathology,
you suddenly have to carry the labor of both advocating for yourself and holding the emotional fallout of being misunderstood.
And that’s a lot to hold, especially for someone already navigating trauma recovery.
But I held it.
First, I sent an email back replying to all the red flags and restating my boundaries.
I also said, “And on just another quick note, I actually go by Kate or Kathryn, not Katie.”
The provider replied with only the words Understood Kate with a semicolon parenthesis smiley face.
But it was clear to me that they didn’t really understand, and now they were avoiding my direct concerns on a whole new level… so I decided to keep the appointment and do conversational cleanup with them.
Because even though I was trying to protect my boundaries with my test, this back-and-forth email chain where they weren’t letting me reschedule was taking up so much energy — and I didn’t want this to be the dynamic moving forward.
So I kept the meeting.
I got on the call first thing in the morning on the day of my test, and I was direct.
I said:
“Before we dive in, I want to name something from our last email exchange because it’s important to address directly, especially if we’re going to create an ongoing relationship in this capacity.
In full transparency, I thought about being a no-show and canceling today.
I know your intention probably wasn’t to incorrectly pathologize or make assumptions about me being avoidant, but parts of your message did exactly that.
There were also assumptions made about my emotional state, about me being ‘frazzled,’ and about my past therapy experiences that didn’t reflect my actualy reality.
My attempts to set boundaries around scheduling, based on new information about my situation this week, were presented as avoidance rather than what they actually were: practical realities.
I don’t owe you an explanation, but I do want to be clear that I need you to be interested in my reality without assuming.
And I need to be able to maintain my autonomy to set my own schedule and have my boundaries honored in a relationship like this.
For me, working with a trauma-informed practitioner means my pacing, boundaries, and resource realities are respected without reinterpretation.
So if we move forward, it has to be from this foundation of mutual respect and collaboration.”
Now, for anyone listening — depending on who you are and what communication skills you have — saying something like that may or may not be easy for you.
When it comes to self-advocacy, I have the privilege of being gifted in interpersonal communication, and that helps me greatly.
But this is where I want to pause and make it personal for you.
If you’re in therapy, coaching, or any kind of healing work, and your energetic capacity or financial reality means that sometimes you have to choose between sessions and burnout — that does not mean you’re avoidant.
That means you’re human.
That means you’re aware of your limits.
And that kind of boundary-setting is actually trauma-healing in action.
When I brought all of this up to my new therapist, I was direct.
And to their credit, they heard me.
They didn’t get defensive.
They apologized.
They acknowledged what happened.
They said, “I am really sorry, I shouldn’t have made those assumptions. I’ll be more curious going forward.”
And honestly, that’s what shifted the whole relationship.
We had a really great first session. They’re so knowledgeable.
And later that day, I went on to get an 80 on my final — and if you’ve been following along, you know that I’m a straight-A student who was getting ready to celebrate her first B because this accounting class was so hard.
and it’s important to recognize that I did okay on this final not because the therapist was right. I wasn’t avoiding the appointment…
I did okay on the final because I always rise to the occasion.
And sometimes I do it to my own detriment, because after that final — after navigating all that communication and self-advocacy — I was burned the fuck out.
I ran a 5K the next morning, and I was completely gassed because I was overcommitted and didn’t reschedule. and that resulted in a full body flare up, decreased mobility, I’m hobbling around the house today with a burned out body trying to recover.
But sometimes there are tradeoffs. Sometimes it works out.
The hard truth is: sometimes when we show all the way up and it burns us out, there are still benefits.
I’m going to be doing trauma therapy with someone known to get every patient results within 6–9 months — and that’s because I decided to sacrifice in the moment for the future.
That can’t always be the choice — it’s not sustainable — but still.
Repair — real repair — is a form of healing, too.
Repairing a relationship where someone engaged in a dynamic that didn’t respect your autonomy or authority re-teaches your body that safety can exist inside connection, not just outside it.
That’s the thing about power.
When you’ve lived through trauma, power can feel like something that’s always being taken or held over you.
But healthy power is shared. It’s co-created. It’s safe.
And that’s what trauma-informed relationships — therapeutic, coaching, or otherwise — should feel like.
Respectful. Curious. Collaborative.
Even though doing self advocacy, conversational clean up, and the emotional labor that comes with waking someone up to the fact that they are not respecting your authority on your self…
You shouldn’t have to surrender your autonomy to receive help.
This whole experience reminded me that courage doesn’t always look like leaving and severing the relationship, even though a lot of the time, it does.
Sometimes courage is staying long enough to name the rupture and see if repair is possible.
Sometimes it’s saying, “This didn’t feel right, can we talk about it?”
Or, “This happened, and I’m not available for that going forward.”
Sometimes it’s allowing someone to rise to the occasion and meet you there.
Because when they do, when they actually respect your power instead of feeling threatened by it or trying to manipulate it for their own gain, that’s where real healing begins.
And let’s be honest, people have a hard time holding nuance and make a lot of assumptions when you need help.
They assume you’re fragile.
They assume you’re lost.
They assume you’re helpless, or that if you struggle with something in one area, you must struggle in all areas.
They assume they know what empowerment should look like for you.
But getting help doesn’t erase your autonomy or your wisdom.
It doesn’t cancel your authority over your own experience.
It doesn’t mean someone else knows what safety, healing, or empowerment look like in *your* body.
We talk a lot about coaches or therapists quote unquote holding you through it or holding the space… but the truth is…
Experts can hold knowledge, wisdom, informaiton..
but they don’t hold actually hold you.
You hold you.
And maybe that’s the biggest takeaway here:
Healing isn’t about who knows more, it’s about who knows you better.
You get to be the expert on what empowerment feels like.
You get to decide how your healing unfolds.
You get to say, “This relationship is worth the work,” when you assess that repair is possible and walk away when it isn’t.
That’s what it means to live empowered.
That’s what it means to stay embodied.
So if you’re in that space right now where you’re asking for help, trying to heal, navigating the courage to stay or the clarity to leave…
Remember:
Your needs are not inconvenient.
Your boundaries are not barriers to healing.
They are the framework that make healing possible.
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Outro 1
That's it for today, Queen.
Take what lit you up, leave what didn't.
You know what serves.
If you want to stay in this Play Big Queen orbit, get the rituals, resources, and real talk that fuels your Play Big self, go to xxxkatebailey.com, scroll to the bottom, and join this community.
This is where bold women gather. Neurodivergent visionaries, disability warriors, sacred disruptors.
If this episode spoke to you, leave a review on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
Leave comments, give me all the stars, share it.
That's how we create change that ripples, and how this podcast gets out to more people who need it.
If you're ready to work together to make your play big self not just a vision, but a reality that you embody, then head to xxxkatebailey.com, go to the work with Kate section, and join in on a program
that feels right for you.
Or tag me on socials and tell me a moment that truly served you from this episode.
Until next time, remember to honor your own timing, value your own unique way.
And most of all, when you come face to face with your boldest desires, trust your brilliance and Play Big Queen.
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Outro 2
Hey, queen, are you still here?
Good.
That means you're not just curious.
You are being called and want more.
I am here for the ones who want more than party trick mindset hacks.
The ones who need nervous system rooted, neurodiverse affirming space held by someone who is trauma trained, so they can rise on their terms.
My work is designed to center folks navigating ADHD, autism, disability, trauma, or mental health challenges and their brilliance all at once.
You do not need to be someone who identifies as neurodivergent or someone who has a disability to benefit from this work.
If you're feeling called, you belong here.
I believe in and support queer and trans rights, Black Lives Matter, sex worker rights, Palestinian, Ukrainian, and global self-liberation, religious autonomy, and dismantling abusive systems.
If that's too much for you, then babe, this isn't your podcast and you know where the unfollow is.
But if that lights a fire within you and you are inspired to learn more, then my Play Big Queen, you are home.
You can also head over to xxxkatebailey.com/about to learn more about me, my company,
qualifications, methodology, values, worldviews, philosophies, and my mission.
My mission is to activate 10,000 women with invisible disabilities to lead, create, speak up, and claim the spaces that they were told to shrink inside.
Because their leadership, your leadership, will change the world.
If you know that's you, declare it.
Put your energetic line in the sand and tell me.
Email me at [email protected] and tell me why this work is so important for you and we can explore opportunities to work together and make your Play Big dreams a reality.
