How Wounds Shape Power in Politics, Activism, and Public Life
By Granite State Report
On a Friday evening in The Hague in April 2025, Dutch lawmaker Pieter Omtzigt — one of Europe’s most respected anti-corruption crusaders — did something most politicians never do. He walked away.
After more than two decades in parliament and a meteoric rise as the leader of the New Social Contract party, Omtzigt announced he was quitting politics altogether, citing burnout and the toll on his mental health. His decision sent shockwaves through a fragile ruling coalition and prompted a rare public conversation about what public life actually does to the people who choose it.
He is not the only one. In Germany, former chancellor Gerhard Schröder has received treatment for “severe burnout,” with symptoms including profound exhaustion, concentration problems, and sleep disturbance. Activists across movements report waves of burnout, anxiety, and trauma. Political professionals privately talk about panic attacks and depression, even as they publicly trade in phrases like “resilience” and “grit.”
Behind the polished speeches and campaign slogans, a blunt question is emerging:
How much of modern leadership is quietly driven — and distorted — by unresolved trauma?
This is not a clinical diagnosis of individual public figures. It’s an investigative look at a pattern: people with histories of adversity and trauma rising to positions of power, often bringing both extraordinary strengths and dangerous vulnerabilities with them.
Psychologists call this intersection the realm of the “wounded leader.” And in an era of rolling crises — pandemic, economic shocks, political polarization, climate disasters — understanding trauma-driven leadership is no longer a niche concern. It’s a question of governance.
The Hidden Biography of Power: Trauma Is Common, Not Rare
To understand trauma-driven leadership, we have to start with a simple, uncomfortable reality: trauma itself is not rare.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) as potentially traumatic events before age 18 — including abuse, neglect, and household factors like addiction, mental illness, or incarceration.
Recent national estimates using Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data show:
- A majority of U.S. adults report at least one ACE.
- Nearly 16% of adults report four or more types of ACEs — a level strongly associated with depression, chronic disease, and socioeconomic difficulties in adulthood.
Other studies find similar patterns. One analysis of ACE prevalence across states emphasizes that childhood adversity is both widespread and strongly linked to adult mental and physical health problems — from heart disease to substance use to suicidality.
In other words: a large share of any adult population — including its leaders — is trauma-exposed.
That includes pastors, non-profit executives, and activists. For instance, a study of more than 600 seminary students found substantial levels of ACEs in future pastoral leaders, with the authors warning that unresolved trauma can shape how leaders relate to congregations and power.
But trauma alone doesn’t explain who ends up in charge. That’s where the story becomes more complicated.
Does Childhood Adversity Make Leaders — or Keep Them Out?
It’s tempting to embrace the neat story: hardship builds character, pain creates empathy, and therefore trauma “makes” great leaders. Reality is messier.
A recent longitudinal study using Britain’s 1970 birth cohort tracked early-life socioeconomic status (SES) and later leadership. Researchers found that persistent affluence, not adversity, most strongly predicted occupying formal leadership roles at age 26, largely through enhanced social capital and networks. Persistent adversity, by contrast, was associated with lower odds of becoming a leader.
A parallel paper in the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology drew similar conclusions: early socioeconomic adversity tended to reduce leadership role occupancy, even when controlling for other factors.
In other words:
- Adversity is common.
- Adversity alone usually makes it harder, not easier, to reach leadership.
Yet there is a subset of people for whom traumatic experiences appear to be part of the narrative of emergence — the origin story that propels them into public life.
A 2022 paper, The Nexus between Childhood Trauma and the Emergence of Leadership, explored famous figures like Oprah Winfrey, Malala Yousafzai, and Tyler Perry, each of whom has publicly described significant childhood trauma. The authors do not claim that trauma causes leadership, but they argue that traumatic experiences can “propel individuals to a totally different place,” shaping their motivation, empathy, and sense of mission.
Other emerging research suggests:
- Childhood trauma is associated with changes in leadership competence and social-emotional functioning, sometimes negatively, especially when complex PTSD symptoms are present.
- CEOs with documented childhood trauma histories may show different risk-taking profiles, possibly due to long-term post-traumatic effects.
The bottom line: trauma neither guarantees leadership nor excludes it. But when trauma survivors do become leaders, their histories often leave a clear imprint on how they lead — for better and for worse.
From Wound to Mission: Post-Traumatic Growth and Leadership
Not all trauma leads to pathology. Over the past three decades, psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun have developed the concept of post-traumatic growth (PTG) to describe positive psychological changes that can emerge in the aftermath of major crises.
PTG is not about “bouncing back” to baseline. It’s about transformations such as:
- Deeper appreciation for life
- Stronger, more authentic relationships
- Clearer sense of purpose
- Increased personal strength
- Spiritual or existential growth
Tedeschi and Calhoun created the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) to measure these changes and have documented PTG across survivors of war, bereavement, illness, and other traumas.
Leadership practitioners have started to connect these findings to the real-world behavior of executives, activists, and public officials.
- Articles in leadership and organizational psychology circles now routinely explore “post-traumatic growth for leaders,” arguing that leaders who have metabolized their trauma often show heightened empathy, emotional intelligence, and capacity to hold others’ pain without flinching.
- Commentators in business media note that leaders with integrated trauma histories may be particularly effective at navigating crises, because they have already had to reconstruct meaning and identity under pressure.
One leadership coach describes trauma-informed leaders as those who “understand how stress and threat shape human behavior” and use that insight to design kinder, more resilient organizations.
In schools, the concept of the “wounded leader” has shown up in both scholarship and practice. Education experts have written about principals and superintendents who are simultaneously managing institutional crises and their own psychological wounds — and how healing can eventually deepen their leadership instead of diminishing it.
For trauma survivors who lead, the wound can be a source of:
- Moral urgency: a refusal to tolerate injustice, abuse, or neglect because they’ve seen it up close.
- Connection: an ability to connect with struggling communities without condescension.
- Perspective: a clearer sense of what is truly catastrophic and what is just noise.
But there is a catch.
PTG is not automatic. Many trauma survivors do not experience growth; they experience chronic PTSD, depression, or burnout. And even when growth occurs, it often coexists with ongoing pain.
Which means trauma-driven leadership can cut both ways.
The Shadow Side: Burnout, Depression, and Saviorism
Unhealed or partially healed trauma doesn’t just disappear when someone wins an election or takes the corner office. It often reappears as a leadership style.
A 2024 review in Routledge Open Research synthesized recent studies on leadership burnout and depression, concluding there is a clear connection between leadership roles, chronic stress, and depressive symptoms.
Other research on activists, campaigners, and social justice leaders paints a similar picture:
- Studies of peace activists and social justice organizers have documented high burnout rates, driven by public apathy, internal movement conflict, and the slow pace of change.
- One recent study of political activists in the country of Georgia found high levels of anxiety and depression, likely tied to ongoing political turmoil and government tactics.
Activist guides now devote entire sections to “activist burnout,” characterizing it as the predictable endpoint of chronic stress, overwork, and moral injury — especially when movements fail to build cultures of rest, shared responsibility, and psychological safety.
When leaders have trauma histories, these external pressures collide with internal patterns:
- Hyper-responsibility: “If I don’t hold this together, everything falls apart.”
- Difficulty delegating: trusting others feels dangerous.
- Work as anesthesia: staying busy is easier than feeling.
- Savior narratives: “I alone understand the stakes.”
Popular psychology pieces on trauma and leadership warn that unresolved trauma can lead to aggression, control issues, and difficulty trusting colleagues. Leaders may appear decisive but are actually operating from a place of threat and hypervigilance.
In that state, empathy can curdle into martyrdom. The leader stops seeing themselves as part of a team and starts seeing themselves as the necessary protector — the only one strong enough to carry the pain.
That is where trauma-driven leadership becomes dangerous:
- To the leader, who is at high risk of breakdown, addiction, or collapse.
- To the institution, which becomes over-dependent on one person’s willpower.
- To the public, which may mistake that intensity for infallibility.
Politics as a Trauma Amplifier
Politics doesn’t just attract trauma-exposed people; it amplifies whatever they bring with them.
Campaigns and high office are structurally hostile to mental health:
- Long hours, constant travel, and 24/7 availability.
- Public scrutiny and online harassment.
- Chronic uncertainty and exposure to conflict.
Clinicians who work with candidates and campaign teams describe patterns of sleep deprivation, anxiety, substance misuse, and relational breakdown.
In recent years, a growing number of politicians have begun citing burnout or mental health concerns when stepping back from office — from local officials to national figures like Omtzigt.
The broader public is not immune. Psychologists have written about “political burnout” among ordinary citizens, driven by fear-based news cycles, online outrage, and the sense that nothing changes no matter what people do.
For trauma-driven leaders, this ecosystem can feel eerily familiar:
- Crisis feels normal.
- Calm feels suspicious.
- Overextension feels like duty.
- Emotional numbness feels like professionalism.
If their personal wounds involve powerlessness — childhood environments they couldn’t control, losses they couldn’t prevent — politics offers an intoxicating promise: this time, you’re not powerless.
That can fuel extraordinary commitment. It can also lock them into a cycle:
- Take on impossible responsibility.
- Ignore personal limits.
- Burn out or break down.
- Interpret the breakdown as personal failure — and double down.
The system quietly rewards it. The public mythologizes it. The movement depends on it.
Until, suddenly, it doesn’t — and the collapse is public.
When Being “The Strong One” Becomes a Liability
The archetype of the invulnerable leader is deeply embedded in political culture: the candidate who never wavers, the executive who doesn’t flinch, the activist who never takes a day off.
But trauma research suggests that unbroken toughness is often a mask — and a brittle one.
- Leaders with unresolved trauma may have difficulty recognizing their own stress signals.
- Chronic stress and unaddressed burnout are linked to higher rates of depression, cardiovascular disease, and cognitive impairment — hardly ideal conditions for making complex policy decisions.
- Public-facing figures who explicitly state they deprioritize mental health to stay successful are often held up as examples of “hustle culture,” even as mental health experts warn that this mindset is unsustainable and risky.
The narrative of the “trauma-forged hero” becomes particularly dangerous when it crosses a line into:
- Authority without accountability (“No one else understands what I’ve been through, so no one else can question me.”)
- Persecution narratives (“Everyone who criticizes me is part of the problem.”)
- Erasure of personal needs (“Resting is selfish when people are suffering.”)
These are classic red flags for both burnout and potential abuse of power.
The irony is that the very capacity that often makes trauma survivors compelling leaders — their sensitivity to pain — can be eroded by chronic overload, turning empathy into cynicism or numbness.
Trauma-Informed Leadership: What It Looks Like in Practice
If trauma-exposed leaders are inevitable — and in a traumatized society, they are — the question is not whether they should lead. It’s how they should lead, and what structures need to exist around them.
A growing body of work on trauma-informed leadership offers some clues.
Leadership scholars and practitioners describe trauma-informed leadership as:
An approach that recognizes how trauma shapes human behavior, relationships, and systems — and intentionally builds safety, trust, and empowerment into the way organizations function.
In practical terms, this can look like:
- Self-awareness and therapy: Leaders actively working on their own trauma histories, rather than projecting them onto teams or constituents.
- Transparent decision-making: Explaining not just what decisions are made, but why, to reduce the sense of arbitrary power.
- Distributed responsibility: Refusing to become the sole carrier of institutional pain; building teams that share emotional and strategic load.
- Boundaries and rest: Modeling limits as part of leadership, not a deviation from it.
- Organizational practices: Clear policies around harassment, conflict resolution, and psychological safety.
Research on trauma-informed school leadership, for example, finds that when leaders intentionally apply trauma knowledge to both students and staff, schools can become more stable, supportive environments — and leaders themselves report growing in their own healing.
In the workplace more broadly, leadership experts argue that integrating trauma science can improve employee performance and reduce turnover by replacing fear-based management with environments that understand how stress and threat responses work.
For public leaders — governors, mayors, organizers — the analogs are clear:
- Trauma-informed leaders don’t weaponize fear; they contextualize it.
- They don’t romanticize suffering; they work to reduce it.
- They don’t hide their histories; they integrate them in measured, appropriate ways.
Systems, Not Superheroes
One of the most corrosive myths in modern politics is the superhero leader: the singular figure whose personal strength will redeem a broken system.
For trauma-driven leaders, this myth is especially treacherous. It maps perfectly onto the old survival script: “Everything depends on me.”
But sustainable, ethical governance requires something else:
- Strong institutions that do not collapse if one person burns out.
- Shared leadership that recognizes multiple kinds of expertise.
- Organizational cultures that normalize therapy, consultation, and stepping back when needed.
Activist circles, having watched too many charismatic leaders flame out, have begun talking openly about this. Guides on activist burnout emphasize collective care and shared responsibility as political strategies, not just wellness trends.
The same logic applies to parties, governments, and campaigns:
If the movement’s success depends on one trauma-forged personality running at 130% until they break, the movement is already structurally unsound.
What This Means for Voters, Movements, and Institutions
For citizens and voters, “trauma-driven leader” is not a label to slap on individuals from afar. It’s a lens — a way of asking better questions about the people we elevate and the systems we build around them.
Questions worth asking include:
- Does this leader talk as though only they can fix things, or do they emphasize teams and institutions?
- Do they model rest, boundaries, and humility, or do they glorify exhaustion and self-sacrifice?
- Are they open about mental health in a way that reduces stigma, or only when it serves a political narrative?
- Do they respond to criticism with curiosity or with hostility and persecution stories?
For movements and organizations:
- Build debrief and support structures for leaders, especially those with visible histories of trauma or activism.
- Provide access to clinical supervision or therapy, not just coaching.
- Normalize rotating roles and sabbaticals rather than permanent, identity-fused positions.
- Design governance so that no one person is indispensable.
For leaders themselves, especially those who recognize pieces of their own story in this article:
- Trauma can be a source of wisdom, but only if it’s acknowledged and worked with.
- You are not weaker for needing support; you are dangerous if you refuse it.
- Your value is not measured solely by how much pain you absorb on behalf of others.
Watch and Listen: Voices from the Front Lines
For readers who want to explore these ideas further, several resources bring human voices to the research:
- Post-Traumatic Growth and Leadership – Richard Tedeschi: The Science of Post-Traumatic Growth – Watch on YouTube
– Post Traumatic Growth – from Surviving to Thriving playlist – Watch on YouTube
- Burnout and Activism – How to Recover from Activism Burnout – TED Talk by Yana Buhrer Tavanier – Watch on YouTube
– Activism Burnout & Supporting Yourself as You Build Community – Watch on YouTube
These are not endorsements of any particular viewpoint, but they offer useful windows into how trauma, growth, and exhaustion feel from the inside.
Conclusion: The Cost of Not Looking Behind the Mask
The trauma-driven leader is not a monster, and not a saint. They are, like most people, someone shaped by experiences they didn’t choose — some of which left scars and some of which forged strengths.
What makes them dangerous is not their trauma.
What makes them dangerous is when we reward them for never dealing with it, and then hand them enormous power.
We ask them to hold our crises while they’re still holding their own. We praise them for ignoring their needs. We romanticize their breakdowns as “the cost of greatness.” And then we act surprised when they burn out, self-destruct, or turn brittle and punitive.
In a traumatized society, it is inevitable that many of our leaders — political, religious, corporate, activist — will be trauma survivors. The question is whether they will be trauma-informed or trauma-driven.
The difference is everything.
One acknowledges the wound, integrates it, and builds systems that do not depend on perpetual self-sacrifice.
The other hides the wound, performs invincibility, and quietly drags institutions and movements into the same cycles of overextension and collapse that once defined their private lives.
A democracy that cares about its future should stop looking only at resumes and soundbites, and start asking harder questions:
- Not just what leaders promise to change, but what has changed them — and whether they’ve done the work of making that change safe for the rest of us.
Until then, we will keep mistaking unhealed wounds for moral authority, and burnout for bravery — and we will keep losing some of our most committed leaders to a cost we never even tried to count.
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