Cover of From Burnout to Bigger Impact | Dr. Debra Kawahara

From Burnout to Bigger Impact | Dr. Debra Kawahara

From Burnout to Bigger Impact | Dr. Debra Kawahara

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In this episode of The 3 Parallels Podcast, Dr. Jason Branch sits down with Dr. Debra Kawahara, former president of the American Psychological Association, interim academic dean of the California School of Professional Psychology at Alliant International University, executive director of the Illumination of Mindfulness Institute, and host of the podcast Wellness in Today's World. Before any of those titles, she was a first-generation college student from Gardena, California, who planned to run a community mental health center. The line she teaches her students sits at the center of the conversation: you are the tool, and if the tool is broken, nobody you serve is well served.

Dr. Kawahara traces her path from a diverse community where she saw leaders who looked like her, to a college classroom where she was suddenly one of a few, to an educational psychology class and an Asian American studies course with Dr. Stanley Sue that connected psychology to what she had lived. She describes her early career in community mental health, including a pilot program for what is now called wraparound services and a residential facility for adolescent males, and what she learned about a system with high turnover and limited resources that was not set up for effective care. She left because she was burned out, took a year off, and kept looking for bigger impact, which led to a visiting faculty position in San Diego and a career in academia. Along the way the conversation covers her dissertation on the generational impact of the World War II Japanese American incarceration, her partner's 160-acre family farm, her work connecting mindfulness to early Buddhism, and her three parallels: a foundation she did not know she was laying, an integration of everything she has learned, and a path that is still evolving.

This episode is for the helping professional who has been treating exhaustion as a character flaw, and for anyone who set out toward one goal and suspects the real path lies somewhere they cannot yet see. It is also for first-generation students and professionals who wish someone had handed them the map. Dr. Branch and Dr. Kawahara send listeners away with three challenges: follow your heart by naming what you keep talking yourself out of, check the tool by asking whether your weekend is designed for relaxation or recovery, and give away one thing you wish someone had told you.


Life Work
  1. Follow Your Heart: Whoever you are and whatever you are meant to do, you will find it if you listen to yourself. Name one thing your heart keeps telling you that you have been talking yourself out of.
  2. Check the Tool: If you do not know how to rest, you can burn yourself out. Is your weekend designed for relaxation or recovery? Schedule one real recovery block this week.
  3. Give It Away: Think of what you know now that you wish someone had told you. Share it with one person this week.


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