Ending Physician Overwhelm

Send us Fan Mail I wish that you could know how amazing you are. AND, today's episode, I am sharing what I want for you. It you are exhausted and overwhelmed and struggling with challenging relationships and work stuff and you just want to feel better NOW, I get it. But there are a few key things that you need to understand to start the journey of feeling better. 1.) The absence of pain is no...

Send us Fan Mail So often, my clients come to me with some version of this question, "How am I supposed to _____ when I have all this other stuff to do?!?" The answer is, you don't. We have been lead to believe that we "should" be able to do it all, have it all, and be it all. I see parenting articles reference this fallacy all the time, particularly for Millennial Moms (G...

Send us Fan Mail You can't pour from an empty tank. It's not a personal failing. It's physics (or math or something). When your empathy tank, or your physical/emotional batteries are on empty, you have to recharge. And although you can get help and support from others, there is a component that relies on you being willing to engage with rest, comfort and connection to recharge. It&a...

Send us Fan Mail Surrounded by people, and yet lonely? Sounds weird, doesn't it? This is the lived experience of so many of us in medicine. We're around people all day, in conversation, fielding frequent questions verbally and in the inbox. And yet, we're alone. We talk today about the lack of connection that occurs for most of us, during the day with the other people we see, as wel...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine being a busy Surgical Resident and experiencing an ocular emergency, resulting in urgent surgery and leaving you with little vision for months. And then imagine your program pushing you out, ostracizing you during your recovery. What would YOU have done? I'm joined today by Dr Brittany Busse, and she shares this portion of her story with us, as well as how she rebuilt...

Send us Fan Mail I'm so excited to share this episode! When I heard fellow Family Physician and Coach, Dr Joan Chan, as a guest on a podcast, I knew I had to reach out to her, and I'm so grateful to share this conversation with you. We decided to take turns interviewing each other, because we both like to talk about our human emotions, as well as the impact of trauma on our nervous syste...

Send us Fan Mail Do you feel called to do something, but you've been ignoring it? Today I'm joined by my friend, Dr Tolu Olabintan, aka "Dr O" as her patients call her. Dr Olabintan is a fellow Family Medicine Physician and she shares her story of realizing that her overworking wasn't normal, and how her curiosity led her to not only discover how to let go of this tendency...

Send us Fan Mail "The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." Dwight D Eisenhower, General and former President reportedly lived by this principle, and today we're diving into how "urgent" is used against us, pushing out the "important." Yes, there are a few diatribes in here about sports physicals paperwork getting labeled "urgent.&qu...

Send us Fan Mail From Military Surgery training to Private Practice Owner and Author, my guest today has lived many facets of medicine. My guest is Dr Amy Vertrees, who is a General Surgeon and Coach for Physicians, and today she shares her amazing journey. Dr Vertrees is on a mission to help us all see what we didn't learn in residency, and encourages us to build skills and practices that he...

Send us Fan Mail Easier is generally gooder. Really. I know that this is not the way many of us are used to thinking. We do hard things. We solve complicated diagnostic puzzles, we try to overcome biology and fight disease, and interact with other humans and all of their thoughts, feelings, symptoms, etc. But don't confuse hard with virtuous, or easy with lazy. Today we are talking all about...

Send us Fan Mail Mental Health is NOT the absence of disease. Today I am thrilled to be joined by Dr Jeannie Lawrence, an amazing Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist and Coach. Dr Lawrence specializes in women physicians tired of their lives looking good on the outside, but drowning inside, and we dive into all the things related to mental health and wellbeing. Dr Lawrence is a practicing board-certifie...

Send us Fan Mail If something's important to you, truly, you will make the time for it. True story, many episodes, when I'm not planning ahead, get recorded the day before they go live. Things are better when they don't happen that way, and I'm glad that this episode was all planned out, but it was recorded the night before as my kids bickered in their usual after-dinner-bicker...

Send us Fan Mail You can be great at medicine, and figure out how to find better balance for yourself AND still be called elsewhere. Today I am speaking with Dr Jill Wener, an Internal Medicine Physician who transitioned from a Hospitalist role to becoming a Meditation and Emotional Freedom Technique Instructor. For her, choosing something outside of medicine wasn't an escape; it was a differ...

Send us Fan Mail Do you fantasize about storming out of the clinic or hospital some days, shouting expletives and never coming back? Fantasize is a strong word. Some people do daydream about this, others try to hold themselves back from doing this everyday once they've hit their BS threshold for the day.  Many people come to coaching ready to quit their jobs. I get it, I did too. One of the m...

Send us Fan Mail Maintenance sounds so boring, doesn't it? We often love a project, getting started with making a change, excited to see how it feels when we achieve our goal. But do you know what's more challenging than meeting a goal? Maintaining the progress. Joining me today is my friend, Dr Tanielle Brew Smith, a fellow Family and Obesity Medicine Physician as well as a Coach for hi...

Send us Fan Mail "They don't value me." "I don't matter to them." "No one cares how I feel." Sound familiar? It's so common for us to feel that no one cares about our feelings, and that we don't matter. Why is this? And what do we need to do about it? In today's episode, I dive into how we got here, and what we need to do to start feeling valu...

Send us Fan Mail It's not uncommon for many of us to find passion in a particular niche, but how many of us pursue it? Today I'm speaking with Dr Sadaf Lodhi, OB-GYN, Sexual Health Coach and host of The Muslim Sex Podcast. After experiencing burnout and deciding that she needed a change, Dr Lodhi became a coach, focusing her expertise on helping women have a better understanding of their...

Send us Fan Mail The One In Which We Talk About How We Turn Delayed Gratification Against Ourselves. Big sigh. Want to know how to start feeling good? Today we are talking about how being too practiced at delayed gratification (you know who you are) leads us to habitually deny ourselves rest and pleasure, often without even realizing it. Again, there are LOTS of issues with systems that contribute...

Send us Fan Mail No one wants cancer to be the thing that shakes them out of an unhappy existence. And yet, sometimes terrible circumstances give us the wake-up call that we need. Today I'm talking with Dr Isabelle Amigues, a Rheumatologist based in Denver, Colorado who found herself diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer at the age of 40. She shares her experience of the before times, feeling...

Send us Fan Mail Do you find yourself trying to "fix" your feelings with tasks? Maybe you feel inadequate from your day and try to soothe yourself with cleaning something. Or you think "I'll feel better once I clear this inbox." But then you do the task and nothing changes?  Nothing's gone wrong. That just isn't how our feelings work. Today I am talking about why...

Send us Fan Mail Circling back to the theme of "what do I want?" Today I am thrilled to be joined by Dr Toyosi Onwuemene, a Board-Certified Hematologist, Clinician Researcher and Assistant Professor at Duke University. Dr Onwumene shares her story of navigating a path to clinical research after being told that she didn't have the necessary background. She shares her story of learnin...

Send us Fan Mail Can you sit still for 5 minutes? It's funny, this is a question we might ask our child (likely in an exasperated voice), but is it something that you can do? This is a common trouble spot I hear from new clients; I can't sit still, I'm always rushing, I have so much to do. And yes, there always is a lot to do for most of us. But is that the issue, or are we afraid t...

Send us Fan Mail *Resisting the urge to make Spice Girls references here* It's easy in the churn of our busy lives to be going through the motions, trying to keep our heads above water, running around busy and exhausted. And, often feeling supremely dissatisfied with what's happening, and then judging ourselves for feeling this way. In today's episode though, I tackle a harder quest...

Send us Fan Mail This week's episode is Part 2 of last weeks. I am sharing more life lessons learned from the conference I went to the prior week. Yes, the conference was for Physician Entrepreneurs, but the lessons are universal to all of us, and here are some more gems, just for you! If you are listening in real time, our next round of Healing Perfectionism in Women Physicians starts this S...

Send us Fan Mail I am abuzz with ideas and energy after returning home from a business conference, words I never thought would come out of my mouth. But, such as it is, today's episode is about life lessons that I've learned, and that I am sharing with  you today. These are not business-specific lessons, they are really life lessons, and I hope that you enjoy! In the episode, I reference...