The Advisor with Stacey Chillemi

It starts before you even open the cabinet. A stressful email. A memory that surfaces uninvited. A feeling you can't quite name. And suddenly the craving is there — urgent, specific, and completely disconnected from actual hunger. That loop isn't weakness and it isn't a lack of discipline. It's your nervous system reaching for the fastest available relief from something that has nothing to do with...

You've processed it. Talked about it. Understood where it came from and why it happened. And your body still reacts as if it never got the memo. The tension that won't release. The anxiety that spikes without warning. The exhaustion that has no obvious source. Trauma doesn't only live in memory — it lives in tissue, in nervous system patterns, in the energetic residue of experiences your body abso...

You smiled at the right moments. Answered 'I'm fine' when anyone asked. Showed up, kept going, held it together — while living in a private world of fear and shame that nobody around you knew existed. That gap between how your life looked and how it actually felt isn't just exhausting. It becomes its own prison. The longer the silence holds, the more normal the suffering starts to feel — until you...

You are not just tired. You are living in a way your body is refusing to sustain — and your sleep is the evidence. Poor sleep is not the problem. It is the signal. Megan Mazzocco spent years studying why intelligent, capable people cannot rest — and what she found goes far deeper than bedtime routines and blue light glasses. Your nervous system, your dreams, your patterns of waking at 3am — they a...

Jenny White woke up from brain surgery and could not remember how to be herself. The memories, the identity, the life she had built as a nurse — gone or scrambled in ways that no recovery timeline could predict. Most people never come back from that kind of loss. Jenny wrote her way back. What she discovered in that process about faith, memory, purpose, and what it actually means to start over wil...

The way you react under stress. The relationships you keep finding yourself in. The patterns you swore you would never repeat. None of that is a character flaw. It is a nervous system that learned how to survive — and is still running those same programs long after the danger passed. Tracy Liberatore works at the root of exactly that — where trauma lives in the body, how it moves silently through...

Everyone has an opinion about your baby. Your mother. Your neighbor. The internet. And somewhere underneath all of that noise you are just trying to figure out what is actually true. Dr. Susan Landers and Dr. Ari Brown have spent their careers answering the questions new parents are too overwhelmed or too embarrassed to ask out loud — about vaccines, sleep, newborn care, and toddler behavior that...

You have noticed the signs. The behavior that is getting harder to explain away. The decisions that are scaring you. The person you love becoming someone you do not recognize. Most families wait too long — hoping it will get better, not wanting to overstep, not knowing what they are even allowed to do. Mark Astor sits at the intersection of mental health and family law — and what he explains about...

You say yes when you mean no. You apologize for having needs. You give until there is nothing left and then feel guilty for being empty. That cycle does not come from weakness. It comes from never being taught that choosing yourself was allowed. Michelle Dosanjh Johal is a resilience coach, a poet, and a mother who has lived that exhaustion from the inside — and what she has built around self-love...

You still love your partner. You just do not feel it the way you used to — and nobody is talking about why. Losing your desire does not mean something is wrong with your relationship. It often means something is shifting in your hormones that nobody thought to check. Carolyn Zaumeyer specializes in exactly that gap — the space between what women feel in their bodies and what conventional medicine...

Most people face one life-altering crisis. Martha Hoy faced several — a devastating car accident, escaping an abusive relationship, and the long painful work of figuring out who she was on the other side of all of it. What she found was not just survival. It was purpose — in the most unexpected place, doing work in Uganda that gave her losses meaning she never could have planned for. This conversa...

You have been breathing your whole life. And there is a good chance you have been doing it in a way that keeps your nervous system stuck in low-level stress. Most people overbreathe during exercise and daily life — mouth open, chest rising, rhythm fast — without realizing it is quietly amplifying anxiety, tightening the body, and working against every relaxation technique they try. Jeff Bailey has...

Most people face one crisis at a time. Candi Keffeler faced all of them at once — an abusive relationship, a cancer diagnosis, and financial devastation that stripped away every safety net she had. Survival stopped feeling like a temporary state and started feeling like a permanent address. What brought her back was not a single breakthrough. It was a series of small choices made in the dark when...

You are managing your schedule, watching your habits, trying to stay on top of everything — and still feeling like something essential is missing. That gap between effort and peace is not random. It often traces back further than last week or last year. Dr. Ronald Goldman has spent his career studying how early life experiences, attachment wounds, and the absence of real empathy quietly shape the...

You are eating what you think is healthy. Taking the supplements. Managing the stress. And still running on empty. The problem may not be what you are eating — it may be what your food has become. Thomas Patton founded Legavera around one core belief: that the disconnection between people and real food, real farming, and real nature is quietly driving the epidemic of low energy, chronic stress, an...

Most people think about longevity as something that happens later. A number on a birthday cake. Years added to the end. But what if the real question is not how long you live — but how alive you feel while you are living it. James Strole has spent decades advocating for a completely different relationship with aging — one built on vitality, purpose, and the refusal to accept decline as inevitable....

You say yes and immediately feel the resentment rising. You say no and spend the next hour over-explaining, apologizing, and second-guessing yourself. That exhausting loop is not a personality flaw. It is what happens when you were taught — directly or silently — that your needs matter less than everyone else's comfort. Kamini Wood works with exactly that pattern — the people-pleasing, the over-gi...

You have more ways to reach people than any generation in history. And you have never felt more alone. That is not a personal failure. It is a nervous system problem. Loneliness is not just about being by yourself — it is about whether your body feels safe, seen, and truly belonging somewhere. And in a world built around performance, scrolling, and surface-level connection, that signal is getting...

Scott Arias lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident. Most people would have called that the end of a military career. He called it a detour. He fought his way back to active duty, served combat tours, earned a PhD, and built a purpose-driven company — not because the path was clear but because discipline filled every gap that motivation could not. What he has learned about resilience, leadershi...

The craving is not really about the sugar. It never was. It is about shame that needs soothing. An identity that has been defined by failure and starting over. A self-worth that got quietly tied to what you ate and what you weighed. Christine Trimpe has lived that cycle from the inside — and what finally broke it was not a better protocol or a stricter plan. It was faith and a complete rebuilding...

You made the same choice again. Said the thing you swore you would not say. Reached for the thing you decided you were done with. And afterward you genuinely could not explain why. That is not weakness. That is autopilot — the nervous system running a program so deeply grooved it does not wait for your permission. Brian Osborne works specifically with the gap between knowing what you want to chang...

You know what you want. You have known for a while. And you keep finding reasons why now is not quite the right time. Alison Gieschen stopped waiting. She left the comfort zone that was slowly becoming a cage, traveled the world, and built a life most people only describe in the future tense. What she learned about fear, anxiety, and courage along the way is not what you expect — because the confi...

Everything looks fine from the outside. Good job. Good relationships. No obvious crisis. And underneath all of it — a hum of anxiety that never fully quiets. That gap between how your life looks and how your nervous system feels is not irrational. It is information. Dr. Jenny Martin specializes in exactly the kind of anxiety that hides inside capable, high-functioning people — the kind that gets m...

You know what to do. You have known for a long time. And knowing has not been enough. That gap between understanding the problem and actually breaking free from it is where so many capable women quietly lose faith in themselves — not because they are weak but because they have been fighting the wrong battle with the wrong tools. Christine Trimpe has been inside that cycle and found her way out — a...

From the time they are small, most boys receive a clear and consistent message — feelings are weakness, crying is embarrassing, and strength means staying quiet. By the time they are grown those lessons have become walls. Walls that damage relationships, block connection, and leave men emotionally stranded in moments that require them to show up fully. Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst has spent her career s...