Episodes

The people we love change over time through aging, illness, grief, personal growth, and life’s many transitions. Dr. Joanne Sotelo draws on her experience caring for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, to describe the practical and psychological weight of caregiving, including the role reversal, constant vigilance, and grief that can arise while a loved one is still here. She also shares how moments of gratitude can coexist with loss, and how choosing compassion can reshape the way we meet someone’...

Numbness, perfectionism, and the drive to keep performing can look like success on the outside while masking overwhelm and disconnection on the inside. This episode centers on that tension and the question of how to meet those signals with curiosity instead of shame. Dr. Stephanie Byerly joins Drs. Joanne Sotelo and Erin Hurley to unpack how achiever identity can become protective armor, and shares practical ways to reconnect with emotions, the body, and clearer boundaries. The conversation poi...

Physicians are trained to accumulate data, credentials, answers, certainty, and to introduce themselves through their titles. Dr. Joanne Sotelo steps outside all of that for a retreat with roughly twenty strangers and one guiding question: Who am I? No curriculum, no agenda, just Dharma talks, nature, and the uneasiness of not being able to look up the answer. Drs. Sotelo and Hurley trace what shifted at home: belongings looked like weight rather than worth, and her roles turned out to be thing...

The closet, the calendar, and the overflowing to-do list are often about more than organization. They can be messages, sometimes uncomfortable ones, for women who have run out of bandwidth, not competence. Meryl Paspa joins Drs. Joanne Sotelo and Erin Hurley to explore how clutter can reflect overwhelm, shifting identities, and the changing demands of women's lives. She reframes clutter as feedback rather than failure and introduces her CLEAR framework: gaining clarity on who you're becoming, l...

A breast cancer diagnosis arrived for Dr. Erin Hurley despite preventive surgeries after she learned she carried a BRCA2 mutation. What followed was a period of waiting and wondering whether the disease had spread, but also a turning point. She shares how the coaching she had started just three months earlier helped her approach the diagnosis with more calm, connection, and intention. The experience reshaped how she approaches everything from how she spends her time to the relationships she ref...

Nine years ago, Dr. Erin Hurley learned she had breast cancer after finding a lump despite having had a preventive mastectomy years earlier. What followed was fear, uncertainty, and weeks of waiting, but also a turning point. She shares how the coaching she had started just three months earlier helped her approach the diagnosis with more calm, connection, and intention. Those lessons have changed the way she approaches everything from yearly cancer follow-ups to moments of everyday stress. The ...

This podcast started with a different name, four hosts, and two episodes a week. Some of that worked, and some didn't. Instead of just pushing through, the team paid attention, got honest about what was working, and made changes. That's how the show reached its 200-episode milestone. Drs. Hurley and Sotelo look back at the lessons that have shaped them. Joanne tells how her biggest retreat so far only worked once she let go of hyper-independence and leaned on a team. Erin talks about how being ...

Physician suicide isn't just a statistic; it's a crisis impacting the heart of healthcare. In this episode, we explore why so many doctors suffer in silence and what's finally being done to change that. Learn the risk factors and how small actions can make a big difference. Tune in to break the silence and be part of the solution. Key Takeaways To Listen For According to many sources, roughly 300 to 400 U.S. physicians die by suicide each year Female physicians carry a higher suicide rate than ...

Physicians are trained to recognize crisis in everyone except themselves. Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo explore how competence, productivity, and the pressure to keep going can hide serious distress, especially among women physicians. Burnout, depression, and suicidal thoughts require different forms of support. The episode examines when coaching or psychiatric care may be needed, the fears that keep physicians from seeking help, and how simply asking, staying present, and offering support...

People-pleasing is more than a boundary issue, especially for women physicians. This episode explores how conflict avoidance, perfectionism, and self-sacrifice can become deeply wired responses shaped by socialization, professional culture, and the nervous system. The conversation offers practical ways to break the pattern through self-compassion, greater awareness, and intentional pauses, helping physicians make choices that protect their energy, peace, and well-being. Key Takeaways To Listen...

Malpractice litigation is one of the most feared and least discussed realities in medicine, yet for many physicians, it is not a remote possibility but an eventual risk of practice. Dr. Gita Pensa joins Drs. Joanne Sotelo and Erin Hurley to explore the psychological toll of being named in a lawsuit, from shame, isolation, and identity threat to burnout, trauma, and even suicide risk. Drawing from her own experience surviving a 12-year malpractice case and facing litigation again, Dr. Pensa shar...

Women are often taught to push through pain, discomfort, and other symptoms they assume are simply part of aging. Dr. Michelle Singer, a board-certified OB-GYN and cosmetic gynecologic surgeon, joins Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo to discuss women's health, anatomical education, and creating psychologically safe spaces where women can speak openly and without shame. Dr. Singer also shares her journey of leaving traditional practice to build a career aligned with her values, while expanding ...

Many high-functioning women appear to be doing everything right, eating well, exercising, staying productive, and showing up for everyone around them, yet still feel exhausted, disconnected, or unwell. In this conversation, Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo speak with Brooke Erickson, a functional nutritionist, about the foundational pillars that are often overlooked, which are circadian rhythm alignment, nervous system regulation, sleep, energy management, and authentic living. Together, they...

Some patient encounters end when the visit is over, but their emotional impact often doesn't. This episode explores the hidden emotional weight physicians carry and why it often goes unrecognized. Through discussions around medicine, caregiving, and emotional well-being, the episode examines why women physicians may be especially vulnerable to carrying this emotional load into their personal lives, how unresolved stress can affect mood, sleep, relationships, and connection, and why self-compass...

Most of us stopped singing somewhere around the time we were told we weren't good at it. We stopped dancing when it became a performance. We stopped playing when we learned to be serious. And in that process, we lost access to what Dr. Dao calls our most fundamental human languages, the ones that live beyond words, beyond analysis, beyond diagnosis. Dr. Dao has spent his career helping people find their way back to those languages, through the body, the voice, and the imagination. In this episo...

Love, loss, and the reality of death shape this conversation as Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo speak with celebration and grief expert Sherry Richert Belul. Through stories of loss, dementia, and inherited belongings, they explore how preparing for death can help people live and love more intentionally. They discuss how simple choices, such as advance directives, important contacts, digital organization, funeral preferences, and plans for meaningful possessions, can ease family burdens and ...

Assumptions feel efficient in high-pressure environments, but this conversation makes the case that they often cost physicians far more time, energy, and connection than they save. Through stories from clinical leadership, family life, and coaching, the discussion explores how negativity bias shapes interpretation, why curiosity interrupts unnecessary conflict, and how a simple pause can create the conditions for psychological safety and trust. The episode makes the case for slowing down long e...

Dr. Joanne Sotelo leads a candid conversation on what mental health truly means for high-performing professionals, moving beyond crisis and diagnosis to everyday emotional, psychological, and physical well-being. She names the subtle warning signs: sleep disruption, emotional numbness, caregiver exhaustion, overworking, people-pleasing, and irritability, and emphasizes that looking “good on paper” doesn’t erase hidden anxiety, burnout, or disconnection. Alongside co-host Dr. Erin Hurley, she unp...

Every elite athlete performs with a coaching staff behind them. It's just part of how high performance works. Physicians perform at the same level of intensity, with far higher stakes, and a coach was never part of their contract, their training, or anyone's expectation. Drs. Hurley and Sotelo both hired their first coaches when physician-specific research on coaching was still in its early stages. For Erin, the twelve months that followed included a breast cancer diagnosis and her mother's fai...

Medicine is supposed to heal. But for many patients, and for the clinicians who care for them, it can also be the source of deep and lasting harm. In this episode, Drs. Erin Hurley and Joanne Sotelo sit down with Diane Solomon, PhD, a retired psychiatric nurse practitioner and nurse-midwife, to explore how medical encounters themselves can become traumatic, and what it takes to change that. Together, they trace how experiences like objectification in teaching hospitals and the relentless pressu...

Centered on the voice and expertise of Dr. Joanne Sotelo, this conversation unpacks why awareness alone doesn’t change the lives of women in medicine and how real transformation comes from upgraded standards and identity shifts. In dialogue with Dr. Erin Hurley, Dr. Joanne explores how “doctor programming” normalizes self-neglect, overworking, and emotional exhaustion, and explains why we don’t rise to our goals, we fall to our standards. Together, they walk through getting specific about desire...

Calm leadership in a nearly 10-hour ordeal becomes a living case study as Dr. Erin Hurley turns a five-hour flight delay into a masterclass on emotional contagion, mindset, and boundaries for women in medicine. In conversation with Dr. Joanne Sotelo, Dr. Erin reflects on how the captain’s steady updates and the flight attendant’s humor contained chaos instead of amplifying it, and how the same principles apply in clinics, hospitals, and homes. Together, they connect the research on emotional con...

Emotional exhaustion often begins when how you spend your time no longer matches what you deeply value, and in this episode, psychiatrist and coach Dr. Joanne Sotelo explains how to realign. In conversation with Dr. Erin Hurley, she defines realignment, shares personal stories of shifting roles and leaving a large institution, and unpacks research on burnout, autonomy, and meaning for women in medicine. Listeners get practical steps to reconnect with values, audit their schedules, regulate their...

When physicians stop treating rest as optional, Dr. Erin Hurley argues that “white space” becomes the key to sustainable medicine. In this episode, she joins Dr. Joanne Sotelo to define white space as truly unstructured, unscheduled time and explains how constantly filling every open slot drives cortisol, burnout, and a shutdown of the brain’s creative default mode network. Drawing on research about physicians’ vacation habits, executives’ 10–15 minute reflection practices, and studies of Nobel ...