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Health with Ginamarie Papia · Lean Out Podcast

• 0:01
  Welcome to the lean out podcast.
• 0:03
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:04
  Don baker.
• 0:05
  Are you looking for a new approach to finding authentic and sustainable work-life balance?
• 0:10
  You've come to the right.
• 0:11
  Place.
• 0:11
  For inspiration.
• 0:12
  information.
• 0:13
  and a community.
• 0:14
  community.
• 0:14
  of like-minded.
• 0:15
  Professionals.
• 0:16
  Let's get to the show.
• 0:23
  Hello?
• 0:23
  Hello.
• 0:24
  Thanks for being here.
• 0:26
  Before we get to the show today, I wanted to share with you something that a former coaching client and listener of the podcast recently sent me.
• 0:36
  She said.
• 0:37
  On Wednesday, I went out for a two hour mountain bike ride.
• 0:41
  I'm not on vacation.
• 0:42
  I just worked part time.
• 0:44
  I live in close proximity to beautiful Hills and trails.
• 0:47
  So the things I love are easy to access.
• 0:51
  I wrote over brand new streams that were the product of recent heavy rains.
• 0:55
  I saw and heard baby lambs chatting with their moms and each other about the annoying lady on the bike MI.
• 1:02
  I came home, had lunch with my husband and picked up my son from school.
• 1:06
  Today, I'm on call and I don't feel the fear, anxiety, and resentment that used to accompany call shifts.
• 1:13
  This weekend, we are having our 94 year old neighbor over for a birthday tea.
• 1:17
  Because now I have time to get to know and form relationships with my neighbors.
• 1:22
  So, yes, I am living my vision.
• 1:25
  I had just recently published a newsletter and I was talking about vision and asking what your vision is, and that was her response.
• 1:34
  And I just wanted to share it with you.
• 1:36
  Two.
• 1:38
  Let you know that it is possible.
• 1:40
  It is possible to still.
• 1:43
  Be in your profession, do your work and then have moments.
• 1:47
  Of connection and of love and excitement in other areas of your life at the same time.
• 1:56
  And I hope that you're inspired by her story and all the stories that you hear on this podcast.
• 2:03
  And if you aren't subscribed to my newsletter and you would like to get other forms of inspiration, like what I just sent about vision, then go to my website.
• 2:14
  Practice balance.com/get in touch.
• 2:17
  And if you go to that particular page, you can put your email address into the purple box.
• 2:23
  And you will start receiving my newsletter, which usually goes out a couple times a month.
• 2:28
  I promise I do not send a bunch of spam and I don't send them too frequently.
• 2:34
  So I hope you go there and enjoy what you read and when you do so you will also get a core values, exercise, download.
• 2:44
  So make sure to look for that.
• 2:47
  My guest today is Dr.
• 2:48
  Gina Marie she is a practitioner of functional and integrative medicine specializing in whole person health.
• 2:55
  She's a dual board certified internal medicine and integrative medicine physician passionate about doing medicine her way.
• 3:02
  She recently started her own virtual telemedicine clinic and she is also the co-founder of the upward spiral podcast from burnout to brilliance.
• 3:11
  That podcast highlights all realms of wellness and mental health.
• 3:17
  Without further ado.
• 3:18
  I hope you enjoy my conversation with Gina Marie.
• 3:22
  GP-Dawn: Gina Marie Papilla, welcome to the Lean Out podcast show.
• 3:27
  GP-Ginamarie: Thank you.
• 3:27
  GP-Ginamarie: Thank you so much for having me, John.
• 3:29
  GP-Ginamarie: My pleasure to be here with you today.
• 3:31
  GP-Dawn: Yeah, my pleasure as well.
• 3:33
  GP-Dawn: I would love it if you would start out by introducing yourself and telling us about your work life balance and how it's different than other people that do what you do.
• 3:43
  GP-Ginamarie: Absolutely.
• 3:44
  GP-Ginamarie: So I am Gina Marie Papilla.
• 3:47
  GP-Ginamarie: I am an integrative medicine doctor.
• 3:49
  GP-Ginamarie: So I'm an internal medicine doctor.
• 3:51
  GP-Ginamarie: And then I did a fellowship and further training in integrative medicine.
• 3:56
  GP-Ginamarie: My work life balance at this point is much better than it has been in many years.
• 4:01
  GP-Ginamarie: I recently decided to leave my nine to five job and explore different options as a physician.
• 4:09
  GP-Ginamarie: And I kind of came to this point.
• 4:11
  GP-Ginamarie: Where I didn't want my life to look like a regular doctor being in an office being in a hospital It felt very constricted to me.
• 4:19
  GP-Ginamarie: So, uh currently i'm fully remote very excited about that It's been really nice just to kind of lean into other areas of my life that aren't medicine, which is new for me Um, I work part time as part of a tech startup.
• 4:32
  GP-Ginamarie: it's like a healthcare startup based in Manhattan, which is a lot of fun and incredible team.
• 4:36
  GP-Ginamarie: And I'm also starting my own virtual medical practice, which has been its own adventure in itself.
• 4:43
  GP-Dawn: Wow, you have a lot of things going on.
• 4:45
  GP-Dawn: And for people who aren't in the medical field that are listening, tell us what integrative medicine really is.
• 4:53
  GP-Ginamarie: So integrative medicine to me is It's looking at a person as mind, body, and soul, and really taking into consideration all the different things that may affect their health.
• 5:05
  GP-Ginamarie: So that's looking at things like diet and nutrition.
• 5:08
  GP-Ginamarie: It's also looking at how are they sleeping?
• 5:10
  GP-Ginamarie: How are their bowel movements?
• 5:11
  GP-Ginamarie: How are, you know, what's their spiritual health?
• 5:13
  GP-Ginamarie: How are their relationships?
• 5:15
  GP-Ginamarie: It also comes with a different toolbox.
• 5:17
  GP-Ginamarie: So I like to use, in addition to all the things we have in medicine, like medications and surgeries and things, I like to look for natural supplements, um, different forms of healing, like acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, Ayurveda, kind of bringing all these beautiful things together into this nice, beautiful combination of healing things.
• 5:37
  GP-Ginamarie: That benefit the patient.
• 5:40
  GP-Dawn: How did you get interested in this?
• 5:43
  GP-Dawn: side of internal medicine.
• 5:46
  GP-Ginamarie: That's a great question.
• 5:47
  GP-Ginamarie: Great question.
• 5:48
  GP-Ginamarie: I.
• 5:49
  GP-Ginamarie: Had an experience even before I went to medical school when I think I was in college and my mom had a horrible rash that would not go away.
• 5:58
  GP-Ginamarie: She had it for months.
• 5:59
  GP-Ginamarie: It would just kind of pop up out of nowhere and she would, we went to so many different doctors and they put her on medications and creams and all these different things and nobody could really figure out what was going on.
• 6:11
  GP-Ginamarie: And it seems like it wouldn't have been a big deal, but it was interrupting her life so much, she would just, she would just cry because she felt so itchy.
• 6:18
  GP-Ginamarie: There was nothing that she could do.
• 6:19
  GP-Ginamarie: Nothing was helping.
• 6:21
  GP-Ginamarie: And we were recommended to see this acupuncturist that was about two hours away from our house.
• 6:26
  GP-Ginamarie: And they're like, he's a miracle man.
• 6:28
  GP-Ginamarie: You need to go see him.
• 6:29
  GP-Ginamarie: He will help you.
• 6:31
  GP-Ginamarie: So we made the trek out there.
• 6:33
  GP-Ginamarie: He saw her, asked her a few different questions.
• 6:37
  GP-Ginamarie: He did this some weird testing where he put like these like vials in her hands and he was like doing all this weird stuff.
• 6:43
  GP-Ginamarie: And within less than 10 minutes, he said to her, he said, you have too much sulfur in your body.
• 6:49
  GP-Ginamarie: And we were like, what?
• 6:51
  GP-Ginamarie: He's like, what do you mean by that?
• 6:53
  GP-Ginamarie: And he's like, you have too much sulfur in your body.
• 6:55
  GP-Ginamarie: And every time you're exposed to something with more sulfur, your body hits a threshold and you break out in hives.
• 7:01
  GP-Ginamarie: And we were like, how could you know that you didn't do a, do you want to do a blood test or something?
• 7:05
  GP-Ginamarie: Like, how can you tell?
• 7:07
  GP-Ginamarie: And he had figured it out doing some of the testing that he did.
• 7:09
  GP-Ginamarie: And we were, she was just at that point where she was like, you know, I, I'm open to anything.
• 7:14
  GP-Ginamarie: What do we have to do?
• 7:14
  GP-Ginamarie: And he said, okay, we're going to do a series of acupuncture for, I think it was like four weeks.
• 7:18
  GP-Ginamarie: I'm going to put you on a diet.
• 7:20
  GP-Ginamarie: And I think it was like some kind of an elimination diet.
• 7:22
  GP-Ginamarie: I remember her eating a lot of pasta, cauliflower, and within a matter of weeks, they were gone.
• 7:28
  GP-Ginamarie: The hives were completely gone.
• 7:30
  GP-Ginamarie: And interestingly, she didn't remember in that moment, but eventually she remembered that she was taking glucosamine sulfate months before, like close to a year before.
• 7:39
  GP-Ginamarie: And it must have been exactly what he said.
• 7:41
  GP-Ginamarie: It just was building up in her system.
• 7:43
  GP-Ginamarie: And once I saw that my path through medicine was always through this kind of lens of there's more to healing than we understand from like the modern medicine standpoint, and just always been open to different forms of healing.
• 7:57
  GP-Dawn: And then what kind of patients would you say are your typical patients that you see?
• 8:03
  GP-Dawn: What do they come to you with?
• 8:05
  GP-Ginamarie: So, it's different now than it was at, so when I did my training at Northwestern, more recently, I've been getting a lot of patients where we've been focusing on diet, nutrition, weight loss, but I think the epitome of the integrative medicine patient.
• 8:21
  GP-Ginamarie: And when I was doing my fellowship at Northwestern, the type of patients we would see are the patients that have seen kind of like my mom had seen.
• 8:27
  GP-Ginamarie: seen every doctor, they went to the rheumatologist, they went to, you know, the endocrinologist, all these different doctors, nobody could quite pinpoint what was going on or couldn't quite pinpoint exactly how to help them.
• 8:39
  GP-Ginamarie: They weren't responding well to medications or they just didn't like being on medications.
• 8:44
  GP-Ginamarie: So it's looking for a different type of healing maybe, or a different type of investigation.
• 8:50
  GP-Ginamarie: So it tends to be patients with chronic pain.
• 8:53
  GP-Ginamarie: Things like fibromyalgia, um, anxiety and depression, you know, not really responding well to medications, don't want to be on medications.
• 9:02
  GP-Ginamarie: And it's kind of fun to see because sometimes you, it's a lot of times it's fun because it's the simple thing.
• 9:08
  GP-Ginamarie: Like somebody who comes in for anxiety and depression, did anybody check their vitamin D level?
• 9:12
  GP-Ginamarie: Are they nutrient deficient?
• 9:14
  GP-Ginamarie: Is it that they're not sleeping?
• 9:15
  GP-Ginamarie: And so it's kind of like in a little bit of an investigation.
• 9:18
  GP-Dawn: Yeah.
• 9:18
  GP-Dawn: I can see how that would be really fun and also fulfilling if you can solve someone's problems with a very simple intervention, even something that they don't necessarily have to spend a bunch of money on or do too much to.
• 9:31
  GP-Ginamarie: Yeah,
• 9:32
  GP-Dawn: So you had said that you left your quote nine to five job.
• 9:36
  GP-Dawn: So tell me about that transition and what were you doing and why did you decide to leave that?
• 9:44
  GP-Ginamarie: so I if we go back to even a year before I started that nine to five job I was in a fellowship for integrative medicine and I was at Northwestern and it was exactly what I thought I wanted It was a big academic institution had all the prestige.
• 9:59
  GP-Ginamarie: I was seeing integrative medicine patients I was learning under the people to learn under and I actually decided to leave that fellowship a year early Um Because I had gotten all the clinical training I needed to sit for my boards, but it wasn't what I felt aligned with, just didn't feel aligned with me.
• 10:17
  GP-Ginamarie: So I decided to step out of that fellowship and I went back home to where my family is from in New York and a mentor of mine who is an endocrinologist who has his own practice.
• 10:28
  GP-Ginamarie: I really wasn't sure in the direction I wanted to go and I asked him, would you be open to having me in your office?
• 10:34
  GP-Ginamarie: exploring integrative medicine, feeling out what I like to do within the field.
• 10:38
  GP-Ginamarie: And he was very, so supportive.
• 10:41
  GP-Ginamarie: And I'm so like, incredibly grateful to him.
• 10:43
  GP-Ginamarie: So I spent a year there it was very comfortable.
• 10:48
  GP-Ginamarie: Um, and ultimately over the year, I learned a lot about myself.
• 10:52
  GP-Ginamarie: I learned a lot about practicing.
• 10:54
  GP-Ginamarie: But I didn't like being trapped in an office again, first I thought it was like being an academic medicine and being like in a big institution.
• 11:02
  GP-Ginamarie: And then I was like, No, I think it's just I don't like being in a building all day.
• 11:07
  GP-Ginamarie: Like I like to have flexibility, I want to be able to go outside.
• 11:10
  GP-Ginamarie: We also didn't have windows so windows or would be would have been nice.
• 11:14
  GP-Ginamarie: So ultimately I started to just feel that feeling again, where I wasn't quite happy and I wanted to make a change and I was starting to feel burnt out again.
• 11:24
  GP-Ginamarie: And so ultimately I, it happened that I had joined a coaching program where I was around this community of people who are making all these different changes in their life.
• 11:34
  GP-Ginamarie: And the doc kind of gave me the courage to say, okay, this is not what I want my life to look like.
• 11:39
  GP-Ginamarie: I'm ready for a change and I made the decision kind of within a matter of days and had that conversation and that's kind of how I, how I got here.
• 11:52
  GP-Dawn: Interesting.
• 11:53
  GP-Dawn: I find it very unique that you quit a fellowship.
• 11:59
  GP-Dawn: That is a very difficult thing to do.
• 12:01
  GP-Dawn: Because we're trained to Number one, not quit, but also number two, chase the certifications.
• 12:11
  GP-Dawn: And I see so many people who really aren't sure on their path, chasing certifications of all types.
• 12:19
  GP-Dawn: Um, well, let me go study this, but I need to get a certification in it to practice it.
• 12:25
  GP-Dawn: And I think it's really saying something that you felt at the time that you had had enough clinical exposure in order to go out and practice the thing that you really wanted to practice, but you weren't looking for that accolade or that gold star, that thing on your resume.
• 12:42
  GP-Dawn: And it's also interesting that you then went and worked with a close mentor, but you still realized that wasn't quite what you wanted.
• 12:51
  GP-Dawn: And so you had a lot of self awareness there.
• 12:54
  GP-Dawn: Was the, the not in alignment part, was that manifesting in burnout?
• 13:00
  GP-Dawn: Like what kind of things were you experiencing when you figured that out?
• 13:03
  GP-Dawn: That like, you weren't in alignment with doing a big academic practice that involved the fellowship.
• 13:10
  GP-Ginamarie: So I will say with the fellowship, it was a two part where the first year was, um, we have like courses as part of it and then the clinical experience and the second year was meant to deepen your practice in the academic center, kind of work on projects that you felt more aligned with.
• 13:27
  GP-Ginamarie: And so by the end of the first year, I was able eligible to sit for my board certification, but I didn't,
• 13:34
  GP-Dawn: Yeah.
• 13:34
  GP-Dawn: You still got a
• 13:35
  GP-Ginamarie: I still got, I still got the certification.
• 13:37
  GP-Dawn: I made a mistake there.
• 13:38
  GP-Dawn: Yeah.
• 13:39
  GP-Dawn: You got your board certification, but you didn't finish your
• 13:42
  GP-Ginamarie: I didn't finish the fellowship.
• 13:43
  GP-Ginamarie: Right.
• 13:43
  GP-Ginamarie: Right.
• 13:44
  GP-Ginamarie: Exactly.
• 13:44
  GP-Ginamarie: Which is very different than, I mean, what I, my path up until that point.
• 13:49
  GP-Ginamarie: So the, I would say the symptoms of starting to feel out of alignment were exactly the same both when I was at Northwestern and when I was with my mentor and it came in the form of what people call the Sunday scaries.
• 14:02
  GP-Ginamarie: Where Sunday night I would start to feel terrible like it wouldn't honestly not even Sunday night would be like midday Sunday just starting to feel anxiety stress not wanting to go to work the next day.
• 14:15
  GP-Ginamarie: For Northwestern I had to do a lot of preparation for the patients that I was going to see so that's what I thought it was that just having to do a lot of preparation.
• 14:23
  GP-Ginamarie: And that ultimately led me to start to question.
• 14:27
  GP-Ginamarie: Okay, maybe.
• 14:28
  GP-Ginamarie: Maybe I am out of alignment here.
• 14:29
  GP-Ginamarie: Maybe it's just, this is, this work is not fulfilling for me.
• 14:33
  GP-Ginamarie: And then when it started to happen again, when I was working with my mentor, I was thinking to myself, like, what is going on?
• 14:38
  GP-Ginamarie: Like, am I ever going to find a job that doesn't make me feel like this on Sunday night?
• 14:42
  GP-Ginamarie: Like this can't, I was like, this is, it was driving me crazy.
• 14:46
  GP-Ginamarie: And.
• 14:47
  GP-Ginamarie: It starts to make you really feel like, wow, did I totally pick the wrong profession?
• 14:51
  GP-Ginamarie: Like, it was giving me those thoughts where I was thinking like, should I go, you know, move to an island and like open up a surf shop?
• 14:56
  GP-Ginamarie: Like one of those ideas where I just wanted to completely leave medicine altogether.
• 15:02
  GP-Ginamarie: And I do think it takes a lot of self awareness.
• 15:04
  GP-Ginamarie: And I, I think what really helped me was having that community of people that we're really doing the inner work to understand and be better people.
• 15:12
  GP-Ginamarie: And when you're starting to really look at your emotions, it's hard to not be honest with yourself and not to see those things.
• 15:19
  GP-Dawn: Hmm, yeah.
• 15:20
  GP-Dawn: Well, I'm really glad and grateful for you that you found a coaching community that really helped you figure that out.
• 15:27
  GP-Dawn: What kind of things did you do as part of that experience that helped you to make that realization?
• 15:36
  GP-Ginamarie: So I think it was a combination of being part of the coaching community has a coaching call once a week where you get to know people and you start to share in different people's experience in your learning tools.
• 15:48
  GP-Ginamarie: But what really shifted it for me, I went to an in person event where They do what they call interventions, but it's basically the person who's running it, who runs the coaching program is asking questions in a way.
• 16:01
  GP-Ginamarie: So it was asking me questions in a way where I started to reflect on how I actually was feeling and what was going on.
• 16:06
  GP-Ginamarie: And I went there because I was like, I feel stuck.
• 16:09
  GP-Ginamarie: I feel stuck.
• 16:10
  GP-Ginamarie: I feel like I'm not where I need to be.
• 16:12
  GP-Ginamarie: I feel like I'm spinning my wheels.
• 16:14
  GP-Ginamarie: And he started asking all these different questions and what Came to me is that I wasn't taking control of the decisions in my life, which seems totally unrelated, right?
• 16:25
  GP-Ginamarie: But at that point I had gone from Waiting for my parents to make decisions in my life to then I was waiting for my partner my boyfriend to make decisions For where my life was moving And I stepped into that power all of a sudden where I was like, okay, it's me.
• 16:41
  GP-Ginamarie: Like it's me I have to make the decisions and it was just that like little millimeter shift change And the next question he asked was like, okay if you are making the decisions What are the next three decisions you need to make and it was like one was, you know Make a decision on my relationship the The practice thing and leave my nine to five job and it was what needed to shift inside of me to realize that this was 100 percent my decision, and it was scary, but in very empowering and ultimately led to this.
• 17:11
  GP-Dawn: Yeah, scary can be good sometimes.
• 17:13
  GP-Ginamarie: Yeah.
• 17:15
  GP-Dawn: So this is a fairly recent transition, correct?
• 17:21
  GP-Dawn: So right now, what does your week to week work life balance look like?
• 17:28
  GP-Ginamarie: So right now it's very, I would say balanced.
• 17:31
  GP-Ginamarie: It's this for the first time in my life, I I'm doing the, I have the kind of steady work of the, the startup company that I've been working with for a year.
• 17:39
  GP-Ginamarie: That's been going on and starting my practice is it's very slow.
• 17:44
  GP-Ginamarie: So there's like a few things going on, but not too much.
• 17:46
  GP-Ginamarie: So my days aren't super busy.
• 17:49
  GP-Ginamarie: Um, And as much as I really enjoy it because I'm sleeping great and I have time to exercise and it's wonderful that like all of a sudden like Slow down is very Cause now you're like, Oh my gosh, like I have to actually sit in silence and just, it's okay for a lot of things to not be going on.
• 18:07
  GP-Ginamarie: And that's been a challenge in itself for me just to really be okay not doing things.
• 18:14
  GP-Ginamarie: I feel like when you're on the roller coaster of like all the different trainings and all that stuff, you feel like you always need to be doing something.
• 18:20
  GP-Ginamarie: So that's been a learning experience for me too.
• 18:24
  GP-Dawn: I don't think you're alone in that at all.
• 18:26
  GP-Dawn: I think so many of us can identify with that.
• 18:29
  GP-Dawn: I know that I felt that when I took time off when I was sick in my residence.
• 18:35
  GP-Dawn: I have talked to you about that before and it felt so uncomfortable for even a few weeks to let go of that idea that I'm supposed to be doing something or I'm not supposed to be this.
• 18:47
  GP-Dawn: non busy.
• 18:50
  GP-Dawn: And so it can be really uncomfortable in that sense that you have to slow down.
• 18:55
  GP-Dawn: And that can be the challenging thing.
• 18:57
  GP-Dawn: I mean, we talk about how embracing challenges is great for competence and for, doing new things and being able to weather transitions, but it can be a challenge for us, the people that are high octane, hard driving professionals to even just.
• 19:15
  GP-Dawn: do nothing or less.
• 19:17
  GP-Dawn: So that's a really good point.
• 19:20
  GP-Dawn: So that's a hard part about leaning out, but what's a good part about leaning out for you?
• 19:24
  GP-Dawn: What do you really like about what you're doing now?
• 19:28
  GP-Ginamarie: I love how well I'm sleeping.
• 19:31
  GP-Ginamarie: I have a wearable device that I forgot to put it back on, but I'm sleeping so incredibly well.
• 19:38
  GP-Ginamarie: Um, I'm not getting the Sunday scaries, which I absolutely love.
• 19:42
  GP-Ginamarie: And I'm leaning into other parts of my life that I, you know, I think I neglected when I was in my training and in my kind of hustle phase, I'm really leaning into being, you know, a partner to my boyfriend.
• 19:54
  GP-Ginamarie: We've been going to farmer's markets and going through shopping together and cooking.
• 19:58
  GP-Ginamarie: And I, I'm really exploring things that I used to love when I was before medical school and all that stuff, like cooking that I haven't been able to do so much of.
• 20:08
  GP-Ginamarie: And I'm loving, being able to take care of my body, going to the gym, being outside.
• 20:13
  GP-Ginamarie: I am really.
• 20:14
  GP-Ginamarie: Loving those parts of my life right now.
• 20:17
  GP-Dawn: That's wonderful.
• 20:18
  GP-Dawn: I mean, in the end, what really matters the most, you know, everyone says this on your deathbed, are you going to be like, I wish I had worked more?
• 20:25
  GP-Dawn: Or am I going to say, I wish I had spent more time with the people I love or doing the things that I really cared about and just being myself.
• 20:34
  GP-Dawn: So I'm glad that you are on that path.
• 20:36
  GP-Dawn: How do you deal with the uncertainty
• 20:39
  GP-Ginamarie: so, I would say it's been a journey, um, dealing with the uncertainty.
• 20:45
  GP-Ginamarie: I haven't really always been good at dealing with uncertainty.
• 20:49
  GP-Ginamarie: Right now, I think what's helped me the most is having a community of people, like I was talking about before, that coaching program.
• 20:58
  GP-Ginamarie: You know, I just had last week where I started to feel uncertainty, it makes me feel very overwhelmed and I tend to get overwhelmed and then I want to shut down and not do anything.
• 21:09
  GP-Ginamarie: And that's, that's how it comes to me.
• 21:11
  GP-Ginamarie: And I didn't even want to go to my coaching call, which is so different for me, but I think it's in those moments where you don't even want to show up that when you do show up and I was just honest and I ended up kind of breaking down and we worked through a couple of things and I realized it's not.
• 21:27
  GP-Ginamarie: The overwhelm and the feelings that I'm feeling around starting a new practice that are the problem.
• 21:32
  GP-Ginamarie: It's the problem is that I think that I shouldn't feel that way.
• 21:35
  GP-Ginamarie: And during the call, I realized that the person running the call he was like, you know, when I started my company, I felt like that all the time, he's like, it's it's part of starting a business, you're learning, you're doing a lot of new things, you're, you're kind of expected to learn sales and marketing and all these different things.
• 21:53
  GP-Ginamarie: And that really helped me just shift.
• 21:55
  GP-Ginamarie: So I think in those moments of uncertainty, I'm still navigating them, they still Sneak up.
• 22:00
  GP-Ginamarie: It's just leaning on the people around me and, and speaking up.
• 22:04
  GP-Ginamarie: I think that's, that was the most important thing is if I didn't speak up about it, I wouldn't have been able to get help.
• 22:09
  GP-Ginamarie: Um, and not feeling like you need to do it all alone.
• 22:12
  GP-Dawn: Yeah.
• 22:14
  GP-Dawn: Is there anything that you know now that you wish you knew when you were a young woman in internal medicine on that treadmill of achievement and going toward all of the things that you were supposed to be doing?
• 22:31
  GP-Ginamarie: Yeah.
• 22:32
  GP-Ginamarie: I, it's funny that you ask.
• 22:34
  GP-Ginamarie: I, I always say this to like medical students and pre med and I actually have a sister that she's 10 years younger than me and she's going into medical school.
• 22:43
  GP-Ginamarie: And it's funny, I feel like I can look back 10 years and I like see myself in her.
• 22:47
  GP-Ginamarie: And.
• 22:48
  GP-Ginamarie: What I tell her is that don't put your life on hold to do all these like achievements because your life is not it doesn't stop, it's running parallel to all these things that you're experiencing.
• 23:02
  GP-Ginamarie: And I think for a lot of the years I always felt like I was putting off different other milestones in my life because I'm like once I achieve once I finished school once I finished residency once I finished fellowship.
• 23:14
  GP-Ginamarie: And I I think it would have made it easier for myself if I had nurtured more of a life outside of medicine to know who I was throughout that, and then not have to like finish and feel like, like, I don't even know who I am, who I am with all this stuff.
• 23:32
  GP-Dawn: It's so common.
• 23:33
  GP-Dawn: I encounter so many people through coaching and other avenues of.
• 23:40
  GP-Dawn: professional community that really just don't remember who they are or what they're interested in or what they like to do for fun or, um, what they might want to do.
• 23:53
  GP-Dawn: So I think that is very great advice.
• 23:57
  GP-Dawn: If I didn't mention that you also have a podcast, I would be, um That would be bad, because I want to tell everyone about your podcast, The Upward Spiral, with Dr.
• 24:11
  GP-Dawn: Michael Foti, who has also been on the Lean Out podcast, and I have recently been a guest on your show, so can you talk about why you decided to also do a podcast for other physicians?
• 24:26
  GP-Ginamarie: Dr.
• 24:26
  GP-Ginamarie: Foti is a friend of mine we met during training during our residency, and he is a huge mental health advocate.
• 24:32
  GP-Ginamarie: He's written his own book of grief about his experience with COVID and his mental health journey and how he came to really come to a place of balance.
• 24:43
  GP-Ginamarie: And so Dr.
• 24:44
  GP-Ginamarie: Foti and I did, we actually were doing Instagram lives and we had such a fun time doing the Instagram live and we got so much traction.
• 24:52
  GP-Ginamarie: We were speaking one day, he's like, why don't we do a podcast?
• 24:54
  GP-Ginamarie: He's like, I think we can do a lot of good.
• 24:56
  GP-Ginamarie: He's got an incredible platform because he's a teacher, of medical students.
• 25:00
  GP-Ginamarie: So it's like, we can really start to impact the medicine from like the ground up.
• 25:06
  GP-Ginamarie: Right.
• 25:06
  GP-Ginamarie: Like if we can just plant a few seeds for the next generation of medicine and even help, you know, people who are already in medicine, see things just a little bit different, um, by exposing them to different people.
• 25:18
  GP-Ginamarie: So we're like, yeah.
• 25:19
  GP-Ginamarie: Let's do it and we're on we just did recorded and released episode six.
• 25:23
  GP-Ginamarie: So we're we're on our way
• 25:26
  GP-Dawn: It's great.
• 25:26
  GP-Dawn: I love that you're doing that.
• 25:27
  GP-Dawn: That's one of the reasons that I donated my book to Dr.
• 25:31
  GP-Dawn: Foti's, office because I know he has a lot of trainees come in there and come through his office asking for advice.
• 25:39
  GP-Dawn: And so, yes, I love the idea of impacting the culture from the ground up.
• 25:45
  GP-Dawn: And I'm happy to be a part of it and to share it with my audience as well.
• 25:50
  GP-Dawn: Can you tell me where people can find you otherwise?
• 25:54
  GP-Ginamarie: So right now the platform that I use the most is Instagram.
• 25:58
  GP-Ginamarie: my handle is dr spelled out D O C T O R period Gina Marie G.
• 26:04
  GP-Ginamarie: I.
• 26:04
  GP-Ginamarie: N.
• 26:04
  GP-Ginamarie: A.
• 26:05
  GP-Ginamarie: M.
• 26:05
  GP-Ginamarie: A.
• 26:05
  GP-Ginamarie: R.
• 26:05
  GP-Ginamarie: I.
• 26:06
  GP-Ginamarie: E.
• 26:06
  GP-Ginamarie: Um, our podcast is on YouTube.
• 26:09
  GP-Ginamarie: Currently, as we grow and expand, we're going to get it on different platforms, but keeping our balance.
• 26:15
  GP-Ginamarie: We're going slow and steady as we grow.
• 26:17
  GP-Ginamarie: So those are the main two places you can find us right now.
• 26:21
  GP-Dawn: Excellent.
• 26:21
  GP-Dawn: Thank you so much, Gina Marie, for sharing your journey with me today and with everyone in the audience.
• 26:29
  GP-Ginamarie: Thank you for having me.
• 26:30
  GP-Ginamarie: This has been a pleasure.
• 26:34
  It was interesting listening to Gina.
• 26:36
  Marie is a journey into integrative health because it's something that I've always been interested in.
• 26:42
  I used to live in Tucson and even before I went to medical school, There was an integrative medicine fellowship at the university of Arizona where I was a college student.
• 26:51
  And I was kind of curious about medicine and I was so interested in that idea of going to that program with Dr.
• 26:58
  Andrew Weil.
• 26:59
  So I love that she has followed this path and it has origins in some issues that her mother had when she was younger.
• 27:08
  So it was.
• 27:09
  Interesting to hear about that.
• 27:12
  Here are my takeaways from our conversation.
• 27:15
  Number one.
• 27:16
  When you are feeling like you might be out of alignment with your current work-life balance or the things that you are prioritizing, pay attention to the symptoms and see if there are any sort of patterns.
• 27:29
  Gina Marie talked about how she saw a pattern of a particular symptom that she had, namely, the Sunday scaries, which a lot of us I know can identify with.
• 27:40
  She had it during her.
• 27:43
  Big academic medicine, practice and fellowship.
• 27:46
  And also during her small private practice position with her mentor.
• 27:51
  The other thing that she mentioned, which.
• 27:52
  Is a common symptom of being on the spectrum of burnout and not being in alignment.
• 27:58
  Is the idea of grandiose thoughts about different jobs, especially jobs that are a lot less high octane, something like working at a flower shop or working at a gear shop.
• 28:11
  I talked about in my book, lean out how I was interested in becoming a Starbucks barista, because I love coffee so much.
• 28:19
  So that's another symptom that maybe something needs to change in your life.
• 28:24
  Number two.
• 28:26
  There is great power in coaching and community.
• 28:30
  Gina Marie highlighted how much her group coaching program that she's a part of has helped her to reflect, to take responsibility for her thoughts and her actions, and to make big decisions on her work-life balance.
• 28:47
  Now I do the kind of coaching that is one-on-one.
• 28:49
  And anytime I do a consultation with people, I talk to them about the differences, the positives and negatives of doing one-on-one coaching versus doing group coaching.
• 28:59
  And one of the things that Gina Marie talked about is really a positive of doing group coaching, that you're in this community of other people who are going through something similar to you.
• 29:10
  And when you hear them get coached and you hear them talk about their issues and the pain points that they're experiencing, it benefits you as well.
• 29:20
  It also leaves you with a sense that you are not alone and that there are other people going through what you're going through.
• 29:26
  However, even though I don't do group coaching, that is precisely why I do this podcast so that there is some sort of a community aspect you can listen to other people and be inspired by them, but also feel like, Hey.
• 29:40
  You know, I have gone through what that person's going through or I'm feeling exactly the same way as that person on that interview.
• 29:48
  So another plug for coaching.
• 29:51
  And I hate to sound like someone who is drinking the Kool-Aid of coaching, but coaching can be very powerful for making big changes in your life and cultivating the confidence to do so.
• 30:04
  Number three.
• 30:06
  Leaning out.
• 30:07
  From the hustle culture the treadmill of achievement or what have you means leaning in to other things?
• 30:16
  For Gina Marie, she is currently leaning into health.
• 30:20
  Her relationships.
• 30:22
  Her prior passions such as cooking.
• 30:25
  And that is just a wonderful thing.
• 30:27
  There is a time and a place to lean in to achievements, to training to your work.
• 30:35
  And there was a time and a place to lean out from that and lean in to other things that light you up and bring you fulfillment.
• 30:43
  So my parting question for you is what thing would you like to lean into right now?
• 30:51
  Thanks for listening to the lean out podcast.
• 30:54
  If you find these conversations inspiring and useful, please forward them to a friend and also leave a review on iTunes or Spotify so that other people can find them easier.
• 31:06
  If you want to get in touch with me, you can find me at my website, practice balanced.com, where you can subscribe to my newsletter and get updates regularly about new podcast episodes, blog posts, speaking, engagements, and coaching services.
• 31:23
  You can also support my work by buying my book, lean out a professional woman's guide to finding authentic work-life balance for yourself, a friend, family member, or coworker.
• 31:35
  Have a great day and we'll see you next time