Healing Is a Lifestyle: Menopause, Mental Wellness & the Power of Community with Dr. Jessica Sheperd
November 18, 2025 • 54 mins
In this powerful episode, Dr. Jay Barnett sits down with renowned OB/GYN and women’s health expert Dr. Jessica Sheperd for a transformative conversation on healing, emotional wellness, and the importance of community in both physical and mental health. They explore the unique challenges women face in healthcare—particularly around menopause, hormonal health, and medical representation—and highlight the urgency of self-advocacy in navigating the medical system.
The discussion dives into how trauma impacts overall wellbeing, the importance of emotional intelligence, and how meaningful communication can strengthen relationships and support healing. Both Dr. Sheperd and Dr. Jay emphasize that healing is not a one-time event, but a lifelong journey rooted in compassion, vulnerability, and self-awareness. This episode serves as a valuable guide for anyone seeking to better understand the connection between emotional health, physical wellness, and community support.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Jesshill with Doctor j a production of The
Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. So I have the
great honor and pleasure to sit with my friend. She's
all over television, She's all over every magazine, doctor Jessica Sheppard.
How you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am so good. We are here, like live together. Yes,
we heard so many times we're like commenting on our
posts and being like, how did you get to that
conference that I missed you? And yes, it's good, we're here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, I listen. This is a conversation that I've been
looking forward to because I just love what you represent,
not just what you do in the medical field, but
I think also what you represent for the achieved woman,
and I want to unpack that today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So have a bit of a packing to do about
that one.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Right, the achieved woman and so and that just came
to me, you know, And I have my questions and
all those different things. But as I always start off
every episode when I'm welcoming someone to the healing community,
I don't ask them how they're doing. I like to
ask them how are they feeling? How are you feeling today?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Dot Ooh, I love that. I'm thinking of my emotion
wheel in my head. Today I feel reassured. I think
today is a day where I feel reassured because we'll
get into that of the work that I've done on
myself as an individual. So today I feel reassured.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Good. I love that reassured. Let's see if I can
ask myself how I feel today today. I feel encouraged.
H Yeah, I feel encouraged today, and not that I
was discouraged, but I feel encouraged to continue the work
that I'm doing in this space. Whenever you and you
know this, when you are helping people heal, whether it's
(01:45):
from a psychological or from a medical perspective, I think
there is the notion that there's this joy that we
always have, yeah, because we're like, oh, we have been people,
and so I think for me, I'm often battling sometimes
back and forth because sometimes there's joy with it, yeah,
and then there's a little bit of pain and it's
not deep pain. It's almost like man, people are really hurting.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's what I would definitely agree with you on because
you know, even though we're approaching it from different perspectives
of you know, psychological mental approach. For me, mostly physical
is there is a lot of mind body connection. But
either way that you're helping people, is that a lot
of times that can maybe pull away from you because
(02:33):
you're so like into the giving and the healing and
how it and I help you that often if you
don't take time for yourself or take time to figure
out how that is impacting you, then you do feel
sometimes a little bit down. And being encouraged I think
is a good term. And yeah, I feel that some days.
She was like, huh, I feel encouraged to continue the
(02:54):
work that I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, because I think if we're on as the ebbs
of flows of our work, it's really attached to the
energy that we're giving out. Because if it's a day
where you're pouring and you're not only talking about the diagnosis,
you're also asking about the support system, you're also asking about,
(03:15):
you know, how are they going to move forward? And
do they have people in their tribe? Those things can
kind of take from us. And I'm reminded because I
was recently sitting with the client and they said to me, man,
I don't have a great community, And that thing has
just been just really just digging at me to know
that they're on this path to healing, but they also
(03:37):
feel very long though they have me to guide them
on this journey. And that's one of the things that
I often feel challenged with because I wish that everyone
can feel yes that edwin and I.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Think that that probably will come up later as we're speaking.
Is one how do you build community? Because many times
the community that you may have been in as you're healing,
you may need to actually change a little bit of
that community, and so finding that new community sometimes can
be challenging. But also is that inner work that you
do with yourself. A lot of self love and self
(04:12):
trust has to be established in order for the days
when you may feel alone or lonely, or the community
is not all the way there, maybe you can't reach
your therapist, right, Yeah, Is that you have to actually
go into yourself to being like, what are my tools
and how are you going to kind of bring back
that self love and self trust Because it's not always
a well honed skill. So it's the work that you're
(04:33):
doing to get to that level of being self worthy
and building that self trust.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So I want to go back to there, Doc and
ask you that question when you were talking about you
may have to get a new community. Talk about that
because that yeah, as a black woman, yes, who is achieved.
Did some of your circles change as you begin to
(04:59):
grow and expand?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Absolutely it has, and there's there's good reason for that.
I think, you know, as we grow, I think we
live in stages and phases. And just because growth might
build a new community, or you may have to offset
some of the community that you have, it doesn't mean
that it's always out of loss of love or loss
of respect. It means that for this moment in my life,
(05:24):
I need to focus on who are the community that's
going to help stabilize me if it's a stabilization issue,
or if it's I'm in a growth phase, who's going
to help me in that growth phase? And not everyone
is going to be best for that community at that time.
So I often think that people feel that if they're
(05:46):
in that kind of movement, both a person who's removing
the community and the person who may be in that community.
It can be tricky. But I do think that if
we do it in a way that's loving and it
doesn't have to be a negative experience, that you should
actually be changing your community. I mean, we would say
the same thing. For think of the people who are
at the top of their game, like what Jeff Bezos
(06:08):
and those people from the time that they were in
college building this thing or oh Facebook was a thing
that I built in my dorm room. The people that
were there at that time to now where they are
have changed. That is what is expected of that. So
why shouldn't we expect that of ourselves as we start
to grow, whether it's spiritually, physically, mentally, that ourn't community
(06:31):
should have to change.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yes, Oh, this is so good because what I'm thinking
about is when I begin my healing journ as a man,
it was difficult. It's tough, and I've talked about this
in previous episodes because it's who you have to leave behind,
and there wasn't there wasn't conversations, you know, most of
(06:54):
the time. I think my growth just kind of did
the talking for me.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
It was kind of a natural phase.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
It was this kind of natural phase. So as a woman,
how does it look because it looks different for men
and women? Because yeah, because yeah, because men, because when
there's a separation with brothers, brothers, I don't think that
they think personally, Bruggies just think, oh man, my man,
got a lot going on and we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
You know, I get to like pose that question back
to you because you just said something that like I
thought of a question, but no. I think that is
very tricky because women, we are so giving and we
are emotional and when something's going on, even if it
isn't something. So for example, I've had times where I'm
really focusing in on a particular project I'm doing, and
so I may not talk to as many people as
(07:45):
I have in my friend group or community as much.
And I won't guarantee you there will be someone who
will be like, reach out and say did I do something?
Was there something? And then you're like, wait, no, but
should I have said something like then you're like caught
in this likespire of there wasn't anything, but did you
think something? Why do you think?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
You know, girl, we will go down a rabbit hole
and then the person's like, well, you didn't call me
at nine o'clock on Tuesday like you usually do, and
so it creates this thing. And I think that's where
we have to be okay with saying the hard thing
with Hey, I'm doing a project and I'm so sorry.
You can honor the person in their feelings, but also
you have to come back and say, well, this is
why this happened. And even if it was I felt
(08:26):
this happened and this is how I felt about it,
you still have to own up to that because there
are a lot of women who will shy away from
that conversation and then it becomes toxic.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Oh, learning how to communicate is one of the biggest
things that I've learned from myself personally in a career
in how to manage friends. But once you navigate through
it and you get more comfortable with it, it isn't
a bad thing. It's actually necessary. I'm going to pose
that question back to you before I forget is you said?
(08:57):
And I think this is so true. Obviously, men and
women are different in how they communicate. If a man
is like, oh, man, he's just going through a hard thing,
but really they may be going through a difficult time
or not. Do you think that men should approach it
in a way where they're like, I was just checking
on you, is this going on or not?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Absolutely? I think I think for us as men, because
we don't have the muscle or the development of that muscle,
we kind of refrain from trying to use it. Like
you'll see this with brothers who are not very good
at something. They fear trying to do something new. They
(09:40):
fear trying to do something that they feel like they
may be a novice at. So if they don't really
have the development in that area, they kind of shy away.
And then if they are interested, they are very kind
of sensitive to kind of like, well, how do I
approach that? And one of the things that has helped
(10:01):
me is that question. I always ask a brother how
they're feeling, and then I'll ask them, hey, brother, how's
your heart? Man? And that question right there, Man.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's aulds like an easy question, but many times to.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Answer that question stops so many of my brothers in
their tracks. And I love that it does. And what
I did is in my group, I created a emotional
chart for the brothers, so each color represents a feeling
and a statement like green says man, brother, I'm feeling great,
(10:35):
I'm feeling couraged, I'm feeling inspired. We have blue with
brother I'm kind of a space where I really don't know. Red,
of course is an emergency, and then we have yellow.
It's just like, man, bro it's not bad, it's not good.
I'm just kind of like in a zone where I'm
just kind of going through the motion and believe it
(10:56):
or not. Got that color chart for them, man has
been liberating game change right, because it also gave brothers
a language to speak that they hadn't learned.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I think it's like bringing it down to a level
of you don't need to be you know, philosophical with it.
Oh and like have this whole dissertation in the answer.
It's just like very simple and that actually can open
up the waves to being like as they admit it,
being like, oh my, I didn't even realize it, but
as you say it, you're like honoring and knowledging. It's
(11:31):
similar to when you're in the hospital, right when you're
after a procedure whatever, they have the chart that has
all the faces. Once we're ten on your pain, it's
pretty much the same thing, is that I just like
asking what is the description of the pain? How does
it feel?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
What number are you? And the face will tell you
like how bad it is. That was such a helpful
thing that we developed in medicine.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yes, because most of us don't really want to talk
about our pain. Let alone talk about what our pain
is making us feel. That's the challenge for men that
I think that we really just really struggle with, because
it's like, if I tell you how I'm really feeling,
there's this fear like, man, are you gonna look at
(12:10):
me different? And what I've been able to do with
the brothers in my circle is allow them to see
how I'm feeling and allow them to see and allow
them to see how I model it where they have
literally sawt I mean they've literally seen in real time
me be at a bad place. About a couple of
(12:34):
years ago, I'm on this prayer call what about eight
brothers every Monday, every Monday, fifty two weeks out of
the year, I mean, which is which is a year
fifty two weeks and every Monday, you know, we get
on the call. And I had missed several weeks, just
wasn't feeling up to it. I didn't want to pray.
I feel like I was just just not feeling it.
(12:58):
And one day I got on the call and I
said to the brothers, I said, man, I want to
apologize man that I haven't been here and I've been missing,
and not because I've been busy. I said, Man, I'm
really overwhelmed. And I said, I'm so overwhelmed that it's
scaring me and I don't know what's happening, and I
(13:24):
fear what my history is with depression, that it could
be pushing me into a dark place. And immediately you
can just hear the phone go silent. And brothers sat
with it. And after they sat with it, one brother
started chiming in and speaking life and the other brother
beg dropping scripture, and then the other brother began sharing.
(13:47):
He said, Bro, it's funny that you said that because
I've been in the same place.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
See, that's the vulnerability, and we need.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
To know that we're not the only one. And this
is the thing that I I love that women have
is you guys have such community that there's never if
any and I made because I'm the only bored and
may but I can't tell with my mom and sisters
because they talk about everything. I never since any trepidation
around you guys is sharing.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You know, we do have some a few we're more open.
I think we communicate more. What I have found in
both my patients and just women that I've started to
meet as i've been more of I guess you can
say a public figure is there is also a lot
of numbing that goes on. Right, So even though we're
communicating and we're saying this is how I feel, or,
(14:40):
there still is on the extreme I would say, actually,
on the extreme of what you're explaining is now I
have to present as everything's good, everything's fine, we're doing great,
and I'm doing great too. Meanwhile, that's not the situation, right,
So it's again the other side of it, where there
is over communication. I wouldn't really call it over communication,
(15:01):
but in the sense of, you know, when we're comparing
to men, but also there becomes this projection of that
everything is okay. So again I think at both stages
there still needs to be this muscle of vulnerability that
needs to be explored and transparency in being okay with
this is really how I feel. Yes, But the community
(15:23):
always matters, right, So as you're growing that skill set
of me being able to explain really how I am
or may require another community and that's okay too, because
you want to grow that part of you emotionally, and
I think in that growth phase you may need to
I call it the cocoon phase, right, the cocune phase
(15:43):
of like, let me kind of be a little bit
more focal with intention to figure out where I am
so I can see what needs to be around me
in order for growth.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
As you were speaking, I was thinking that you're in
a place where some will look at you and said, man,
you achieve everything. How important is it for you to
have achieved everything? But also to find spaces where you're
not doctorshipper you can just be just how important is
(16:15):
that for you?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
That definitely was a growth phase for me when you
think of in the path when you know, I can
remember myself when I first started to do say TV,
which is way back, and like I think that was
like twenty eleven is where I really started to hone
that skill. And in that path of that required really
(16:36):
focus into learning how to be on TV, how to present,
how to make sure that you were giving a really
broad scope of information a very short amount of time
that people could walk away with. That was like a
lot of training all while being a doctor. Right, so
if you can imagine that already has to be there,
so doctors already when we work way too many hours
(16:58):
and then on top of the I'm like, oh, let
me try this other skill set that I have to
learn so as a learning curve, and then at that
time I think, well maybe a few years after that,
like around twenty fourteen, I had kids back to back,
mind you, which is funny because I'm an obgyn, and
I was like, ah, how does one not do that?
And then you do it anyway? So that comes and
(17:18):
I do think that you know, you hear this often
when you hear of accomplished women. I was recently at
a at a conference in Indra who was a previous
CEO of PEPSI was talking and one of the things
that she talks about a lot is people will say
the same thing, how did you accomplish so much? And
can you have it all at once? I believe you
can have it all at once, but they're not going
(17:40):
to grow in the same globe stages and phases. And
that was something for me to learn because inherently I'm
a very like motivated, determined person. And I would say,
even now I have a name for it is like
kind of like a steamroll or effect. I'm like, we're
coming through, whether you're we're coming through. But always remember
(18:03):
your strongest attributes can also have a weak spot. And
I think early on for me, oh that's steamroller.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Man, you gotta go No, no, we gotta park back there. No, no,
we're not right there. That's that's the moment too. Oh
my gosh. Our strongest attributes also has weak points, also
has weak points. What were some of the weak points?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The week point the steam roller was like, I'm out
of my way, I've got like this path to do.
I know what the next step is. Yeah, I mean,
like you really had to be like that in med
school or you ain't never going to get through. So
you had to be so like, I'm determined, I'm here
to accomplish this goal. This is what I'm doing. And
so I was already like that, and then going into
(18:49):
a profession where that was really what got you to
the highest levels. And now I'm at another four forefront
of I'm going to do this other thing and so
steamrolling again. And I think, looking back, yes, it was
a strength, and yes it got me to a lot
of the reasons why I am the way I am
today or where I am. But in that is taking
(19:11):
pause and saying, are there moments of this steamroller path
that I need to be aware of my surroundings? And
what's going on and that has been one of my
biggest growth phases over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And when you and when you discover that and you
have that awakening like this works over here, yeah, but
it doesn't work over there. And I think that's important
for the women that are watching and even for the
men that are watching. How important is it to quickly
recognize what works and where it works?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I love that question. So I would say the quickness
of it doesn't always happen because you may not realize
it's going on, or that it's not giving you the
best outcome that you were expecting. Right. What I would
say is in those phases is learning the capacity to saying,
how are people experiencing me?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
There? It is?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Right there?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It is?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
What is that weakness? And now what are the things
that I'm maybe willing to decrease in the strength of it.
You're not decreasing your strength, You're decreasing possibly the momentum
or the aptitude or the speed and velocity of which
the strength is going to. Now focus on the weakness
to accommodate it so that you are you're creating it
(20:31):
in a way where you're always aware self awareness that
is my like term for twenty twenty five. Yeah, self
awareness ability to say, ooh this is this doesn't feel good?
Maybe that's an internal thing for yourself. Or if someone
comes to me with something, where can I hold that
and be vulnerable enough to say, this may be something
(20:53):
that I have to pay attention to. How am I
going to do that in a way where I have
compassion for myself.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Which is hard for susciety people and driven very hard
because they often see compassion as weakness.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yes. Absolutely, And that was probably in the last year
as I realized I did not have a lot of
self compassion.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Wow. Yeah, when you discovered that, Yeah, how did you
receive it? Like for yourself?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Oh? I think it's still a daily thing because it's
a tool, right, It's something that you actually have to
start to learn how to do. So if you think
this is where I get into the brain philosophy of
who we are and how we present and what are
our childhood traumas that we have to address. Is our
brains are magnificent complex organs, yes, which is why they're
(21:49):
so smart. But inherently what they do is they will
figure something out that you may have acquired when you
were six, seven, eight years old. Yeah, and it will
stay in that pattern unless you choose to recognize that
the pattern that was built, which may not be serving you,
has to be changed. That's where the difficult part is
because you have to acknowledge it and then work to
(22:10):
change it. And the work, the hard work. No one
wants to do that hard work.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
It's you know, and this is the doctor in me
in the healthcare that we don't discuss often for individuals
that neuroplasticity.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Neuroplasticity is so amazing when you're able to understand it
and work with it, but it will be the thing
that hinders you. Right, it's a strength. But the weakness
is if you don't understand how wired your brain is
and the things that may not be your fault at
all that may have accumulated over years. Being self aware
(22:49):
of that and saying, oh my, this may be something
that I need to address, and then focusing that cocoon
phase on it so that you can come out with
the skill set that you focused on and the neuroplasticity
that allows all of us to acquire that growth is fascinating,
It is so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
How is it important for people to identify with how
they are experiencing them themselves and how is tied to
the trauma that is also tethered. Yeah, so they're.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Man, you ask like a you asked like a punch quest.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Let's go to work.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So I would definitely say going back to self awareness. Right.
So for women, typically we call it the the airplane
approach where they tell you in an emergency, you're supposed
to put the oxygen on yourself first before you put
it on the child. What do women typically do? The opposite?
They will take care of everyone else except themselves. And
(23:53):
for years, what we have seen, and this is where
I go a little bit into patriarchy of society, religion, culture,
or family has taught them is to you take care
of everybody else before yourself. And so with that comes
this trauma from a very young stage. Whether you saw
it is exemplified and you took that on, is I
take care of everyone else and now I don't even
(24:14):
know that skill of knowing what's going on with me
or I'm going to ignore it or it's not I'm
too busy, I'm not going to pay attention to it.
Self awareness is key, and that also means for your
physical health and when you don't feel yourself, and that's
why you know I do midlife medicine is typically what
I focus on in my practice, So for women who
are in between the ages of like forty to fifty five,
(24:34):
because inherently what happens during that phase as they start
to have changes and fluctuations in their reproductive hormone. So
that's like your estrogen, your testosterone, and your progesterone. What
we have seen now in evidence and research, you know,
and it's very new. We know women go through menopause.
It's fine, it's physiologic, it's biologic, it happens. But what
(24:56):
was happening leading up to that point is this kind
of fluctuation of hormones which inherently impacted how we felt
about ourselves because of mood. When we think about depression,
the most common age of women being diagnosed with that
with the mood disorder is forty five to fifty five. Wow,
why do you think that is? Because there's all these
(25:17):
changes happening with hormones, which is not their fault. It's
part of the biological process, but no one was talking
about it. We don't talk about our health. We don't
talk about when I just don't feel myself because what
are people going to label us? Right, and then we're
not going to our doctor to talk about it either.
And I will say, you know, from a medical standpoint,
we weren't well equipped with understanding the mental and mood
(25:40):
changes that happens in perimenopause and menopause. Yeah, and so
we always attribute it to a physical symptom, not a
mental emotional We.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Always talking about the because I was at home with
my mom when she was going to the mintopause, and
I just remember it being fifty five degrees in the
house and I'm like, it's decent, like, but she but
she's having she's having hot flashes and nice and all
the things. And I remember being home and my mom
(26:10):
coming in she was like, what aren't you cold? And
I'm just like, no, I'm not like I'm freezing. I'm
like And I was in school at the time, and
my bachelor's in science and I was in anatomy and
physiology and brothers. This is this is why I'm so
glad that you hear, doc, because I want you to
talk to these brothers as well. And I'm the only son.
I'm so glad that I educated myself about women's reproductive
(26:35):
system and understanding that this mental pause changed that my
mom was going through was the end of a reproductive journey.
And then also my mom had a hysterectomy, so I
was locked in and tapped because when she was in
one of those moves, I didn't take it personal. And
I want you to speak to that because I hear
(26:57):
and work with a lot of men that are married
to women who are either pre menopause or it's full blown,
and just how important is it for men to understand
what that woman journey is so they can in some
way be supportive and not take it personal and feel
(27:19):
attacked Because there is a mood.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Change, There is absolutely, I mean, even me being perimenopausal,
I can definitely note the changes in how I feel
from day to day. But again, because I have this
education and the resource, I mean to go to work
and get that taken care of. As far as from
a hormonal standpoint was, I would say it's a two
prong approach in the sense that for men who have
(27:41):
a spouse partner who are going through that is exactly
to understand it's not personal and to understand that it
is a hormonal shift, but they shouldn't be shamed, right,
So women shouldn't be shamed for having that happen. So
the best approach a man could take is, yes, being
brought up to speed on what it is, but to
being a safe space for that woman to be in
(28:05):
that you know, kind of transition and being like, at
least I have someone here who makes me feel safe
August right, So kind of creating a safe space. But
from the women's side of that is, you don't have
to live that way. There are ways that you should
be addressing because that ultimately is your quality of life.
(28:25):
Whether it's your relationship, whether it's the symptom that you're
going through of hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, whatever it is.
You don't have to live that way. And so that's
why I encourage women to in like that advocacy for themselves.
Is it literally is the airplane. You know how many
women I have come into my office and they'll talk
about these literally extreme It doesn't have to be extreme
(28:47):
the symptoms all the time, but the ones who come
in my office and I remember them is because they
have these extreme symptoms. I'll be like, how long have
you been going through this, No, like three four years,
I'm like, why are you living like this? Or like
I thought it it would pass. I thought, you know,
maybe if I just like ignore it, it would go away.
And I'm like, no, no, we're taking care of that
to date. But it's advocating for yourself in a way
(29:07):
where you're like, I can do better than this, and
I don't want to live like this. So I think
that's a too prong approach. And I would also say
as a community, and I would definitely say in the
Black community. And this is where I love statistics. There
is a study that was done and they looked at
all ethnicities or at least five of women going through
that transition. Black women typically start menopause earlier. Black women
(29:32):
typically have more severe hot flashes and night sweats. Black
women typically have more heart disease that is associated with
that change in estrogen. And when we look at the
long term outcomes of decline and estrogen, which would be
heart disease still number one killer of women when we
think of dementia, still something that impacts Black women more
(29:53):
because their hot flashes are more severe. So it's not
only in that moment that they're going through the symptom,
and like, what are you going to show up as
as a seventy eighty and ninety year old. Now, now
you're increasing your risk for dementia. Now you're increasing your
risk for heart disease. Why are we doing this? Why
are we doing this?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, I'm just gonna let us sit in this because
she just dropped the wealth of knowledge and information. A
lot of Black women don't have access to good health care.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
That is probably the thing that infuriates me the most
is the access and resources that our community has. And
you could take that across the board. You could take that,
we could get into maternal mortality at the point of pregnancy,
because that still is something that impacts us more when
you think about depression. You know this when it comes
to the community breast cancer, we don't even have more
(30:46):
rates of breast cancer. We just die more. So it
is across the board that clearly we see that there's
health disparities and health inequities. Yes, and so when it
comes to menopause, I'm like, it is not even something
that you know, if you wanted to put it a
range of how hard it is to manage, it's not.
So why are we still at a paucity of having
(31:07):
the same resources that are available. But we're suffering more.
If you think about what we just said about age
and severity of symptoms infuriates me, you.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Know, doc for you, you know, being a black woman
and knowing that we have less black doctors today than
we did. I want to say back in nineteen seventy eight,
if my stats are right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
They just haven't increased. They have not and they were
low already.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
With exactly So listen.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Do you know, like, let me not get on that soapbox.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I'm a hobble on this soad box. Really quick. Listen.
We don't need no more rappers.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We need more doctors. I'm scientists. Its listen.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
We'll need no more ig models. We don't need no
more scammers there. We don't need no more real estate agents.
Please listen. We need more doctors. And I say this
because I sit on the advisory committee for the APA,
the American Psychiatric Association, So I'm part of the advisory
council committee for their MFS for their Minority Fellowship program.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
So I want to hear about this. What are you
seeing from that lens?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
So what I'm seeing from this lens is we need
more black psychiatrists and more black psychologists, We need more research.
We were just in a meeting in DC. We have
about forty six fellows that is getting ready to go
through this fellowship program, which was a two year program
that has now been cut down to one year program.
(32:34):
And I'm not going to get into this from a
political standpoint, but this is why we have to do
something because all of these cuts not just affect us now,
but if you have fellows that are not able to
go through these processes in these programs, and so my
job is to help mitigate some of that, and then
(32:55):
also to create clearer pathways so they're able to talk
to a doctorship, so they're able to have other mentors
and other fellows that look like them that can mirror
them to have an understanding of their journey while they're
in residency. And I just I just sat there as
being a black man sitting in his room and being
(33:15):
able to lend my voice. I felt so proud. But
when I look at the pictures, I'm like, God, we
need some more black and brown people.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Like so many more, so many more, right, Because here's where,
here's the thing that really kind of makes it put
it put it all together for me is that we
are already at a lack of So the fact that
we have more community, we're trying with more programs, but
then you have budget cuts or then you have you know,
because of what party is in and they want to
cut funds. So now it's that what two steps forward,
(33:47):
you know, seven steps back? Is like you're already at
a limitation. Yes, So the long term implication, I agree
with you, like looking five ten years out from now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh and and we're and we're even looking at it
from the perspective that if you think about the access
to care, that if this big beautiful bill and all,
I'm not like we were having this discussion around these
rural areas that will have hospitals shut down there's no
access to Medicare, Medicaid. And we're also looking at the
(34:20):
influx is going to happen with clinicians because when people
can't get medication, when people can't receive care, that's going
to drive mental health issues, that's going to drive individual psychosis,
is going to create a mired of different issues. And
this is why we are necessary in this time. And
this is what I love about what you've been able
(34:41):
to do with your platform, is be a representation as
a black woman, because I'm pointing young black girls to you,
I'm pointing young Yeah. Absolutely, I've worked with black girls
who code and working with them, we're talking about all
of these different pathways to not just only creating girls
who can code and understand technology, but also girls who
(35:03):
can understand medicine and technology and how those two things
come together. So we need more representation in this space
to provide better care. When I was going through my
doctoral program and master's program, it was heartbreaking to know
that there wasn't any research on most of the issues
(35:25):
that we're plagued with as blacks, and to think about
most of our research is not even accepted.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Not accepted. And then from if you think again, going
back to trauma, the trauma that was endured by the
black community when it came to research talk about it.
So now there is a complete mistrust of the system.
And so even I remember, you know, working in Chicago,
as there University of Illinois so very high research, and
then here at Baylor, and then there was that also
University of Louisville, which are research academic centers to be
(35:58):
able to recruit patients to come into a study. Every
time I had a black patient, I was like, oh,
let's get you into a study because I know what
research does and how it helps us formulate medications and
treatment programs. The amount that would deny versus accept it
was much more denial than being like, yeah, I'll be
part of this project because there's mistrust and how do
(36:20):
we carry down information? Usually through family stories or but
that's all they hear. And now even with changes in
being able to say no, we have we have much
more protocol or we have ethical portions or committees that
you know, look over research, they were still like, nah.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand it. And I could exactly
because when you look at the healthcare system when it
comes to us, yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I can't trust why would you? Why would you?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And if I can't trust your system, I don't know,
don't I don't know if I have the capacity to
embrace what you would prescribe it. It may be something
that could possibly help me. But how many times have
we seen black says I'll die with.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
It yes, or doctors ain't trying to help.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Us, aans trying to help us, And.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's like this loaded statement which if you're to maybe
take this back to like nineteen twenties thirty four, very true,
and now that we have more block not more block doctors,
but more visibility to inequities, they still are like I
still don't trust you, Like, what what have you done
to build trust in order for me to have surefooting
to step into it? I don't think we've done enough.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Wow with your journey, doctor Shepherd, how has your journey
inspired you even more to do more?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
I think that comes through the stories, right, So that
comes through stories of every patient, which is why I
still choose to practice. Like there's so many other things
that I'm involved in where I really could step away
from practicing, but I have found you would love this analogy.
One of my favorite favorite IT shows and series is
The Wire.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Oh heck yeah, the greatest show of all time. It is.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
I mean the writing was brilliant. I mean every season
was brilliant. So it's kind of like, what was at
the end of it? What was Avon? Who did Idris play?
What was he?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Stringer bells?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Stringer bell the differences between them at their level of
like where they were and string was like, nah, we
got to do all businesses. Am, I'm like, no, we
got to be like keep our feet in the in
the community and like seeing what's going on in the corners.
And in the end, he still needed that, he still
needed to be relevant, he still needed to see what
was going on. And so that's what that's that's what
(38:40):
really helped me being like, what's really going on is
for me to hear stories to people, for women to
come in and share what's going on in their lives
so I can be like, ah, that's where we need
the help or that's how we're going to reach them,
because this is the overlying or the overwhelming message that
they're telling me.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, Because for me, what I've always loved about research
is a love of the you know, the qualitative and
all those different things, but I love the oral research
where you get to hear stories, and I think those
stories are our maps to understanding so much about our
(39:15):
culture and then so much about our family history and
about the DNA of the family, and I think we
need more of that. What scares me where we are
today is I don't know whether I don't know where
to connect anything when it comes to us as blacks.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, I mean I think it's quite honestly trying to
be written over. And so that's why we have to
be more vocal and vocal, not just and loud. That
you have to be strategically loud with what you're saying
because you still again trying to communicate. What comes back
down to communication. You're trying to communicate with a group
(39:53):
that may not have the best interest or any interest,
but you still have to align yourselves in a way
or the communication is not either going over their head
or they refusing not to listen to it because it
isn't coming in a way that now there can be
actual dialogue.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yes, so dog, this this conversation is so good, like
we can oh, I.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Love I'm learning today.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So we've talked about you know, the pathways MENI palls
with women, and we've kind of talked about your journey.
What do you what do you see now for yourself
as you're in this stage where you've been a voice,
you've been a face, you've been an advocate of, you've
(40:39):
been a conduit at this journey of your life now right,
we was talking about healing and talking about your self awareness.
What matters to you now?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What matters to me now? So that can be through
my experience and what I've navigated through personally in my life,
and then also hearing the kind of the similarities in
other women who have come into my office in space
is we have neglected I could say this for all women,
doesn't matter. You know what ethnicity is that we have
(41:12):
neglected a large part of how the emotional status of
our lives connects with our physical health. Just like that book,
the body holds score right. So whatever trauma you've gone
through in the past, whatever bad experiences, relationships, motherhood, you know, career,
all of that has created something within us. But that
(41:35):
emotional space for us to understand it will a lot
of times limit our ability to be our best selves
because we have not connected mind and body. And so
that's where I have devoted a lot of my time
when they come in. So women will come in for
obviously a disease state or a condition, or I need
help physically. But when I tell you, when I dig down,
(41:57):
just ask a few more questions about the emotional capacity
in space that they're in and why they're there and
trauma and the complexity of that. So many women will
literally sit there and just start crying because I've never
had from the MD perspective, my emotional health and well
being discussed in the same visit, and then suddenly I'm
(42:20):
able to say, well, then this is why it should
be because that ability for you to now put them together,
to feel emotional within your physical health visit means that
we have to pay more attention both that patient and myself,
and getting them to someone who can get them help
is so important because then they can see how much
(42:40):
work needed to be done up here in order to
address what their physical symptom is. And that's why I
have therapists in my practice. Then it's like this pathway
where I'm just like pathway, you don't even have to
look for one.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
You'r too.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Trauma recovery. We have those who look at health anxiety.
We have those who will even be like, let's get
you into somatic work trauma recovery, so it all is integrated,
but we've never approached it that way. So I think
that has been my own personal journey and being able
to share that with my patience, it's been it helps
me in my healing.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, so as you were talking, you hear a lot
of men say women are never happy, like you can't
make a woman happy. And as I was listening to you,
it made me even have more compassion for the journey
of a woman because I'm the only boy, and I
have sisters and I have a mom. And what I'm
(43:38):
hearing from you is, though though men have this misconception
that women have all of this liberation and freedom and all,
it is just kind of like, you know, she gets
to say things that I can't. What I'm hearing from
you is that women don't feel that they even have
the permission to be totally connect to their emotions in
(44:02):
the way that they should feel them.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Is that I would say that in addition to thinking
of that statement that you just said, that women feel
that they can never make them happier, they're never happy either.
One of those is that there is some truth to
that because it boils down to communication again, right, So
the way that it's being approached and the response may
(44:25):
feel as if, oh, she's not happy. On the flip side,
I always will bring it back because there's always everyone
has a responsibility in this and what we call beautiful
partnership of men and women. And again we're speaking to
when we think of male and female relationships. And obviously
there's other dynamics of that is that women also too
because the whole airplane thing of putting on oxygen first,
(44:49):
we don't do that, And what happens is we fear
or fail to form boundaries for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And many times when women do form boundaries, they usually
are looked at as the one that's difficult. Right, But
a boundary is being set. But we're not taught to
do that. And we're also not taught from men to
really learn how to emote and to share the feeling
and being vulnerable. So there's do you see, It's kind
(45:18):
of this like seesaw where women also maybe they aren't
happy because they haven't learned to set boundaries and they
haven't learned to saying what is the safety of what
I'm feeling now? And when I'm out of that, that's
usually when you have emotional dysregulation. So many women are
actually functioning in emotional dysregulation. I believe it's because they
(45:39):
don't form boundaries. We're not allowed. We always have to
be nice and smile. What they say to Hillary when
she was running, she doesn't smile enough. Have they ever
said that to a man?
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah? They said that to me, I don't smile like.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
You need to smile.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, it's like you need to smile more. Are you mad?
I'm like, no, I'm good. And as you said, I'm
thinking we both need to come to the table and.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Have a very long table, very long time, a.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Very long conversation to extend grace, particularly for us as
black people, because of the trauma, because of the pain
that is unresolved. I think there needs to be some
morning there because what didn't have. There's a lot of
grief because when we come to each other, we don't
(46:27):
come to each other with open arms. We come to
each other with boxing gloves on.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
We don't go to listen to be heard, and so
I don't see a partner.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I see a sparring partner. So I'm not coming to
see how I can support and understand you. I'm coming
to defend. And I got my hands up because in
my mind I'm thinking that you're going to swing on me.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
One of the most profound I would say psychiatrists. He's
an MD. He's Canadian like me.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
I mean, you know Canadian Jamaican, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Canadian and Jamaican. We're going to stop and do like
a whole house party now. But his name is Gobormante,
and he is fundamental in looking at trauma, like how
we store things from so long ago that we're unaware of.
But they were survival skills, survival skills of whatever situation
you were in. They didn't have to be bad, but
(47:23):
you were exposed to them in a way. How people
dealt with things, how they avoided conflict, how they learned,
how to blame people, how they communicated, And that's survival.
Whether you were abandoned, whether you have anxiety because you're perfection,
you're always you know, built up in a perfection mode.
Those are forms of trauma, but we build them so
far back, so now we enter into relationship or partnership
(47:46):
with people with those skills, so we are only like
our seven, eight, nine year old versions of ourselves. The
self awareness part of that of kind of like unveiling
that is like the ekey work. No one wants to
do it, but once you like and veil at your
I literally in this last year have been like, oh,
I'm doing that thing again, whatever that is that whole list.
(48:08):
I have a whole list of these limitations that once
you're self aware of it you're like, oh, but now
I have the tool to know how to avoid that,
because that's not serving me in the best way, and
someone can experience me in a bad way. If I
continue to do that, it becomes easier to have that
conversation with yourself feel like, oh, well, I probably shouldn't
do that. How am I going to pause with it,
step away and deal with that in a better way?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, it's good. So I ask every guest same question,
because this is just heal all things healing. What is
healing for you, doctor Shepherd?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Healing for me is a lifelong journey. Healing requires the
space to be compassionate, which I'm still working on, but
it also requires the vulnerability of saying this has to
become different, this has to become better. I have to
(49:03):
release that thing or that person in order to create growth,
and growth doesn't always feel good. Releasing ego doesn't always
feel good. But that healing is really a lifelong journey
because we always should be students, Yeah, every day, and
students and healing require looking at it at the marathon,
(49:26):
not the sprint.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah. So a lifelong.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Journey, lifelong journey.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, for the woman that is out there today, that
is watching, they see the doctor Shepherd. I hope they
got to see the woman behind the title, because you
share such a wealth of knowledge. I never forget sitting
with a client who was a mother who had had
a mental breakdown, and we had been working. We were
(49:52):
on our third session, and I'm connecting the pathways to
her performance because for her, motherhood was performative and not
performative because she was trying to be but she felt
that she had to because as you were speaking earlier,
that most women are going to put the mask on
the child rather than themselves. And I never forget doctor
(50:16):
she said. She says, Jay, I don't know how not
to be a mom. And I said to her, I said,
you were a woman before you became a mother. You
were a woman before you became a wife. I said,
(50:37):
what I want you to do is to reconnect to
that woman. And immediately she like, I don't know, it's
just instantly she felt this like this liberation or something.
She felt this freedom. And she said, I said, what
is this that you're feeling. She said, for the first time,
(50:57):
I feel like I have permission to be the woman
rather than trying to focus on being this best mom.
So can you talk to the woman in the camera
that is, and just speak to them from you as
a woman, because I see that a lot with a
lot of the women that I still see as clients
are usually c suites, usually women that they are doing
(51:22):
the therapy and the counsel and all the things, but
sometime they have a difficult time taking care of the
women because they're so focused on the title.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Absolutely, I would say for anyone who's listening today, especially
for women in midlife, is one you are not alone.
Many times we feel like we're going through this journey
in this path alone, You are not alone. And also
to take compassion for yourself, to take the pause in
truly understanding what is this journey about, and what are
(51:52):
the tenets of this journey that I may have missed
and I want to recapture and falling back in love
with the individual and not the title. We are all
individuals who come into throughout our life different job titles
or I guess responsibilities, but ultimately your responsibility to yourself
(52:16):
is to build that self trust and that self love.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
You are not alone, Doctor Shepard, thank you. Today's episode
was phenomenal. Like I just because normally we usually on
a panel and so it's like we got to tee
it off. And I love that you and doctor Jill
have have come to the Just Heal podcast and to
give y'all an hour to just cook. Listen. Please follow
(52:42):
doctor Jessica Shephard on Instagram all of our social handles.
She is phenomenal. And for those women that are forty
five plus, I would even say forty plus yeah, because
one of the things that have helped me to understand
my body. Because here's the other thing, Brothers, we didn't
get into this today. You go through a former menopause too,
called Andrew Paul's. So we didn't get into that today
(53:04):
because it's not all just the women, but definitely brothers,
take care of yourself, go to the doctor. And as
I'm an advocate for black men in particular, to make
sure that we are aging well, we need each other. Brothers.
Listen again. October is one of the greatest wellness months
for women. It is a breast cancer awareness month. Find
(53:26):
something to connect to an initiative is menopause awareness. Listen,
go out and become an advocate for something that speaks
to you and to all of the women that are
watching the podcasts, all of the women that are supporting
the movement that we do here at the just Here community.
I Doctor j Am giving you permission to put the
(53:46):
mask on yourself and remember healing is a journey and
wholeness is the destination. Until next time, take care. Just
Here with Doctor j a production of the Black Effect
Podcast Network. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
(54:07):
and you can follow me at King J. Barnett on
Instagram and x and follow us on YouTube. Just Here,
Doctor j
Welcome to Jesshill with Doctor j a production of The
Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. So I have the
great honor and pleasure to sit with my friend. She's
all over television, She's all over every magazine, doctor Jessica Sheppard.
How you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am so good. We are here, like live together. Yes,
we heard so many times we're like commenting on our
posts and being like, how did you get to that
conference that I missed you? And yes, it's good, we're here.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Yes, I listen. This is a conversation that I've been
looking forward to because I just love what you represent,
not just what you do in the medical field, but
I think also what you represent for the achieved woman,
and I want to unpack that today.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
So have a bit of a packing to do about
that one.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Right, the achieved woman and so and that just came
to me, you know, And I have my questions and
all those different things. But as I always start off
every episode when I'm welcoming someone to the healing community,
I don't ask them how they're doing. I like to
ask them how are they feeling? How are you feeling today?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Dot Ooh, I love that. I'm thinking of my emotion
wheel in my head. Today I feel reassured. I think
today is a day where I feel reassured because we'll
get into that of the work that I've done on
myself as an individual. So today I feel reassured.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Good. I love that reassured. Let's see if I can
ask myself how I feel today today. I feel encouraged.
H Yeah, I feel encouraged today, and not that I
was discouraged, but I feel encouraged to continue the work
that I'm doing in this space. Whenever you and you
know this, when you are helping people heal, whether it's
(01:45):
from a psychological or from a medical perspective, I think
there is the notion that there's this joy that we
always have, yeah, because we're like, oh, we have been people,
and so I think for me, I'm often battling sometimes
back and forth because sometimes there's joy with it, yeah,
and then there's a little bit of pain and it's
not deep pain. It's almost like man, people are really hurting.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
That's what I would definitely agree with you on because
you know, even though we're approaching it from different perspectives
of you know, psychological mental approach. For me, mostly physical
is there is a lot of mind body connection. But
either way that you're helping people, is that a lot
of times that can maybe pull away from you because
(02:33):
you're so like into the giving and the healing and
how it and I help you that often if you
don't take time for yourself or take time to figure
out how that is impacting you, then you do feel
sometimes a little bit down. And being encouraged I think
is a good term. And yeah, I feel that some days.
She was like, huh, I feel encouraged to continue the
(02:54):
work that I'm doing.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, because I think if we're on as the ebbs
of flows of our work, it's really attached to the
energy that we're giving out. Because if it's a day
where you're pouring and you're not only talking about the diagnosis,
you're also asking about the support system, you're also asking about,
(03:15):
you know, how are they going to move forward? And
do they have people in their tribe? Those things can
kind of take from us. And I'm reminded because I
was recently sitting with the client and they said to me, man,
I don't have a great community, And that thing has
just been just really just digging at me to know
that they're on this path to healing, but they also
(03:37):
feel very long though they have me to guide them
on this journey. And that's one of the things that
I often feel challenged with because I wish that everyone
can feel yes that edwin and I.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Think that that probably will come up later as we're speaking.
Is one how do you build community? Because many times
the community that you may have been in as you're healing,
you may need to actually change a little bit of
that community, and so finding that new community sometimes can
be challenging. But also is that inner work that you
do with yourself. A lot of self love and self
(04:12):
trust has to be established in order for the days
when you may feel alone or lonely, or the community
is not all the way there, maybe you can't reach
your therapist, right, Yeah, Is that you have to actually
go into yourself to being like, what are my tools
and how are you going to kind of bring back
that self love and self trust Because it's not always
a well honed skill. So it's the work that you're
(04:33):
doing to get to that level of being self worthy
and building that self trust.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
So I want to go back to there, Doc and
ask you that question when you were talking about you
may have to get a new community. Talk about that
because that yeah, as a black woman, yes, who is achieved.
Did some of your circles change as you begin to
(04:59):
grow and expand?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Absolutely it has, and there's there's good reason for that.
I think, you know, as we grow, I think we
live in stages and phases. And just because growth might
build a new community, or you may have to offset
some of the community that you have, it doesn't mean
that it's always out of loss of love or loss
of respect. It means that for this moment in my life,
(05:24):
I need to focus on who are the community that's
going to help stabilize me if it's a stabilization issue,
or if it's I'm in a growth phase, who's going
to help me in that growth phase? And not everyone
is going to be best for that community at that time.
So I often think that people feel that if they're
(05:46):
in that kind of movement, both a person who's removing
the community and the person who may be in that community.
It can be tricky. But I do think that if
we do it in a way that's loving and it
doesn't have to be a negative experience, that you should
actually be changing your community. I mean, we would say
the same thing. For think of the people who are
at the top of their game, like what Jeff Bezos
(06:08):
and those people from the time that they were in
college building this thing or oh Facebook was a thing
that I built in my dorm room. The people that
were there at that time to now where they are
have changed. That is what is expected of that. So
why shouldn't we expect that of ourselves as we start
to grow, whether it's spiritually, physically, mentally, that ourn't community
(06:31):
should have to change.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
Yes, Oh, this is so good because what I'm thinking
about is when I begin my healing journ as a man,
it was difficult. It's tough, and I've talked about this
in previous episodes because it's who you have to leave behind,
and there wasn't there wasn't conversations, you know, most of
(06:54):
the time. I think my growth just kind of did
the talking for me.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
It was kind of a natural phase.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
It was this kind of natural phase. So as a woman,
how does it look because it looks different for men
and women? Because yeah, because yeah, because men, because when
there's a separation with brothers, brothers, I don't think that
they think personally, Bruggies just think, oh man, my man,
got a lot going on and we'll catch up.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
You know, I get to like pose that question back
to you because you just said something that like I
thought of a question, but no. I think that is
very tricky because women, we are so giving and we
are emotional and when something's going on, even if it
isn't something. So for example, I've had times where I'm
really focusing in on a particular project I'm doing, and
so I may not talk to as many people as
(07:45):
I have in my friend group or community as much.
And I won't guarantee you there will be someone who
will be like, reach out and say did I do something?
Was there something? And then you're like, wait, no, but
should I have said something like then you're like caught
in this likespire of there wasn't anything, but did you
think something? Why do you think?
Speaker 1 (08:03):
So?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
You know, girl, we will go down a rabbit hole
and then the person's like, well, you didn't call me
at nine o'clock on Tuesday like you usually do, and
so it creates this thing. And I think that's where
we have to be okay with saying the hard thing
with Hey, I'm doing a project and I'm so sorry.
You can honor the person in their feelings, but also
you have to come back and say, well, this is
why this happened. And even if it was I felt
(08:26):
this happened and this is how I felt about it,
you still have to own up to that because there
are a lot of women who will shy away from
that conversation and then it becomes toxic.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Oh, learning how to communicate is one of the biggest
things that I've learned from myself personally in a career
in how to manage friends. But once you navigate through
it and you get more comfortable with it, it isn't
a bad thing. It's actually necessary. I'm going to pose
that question back to you before I forget is you said?
(08:57):
And I think this is so true. Obviously, men and
women are different in how they communicate. If a man
is like, oh, man, he's just going through a hard thing,
but really they may be going through a difficult time
or not. Do you think that men should approach it
in a way where they're like, I was just checking
on you, is this going on or not?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Absolutely? I think I think for us as men, because
we don't have the muscle or the development of that muscle,
we kind of refrain from trying to use it. Like
you'll see this with brothers who are not very good
at something. They fear trying to do something new. They
(09:40):
fear trying to do something that they feel like they
may be a novice at. So if they don't really
have the development in that area, they kind of shy away.
And then if they are interested, they are very kind
of sensitive to kind of like, well, how do I
approach that? And one of the things that has helped
(10:01):
me is that question. I always ask a brother how
they're feeling, and then I'll ask them, hey, brother, how's
your heart? Man? And that question right there, Man.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
It's aulds like an easy question, but many times to.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Answer that question stops so many of my brothers in
their tracks. And I love that it does. And what
I did is in my group, I created a emotional
chart for the brothers, so each color represents a feeling
and a statement like green says man, brother, I'm feeling great,
(10:35):
I'm feeling couraged, I'm feeling inspired. We have blue with
brother I'm kind of a space where I really don't know. Red,
of course is an emergency, and then we have yellow.
It's just like, man, bro it's not bad, it's not good.
I'm just kind of like in a zone where I'm
just kind of going through the motion and believe it
(10:56):
or not. Got that color chart for them, man has
been liberating game change right, because it also gave brothers
a language to speak that they hadn't learned.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
I think it's like bringing it down to a level
of you don't need to be you know, philosophical with it.
Oh and like have this whole dissertation in the answer.
It's just like very simple and that actually can open
up the waves to being like as they admit it,
being like, oh my, I didn't even realize it, but
as you say it, you're like honoring and knowledging. It's
(11:31):
similar to when you're in the hospital, right when you're
after a procedure whatever, they have the chart that has
all the faces. Once we're ten on your pain, it's
pretty much the same thing, is that I just like
asking what is the description of the pain? How does
it feel?
Speaker 1 (11:43):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:43):
What number are you? And the face will tell you
like how bad it is. That was such a helpful
thing that we developed in medicine.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
Yes, because most of us don't really want to talk
about our pain. Let alone talk about what our pain
is making us feel. That's the challenge for men that
I think that we really just really struggle with, because
it's like, if I tell you how I'm really feeling,
there's this fear like, man, are you gonna look at
(12:10):
me different? And what I've been able to do with
the brothers in my circle is allow them to see
how I'm feeling and allow them to see and allow
them to see how I model it where they have
literally sawt I mean they've literally seen in real time
me be at a bad place. About a couple of
(12:34):
years ago, I'm on this prayer call what about eight
brothers every Monday, every Monday, fifty two weeks out of
the year, I mean, which is which is a year
fifty two weeks and every Monday, you know, we get
on the call. And I had missed several weeks, just
wasn't feeling up to it. I didn't want to pray.
I feel like I was just just not feeling it.
(12:58):
And one day I got on the call and I
said to the brothers, I said, man, I want to
apologize man that I haven't been here and I've been missing,
and not because I've been busy. I said, Man, I'm
really overwhelmed. And I said, I'm so overwhelmed that it's
scaring me and I don't know what's happening, and I
(13:24):
fear what my history is with depression, that it could
be pushing me into a dark place. And immediately you
can just hear the phone go silent. And brothers sat
with it. And after they sat with it, one brother
started chiming in and speaking life and the other brother
beg dropping scripture, and then the other brother began sharing.
(13:47):
He said, Bro, it's funny that you said that because
I've been in the same place.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
See, that's the vulnerability, and we need.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
To know that we're not the only one. And this
is the thing that I I love that women have
is you guys have such community that there's never if
any and I made because I'm the only bored and
may but I can't tell with my mom and sisters
because they talk about everything. I never since any trepidation
around you guys is sharing.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You know, we do have some a few we're more open.
I think we communicate more. What I have found in
both my patients and just women that I've started to
meet as i've been more of I guess you can
say a public figure is there is also a lot
of numbing that goes on. Right, So even though we're
communicating and we're saying this is how I feel, or,
(14:40):
there still is on the extreme I would say, actually,
on the extreme of what you're explaining is now I
have to present as everything's good, everything's fine, we're doing great,
and I'm doing great too. Meanwhile, that's not the situation, right,
So it's again the other side of it, where there
is over communication. I wouldn't really call it over communication,
(15:01):
but in the sense of, you know, when we're comparing
to men, but also there becomes this projection of that
everything is okay. So again I think at both stages
there still needs to be this muscle of vulnerability that
needs to be explored and transparency in being okay with
this is really how I feel. Yes, But the community
(15:23):
always matters, right, So as you're growing that skill set
of me being able to explain really how I am
or may require another community and that's okay too, because
you want to grow that part of you emotionally, and
I think in that growth phase you may need to
I call it the cocoon phase, right, the cocune phase
(15:43):
of like, let me kind of be a little bit
more focal with intention to figure out where I am
so I can see what needs to be around me
in order for growth.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
As you were speaking, I was thinking that you're in
a place where some will look at you and said, man,
you achieve everything. How important is it for you to
have achieved everything? But also to find spaces where you're
not doctorshipper you can just be just how important is
(16:15):
that for you?
Speaker 2 (16:16):
That definitely was a growth phase for me when you
think of in the path when you know, I can
remember myself when I first started to do say TV,
which is way back, and like I think that was
like twenty eleven is where I really started to hone
that skill. And in that path of that required really
(16:36):
focus into learning how to be on TV, how to present,
how to make sure that you were giving a really
broad scope of information a very short amount of time
that people could walk away with. That was like a
lot of training all while being a doctor. Right, so
if you can imagine that already has to be there,
so doctors already when we work way too many hours
(16:58):
and then on top of the I'm like, oh, let
me try this other skill set that I have to
learn so as a learning curve, and then at that
time I think, well maybe a few years after that,
like around twenty fourteen, I had kids back to back,
mind you, which is funny because I'm an obgyn, and
I was like, ah, how does one not do that?
And then you do it anyway? So that comes and
(17:18):
I do think that you know, you hear this often
when you hear of accomplished women. I was recently at
a at a conference in Indra who was a previous
CEO of PEPSI was talking and one of the things
that she talks about a lot is people will say
the same thing, how did you accomplish so much? And
can you have it all at once? I believe you
can have it all at once, but they're not going
(17:40):
to grow in the same globe stages and phases. And
that was something for me to learn because inherently I'm
a very like motivated, determined person. And I would say,
even now I have a name for it is like
kind of like a steamroll or effect. I'm like, we're
coming through, whether you're we're coming through. But always remember
(18:03):
your strongest attributes can also have a weak spot. And
I think early on for me, oh that's steamroller.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Man, you gotta go No, no, we gotta park back there. No, no,
we're not right there. That's that's the moment too. Oh
my gosh. Our strongest attributes also has weak points, also
has weak points. What were some of the weak points?
Speaker 2 (18:28):
The week point the steam roller was like, I'm out
of my way, I've got like this path to do.
I know what the next step is. Yeah, I mean,
like you really had to be like that in med
school or you ain't never going to get through. So
you had to be so like, I'm determined, I'm here
to accomplish this goal. This is what I'm doing. And
so I was already like that, and then going into
(18:49):
a profession where that was really what got you to
the highest levels. And now I'm at another four forefront
of I'm going to do this other thing and so
steamrolling again. And I think, looking back, yes, it was
a strength, and yes it got me to a lot
of the reasons why I am the way I am
today or where I am. But in that is taking
(19:11):
pause and saying, are there moments of this steamroller path
that I need to be aware of my surroundings? And
what's going on and that has been one of my
biggest growth phases over the last few years.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
And when you and when you discover that and you
have that awakening like this works over here, yeah, but
it doesn't work over there. And I think that's important
for the women that are watching and even for the
men that are watching. How important is it to quickly
recognize what works and where it works?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
I love that question. So I would say the quickness
of it doesn't always happen because you may not realize
it's going on, or that it's not giving you the
best outcome that you were expecting. Right. What I would
say is in those phases is learning the capacity to saying,
how are people experiencing me?
Speaker 1 (20:07):
There? It is?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Right there?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
It is?
Speaker 2 (20:09):
What is that weakness? And now what are the things
that I'm maybe willing to decrease in the strength of it.
You're not decreasing your strength, You're decreasing possibly the momentum
or the aptitude or the speed and velocity of which
the strength is going to. Now focus on the weakness
to accommodate it so that you are you're creating it
(20:31):
in a way where you're always aware self awareness that
is my like term for twenty twenty five. Yeah, self
awareness ability to say, ooh this is this doesn't feel good?
Maybe that's an internal thing for yourself. Or if someone
comes to me with something, where can I hold that
and be vulnerable enough to say, this may be something
(20:53):
that I have to pay attention to. How am I
going to do that in a way where I have
compassion for myself.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Which is hard for susciety people and driven very hard
because they often see compassion as weakness.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yes. Absolutely, And that was probably in the last year
as I realized I did not have a lot of
self compassion.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Wow. Yeah, when you discovered that, Yeah, how did you
receive it? Like for yourself?
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Oh? I think it's still a daily thing because it's
a tool, right, It's something that you actually have to
start to learn how to do. So if you think
this is where I get into the brain philosophy of
who we are and how we present and what are
our childhood traumas that we have to address. Is our
brains are magnificent complex organs, yes, which is why they're
(21:49):
so smart. But inherently what they do is they will
figure something out that you may have acquired when you
were six, seven, eight years old. Yeah, and it will
stay in that pattern unless you choose to recognize that
the pattern that was built, which may not be serving you,
has to be changed. That's where the difficult part is
because you have to acknowledge it and then work to
(22:10):
change it. And the work, the hard work. No one
wants to do that hard work.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
It's you know, and this is the doctor in me
in the healthcare that we don't discuss often for individuals
that neuroplasticity.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
Neuroplasticity is so amazing when you're able to understand it
and work with it, but it will be the thing
that hinders you. Right, it's a strength. But the weakness
is if you don't understand how wired your brain is
and the things that may not be your fault at
all that may have accumulated over years. Being self aware
(22:49):
of that and saying, oh my, this may be something
that I need to address, and then focusing that cocoon
phase on it so that you can come out with
the skill set that you focused on and the neuroplasticity
that allows all of us to acquire that growth is fascinating,
It is so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
How is it important for people to identify with how
they are experiencing them themselves and how is tied to
the trauma that is also tethered. Yeah, so they're.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Man, you ask like a you asked like a punch quest.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Let's go to work.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
So I would definitely say going back to self awareness. Right.
So for women, typically we call it the the airplane
approach where they tell you in an emergency, you're supposed
to put the oxygen on yourself first before you put
it on the child. What do women typically do? The opposite?
They will take care of everyone else except themselves. And
(23:53):
for years, what we have seen, and this is where
I go a little bit into patriarchy of society, religion, culture,
or family has taught them is to you take care
of everybody else before yourself. And so with that comes
this trauma from a very young stage. Whether you saw
it is exemplified and you took that on, is I
take care of everyone else and now I don't even
(24:14):
know that skill of knowing what's going on with me
or I'm going to ignore it or it's not I'm
too busy, I'm not going to pay attention to it.
Self awareness is key, and that also means for your
physical health and when you don't feel yourself, and that's
why you know I do midlife medicine is typically what
I focus on in my practice, So for women who
are in between the ages of like forty to fifty five,
(24:34):
because inherently what happens during that phase as they start
to have changes and fluctuations in their reproductive hormone. So
that's like your estrogen, your testosterone, and your progesterone. What
we have seen now in evidence and research, you know,
and it's very new. We know women go through menopause.
It's fine, it's physiologic, it's biologic, it happens. But what
(24:56):
was happening leading up to that point is this kind
of fluctuation of hormones which inherently impacted how we felt
about ourselves because of mood. When we think about depression,
the most common age of women being diagnosed with that
with the mood disorder is forty five to fifty five. Wow,
why do you think that is? Because there's all these
(25:17):
changes happening with hormones, which is not their fault. It's
part of the biological process, but no one was talking
about it. We don't talk about our health. We don't
talk about when I just don't feel myself because what
are people going to label us? Right, and then we're
not going to our doctor to talk about it either.
And I will say, you know, from a medical standpoint,
we weren't well equipped with understanding the mental and mood
(25:40):
changes that happens in perimenopause and menopause. Yeah, and so
we always attribute it to a physical symptom, not a
mental emotional We.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Always talking about the because I was at home with
my mom when she was going to the mintopause, and
I just remember it being fifty five degrees in the
house and I'm like, it's decent, like, but she but
she's having she's having hot flashes and nice and all
the things. And I remember being home and my mom
(26:10):
coming in she was like, what aren't you cold? And
I'm just like, no, I'm not like I'm freezing. I'm
like And I was in school at the time, and
my bachelor's in science and I was in anatomy and
physiology and brothers. This is this is why I'm so
glad that you hear, doc, because I want you to
talk to these brothers as well. And I'm the only son.
I'm so glad that I educated myself about women's reproductive
(26:35):
system and understanding that this mental pause changed that my
mom was going through was the end of a reproductive journey.
And then also my mom had a hysterectomy, so I
was locked in and tapped because when she was in
one of those moves, I didn't take it personal. And
I want you to speak to that because I hear
(26:57):
and work with a lot of men that are married
to women who are either pre menopause or it's full blown,
and just how important is it for men to understand
what that woman journey is so they can in some
way be supportive and not take it personal and feel
(27:19):
attacked Because there is a mood.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Change, There is absolutely, I mean, even me being perimenopausal,
I can definitely note the changes in how I feel
from day to day. But again, because I have this
education and the resource, I mean to go to work
and get that taken care of. As far as from
a hormonal standpoint was, I would say it's a two
prong approach in the sense that for men who have
(27:41):
a spouse partner who are going through that is exactly
to understand it's not personal and to understand that it
is a hormonal shift, but they shouldn't be shamed, right,
So women shouldn't be shamed for having that happen. So
the best approach a man could take is, yes, being
brought up to speed on what it is, but to
being a safe space for that woman to be in
(28:05):
that you know, kind of transition and being like, at
least I have someone here who makes me feel safe
August right, So kind of creating a safe space. But
from the women's side of that is, you don't have
to live that way. There are ways that you should
be addressing because that ultimately is your quality of life.
(28:25):
Whether it's your relationship, whether it's the symptom that you're
going through of hot flashes, night sweats, irritability, whatever it is.
You don't have to live that way. And so that's
why I encourage women to in like that advocacy for themselves.
Is it literally is the airplane. You know how many
women I have come into my office and they'll talk
about these literally extreme It doesn't have to be extreme
(28:47):
the symptoms all the time, but the ones who come
in my office and I remember them is because they
have these extreme symptoms. I'll be like, how long have
you been going through this, No, like three four years,
I'm like, why are you living like this? Or like
I thought it it would pass. I thought, you know,
maybe if I just like ignore it, it would go away.
And I'm like, no, no, we're taking care of that
to date. But it's advocating for yourself in a way
(29:07):
where you're like, I can do better than this, and
I don't want to live like this. So I think
that's a too prong approach. And I would also say
as a community, and I would definitely say in the
Black community. And this is where I love statistics. There
is a study that was done and they looked at
all ethnicities or at least five of women going through
that transition. Black women typically start menopause earlier. Black women
(29:32):
typically have more severe hot flashes and night sweats. Black
women typically have more heart disease that is associated with
that change in estrogen. And when we look at the
long term outcomes of decline and estrogen, which would be
heart disease still number one killer of women when we
think of dementia, still something that impacts Black women more
(29:53):
because their hot flashes are more severe. So it's not
only in that moment that they're going through the symptom,
and like, what are you going to show up as
as a seventy eighty and ninety year old. Now, now
you're increasing your risk for dementia. Now you're increasing your
risk for heart disease. Why are we doing this? Why
are we doing this?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, I'm just gonna let us sit in this because
she just dropped the wealth of knowledge and information. A
lot of Black women don't have access to good health care.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
That is probably the thing that infuriates me the most
is the access and resources that our community has. And
you could take that across the board. You could take that,
we could get into maternal mortality at the point of pregnancy,
because that still is something that impacts us more when
you think about depression. You know this when it comes
to the community breast cancer, we don't even have more
(30:46):
rates of breast cancer. We just die more. So it
is across the board that clearly we see that there's
health disparities and health inequities. Yes, and so when it
comes to menopause, I'm like, it is not even something
that you know, if you wanted to put it a
range of how hard it is to manage, it's not.
So why are we still at a paucity of having
(31:07):
the same resources that are available. But we're suffering more.
If you think about what we just said about age
and severity of symptoms infuriates me, you.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Know, doc for you, you know, being a black woman
and knowing that we have less black doctors today than
we did. I want to say back in nineteen seventy eight,
if my stats are right.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
They just haven't increased. They have not and they were
low already.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
With exactly So listen.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Do you know, like, let me not get on that soapbox.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
I'm a hobble on this soad box. Really quick. Listen.
We don't need no more rappers.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
We need more doctors. I'm scientists. Its listen.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
We'll need no more ig models. We don't need no
more scammers there. We don't need no more real estate agents.
Please listen. We need more doctors. And I say this
because I sit on the advisory committee for the APA,
the American Psychiatric Association, So I'm part of the advisory
council committee for their MFS for their Minority Fellowship program.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
So I want to hear about this. What are you
seeing from that lens?
Speaker 1 (32:13):
So what I'm seeing from this lens is we need
more black psychiatrists and more black psychologists, We need more research.
We were just in a meeting in DC. We have
about forty six fellows that is getting ready to go
through this fellowship program, which was a two year program
that has now been cut down to one year program.
(32:34):
And I'm not going to get into this from a
political standpoint, but this is why we have to do
something because all of these cuts not just affect us now,
but if you have fellows that are not able to
go through these processes in these programs, and so my
job is to help mitigate some of that, and then
(32:55):
also to create clearer pathways so they're able to talk
to a doctorship, so they're able to have other mentors
and other fellows that look like them that can mirror
them to have an understanding of their journey while they're
in residency. And I just I just sat there as
being a black man sitting in his room and being
(33:15):
able to lend my voice. I felt so proud. But
when I look at the pictures, I'm like, God, we
need some more black and brown people.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
Like so many more, so many more, right, Because here's where,
here's the thing that really kind of makes it put
it put it all together for me is that we
are already at a lack of So the fact that
we have more community, we're trying with more programs, but
then you have budget cuts or then you have you know,
because of what party is in and they want to
cut funds. So now it's that what two steps forward,
(33:47):
you know, seven steps back? Is like you're already at
a limitation. Yes, So the long term implication, I agree
with you, like looking five ten years out from now.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Oh and and we're and we're even looking at it
from the perspective that if you think about the access
to care, that if this big beautiful bill and all,
I'm not like we were having this discussion around these
rural areas that will have hospitals shut down there's no
access to Medicare, Medicaid. And we're also looking at the
(34:20):
influx is going to happen with clinicians because when people
can't get medication, when people can't receive care, that's going
to drive mental health issues, that's going to drive individual psychosis,
is going to create a mired of different issues. And
this is why we are necessary in this time. And
this is what I love about what you've been able
(34:41):
to do with your platform, is be a representation as
a black woman, because I'm pointing young black girls to you,
I'm pointing young Yeah. Absolutely, I've worked with black girls
who code and working with them, we're talking about all
of these different pathways to not just only creating girls
who can code and understand technology, but also girls who
(35:03):
can understand medicine and technology and how those two things
come together. So we need more representation in this space
to provide better care. When I was going through my
doctoral program and master's program, it was heartbreaking to know
that there wasn't any research on most of the issues
(35:25):
that we're plagued with as blacks, and to think about
most of our research is not even accepted.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
Not accepted. And then from if you think again, going
back to trauma, the trauma that was endured by the
black community when it came to research talk about it.
So now there is a complete mistrust of the system.
And so even I remember, you know, working in Chicago,
as there University of Illinois so very high research, and
then here at Baylor, and then there was that also
University of Louisville, which are research academic centers to be
(35:58):
able to recruit patients to come into a study. Every
time I had a black patient, I was like, oh,
let's get you into a study because I know what
research does and how it helps us formulate medications and
treatment programs. The amount that would deny versus accept it
was much more denial than being like, yeah, I'll be
part of this project because there's mistrust and how do
(36:20):
we carry down information? Usually through family stories or but
that's all they hear. And now even with changes in
being able to say no, we have we have much
more protocol or we have ethical portions or committees that
you know, look over research, they were still like, nah.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah, yeah, I can understand it. And I could exactly
because when you look at the healthcare system when it
comes to us, yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
I can't trust why would you? Why would you?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
And if I can't trust your system, I don't know,
don't I don't know if I have the capacity to
embrace what you would prescribe it. It may be something
that could possibly help me. But how many times have
we seen black says I'll die with.
Speaker 2 (37:06):
It yes, or doctors ain't trying to help.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
Us, aans trying to help us, And.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
It's like this loaded statement which if you're to maybe
take this back to like nineteen twenties thirty four, very true,
and now that we have more block not more block doctors,
but more visibility to inequities, they still are like I
still don't trust you, Like, what what have you done
to build trust in order for me to have surefooting
to step into it? I don't think we've done enough.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
Wow with your journey, doctor Shepherd, how has your journey
inspired you even more to do more?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
I think that comes through the stories, right, So that
comes through stories of every patient, which is why I
still choose to practice. Like there's so many other things
that I'm involved in where I really could step away
from practicing, but I have found you would love this analogy.
One of my favorite favorite IT shows and series is
The Wire.
Speaker 1 (38:02):
Oh heck yeah, the greatest show of all time. It is.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
I mean the writing was brilliant. I mean every season
was brilliant. So it's kind of like, what was at
the end of it? What was Avon? Who did Idris play?
What was he?
Speaker 1 (38:17):
Stringer bells?
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Stringer bell the differences between them at their level of
like where they were and string was like, nah, we
got to do all businesses. Am, I'm like, no, we
got to be like keep our feet in the in
the community and like seeing what's going on in the corners.
And in the end, he still needed that, he still
needed to be relevant, he still needed to see what
was going on. And so that's what that's that's what
(38:40):
really helped me being like, what's really going on is
for me to hear stories to people, for women to
come in and share what's going on in their lives
so I can be like, ah, that's where we need
the help or that's how we're going to reach them,
because this is the overlying or the overwhelming message that
they're telling me.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Yeah, Because for me, what I've always loved about research
is a love of the you know, the qualitative and
all those different things, but I love the oral research
where you get to hear stories, and I think those
stories are our maps to understanding so much about our
(39:15):
culture and then so much about our family history and
about the DNA of the family, and I think we
need more of that. What scares me where we are
today is I don't know whether I don't know where
to connect anything when it comes to us as blacks.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, I mean I think it's quite honestly trying to
be written over. And so that's why we have to
be more vocal and vocal, not just and loud. That
you have to be strategically loud with what you're saying
because you still again trying to communicate. What comes back
down to communication. You're trying to communicate with a group
(39:53):
that may not have the best interest or any interest,
but you still have to align yourselves in a way
or the communication is not either going over their head
or they refusing not to listen to it because it
isn't coming in a way that now there can be
actual dialogue.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Yes, so dog, this this conversation is so good, like
we can oh, I.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Love I'm learning today.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
So we've talked about you know, the pathways MENI palls
with women, and we've kind of talked about your journey.
What do you what do you see now for yourself
as you're in this stage where you've been a voice,
you've been a face, you've been an advocate of, you've
(40:39):
been a conduit at this journey of your life now right,
we was talking about healing and talking about your self awareness.
What matters to you now?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What matters to me now? So that can be through
my experience and what I've navigated through personally in my life,
and then also hearing the kind of the similarities in
other women who have come into my office in space
is we have neglected I could say this for all women,
doesn't matter. You know what ethnicity is that we have
(41:12):
neglected a large part of how the emotional status of
our lives connects with our physical health. Just like that book,
the body holds score right. So whatever trauma you've gone
through in the past, whatever bad experiences, relationships, motherhood, you know, career,
all of that has created something within us. But that
(41:35):
emotional space for us to understand it will a lot
of times limit our ability to be our best selves
because we have not connected mind and body. And so
that's where I have devoted a lot of my time
when they come in. So women will come in for
obviously a disease state or a condition, or I need
help physically. But when I tell you, when I dig down,
(41:57):
just ask a few more questions about the emotional capacity
in space that they're in and why they're there and
trauma and the complexity of that. So many women will
literally sit there and just start crying because I've never
had from the MD perspective, my emotional health and well
being discussed in the same visit, and then suddenly I'm
(42:20):
able to say, well, then this is why it should
be because that ability for you to now put them together,
to feel emotional within your physical health visit means that
we have to pay more attention both that patient and myself,
and getting them to someone who can get them help
is so important because then they can see how much
(42:40):
work needed to be done up here in order to
address what their physical symptom is. And that's why I
have therapists in my practice. Then it's like this pathway
where I'm just like pathway, you don't even have to
look for one.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
You'r too.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
Trauma recovery. We have those who look at health anxiety.
We have those who will even be like, let's get
you into somatic work trauma recovery, so it all is integrated,
but we've never approached it that way. So I think
that has been my own personal journey and being able
to share that with my patience, it's been it helps
me in my healing.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah, so as you were talking, you hear a lot
of men say women are never happy, like you can't
make a woman happy. And as I was listening to you,
it made me even have more compassion for the journey
of a woman because I'm the only boy, and I
have sisters and I have a mom. And what I'm
(43:38):
hearing from you is, though though men have this misconception
that women have all of this liberation and freedom and all,
it is just kind of like, you know, she gets
to say things that I can't. What I'm hearing from
you is that women don't feel that they even have
the permission to be totally connect to their emotions in
(44:02):
the way that they should feel them.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Is that I would say that in addition to thinking
of that statement that you just said, that women feel
that they can never make them happier, they're never happy either.
One of those is that there is some truth to
that because it boils down to communication again, right, So
the way that it's being approached and the response may
(44:25):
feel as if, oh, she's not happy. On the flip side,
I always will bring it back because there's always everyone
has a responsibility in this and what we call beautiful
partnership of men and women. And again we're speaking to
when we think of male and female relationships. And obviously
there's other dynamics of that is that women also too
because the whole airplane thing of putting on oxygen first,
(44:49):
we don't do that, And what happens is we fear
or fail to form boundaries for ourselves.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And many times when women do form boundaries, they usually
are looked at as the one that's difficult. Right, But
a boundary is being set. But we're not taught to
do that. And we're also not taught from men to
really learn how to emote and to share the feeling
and being vulnerable. So there's do you see, It's kind
(45:18):
of this like seesaw where women also maybe they aren't
happy because they haven't learned to set boundaries and they
haven't learned to saying what is the safety of what
I'm feeling now? And when I'm out of that, that's
usually when you have emotional dysregulation. So many women are
actually functioning in emotional dysregulation. I believe it's because they
(45:39):
don't form boundaries. We're not allowed. We always have to
be nice and smile. What they say to Hillary when
she was running, she doesn't smile enough. Have they ever
said that to a man?
Speaker 1 (45:48):
Yeah? They said that to me, I don't smile like.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
You need to smile.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, it's like you need to smile more. Are you mad?
I'm like, no, I'm good. And as you said, I'm
thinking we both need to come to the table and.
Speaker 2 (46:01):
Have a very long table, very long time, a.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Very long conversation to extend grace, particularly for us as
black people, because of the trauma, because of the pain
that is unresolved. I think there needs to be some
morning there because what didn't have. There's a lot of
grief because when we come to each other, we don't
(46:27):
come to each other with open arms. We come to
each other with boxing gloves on.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
We don't go to listen to be heard, and so
I don't see a partner.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
I see a sparring partner. So I'm not coming to
see how I can support and understand you. I'm coming
to defend. And I got my hands up because in
my mind I'm thinking that you're going to swing on me.
Speaker 2 (46:52):
One of the most profound I would say psychiatrists. He's
an MD. He's Canadian like me.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
I mean, you know Canadian Jamaican, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Canadian and Jamaican. We're going to stop and do like
a whole house party now. But his name is Gobormante,
and he is fundamental in looking at trauma, like how
we store things from so long ago that we're unaware of.
But they were survival skills, survival skills of whatever situation
you were in. They didn't have to be bad, but
(47:23):
you were exposed to them in a way. How people
dealt with things, how they avoided conflict, how they learned,
how to blame people, how they communicated, And that's survival.
Whether you were abandoned, whether you have anxiety because you're perfection,
you're always you know, built up in a perfection mode.
Those are forms of trauma, but we build them so
far back, so now we enter into relationship or partnership
(47:46):
with people with those skills, so we are only like
our seven, eight, nine year old versions of ourselves. The
self awareness part of that of kind of like unveiling
that is like the ekey work. No one wants to
do it, but once you like and veil at your
I literally in this last year have been like, oh,
I'm doing that thing again, whatever that is that whole list.
(48:08):
I have a whole list of these limitations that once
you're self aware of it you're like, oh, but now
I have the tool to know how to avoid that,
because that's not serving me in the best way, and
someone can experience me in a bad way. If I
continue to do that, it becomes easier to have that
conversation with yourself feel like, oh, well, I probably shouldn't
do that. How am I going to pause with it,
step away and deal with that in a better way?
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Yeah, it's good. So I ask every guest same question,
because this is just heal all things healing. What is
healing for you, doctor Shepherd?
Speaker 2 (48:40):
Healing for me is a lifelong journey. Healing requires the
space to be compassionate, which I'm still working on, but
it also requires the vulnerability of saying this has to
become different, this has to become better. I have to
(49:03):
release that thing or that person in order to create growth,
and growth doesn't always feel good. Releasing ego doesn't always
feel good. But that healing is really a lifelong journey
because we always should be students, Yeah, every day, and
students and healing require looking at it at the marathon,
(49:26):
not the sprint.
Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah. So a lifelong.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Journey, lifelong journey.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Yeah, for the woman that is out there today, that
is watching, they see the doctor Shepherd. I hope they
got to see the woman behind the title, because you
share such a wealth of knowledge. I never forget sitting
with a client who was a mother who had had
a mental breakdown, and we had been working. We were
(49:52):
on our third session, and I'm connecting the pathways to
her performance because for her, motherhood was performative and not
performative because she was trying to be but she felt
that she had to because as you were speaking earlier,
that most women are going to put the mask on
the child rather than themselves. And I never forget doctor
(50:16):
she said. She says, Jay, I don't know how not
to be a mom. And I said to her, I said,
you were a woman before you became a mother. You
were a woman before you became a wife. I said,
(50:37):
what I want you to do is to reconnect to
that woman. And immediately she like, I don't know, it's
just instantly she felt this like this liberation or something.
She felt this freedom. And she said, I said, what
is this that you're feeling. She said, for the first time,
(50:57):
I feel like I have permission to be the woman
rather than trying to focus on being this best mom.
So can you talk to the woman in the camera
that is, and just speak to them from you as
a woman, because I see that a lot with a
lot of the women that I still see as clients
are usually c suites, usually women that they are doing
(51:22):
the therapy and the counsel and all the things, but
sometime they have a difficult time taking care of the
women because they're so focused on the title.
Speaker 2 (51:31):
Absolutely, I would say for anyone who's listening today, especially
for women in midlife, is one you are not alone.
Many times we feel like we're going through this journey
in this path alone, You are not alone. And also
to take compassion for yourself, to take the pause in
truly understanding what is this journey about, and what are
(51:52):
the tenets of this journey that I may have missed
and I want to recapture and falling back in love
with the individual and not the title. We are all
individuals who come into throughout our life different job titles
or I guess responsibilities, but ultimately your responsibility to yourself
(52:16):
is to build that self trust and that self love.
Speaker 1 (52:20):
You are not alone, Doctor Shepard, thank you. Today's episode
was phenomenal. Like I just because normally we usually on
a panel and so it's like we got to tee
it off. And I love that you and doctor Jill
have have come to the Just Heal podcast and to
give y'all an hour to just cook. Listen. Please follow
(52:42):
doctor Jessica Shephard on Instagram all of our social handles.
She is phenomenal. And for those women that are forty
five plus, I would even say forty plus yeah, because
one of the things that have helped me to understand
my body. Because here's the other thing, Brothers, we didn't
get into this today. You go through a former menopause too,
called Andrew Paul's. So we didn't get into that today
(53:04):
because it's not all just the women, but definitely brothers,
take care of yourself, go to the doctor. And as
I'm an advocate for black men in particular, to make
sure that we are aging well, we need each other. Brothers.
Listen again. October is one of the greatest wellness months
for women. It is a breast cancer awareness month. Find
(53:26):
something to connect to an initiative is menopause awareness. Listen,
go out and become an advocate for something that speaks
to you and to all of the women that are
watching the podcasts, all of the women that are supporting
the movement that we do here at the just Here community.
I Doctor j Am giving you permission to put the
(53:46):
mask on yourself and remember healing is a journey and
wholeness is the destination. Until next time, take care. Just
Here with Doctor j a production of the Black Effect
Podcast Network. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
(54:07):
and you can follow me at King J. Barnett on
Instagram and x and follow us on YouTube. Just Here,
Doctor j
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