The Worthy Physician

Healing Trauma and Empowering Lives with Emotional Freedom Technique with Dr. Jill Wener, MD

• Dr. Sapna Shah-Haque MD

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Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), or tapping, offers physicians a powerful tool to process trauma and emotional stress. Dr. Jill Wener, MD shares insights on how tapping integrates easily into medical practice, emphasizing vulnerability, self-compassion, and effective stress management. 

• Introduction to Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) 
• Understanding the science behind tapping 
• Exploring trauma experiences within medicine 
• The emotional burden carried by healthcare professionals 
• Practical applications of tapping in personal and professional life 
• The importance of self-compassion and vulnerability 
• Guidance on connecting with Dr. Jill Wiener and further resources


Unlock the transformative power of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) with Dr. Jill Wiener. Discover how tapping on acupressure points can be a game-changer for trauma healing and stress reduction, especially in the high-pressure world of healthcare. Whether navigating the emotional turmoil of medical practice or facing everyday stressors, learn how EFT helps regulate the nervous system and mitigate the impact of intense emotions. This episode promises insights into how acknowledging trauma is crucial for mental well-being, particularly for physicians who constantly confront highly charged situations.

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Though I am a physician, this is not medical advice. This is only a tool that physicians can use to get ideas on how to deal with burnout and/or know they are not alone. If you are in need of medical assistance talk to your physician.


Learn more about female physicians' journey through burnout to thriving!
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Speaker 1:

Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah-Hawk, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine.

Speaker 1:

With each episode, we bring you inspiring stories, actionable insight and expert advice. Get ready for another engaging conversation that could change the way you think and live as a physician. Your income is your greatest asset, protected with Pattern Life. The easy, stress-free way to find the right disability insurance, with unbiased comparisons and no jargon. Pattern helps you to choose the best policy for your needs. Secure your future today at Pattern Life. The link is in the show notes. Let's dive in. Welcome to another episode of the Worthy Physician. I'm your host, dr Sapna Shah-Hawk, reigniting your humanity and passion for medicine. Emotional freedom technique how powerful does that sound and what is it? And today we're going to dive in with Dr Jill Wiener about what it is, who can practice it and how it can be utilized in our everyday lives. Jill, thank you for being here, of course. Thanks so much for having me. Emotional freedom technique that is just so powerful. The three words are very powerful. Tell us what it is.

Speaker 2:

So I came to learn about it as it's called tapping. Emotional freedom technique is like it's scientific name, so it is an evidence-based practice. So if anyone here wants to go look up the data, if you look for tapping it's not going to find. You're not going to find the data. So emotional freedom technique is its fancy term and it's basically a trauma healing, stress reduction, nervous system regulating technique that, as I mentioned, is evidence-based and you basically tap on different places in the face and chest that correspond to some of the same places that are used in acupuncture, some of the energy meridians. For folks who are familiar with acupuncture they're scientifically verified spots on the spots is the wrong word, but where they come to the surface they're areas of our face and chest and we use acupressure on them, so otherwise known as tapping, and we say out loud whatever it is that is distressing us and it can be used in a whole variety of ways which maybe we will get into. But basically this is a physician podcast, so I can permission to speak scientifically podcast, so I can permission to speak scientifically Basically, for I'm an internist, I was a hospitalist.

Speaker 2:

I forgot neuroscience like as soon as I poorly learned it. But from what I understand now, the stress center of our brain is the amygdala and the hippocampus, and it, the hippocampus, is and this is technical but not technical so the hippocampus is the part of our brain that stores all the memories of the bad things that has happened to us and it wants to find out all the bad things that are going to happen to us before they happen. So it's scanning the environment. Is that going to harm me? Is that going to harm me? Is that going to harm me? And if it says, oh, that's the stress center of the brain.

Speaker 2:

And so what happens is, as we tap, we send calming signals to that stress center of our brain. We tap when we're distressed about something it could be again a whole wide range of things. We're telling that part of our brain that we're safe. So instead of you're not safe, go into fight or flight. It's happening and I'm okay. Now, if you get a car accident or have to actually fight off a predator, your fight or flight response is perfectly intact. It's not changing anything when you actually need it. It's more when you are having emotional distress and want to really feel the process through that. And it also activates the parasympathetic nervous system. So it has two mechanisms that they've been able to ascertain so far, and that's how it works.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm an internist as well and it's interesting that you bring up trauma and because that's what this emotional freedom technique or tapping, helps to regulate, to decrease those signals. But for the listener and this may not be a fair question, but how much trauma do you think we actually experience in medicine seeing that, and I don't mean just in the ER.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Not like code 911 or code stat packs. In med school that was what they call it the traumas that came into the ER. So I guess I'll answer that with a preface is that tapping can be used as a technique to actually heal trauma and that's like a specified technique that you do with a tapping practitioner. That's like a deep trauma healing. So something bad happened in your childhood or adulthood or something, an event happened. You can actually heal it. So there is that. An event happened, you can actually heal it. So there is that. And then there is also the processing of intense emotions that come up around the things that we experience, Sure, and that can mitigate the intensity of that experience so that it doesn't. It's stressful and it was painful, but it may not all go all the way on the spectrum to becoming trauma. It may mitigate the impact that it has on us longer term if we're processing it in the moment as it's happening.

Speaker 2:

So tapping can be used like I'm mad at my kid for not making their bed. It can be used for something more emotion-based or and it can be used on deep healing, and so I just want to clarify that for people listening. It's not only used for trauma, and I think that and I do a lot of work in the trauma space too so even outside of tapping. So it's a great question. I think we're exposed to trauma all day, every day, and we don't even recognize it. We have our own trauma.

Speaker 2:

I was what was I watching? I was watching some YouTube channel where some doctor guy talks about medical issues. He watches a video of some guy falling on his hip and he talks about hip fractures. My stepson loves to watch it and he did this one episode where he watched through Grey's Anatomy the first episode and commented is it real, is it not real? And there's one moment where Meredith Grey I haven't watched the first episode of that in decades and she goes outside and vomits because she had this whole experience. And it brought me right back to the central line that I did when I was an intern. It must have been. I did a central line on this woman who had DKA and she ended up getting a pneumothorax. I think her PEEP was really high and it was one of those things where everyone reassured me that it was OK and it wasn't anything we did wrong. But I just remember being in the bathroom like sobbing because I had just caused this thing to this person, after puncturing them with a large needle.

Speaker 2:

And so there's that's a kind of primary trauma, like witnessing it happening.

Speaker 2:

Or I'm the one that caused it, or perhaps I'm getting assaulted by a patient, or I'm getting yelled at by a patient's family member or something. Secondary trauma is actually more something bad happens to a patient that we're caring for, and then there's the so how many times has that happened? And then the vicarious trauma of hearing all the different stories of all the different people. So we're they all land in our nervous system the same, even if it doesn't happen to us directly. So we're exposed. And then there's the moral injury aspect of being part of a system that harms patients all the time, when we take an eval to do no harm and we're harming them even as we're trying to help them, but we don't have any say over it. So there's like all of that mixed in that can all become trauma embodied as trauma, and it impacts our body the same way. It impacts our emotions and our behavior the same way. So I think almost every day, if not multiple times a day, do we experience things that can potentially stick with us as trauma.

Speaker 1:

That's our answer to your question. No, but that's been my experience as well, because we think we have 15 to 20 patients a day, as an example. As an outpatient or even inpatient, we see a lot and we hear a lot and we absorb that energy, whether we realize it or not, and especially if you're an empath, you echo what my experience has been. That is part of the reason why I've chosen my schedule the way it is, which is only part-time, and for me that's sustainable.

Speaker 1:

But thank you for highlighting that, because I don't think that we're aware, and even if we are, it's very hard to acknowledge that because it makes us vulnerable. It makes us vulnerable and I don't think it highlights the weakness. I think vulnerability definitely highlights strength and really knowing yourself and being able to put your feelings into words, which somehow is a skill that I don't think we truly develop until maybe later on in life, but it's something that needs to be acknowledged and that's the underside, that's the underbelly of medicine. Yeah, now, how did you come into this technique? How did that become part of your repertoire?

Speaker 2:

Permission to tell the a little longer background story. I keep asking for permission.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh yes this is.

Speaker 2:

I've never done that before and I've done that twice on this episode. I wonder what that is all about. Yeah, so basically because it's like a little bit more than the question you're asking, but I just to give a background of who I am and how I ended up not practicing medicine anymore. I got really burnt out in 2011. I unexpectedly learned this incredible meditation technique that, like, made me not burnt out anymore, practiced for several more years, quite happily decided I wanted to become a teacher in this meditation tradition, which is a three-month training in India. Always thought I would go do that and then come back and finish in, like, practice medicine 0.6 FTE and then teach meditation the rest of my time. And then had the opportunity to move to China, which is a whole other story that I won't go into. But so, like, the move to China actually is what took me out of medicine. I never, ever even considered leaving, and then, once I had been in China for a while, I went to my teacher training for three months.

Speaker 2:

The plan had been to move back to China, but at that point my plans changed. I ended up moving back to Atlanta, which is where I'm from, and I have a skill. I had something I could do and I didn't. I couldn't. At that point I had been out of medicine long enough where I was like, oh, I was really stressed and I didn't even know it, like I felt happy enough. But being out of it, this weight had been lifted and so I decided not to go back into practicing medicine because I had something I could do, which is teach meditation, and I thought I knew all the answers because I had become a meditation teacher and that was supposed to fix all my problems until it didn't.

Speaker 2:

And I met a woman who was a tapping practitioner. I heard actually I heard about it at a medical conference. I was teaching my meditation course to women physicians and some of the guest speakers were a psychiatrist and a psychologist who talked about tapping and a few other techniques. So I heard about it in a very clinical setting. It was an alternative kind of conference in Colorado, but it was still like psychiatrists talking about how they use tapping to heal trauma for their VA patients. So for me I had a very clinical background exposure to it and I thought, oh, maybe one day I'll teach that, maybe I'll become a practitioner. Wouldn't that be lovely, thinking I don't need that because I'm fixed. I'm a meditation teacher, I know all the answers.

Speaker 2:

And then I went through a bunch of personal stuff and realized the meditation wasn't enough. I met a woman who was a tapping practitioner and she said let me just, can we just do one? Just want to show you how this works. I think you'll really like it. Let's just do one session. And I felt like myself for the first time in months and I was like what is happening? I want more. It was so incredible and that. So that was my first as a human being having a need exposure to it and I signed up. I was like, let's do this. And we worked through so much stuff and then eventually, after maybe a year and a half or two years, I ended up doing a training to become a practitioner.

Speaker 1:

So I experienced it myself for a long time first, no, thank you for that, and your story's pretty awesome Because you had one plan. The universe said now we're going to do something else, and you went with it, and so now you are a. Would you call yourself a tapping practitioner? Yeah, and so now that's how you help others is by teaching and this technique and working with them through this, and is meditation still part of that?

Speaker 2:

so I still practice um twice a day. I still. I have an online meditation course that's CME accredited, so that's like out there in the world but that's not me actively teaching it. I've shifted away from teaching meditation, but once a year I do a retreat for women in health care, so at a fancy spa in Arizona. So I still do that and that brings me the most joy ever. But other than that, I don't really teach live unless I'm asked to do. But I'm not like posting about meditation on my social media, that kind of stuff anymore. But I still do teach and can teach. It's just way less frequent. I'm focusing more on tapping and then I do anti-racism, anti-oppression work as well, and the tapping informs that and it's also a separate aspect of what I do.

Speaker 1:

I think that's amazing because we don't get a lot of information about this, like in medical school or conferences, and yet, like acupuncture and other practices, it's well documented that it is helpful, and so, for those that are maybe not, I'm not saying that medication is bad. I definitely think that it has its time and place. But for those that might be looking for an adjunct or even a different technique, this would be one. But then also even as we're in clinic or dealing with kids, dealing with the in-laws with modern day life, it sounds like it would also be a good technique to have in our back pocket to calm down that nervous system.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. And so there's like deep one-on-one work that I do with my clients, and I do that in addition to like the trauma healing techniques. There's also deep one-on-one work, and one of the really cool things about tapping is that there's a very small learning curve and so people can tap on their own at a very simple basic level and it can still work. So it's something that can be taught to other people very easily. It's something that can be taught to other people very easily. It's something that we can learn how to do ourselves very easily without having to get a whole multi-month, multi-year training with it. And so I do train the trainer programs also, which and I also do workshops where I teach people how to tap. So it's a very I don't want to say, see one, do one, teach one, because I think we're probably moving away from that model anyway, because I don't know, people aren't experiments, but it's very easily understood and taught to other people and empowering to people for themselves and for other people, because you can do it with your kids, you can do it with your patients.

Speaker 2:

We could teach nurses how to do it. They could teach their patients other ways of pain control or anxiety control, like you're say you're about to have a medical procedure or you're getting some bad news medically, there's ways to process those emotions. It doesn't. We're not pushing the emotions away. We're actually, if you've ever seen anyone tap, we're saying out loud, over and over again, the thing that's bothering us, which is very counterintuitive, I think. Initially because usually we're like nope, bad feelings, push them away, got to see the next patient, bad, bad feelings, got to get home and take care of the family, and so we're allowing ourselves to honor and acknowledge those feelings and we're tapping on our face and chest. So sometimes it looks a little goofy at first but it works so quickly and it works. So I don't know easily and powerfully that it's just so applicable to so many different people and I just get so much joy out of seeing how much it works for other people, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

That makes total sense, and so it can be used at multiple points, like it's something that can be learned rather quickly. Yeah, and it can be utilized quickly as well, so is there a minimum time limit as to how long you have to tap in order for it to be effective?

Speaker 2:

Five minutes. The thing with the meditation is that really, if you want the life-changing benefits, or at least the kind that I teach, you got to practice it regular. For me it's 20 minutes twice a day. My online course is 15 minutes twice a day. Tapping has none of that. So you can tap once a week, once a month, once a year.

Speaker 2:

Some people struggle a little bit just with the like what I'm tapping my face and saying things like huh. So some people sometimes there's just a little bit of getting the logistics of it figured out. One thing that happens you can tap for five minutes once a year and it can work in those five minutes. Now the amount of relief you're gonna get generally is gonna be correlated to how long you tap for. But if you're at a 10 out of 10, let's say you just ran a code and it went badly. Or you ran a code and it went well but you're still devastated by whatever.

Speaker 2:

But you still need to go see the next patient or you need to go do teaching, for example. If you work in an academic setting, you can tap and get yourself down from a 10 out of 10 intensity to a 7 out of 10. And then you can breathe again and your heart's not pounding, and then you can go and do what you need to do and be much more present for it. So there's the like. The end goal of tapping can be different and there are times where somebody can tap for five minutes and go from super upset to totally calm in five minutes also, but it just varies on what your goal are, goals are, and what you're tapping through.

Speaker 1:

I would say no that's a really good breakdown. That's a really good breakdown. Good breakdown, that's a really good breakdown. So what is something that Jill Wiener would tell herself 10 years younger, like from 10 years ago? What would you tell yourself?

Speaker 2:

Look, I just had this conversation last night. My father-in-law is in town and we're sitting at dinner with my husband and my father-in-law and I asked him with my husband and my father-in-law and I asked him what advice would you give 20-year-old you or 25 or 30-year-old you? That's so wild. He's obviously broadcast that here. I guess the pieces of advice that I said last night were don't care so much about what people say or think about your body, don't care so much, don't worry so much about what my body looks like, and also to learn about privilege and to understand more. If I had learned about that much earlier in my life, I think I would have been a much more impactful person in my medical career and a better person in the world at large. So those were, like, I think, my big picture advices of things that looking back, things that I would have done differently.

Speaker 2:

I think in this context, in terms of looking back at Dr Jill and what would I have told her, it's okay to not know the answers. Medicine that we practice it. That includes osteopas as well. While it does a lot of great things, it doesn't know everything and you don't have to listen to those people telling you that all the other options are crap. You can be open to things and explore things and those things are valid and they may really help you and they may really help other people and it's okay to need help and ask for help. So I think that's one thing that we were just taught to distrust and scorn almost so many things that have ultimately been game changers for me and so many people. So I wish I had known that.

Speaker 1:

No, I echo that. I echo that because a lot of these practices, like meditation, tapping, acupuncture, yoga, they've been around for thousands of years and they've lasted for so long because they're there's some validity. Right, we try to separate, like you're saying, dr jill versus jill to me they're the same person. Right, we try to separate them out, just like we try to separate out the mental health from physical health. Sure, sure, they go hand in hand, the yin and the yang. So what makes a person worthy physician or not? What makes a person worthy Existing?

Speaker 2:

And I have done a lot of personal work on this and it's something that I still struggle with, sapna. It's so easy to give our validity as a human to other people. Yeah, and I remember I had started meditating, but I was not. My life had already been changed, but I was still suffering a lot emotionally with the stresses of healthcare, and what, in particular, was really hard for me was all the different demands you have to get patients out of the hospital, but they also can't get readmitted. And you have to control their pain, but you can't make them addicted. And you have to treat their infections, but you can't like overuse antibiotics. And also there's patient satisfaction scores and also you have to get, you have to teach on bedside, but you can't like, but you can't take too long on rounds, and you have to have student scores and resident scores, and there was just so many things that we were like our value was based on and I was trying to do all of them. I was trying to do all these things to satisfy all the numbers and all the people and I was like losing myself because I felt like I'm never going to be enough and then I would get my patient satisfaction composite score back and who knows what that's based on, particularly when you're in a hospital medicine setting, and it would just gut me. They weren't horrible, but they were never like I've tried so hard to do all the things.

Speaker 2:

And I remember I went on my first trip to India and one of the one of the teachers on this meditation retreat I was on was like so you're telling me you've given your whole sense of self-worth to like a patient who's maybe who's, or a group of patients or whatever who's maybe judging you at they're at their worst point in their life, they're sick, in the hospital, and that determines who you are. And I just gave me this perspective and this like permission to not have to internalize all of that. And that was in 2013, and it's 11 years later and I'm still working on it. But I think that what we forget is that we have wonderful, unique gifts to bring, even when we're imperfect, especially when we're imperfect, maybe, and that's what makes us enough, and it's not about what we achieve or who likes us. It's about us like just our core I love that.

Speaker 1:

I love that it brings me back to one of my favorite songs by tiesto just be and it's. The lyrics are beautiful and just be in the moment. Yeah, so easy to do, but it is one of the hardest things, I think, because we're again just how hectic everyday life is and how we have to drink the kool-aid and medicine in order to perform in a system that doesn't give a damn about the physicians, the patients, and we know the system's broken and it's very faulty putting money before patients and everybody else.

Speaker 1:

Having said that, we're also in a beautiful profession to be able to help people at their most vulnerable points.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And don't lose yourself in that. And I've always tried keyword is tried to gauge my mind I'm not going to say worth, but the job I'm doing by my integrity. If I can still look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day. That doesn't always hold true.

Speaker 2:

It's some various peaks and valleys of life, but but coming back to that, and I think you'll get an invitation there that even when we do things that we aren't proud of, like we're still enough. That part that gets me is anti-racism work, anti-oppression work. I'm a white woman. I work with a partner who's a black woman. I show up in the world all the time I try.

Speaker 2:

It's like another version of perfectionism, right it's. I'm going to do all the like. My heart's in the right place and I want to do all the things. There's ultimately always going to be times where I'm going to cause harm and everyone causes harm, no matter what their identity is. But, or if I have a, I'm a step parent and they're becoming teenagers now and there's feelings that come up and stuff that comes up. Even if I totally botch it with my kid kids, one of the kids or both of them can I still connect into that feeling of being enough and not just like completely beat myself up about it? And I don't know if that's something you experienced, but that's, for me, my growing edge. I would say.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, you're talking. You're preaching to the choir. Kids are hard Parents, extended family it's all challenging when you have different personalities. Right, we have different opinions, we have different thought processes, particularly if there's an age gap. But going back to being human is messy that we're going to have imperfections and it's just understanding that, I think, allowing ourselves to acknowledge it, which is, oh my gosh, I'm going to acknowledge that I have a blind side or I have a weak spot that maybe I need to work on and that's okay. I think that's the power of vulnerability, especially with yourself, and once you know it, really the best thing that you can do is try to have it on your radar. And maybe I have areas I need to improve in, and I'm working with a coach on that and I appreciate and value the insight.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely. My therapist does a lot of work in self-compassion and self-compassion and it has been such a balm to my soul, like to realize. Sometimes I'll take a moment and step outside myself and just realize how mean I've been to myself about whatever it is, some things that may not even make sense to other people in terms of importance, but being able to take a step back and say, wow, that is so intense, why am I being so mean to myself? And then to bring in some space for self-compassion in there, since tapping that's been the most powerful thing for me is self-compassion. Are we even taught those words in med school? Are we even allowed to entertain those notions in med school? I wasn't. Maybe it is now, but I certainly wasn't.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I would agree. Now let me ask you this. We've had a great conversation after talking, discussing tapping. Has tapping allowed you to be more open to these things, such as self-compassion, self-forgiveness, not tying your self-worth to outcomes?

Speaker 2:

yes, and I think meditation for me was the first thing that really it's like tilling the soil of my brain, if you think about it that way. It just makes my brain more receptive to things, and I don't think I could have been as receptive to anti-racism, social justice things as well, and to my own complicity in it, without having meditated for several years and having my brain. It's okay for me to be wrong. It's okay for me to have complete to, to realize things about myself that I don't want to know, I don't want to acknowledge. So I think that was the first thing, and then I think tapping also does as well. I think both of those together allow my brain to be more receptive than it might be to things that might help me.

Speaker 1:

That makes a lot of sense and I appreciate the reference to tilling. That is spot on. And if the listeners wanted to connect with you, what is the best way?

Speaker 2:

So my website has information about all the stuff I do tapping meditation, anti-racism work. On Instagram, I'm at Jill Liener M-D-E and my last name's W-E-N-E-R, so just make sure you find it that way. And LinkedIn, I'm on there as well, and I have just recently gotten CME accreditation for my tapping training. There's an online version and a live version, so if anyone wants to learn how to teach it to people, you can actually do it and get CME for it, which is super exciting, and so that information is all on the website as well.

Speaker 1:

And what is your website?

Speaker 2:

Oh, that would be helpful. It's jillwienercom, super easy. So j-i-l-w-e-n-e-rcom, j-i-l-w-e-n-e-r dot com.

Speaker 1:

And these links will be in the show notes. Jill, I always ask the guest what is one last pearl of wisdom? You've given us so many already? What is one last pearl of wisdom you'd like to leave us?

Speaker 2:

You aren't alone, and it's okay if you're not okay, and it's okay to ask for help. Life doesn't have to be like this. It can be better.

Speaker 1:

That's an awesome disclaimer, because, yes, it can be. You've experienced it, I've experienced it, and just you are enough. It is okay to ask for help. Thanks for tuning in to another episode from the Worthy Physician Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who'd love it too. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube, linkedin, instagram for more updates and insights. Until next time, keep inspiring, learning, growing and living your best life.