Dr. Erica Bove:

Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science Podcast.

I have a distinguished guest today. She is a friend, she is a colleague, and she is an amazing physician coach. Her name is Dr. Mel Thacker. She’s a board-certified otolaryngologist, rhinologist, master coach, host of the podcast Surgeons of Purpose, and the co-founder of the multimedia company Hippocratic Collective. She is also a two-time TEDx speaker.

We’ll put all of her links in the show notes, but I am so grateful to know her. Dr. Mel, I’m so excited for the conversation we’re going to have today. Welcome.

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Erica Bove:

Absolutely. You’re a surgeon and you’re also a coach, and you help surgeons live more meaningful, purposeful, regulated lives. Can you tell us your story — and why you expanded from surgery into coaching?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Yeah. It’s the classic “two mountains” theory. There’s a book by David Brooks that talks about two mountains.

The first mountain is the power, status, wealth mountain. It’s the ego mountain. The “me” mountain. It’s about achievement and external validation — getting the A-pluses, graduating top of the class — like you’re playing a video game you’re trying to beat.

I beat the video game. I did everything I ever wanted to do. I had the perfect husband, the house, the kids, I was a partner in private practice. On paper, my life looked perfect.

But internally I was suffering. I had so much unprocessed trauma from childhood. I felt worthless. I didn’t like myself at all. I was brutally mean to myself. I was always running on the hedonic treadmill, on the hamster wheel, never stopping. And we normalize going a million miles per hour.

The second mountain often presents itself after you fall into the valley of despair — and that’s where I was. For me, it culminated during the pandemic. It was like ripping a bandaid off a fresh wound.

All my elective cases were removed. Private practice already felt threatened by private equity and everything happening in medicine. Suddenly our income was threatened and I felt financially insecure. I come from significant poverty, so that button was being pushed again. My husband doesn’t work, and I’m the breadwinner — I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders.

And secretly, I had these horrible thoughts about myself, and trauma from childhood and training. I started having panic attacks in the operating room.

I was going to go and go and go until I couldn’t go anymore — but I couldn’t push through it. We’re so accustomed to ignoring our body, dissociating, compartmentalizing, avoiding.

My body was screaming at me. And I had to do something.

For about three months I had severe insomnia. I would drive to work crying. I used to love going to our surgery center, but I started associating it with danger. I’d pull into the parking lot and go into full fight-or-flight. Panic attacks with every case.

So I stopped. I got coaching. That’s when I found coaching.

I saw therapists and I felt like I was being given tools and theory — but I needed someone who had lived it.

I found coaching and then discovered Brooke Castillo’s podcast, The Life Coach School. I listened to the first 200 episodes twice. Then I found Martha Beck. I jumped in with both feet. I became Wayfinder certified, then Master Coach certified.

I was able to work through my panic attacks. I became a totally different person. I slept again. Life got better.

But then I realized it wasn’t enough to just stay in private practice. I felt a desire to do something more — and that’s when I started coaching surgeons.

The second mountain is the “we” mountain. Community. Impact. Giving back.

I want to serve surgeons — because when surgeons are well-resourced and cared for, patients are better cared for too.

As I stayed in practice, I experienced moral injury and unsafe practices, and I didn’t want to keep working within certain insurance structures. My brain was always thinking about my coaching clients, content, and tools — and I realized it wasn’t fair to my patients if my heart wasn’t fully there.

So I left private practice. I took the leap and became an entrepreneur.

Now I still do locums, because it keeps me connected — like field research. It keeps my finger on the pulse of medicine. And it’s the easy part of my job now. I’m more effective and skilled than I’ve ever been — but now I also get to share how I climbed out of the bottom and built a new life on purpose.

Dr. Erica Bove:

That is so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

You said your body was yelling at you. Looking back, were there whispers you ignored?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Oh yes — whispers all along the way.

It often starts with tension. The body speaks in sensations. For me, it was grinding my teeth starting in medical school. Tight shoulders. Knots in the stomach. Tightness in the chest.

Instead of getting curious, I would try to outrun it — literally. I’d go for a run to make it go away, or just push past it.

Another interesting thing: when I met my husband, I used to ask him to just lay on me — fully clothed — just to feel the weight. I didn’t understand it then, but now I see it as my nervous system trying to find grounding. I would have loved a weighted blanket.

Dr. Erica Bove:

That’s fascinating. Can you talk about how you help surgeons improve quality of life? What’s your method?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

People usually come in two buckets.

Some are deeply suffering — “This isn’t sustainable. I need an exit strategy. I feel powerless.” Like the dogs in the shock experiment — moral injury, no way out, sunk-cost fallacy, no boundaries.

Others are dissatisfied — “I have everything I wanted on paper, but I’m not happy.” That’s the arrival fallacy — attaching how we feel to circumstances.

A big part is teaching the model: circumstances don’t create feelings — thoughts create feelings. It’s learning to eavesdrop on the brain, see default thoughts, and build a relationship with yourself.

I also use Byron Katie’s work — taking the most painful thoughts and dismantling them. Many people have a core theme: “I’m not good enough,” “I don’t belong,” “Something is wrong with me.”

Then there’s embodiment work: trauma lives in the cells. We learn to track sensation, track charge, and use tools like pendulation.

For example: identify a place where anxiety lives — shoulder, chest — and a place it doesn’t — like an earlobe. Then gently go back and forth. It helps you stop over-identifying: “I’m anxious” becomes “I have anxiety in one place.”

Then you start to see: emotions are data. You don’t have to fix them — you can be with them.

And when stakes are high — challenging cases, conflict at work — that’s when old wounds show up. Often it’s a younger version of you reacting.

The work becomes: pause, recognize the rupture, tend to the younger part, compare the intensity to the actual circumstance, then choose how you want to respond rather than react.

Over time, you can go to bed and think: a lot happened today — trays weren’t right, delays, problems — and still feel proud of how you showed up.

That’s empowered response.

Dr. Erica Bove:

That’s so powerful — “a part of me feels anxious” vs. “I am anxiety.”

I also wanted to ask: you work with female surgeons on the fertility journey. What stands out about that “double hit”?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

It adds a whole extra layer of grief and scarcity and stress.

I see intense fear, intense attachment to outcomes, and over-coupling identity with results: “If I don’t conceive, I’m not living the life I want.”

And I hear so much language like “I failed my transfer.” I want to say: you did not fail. The language matters. Shame compounds trauma. It makes everything harder.

We have to redefine failure, separate biology from identity, and protect the nervous system during a process that already activates survival brain.

Dr. Erica Bove:

In fertility care, I try to move away from “failed” and “good/bad news” and toward “disappointing news” and “unsuccessful transfer.” And I focus on curiosity: embryo side, uterine side, both, what haven’t we looked at yet?

And mindset-wise, I see the best outcomes when people can hope for the best while also surrendering attachment to a specific outcome, timeline, or single attempt.

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Yes — Byron Katie talks about three businesses: my business, other people’s business, and the universe’s business. People suffer when they live in other people’s or the universe’s business — trying to control outcomes.

There’s a way to think through worst-case scenarios, come to peace with them, and then return to presence — like the Samurai idea of making peace with the possibility before going into battle.

Dr. Erica Bove:

Can you share how you define trauma and how you help people integrate feelings?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Trauma isn’t the incident — it’s the response. That’s why I say “trauma response.”

One event can be traumatic for one person and not for another depending on sensitivity and lived experience. We don’t need to compare suffering.

Fear is an in-the-moment response. Anxiety is fear applied to imagination.

And many surgeons default to fawning (people-pleasing). Underneath fawning is usually freeze — then fawn.

It’s a process. You don’t jump from fawn to perfectly regulated overnight. You move through it step by step until an email from your boss stops feeling like a lion chasing you.

Dr. Erica Bove:

That’s so relevant in fertility care too — the hypervigilance waiting for calls, results, timing, next steps. People often go into urgency and fight mode.

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Urgency is survival. When you feel urgency, slow down.

That’s true in surgery and in life. The pause is where agency lives. You can process first, then respond intentionally.

Dr. Erica Bove:

One last question: so many women physicians are depleted physically — sleep, nutrition, stress. How do you help surgeons reconnect with basics like sleep and food when the culture is unforgiving?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

I don’t tell people what to do strategically — I help them protect the asset. The asset is a human.

Humans need to eat, sleep, rest, and play. You have to protect diastole — recovery time.

If I had a magic wand: eight hours serving patients, eight hours protecting the asset (family, movement, nourishment), eight hours sleep. And yes, call complicates it — but that’s still the ideal.

And with food, notice what makes you feel balanced. Pay attention. Fiber matters. Most of us are fiber deficient.

I’m board-certified in lifestyle medicine, and we’re plant-based in my house. My husband felt better immediately. But regardless of diet philosophy, the principle is: engage with your body, notice what helps, and make it a priority.

Dr. Erica Bove:

That’s brilliant. Protect the asset as a physician — and protect the asset as a vessel for another human who may come into this world through you.

Dr. Mel, anything you want to share with listeners before we close?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

Just protect the asset. We’re so bad at it. Start now.

Dr. Erica Bove:

It’s a discipline and a practice. And once you start feeling better, your body tells you when you’re abandoning yourself.

Dr. Mel, where can people find you?

Dr. Mel Thacker:

My website is melthackercoaching.com.

I have a podcast, Surgeons of Purpose.

And you can find me on Instagram — check the show notes for the exact handle.

Dr. Erica Bove:

Amazing. Thank you for your wisdom and for what you do. Medicine and the world are better because you’re in it.

And to my pod squad — you know how much I love you. Until next time. Bye.