Overcoming Impostor Syndrome to Founding a Highly Successful Rural Women’s Practice with Dr. Amanda Thompson, PT, WHC

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:00:03 Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond, and I am so thrilled to have you here. As we dive into today’s episode, as always innovating and integrating in the world of women’s health. And just as a reminder, the content in this podcast episode is no substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from your medical or licensed health care team. While myself and many of my guests are licensed healthcare professionals, we are not your licensed healthcare professionals, so you want to get advice on your unique circumstances. Diagnostic recommendations treatment recommendations from your home medical team. Enjoy the episode. Let’s innovate and integrate together. Hi and welcome to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. I’m your host, Doctor Jessica Drummond. Today I have such a wonderful conversation for you with Doctor Amanda Thompson. If you are working in a hospital setting right now, you’re a nurse, you’re PT, OT, nurse practitioner dietitian, and you are burned out if you’re a doctor and you are burned out if you are working in any health profession and you’re like, they are really pushing me to my limit at this point.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:01:33 Our system is crumbling. The productivity standards are out of control. I’m feeling burned out. This episode is for you. This episode is also for you. If you work in a rural area and you’re like, there’s no way that working in integrative health, that doing perimenopausal work or chronic health care work is needed out here. We’re just patching it together. Your work is so needed. In fact, probably there more than anywhere else. Your opportunity for success is more needed than many other areas of the country or the world. This is for you. If you’re afraid to take the leap into what you really want to do, but you’re having a little imposter syndrome. You are going to love this conversation with Doctor Amanda Thompson. Let me introduce you to her. Officially, Doctor Amanda Thompson is a physical therapist and a women’s health coach. She’s the owner of Rooted Physical Therapy, which is an orthopedic and pelvic health physical therapy clinic in Bridgeport, Texas. She’s originally from humble, Texas. She attended Texas A&M, where she met her husband.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:02:44 My husband also went to Texas A&M. So Giga Aggies, all of you out there and received her bachelor’s in kinesiology in 2007. She later received a doctorate of physical therapy in 2013 from the University of North Texas Health Science Center in Fort Worth. She is proficient in all areas of physical therapy, and this is also a great episode for you. If you’re one of those people who are like, I don’t want to niche down, I like to do everything. I can’t decide, that’s fine. We’re going to show you exactly how to use that indecision to your advantage. Because, look, the body is not siloed, right. So Amanda is proficient and I would say far more than proficient in all areas of physical therapy, including orthopedics, neurologic, sports medicine, pediatrics. We both grew up being gymnasts. Thought we were just going to go into sports medicine, but then it got crazy from there. And she’s even worked in pediatrics, hospice. She’s gained a lot of experience in rural settings, working with people with chronic pain, fibromyalgia, connective tissue disorders and more.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:03:51 She’s passionate about women’s health, helping women in the perinatal phase with pain management, birth prep, birth trauma and healing postpartum. She learned from my dear friend Lynn Schulte at the Institute of Birth Healing and she, of course, is one of our graduates at the Integrative Women’s Health Institute. She’s taken every single one of our courses because she is that kind of multi-specialty person. And often in a rural healthcare area, you have to be a little bit jack of all trades. Though her specialty in her practice now is really focused on orthopedic pelvic health, pelvic floor issues, dyspareunia, vulvar tinea, vaginismus, incontinence, bladder issues, bowel dysfunction. So much of pelvic health intersects with overall physiology digestion, nervous system, immune system, especially when we’re talking about MCAS and hypermobility syndrome. So this episode is for you. You, jack of all trades. You a person who loves to do everything. And if you’re in a rural area and you think there’s not enough work, there’s so much work for you. So let’s dive in and meet Doctor Amanda Thompson.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:05:14 Welcome, doctor Amanda Thompson to the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast and welcome everybody. Hi, Amanda.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:05:22 Hello. Thank you so much for having me today.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:05:25 So glad to have you here. So let’s talk about your story, your journey as a physical therapist and women’s health and perimenopause coach. How did your career start? Like why were you excited to start a career in healthcare in general? And then what was the evolution that you thought? You know, I want to be a little more integrative. I want to specialize in women, especially women in the perimenopause transition. Tell us your story.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:05:54 I feel like my journey is so long and it’s. So I’m gonna try to make it really brief. I graduated from PT school, and when I graduated from PT school, I knew that I wanted to do everything. So when I was trying to find a clinical rotation. So I did a little bit of ortho, I did some sports med, I did neuro, I learned a lot of vestibular stuff, and everyone told me, you can’t do everything you have to pick.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:06:23 The catch 22 is I live in a very, very rural area. I’m in Texas, I’m in North Texas, but I grew up in the Houston area and I was a gymnast growing up. I was an athlete. So just like a lot of people going into PT school, I want to do sports med, because that’s what I knew. Quickly I realized I loved it, but it wasn’t enough challenge for me. Not that that’s not challenging, but it was enticing to learn all the different avenues of HT. So when I went to art school. It was definitely very much I want to do everything. So right out of school I got a job in a rural hospital. Therefore, I did everything.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:07:06 Yes, yes.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:07:07 It was a swing bed hospital. If you don’t know what that is from like a TX perspective, it’s basically like a small version of a sniff or inpatient rehab. Only in rural areas. I did outpatient, I did home health, hospice, I did pediatrics, ortho, sports, med, I did on the field coverage for football, volleyball, basketball.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:07:30 And I realized pretty quickly that my therapist that were working with me were very cookie cutter. Everybody with a total knee. You got the same exercises and it really integrated from this patient with back pain that I know nothing else about. But she’s not getting better on the traditional way. So I really started diving into different ways to do it, and I’ve kind of figured out my own way to treat these people, and they got better, then progressed into trying to get pregnant with my own children. So I had a lot of infertility issues. We could dive really deep into why I think now at 40, why I had those issues in my 20s, but I had my own fertility issues, which led me to a whole infertility journey IVF, lots of drugs, all the things. When I finally was able to get pregnant, that was my big like, oh my gosh, these providers, my ob gyn, although I adore and love and he made my baby get here with safely. And I had really kind of complicated deliveries, I realized that there was such a huge gap in understanding and knowledge of what I knew was not normal, and my expectations of the route that I thought he would give me.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:08:50 So with my own issues, I started dive bombing into, oh my gosh, this world of women’s health, what is this? As much as I had already figured out on my own, once I opened that kind of canister, it just exploded. And so, through my own journey and trying to heal myself, I discovered that there was so much uncovered that I wanted to dive deeper. So I would go to courses, treat my patients, and then I wouldn’t get everybody better. So then I find another course and get that person better, find another course throughout. That is when I discovered, I believe it was probably somewhere in like 2017, 2018. No, actually it had to have been sooner. But I did a course with Lyn Chelsea with the Institute for Birth Healing, and that kind of opened my mind on a different world of therapy then. I’ve been following your pages for Ever. I think I first learned about your stuff, one of my first pelvic health courses, and one of the Tas had written down.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:09:56 It was like a Herman and Wallace one or something. She had written down everybody that you should follow. And I just got Instagram in 2017, so that’s probably about when it happened. As I moved through my own journey. And exercise is one component. Healing is another component. Mental health is another huge component. I started diving into different worlds of nutrition, and a lot of it was a lot of stuff that I saw on your social media at the time. And then Covid hit. Now, I think everybody’s world changed during Covid. For me, at the time, I was the women’s health coordinator at a hospital based outpatient clinic. How many times have you heard that? So yes, I was treating men and women with pelvic health conditions in an outpatient orthopedic clinic, being the solo pelvic health provider.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:10:48 Yeah, especially in a rural area, there’s often one.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:10:52 In like multiple counties. So I had like a six month wait list. I was required to treat, you know, X amount of patients per hour because then you’re not productive.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:11:04 And when Covid hit, it was like everybody stopped. Let’s separate. We had 14 therapists at the time. We had separate. We had all these rules and regulations that we had to follow. But the therapy department was the only department that besides ICU, CCU and inpatient rehab, outpatient therapy stayed open. And although surgery was closed, we were doing all of the rehab. Therefore, I worked 50 60 hours a week. I had a huge pivot in my life. My kids were in daycare at the time and their lives didn’t change. My daycare was amazing. They only did care for essential employees, but they were basically living at daycare while I was working. I worked weekends because there was I was a salaried employee. Therefore I worked every hour that was possibly capable. And burnout really started to set in probably about that summer, really, of Covid of 2020. So then during 2020 summer, you had really kind of your coaching program was really kind of the highlight there. So I started following and I was like, you know what? I feel like I needed change.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:12:21 I need a little bit of a pivot. What can I do different? So I did your entire coaching program, and I had an entire kind of pivot with my mindset. And it’s during your coaching programs, if people don’t know you are, which it may have changed by now, but at the time you did three day retreats or two day retreats, and during that you do breakout groups, which I’m the type of person that I’m like, oh, we have to do another breakout group. Like we have to dive into it’s all the things. But what what that led to was finding your own limiting beliefs because you’re doing real life stories. You can make up whatever you want, but every group that I was in was so amazing. We coached each other and it was real life things. And so it was really your coaching program that gave me like a little bit of a push to be like all my limiting beliefs were like, I can’t do functional medicine, I can’t do nutrition, I can’t do X, Y, and Z because I’m so limited in the outpatient world.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:13:31 Then it took me towards an entire six month process of after I completed the program, which took me about a year because it didn’t focus.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:13:41 That’s still. That’s common. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:13:44 So then about six months, I’m like, you know what? I can do this. I feel like there’s something different. My limiting beliefs of being in a very rural area, my limiting beliefs of not having enough followers on social media, my limiting beliefs of not being good enough. Like the imposter syndrome, which you talk a lot about in the coaching program. And the reality is, is I’m not just one step. I’m 5 to 6 to eight, ten steps ahead of most people. And so why not? So I took a huge leap of faith. I actually quit my job right after Thanksgiving of 2021, which was well after I had taken the coaching course, started my business in 2022. I consider myself an ortho pelvic PT clinic in a fairly rural area, and it started with a little bit of everything pelvic health with some virtual clients.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:14:40 So I did some functional medicine, some functional nutrition components. But what I’ve really tailored in the last 3 or 4 years is every patient that comes in, I provide functional nutrition with them. So it’s part of the pelvic health. For a long time I tried to separate it and I’m like, I’m either going to be a functional nutritionist and doing virtual coaching, or I’m going to be a PT, and it really pulled on me really hard. For several years. I really tried to separate it, but at this phase not may change, but at this phase my practice runs with staff as a ortho pelvic clinic, but every patient has a functional nutrition coaching perspective.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:27 Yeah, yeah, I really love that because I want to go back to the beginning of your story that you were like so many of our students in that you said, I want to do everything. Don’t box me in. don’t make me niche down. You know, we could have a whole conversation about niching and marketing. And so Niching is to some extent important from a marketing perspective.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:15:51 And you’ve done that. But it also is the truth that from a clinical and coaching perspective, from an implementation perspective of getting people fully healthy from more of a root cause perspective and in alignment with their goals, which is the key of coaching, you know, what do they actually want? We’ve got to stop styling the body, you know? And like you said, it was like you had these colleagues who were like, everyone with back pain gets core strengthening exercises or everyone with a knee replacement gets, you know, leg raises. And I know all the exercises, right. The quad sets. Right? Yes. Mini squats. But the problem is two people with a knee replacement could have wildly different underlying health issues. One could have a before they even had the knee replacement, they had a chronic pain condition, or they had a chronic fatigue condition, or they have diabetes, or they have chronic migraines. That makes it hard for them to sleep. And so their recovery is going to be very different from someone who’s 15 years younger or premenopausal or post-menopausal, 15 years older, who has osteoporosis.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:17:10 And so the problem when we approach everything is like, I’m an expert in the knee, separate from the body, or even pelvic pain, separate from someone’s nutrition. You know, someone has endometriosis and they eat fast food five times a week versus if they’re on a fully organic garden because you live in a rural area, there’s fully organic diet that they’re farming in their own backyard, Yard. You know, they have different goals. They have different stressors. One of them might be eating fast food because she has no support. She has three jobs. She has little kids at home, you know. And so I really don’t think and it’s interesting because my colleague Doctor Jo Tata and some other people in our world and myself, we’ve over the last 15 years have said, look, nutrition and coaching is 100% a part of any health care profession because coaching is a skill set of communication. As you learned, it’s like, okay, everyone doesn’t want to go to the retreats until they get there, and then they love it because they’re like, oh, wait, just like all my patients, I’m not sure if I can do this.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:18:31 I’m not sure if I can handle this. I’m not sure if I’m good enough. You know, all those limiting beliefs come in and our patients have the exact same thing. So like so many of our students, you love it all. And so what our program tries to do is actually organize that so that there’s a system for actually implementing it too. We always lead with coaching because we have to know the person before we give them five sets of ten cals or whatever. And the third thing is we need to use all of our tools because the underlying health of the person and more and more, we’re seeing this in every aspect of medicine. Like we cannot silo people. Yes, you might have a specific subspecialty. You might be emphasizing certain things more than other things. But American Physical Therapy Association has said that nutrition is part of the practice. As long as you’re educated, and we’re now doing that level of expansion. I’ll give. Joe taught a ton of credit here because he’s helped expand that with official language and is also helping to expand it now in the world of mental health, because again, you can’t recover your pelvic health or your postpartum health or your perimenopausal health.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:19:46 How many of our Perimenopausal clients their number one issue is anxiety depression?

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:19:53 100%. All of them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:19:55 You pulled this all together now, and that’s why we created this system inside of the coaching programs, the perimenopause coaching program, because we then have to be able to organize it so we can implement it with our clients. So you do that and then you break away. And I think this is very brave. You’re like, okay, I was doing it all, but in a way that was causing me harm. And, you know, I think it’s pretty clear at this point that our health care system, while it has been crumbling for two decades, my entire career, it’s crashing now. So I can imagine that people in rural areas in particular need this depth of skill set. And so let’s circle back to your own work life balance. So how has that changed now? Because we have to take care of ourselves if we have any oxygen to take care of all these people, plus our own kids and, you know, families.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:20:55 So I think the biggest thing career wise that I did and, you know, most, not most, but a lot of continuing education. I listened to a podcast recently with Bill Taylor, and he’s he does talk about how we just need to shut up and listen to our patients because they’ll tell us what is wrong. So the act of listening component is huge. From a personal standpoint, I have tried to do that from a kind of a multifold perspective. I try to listen to myself, what do I need? I’m 40 and I have younger kids. I had kids in my 30s. My biggest thing is I want to drop off and pick up my kids from school. There are days where I’m like, I have to get this patient, and the only time they can come is after school. So I’ll try to get somebody to pick them up. I try my hardest to attend every practice, every game that I can. Now I have conferences. I have continued education that I’m taking. We’re all miss a handful, but my priority is to be there for my kids.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:22:00 I also time block my schedule, so I time block my schedule, which was probably the most challenging thing. And I’ll tell you, I just got good at it this like last month or two. Like really good at it. Time blocking for not just self-care. Self-care can look different for everybody right now. My self-care is a little bit of everything. I want to spend ten minutes in peace by myself in the morning, in the evening. So I really try to wake up just early enough so I can do that. And then after dinner’s over, all the kids are in bed. And I have a kind of a weird schedule because I do live in a rural area. My husband is a rancher, so my wife works around the weather and daylight till dark. 30 is what I tell people. And then if we’re trying to get hay off the ground, it’s until the hay is off the ground before the rain. So my lifestyle is very different than most people, so time blocking is essential.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:22:59 Quality time with my kids is essential, and there’s a lot of things that are non-negotiables that I’ve had to get really comfortable with. The cool thing about my patient population right now, as far as in-person patients, is a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them are homesteading, which is they are growing their own food. They have a cow, they milk their cows, they’re doing everything, and they’re still having issues. They have multiple kids. I dove deep into the mental health and the nutrition. What I thought I was going to be doing was pregnancy and postpartum. But what the reality was is nobody has time for that. Patients don’t have time for that. But me going through perimenopause, I feel like I went through it fairly early. My mom hit menopause between 40 and 42. I started having hot flashes and all the things, but I had IVF. So my world is also a little bit kind of rushed. Stress, high stress environment. I worked in a really stressful environment and I loved what I did.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:24:08 I loved with the patients, I loved the clinical staff that I worked with at the time. It sense demise, but the clinical staff that I worked with was amazing. The support that I had with them, just the camaraderie, the bouncing ideas back and forth were huge. But going through my own journey, myself of perimenopause and stress and mental health, and really trying to tie that into my own clients and being able to relate to that from a now 40 year old versus a 25 year old that’s just trying to figure out life. So I think all of us kind of go through our own phases and journey, and that’s how I ended up in the perimenopause menopause world, is these people are desperate for care. Desperate for someone to listen to them. Nobody is giving them any education on the medications that they’re taking. We can talk all day about hormone replacement, which is I’m not against it. Same thing with GOP ones. I’m not against it, but there’s nothing being provided from an education standpoint for long term care.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:25:13 They’re slapping people with medications or anything just to make a dollar and nobody cares. So. Clients that come into my office, they feel my heart. They see my heart. And the whole goal is their goal, not my goal.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:25:29 Yeah, I really think that piece about. Especially in rural areas where health care services are so limited and they’re getting tighter and tighter. Like, you know, in rural Texas, any given area there might be like one gynecologist. And so he or she is running around trying to deliver babies like, oh, here’s a standard dose pack of all the different HRT that maybe you might want to try. There’s no follow up. They just don’t have time. And I think the other myth that so there’s like the kind of excessive medicalization that we sometimes get from the health care system and the real silo of like, I only treat your, you know, pelvis, not your brain, which is intimately connected or not, your digestion, which is intimately connected. So there’s that kind of one extreme part of our health care system.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:26:20 And then there’s a little bit of the other, especially in areas where you’ve got rural homesteading. There’s another myth, because I’ve been an integrative health for a long time, that if you just eat organic, you’re not going to have any of these problems. And this is the other myth that you’re having to combat. Like, you can have your own cows. You can be milking them yourself. You can be picking your own tomatoes and still have perimenopausal mental health issues. If you have children in your 40s or even younger, but certainly in your 40s, you’re overlapping postpartum and perimenopause. And a lot of times, people with bigger families do that because you’d have children until your later years, or even women with smaller families who maybe just didn’t start having children till later. I mean, my kids, I had it 29 and 36 and it was very different experiences. But so I think you’re such an important Voice. And this is what we try to empower our students with the research, the science. And you have that background from your physical therapy training about the perimenopause medications, the perimenopause supplementation, nutrition, lifestyle medicine, functional testing.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:27:47 Also, people are gathering a lot of their own data. I mean, I’ve got my own aura ring on, you know, and yet they don’t know what to do with it. So they’re just either following influencers or just like, I don’t know, it’s your fault. If you haven’t been eating organic, then of course you’re depressed. No, you can be eating perfectly organic your entire life and still have depression, or low iron, or low vitamin B12 or vitamin D or whatever, and that can impact your mental health. So you’re really supporting that area where rural people who are homesteading, who are sort of doing everything right when they get sick. There’s a lot of shame.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:28:33 100%. The word shame comes up in my office more than anything else. And that’s where also the mental health component comes in. The listening, active listening. And truthfully, it’s really giving people permission to feel how they feel and then giving them an option to feel better and giving them the reins for their health care instead of pushing one direction or the other.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:29:03 Yeah, you and I know this because from a scientific lens, the reality is it’s both. Eating healthier is helpful, and taking HRT is helpful in many cases. But if the health care provided is not anchored in that woman’s goals. It doesn’t deal with how she’s being shamed on both sides. Then we’re really doing humans a disservice. And I think you have such a valuable skill set for your community. And yet it’s so interesting because we have so many students who come in and they’re like, well, I’m just that whole thing where you’re like, imposter syndrome. Like, I want to really empower every nurse, nurse practitioner ot R.D. who’s working in rural America or Canada or anywhere in the world. You’re needed almost more than anyone else because the resources are so scarce and getting scarcer.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:30:11 And the reality with the imposter syndrome is we know more than the average people. So regardless of the discipline, I have a local nurse practitioner who is pretty new to the functional medicine world, and she’s been my biggest cheerleader from a professional standpoint, and I’m trying to really support her.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:30:29 She worked in the hospital setting for a long time. I’m sending her all your resources because she wanted to do a lot of postpartum care. But the reality is when she fixes him, that’s it. And I think educating her on what’s next is really powerful. The fear of most providers is that they don’t know enough. And I think when you realize that you know more than the person sitting next to you, and all you have to do is be one step ahead. That’s how I made my entire career. I don’t know what’s wrong with you, so I’m going to go research it, find a course. Can I come and try that on you? That’s from pelvic pain leakage. All the standard things that didn’t work. And let me create something. And so it really takes that personality. You got to have a little bit of empathy. You got to have a little bit of drive. But the truth is I want my patients to feel heard. I want my patients to feel like they have a say in their health care.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:31:35 And I wish, which I think all of us agree, that health care was more proactive than reactive. I’m 40 and I watch my mom go through menopause. She still having hot flashes at 65. She’s osteoporotic like nobody’s business. A lot of it was from corticosteroid use in the early 90s for rheumatoid arthritis, followed by an eating disorder, followed by aging. No hormone replacement therapy in any way, shape or form because we have breast cancer in our genes. Therefore, every tick to decrease her ability to not have osteoporosis. She’s hit every tick. Then she had Covid, which I know. I’ve listened to your podcast too. Some of your story is pretty powerful because even like you said, even if you do all the things, there’s still things that can come up and make your risk factor. So from a prophylactic standpoint, I don’t want to be a washed up old hag. I want to go into menopause and be like, heck yeah, let’s go girls. It’s really powerful. And I think when my best friend and I went on a 40th birthday trip for me, and she’s a few years younger than me and everybody’s like, oh my God, you’re 40.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:32:47 And I’m like, yeah, I’m 40. Like, now I’m just going on the other side. 40 to 50 is gonna be awesome. And it’s a mindset shift. If you’re dragging about 40, then it’s going to be a drag. But if you’re really proactive, if you’re trying to figure out where your mom rage is coming from or where your sensitivities to different foods are coming from, if you are trying to figure out why you are now super inflamed after one Mexican restaurant with a margarita if you’re really in that boat, there’s something that’s changed. And so going through my own journey and seeing it from a chronic health standpoint, so it actually started with chronic health. Nobody in my area would treat anybody with editors or chronic pain or anything with the word chronic in it. They would be crazy is what they would be said told.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:41 Right. They were just sent to psych or whatever. Yeah.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:33:43 Yes. And so giving those patients kind of a breath to be told, it’s okay, let’s work through this has really made the grand scheme of things bigger for me professionally, because I’ve been able to learn from them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:33:58 Yeah. Yeah. Even within your community, you need to build community among the health care professionals that you’re working with. And this is really what I love about our community at the Integrative Women’s Health Institute. We have practitioners of every discipline from every perspective. In big cities and small towns all across the world. And so you always have a place. And what I love about our community is so many people come in and take one course, and then they’re just in the community forever. We have a membership that’s sort of our advanced level programs, but people stay in that for decades because exactly what you said, someone comes into your practice and you’re like, I’m stumped here. Like I’m stuck. And when we’re working in a rural or a one person practice, even if it’s in the largest city in the world, you know, you could be in Manhattan and still like, see something that’s a little complicated or you don’t quite know how this stuff interacts or where’s the next step for this patient? That’s why we have this long term community.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:35:03 You can bring that complex case every week. We go through complex cases. We’ll be doing it later this afternoon. And I think that that’s a really safe way for practitioners who are like, Okay. I just need to not feel like I have imposter syndrome. And also, you just don’t have to wing it anymore. Like, there’s a whole community here, people with more experience who are working from an interdisciplinary perspective. And, you know, a lot of what we’ve talked about in our community recently is building those bridges among the practitioners in your particular town location, or even among practitioners who specialize. Like, let’s say your practice is digital and you work with women in perimenopause that are really struggling with sleep issues, like who are all the resources that work digitally or via telehealth. So I really think that you’re such a shining example of what’s possible, because you’ve taken your own experience and then learned like you just stay open to support and to learning. So if we think about five years ago, you were totally burnt out.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:36:20 Yes.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:36:21 Working 100 hours a week because they didn’t have to pay you more. They just could just work you more, which is crazy. Let’s keep these people, because I can just work them as much without paying them in the middle of a dangerous pandemic, while she has babies and daycare, you know, and five years later, you have your own practice and you’re really a leader in your community. How does that feel?

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:36:46 So I think in some ways, I think until probably about a year ago, but even more in the last six months, I always felt I was the learner, the learner, the learner, the learner. I’m never going to know enough. I’m going to keep going, keep going, keep going. I’m not a researcher. I will look at an article and look at the abstract I rely on my other Professionals for that purpose. So continuing the education. But about a year ago and then more recently, about six months ago, I realized that I’m always the learner, but I really need to take the reins back and provide the education for my other team members, whether it’s my staff here, future staff providing my brain in a systematic place, but also reaching out to those other professionals and saying, hey, this is what I know about this topic, teach me what you know and let’s work together to get these patients where they need to go.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:37:55 And so I feel like it’s still a humbling experience. The reality of I still have these really big dreams and goals from a professional standpoint, and I never feel like I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I hit the mark. But knowing that in some way or capacity, I’ve definitely made an impact on patients lives. And I hope from a professional standpoint, I can do that for other professionals as well. I think we each bring to the table something a little bit different, and I really I admire all the work that you’ve done. The vault is like my Bible. I, I watch the videos, I tell everybody I have every course I’ve ever bought, about 30 to 50% done until I sit down and finish it.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:38:34 Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:38:36 And it’s not even for the seniors. It’s literally for the education. I have a patient that has this problem now I need to learn more about it. I get a little bit of information, implement and then move on to the next. So it’s humbling.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:38:49 I hope people see that it. If you’re a new grad or you’re your new grad PT or you’re contemplating the courses, it is definitely something that’s worth it. It brings an entire perspective to your current clinical state to a different level. But if you’re not in health care at all, it can literally bridge the gap between you just having the symptoms and you providing the education outside. So it really, you know, is the whole wide range of things. I feel like every part, in my opinion, should go through your coaching program, period, whether you have a small mini course on truly coaching. But the act of listening, getting to the patient’s root cause is truly been the most powerful thing, the act of listening. So I’m trying to train my staff on its active listening because that in and of itself is super powerful. The education will come knowing all the things will come, but being one step ahead is going to be all you need to be. You don’t have to know everything before you, quote unquote, start your own business, or start seeing those clients or asking the patient, hey, I went to this course or I learned this.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:40:01 Can I try it? Most people are willing to try anything because I am their last resort. They aren’t finding me the first time they’ve been having symptoms for 12, 15, 30 years. Hopefully less than that. But the reality is not really.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:40:21 Yeah. And even if you’re the first person they see, which like you said, is very rare because usually people do kind of start with a primary care provider or something like that. There’s always a piece that was missing. I think one of two things happened by the time people get to people that have done our training, they’ve either been through kind of like primary care. Maybe they’ve seen 1 or 2 specialists, but everyone was kind of like, you’re fine, you know? Or like, your labs are normal. Yeah, your labs are normal. You know, try this medicine. Oh, maybe that worked or they’ve been trying to follow influencers and just patch it together themselves. That act of just bringing someone into a safe space, whether it’s in person or digitally and active Dev listening.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:41:08 Mindful listening. Then you commit. This is one of the things we talk a lot about a lot in our community. To you as the professional commit to being there for their full healing journey. Not more than them. You’re not dragging them along, right? But you’re committed to being by their side for as long as it takes, because most of the things that we deal with from postpartum to perimenopause, through chronic illness, through menopause and beyond, like your mom, you know, she’s post-menopausal, but no one dealt with it. It’s not like it just goes away on its own. This is a commitment to your clients over time. It’s like, we’re going to work on this right now. We’re going to hit this goal, and then I’m here. And how calming is that to the nervous systems of your clients when they come in and they’re just like, oh my God, finally someone’s not going to just drop me off when it didn’t work or whatever.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:42:10 I tell people that once they’re in my world, are always in my world.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:42:14 It’s they’re up to them for the capacity that they see fit. Initially, it’s really a lot. Then it could be as needed. Even if it’s just a resource on hey, do you have somebody that I could do for X, Y and Z? And I’ve because of the coaching perspective, I’ve been able to treat people all over the United States that happen to hear about me from a wellness perspective, not necessarily a true TX perspective. And like you talk about in your coaching courses, is are they seeing a public health therapist? My actual practice here is really both. But for my patients that are not local, it’s a little bit of everything.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:42:51 And it’s collaborative with their local practitioners. And I think the more comfortable we get starting to have the skill set to release the imposter syndrome, I think actually helps us be better clinicians and coaches because we’re sort of like solid in what we can offer and how we support. And then we’re not, like, afraid of working with anyone else. Like, you know, I’m sure when I was 25 and first starting like to have called an orthopedic surgeon or the top endometriosis surgeon or someone who was like the best, you know, menopause practitioner on social media would have scared me.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:43:39 Yes, but now whatever, I’ll talk to them. They might be able to help us. They might not. We might teach them something. So I really think that commitment to being there with your clients, and it doesn’t mean you have to treat patients for 25 years, like you’re not going to be like lifers with you. But as you said, like, healing is not linear. And the whole time you’re alive, stuff can happen.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:44:12 So I think that’s where social media has really kind of helped people. Once they’re in my world, they stay in my world. So as I’m learning these new things, so like, oh, cool, let’s work on this. Kind of like even the coaching stuff that I did with you. I followed you for a very long time before I committed to the coaching program. And then even still, there’s different things that I’m following so that eventually I’ll either buy into it personally or professionally. And I think that goes along with a lot of things. So the fear factor of not jumping ship or not starting your own thing really is a limiting belief.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:44:48 And a lot of it’s I don’t feel like I know enough, which is the imposter syndrome. But I was really excited about the interview today because I told my husband I was like, this is one of the most prestigious people in my entire world of public health. And so I think when people understand the capacity that they can have and learning from the people that have come before us and then impacting the people that are coming after us, I think that’s where the full circle comes in. And that’s been the last six months of like, oh, I actually do know a lot. I need to start educating. And although I’ve been an adjunct faculty member at my old school, which is about an hour away, that’s still not enough. That’s just the basics. Once you graduate, we really got to push forward and teach these people that are just graduating that there’s more to it than what meets the eye. And I have a funny story about my first semester of PT school. So any new grads listening to this? My first semester of PT school we took our anatomy and physiology with the Pas.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:45:51 It was a just a health care graduate school, so dos Pas and public health and PT I was I was in the inaugural class of the UNT Health Science Center in Fort Worth and during the physiology and the anatomy. We all were like, why are we learning about the gut and the liver? And oh, I remember rolling my eyes and being like, this means nothing. I don’t care about this. I’m a muscle expert and oh my gosh, if I could slap myself silly. I’ve spent more hours and money learning about the liver and the gut than I have the muscles. Let me tell you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:46:31 Yes, yes, 100%. I know it’s so true because our original perspective as patients of the health care system is this doctor for this, this pizza is for this, the nutritionist for this. And that’s just not how human physiology works. So you’re 100% right. If you’re listening to this right now and you’re in a health profession, graduate school, pay attention to all the anatomy, all the physiology and be like, why do I need to know this? Who cares about the mitochondria? Yes you do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:47:08 You need to know about the mitochondria. You’re gonna. I’m 5051. And every year, I always have to remember the Krebs cycle. You have to know it. Learn it. Now, you might as well. Yeah, that is really funny, because I actually didn’t go to med school because I did not want to take biochem. All I’ve been doing since 2016 is biochemistry. So if you think you hate it right now, just lean into it. Yes.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:47:38 For sure.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:47:39 That’s so true. I actually don’t regret at all that I didn’t go to med school. Medical practice is a really wonderful and important thing. And it’s just, you know, I think it’s just not my I, my zone of genius. But. So thank you so much, Amanda, for being here. Thank you for really being a strong model example of what a really important practice is in any rural area, anywhere in the world. I just can’t stress enough how much the people in these communities need good health care, because right now and sooner and sooner, there’s going to be either very, very limited conventional health care available, or there’s going to be influencers that are shaming them.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:48:29 And neither of those things is going to get to their goals, solving their problems, the work that you are doing and how you’re learning to use those tools to advocate and expand your voice and spread your voice louder, which is really, really important. You are right now saving lives because the mental health piece is life saving. Getting people out of chronic pain is life saving. I just can’t stress enough how important your work is. So thank you.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:49:04 Thank you so much for having me today. It’s been truly one of my top tier podcasts, because it’s pretty cool to even be in the same space as you. Even whenever I go to conferences, I don’t know if you realize how prestigious people see you as, so just FYI, people do.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:49:22 Thank you. Yeah, I you know, it’s just colleagues for me. Like, I’m so glad to be a part of this community of people who are thinking expansively about how we can help other people live better. It’s that simple. So if anyone is listening to this, whether you’re a first year, you know, nutrition student or physical therapy student or nursing student or your you’ve been out in practice for 25 years.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:49:49 This community loves you and we can’t wait to support you. And we are so excited for how expansive your work can be. So if anyone’s on the fence right now, what would you say to them? Amanda.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:50:01 You just gotta jump to feed in. That’s really all there is. Because once you start any program that you offer, it will heal you and be able to realize what powerful knowledge that you have to share with others. So on the fence, just two feet in, not one foot, not a toe. Like you’re just got to jump in.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:50:26 Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dr. Amanda Thompson 00:50:28 Welcome. Thank you.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:50:33 I loved that conversation with Doctor Amanda Thompson. She is doing essential work in the rural areas of North Texas. If you are there and you need support, reach out to her. If you also feel like you have a lot of different things going on and you want some pelvic health support virtually, She is also available for that. But, you know, I hope that if you are a practitioner or you would like to become a practitioner in this world of integrative perimenopausal and menopausal health, or that intersection between postpartum and perimenopause, right? How many women all over the world are having babies in their 40s now? More and more.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:51:20 There’s so many nuggets in this conversation. I don’t even know where to focus you, but one of the nuggets I hope you’ll take away as a professional who’s kind of on the fence about what to do next. Take a moment to release your imposter syndrome a little bit, as much as you can right now, and just dream a little. What would you do if there were no limiting beliefs? One of the things we do with our students is once you come into our community to learn how to be a better women’s health professional, we start with you. What are your own limiting beliefs? And as Amanda told us in her story, being coached by her peers, you know, this might be your first experience of you getting coached when you join our programs, because we want you to have that experience of what your clients and patients will be going through. Like, What are my own limiting beliefs about how I can heal what I can do? Start with yourself, and the first step of that is to just dream a little.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:52:24 What do you want? So spend 15 minutes this week, just like sitting quietly. Amanda says she does that ten minutes in the morning, ten minutes in the evening, every day. Just a little quiet time.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:52:37 What do you want? What are your dreams? What would you do if there were no limits? Because, as Amanda showed us, there aren’t any limits.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:52:49 What you want is possible. Where? She was less than five years ago. And where she is now? Light years. Light years. And it’s just because she made the decision to jump into a program that held her accountable and gave her the tools and support to make huge strides in her career. And that’s possible for you to take 15 minutes and dream, and I’ll see you next week.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:53:20 Thank you so much for joining me today for this episode of the Integrative Women’s Health Podcast. Please share this episode with a colleague and if you loved it, hit that subscribe or follow button on your favorite podcast streaming service so that we can do even more to make this podcast better for you and your clients.

Dr. Jessica Drummond 00:53:45 Let’s innovate and integrate in the world of women’s health.