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Radiologist Robyn Tiger shares her journey from childhood tragedy to a career dedicated to healing and self-discovery. Robyn recounts how the loss of her father to suicide sparked her passion for understanding the human mind and led her to become a physician. She opens up about her struggles with chronic stress, burnout, and the profound insights that transformed her life and career. Robyn now empowers others with the tools to navigate their own well-being, proving that life’s greatest challenges can become opportunities for growth and service.
Robyn Tiger is a radiologist.
She discusses the KevinMD article, “Through a physician’s eyes: Living twice as long as your parent.”
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Transcript
Kevin Pho: Hi, and welcome to the show. Subscribe at KevinMD.com/podcast. Today, we welcome back Robyn Tiger. She is a radiologist and a physician coach. Today’s KevinMD article is “Through a Physician’s Eyes: Living Twice as Long as Your Parent.” Robyn, welcome back to the show.
Robyn Tiger: Thank you, Kevin. It is such a privilege, and what a great way to start the year off together.
Kevin Pho: Absolutely. So, tell us what this article is about.
Robyn Tiger: Yeah, so the inspiration for this article actually came over a year ago, on December 23, when I was on vacation with my family. I was just sitting, looking out at the water, a beautiful beach, and I started to overhear this conversation—a group of individuals who were much younger than me talking about how upset they were about getting older. They were sad and depressed about their age. They hated birthdays. It was the worst time of year for them.
It got me thinking about how common that is in my professional life, my personal life, hearing this again and again—and in my coaching clients, whether they are retired physicians, mid-career, or residents who are unhappy at turning thirty. I thought, “Why do I think differently? Why is it that birthdays are a celebration for me? Why do I get excited about them?”
I started to reflect, beginning that December, and I came to recognize that I had, at age fifty-eight, lived twice as long as my father. He suffered from manic depression and died from suicide at age twenty-nine when I was seven years old—or seven years young. That brought me to think back: “OK, let me start there. What was I like at that seven-year-old age, and how am I here now? What has gone on?””
Initially, being inquisitive, I wanted to learn more about the human mind and brain. I thought I would be a doctor so I could understand this and prevent it from happening to anyone else again—big dreams at age seven. I took the path, went to medical school, residency, fellowship, became an attending, got married, had kids, and then I realized I started developing all kinds of symptoms. People could not figure them out; physically I was not well, emotionally I was not well, and I started having my own thoughts of not wanting to be here—really scary thoughts. I also had three physician friends die from suicide. So there was my father’s suicide, my three physician colleagues, and now I was having those same kinds of thoughts. I did not want to take that road. I remember thinking, looking at my children, “I do not want this to happen to you. What happened to me, I do not want for you.”
So, I decided to look outside the box of traditional Western medicine because it really was not helping me. I was taking lots of medications, going to therapy, and I was not getting better. I wanted to feel better. I found tools to help relieve my stress—tools related to lifestyle medicine, about food and mood, what we eat actually affecting our emotions, how we move our bodies, getting sleep, connecting with others, and so on. I totally turned my life around. I had never felt happier, healthier, or more vital. That is when I pivoted my career in medicine to help other physicians feel the same.
Kevin Pho: I definitely want to talk about those tools in a bit, but before we do, take us through the mindset you were in during those dark times, when you were reflecting on your father’s death by suicide and your physician colleagues’ suicides. What exactly were you feeling?
Robyn Tiger: As a child, I felt at fault or to blame, like if I had been a good girl, this would not have happened. There was this sense of “enoughness,” of not being good enough, not being loved enough. That feeling carried with me into adulthood. In my own darkest thoughts, I was in so much pain—physically and mentally—that it would have felt easier not to wake up and experience it all over again. I just felt so distraught, so depressed, so sad, and I also felt that same loss of worth and belonging.
Kevin Pho: You mentioned you were on multiple medications, you went through traditional Western treatments that were not as effective for you. Could you tell us more about what you went through?
Robyn Tiger: Yes. My symptoms seemed disconnected at first: migraine headaches with intractable vomiting, vertigo, tinnitus, tension pains in my body, burning reflux, inability to digest food, poor bowel habits, inability to sleep. One really scary symptom was paresthesias in my hands and feet and on the left side of my back. My physician brain thought I had some neurologic disease. I would be in the middle of doing a breast biopsy, right there at the lesion, and my tech would say, “Dr. Tiger, you’re right there,” and I would say, “Yes, I’m just checking it out,” when really I was waiting for the paresthesias to pass.
So I saw many specialists: gastroenterologists, neurologists, a periodontist for bleeding gums—each giving me a different medication for each symptom, essentially a pill for an ill. I had an entire pile of pills. I also had a mental health care professional, who was lovely, but it was not what I needed at the time. Lab tests were negative, imaging was negative—everything was negative.
Kevin Pho: At what point did you start looking outside that Western medicine paradigm, and how did you go about doing so?
Robyn Tiger: That happened when I realized how terrifying these thoughts were, that I might be following my father’s path or the path of my three physician colleagues. I looked into my children’s eyes and thought, “This cannot happen to them.” I said, “Western medicine is amazing, but there has to be more.”
I started hearing about things like yoga, meditation, coaching, and so on. At the time, I was exercising a lot—running races—and I thought I was eating a healthy diet, though it needed tweaking. Once I started exploring what was outside our standard medical curriculum, I began feeling better. My symptoms resolved—eventually even the paresthesias and the thoughts that did not serve me about being alive all disappeared.
Kevin Pho: What were some of the specific techniques or actions you took that helped alleviate your symptoms?
Robyn Tiger: It started with understanding the stress response. Now I know from the literature that up to ninety percent of symptoms we and our patients experience come from chronic stress. Learning how to balance my autonomic nervous system—sympathetic and parasympathetic—was huge. That involved certain breathing techniques, certain ways of moving my body, and certain ways of thinking.
I also learned from lifestyle medicine how food can affect mood: eating more whole plants—fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds—helps us feel calmer, less anxious, and less depressed. Eating highly processed foods, saturated fats, and chemicals we cannot pronounce or spell only makes our stress and negative moods worse.
Exercise is another important part: getting the right amount and types of exercise each week. Then nourishing sleep—sleep is incredible medicine. On top of that, connection. Our surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, has really emphasized the power of connection. Harvard research shows connection may be the most important factor in mental health and well-being. So incorporating all these factors into my life caused an unbelievable shift. They are things we were never really taught, but they are transformative.
Kevin Pho: You are a coach now, and I am sure a lot of physicians approach you in a state of chronic stress—pretty much the norm for a physician’s professional life. Could you paint us a picture of how these physicians come to you, and how you help them with some of these techniques?
Robyn Tiger: Absolutely. Stress, as I see it, is the umbrella under which all our behaviors live. There is a bidirectionality between stress and food, stress and movement, stress and sleep, stress and connection. When physicians come to me, I like to do a brief lifestyle medicine assessment that looks at what I think of as the spokes on a wheel. All of these factors must function well if the wheel is to keep turning. So we identify which areas are strong, which are weak, and start from there.
Kevin Pho: Could you share a story—obviously without identifying details—about how these interventions helped a physician move the needle in his or her life?
Robyn Tiger: Sure. I recently worked with a physician who is a mother of three, married to another very busy physician, and her life was crumbling. She had warnings at work, patients and staff were complaining, and her marriage was on the rocks. She was prediabetic, hypertensive, had gained a lot of weight. Everything was out of balance.
We started with a bottom-up approach—body-based techniques to address stress reactivity—things like specific breathing exercises, somatic-based movement to help her interrupt and regain control of her sympathetic response. Then we layered on the top-down approach, or life coaching based in cognitive behavioral therapy, understanding how our thoughts create our feelings, which drive our actions or inactions.
She also needed to adjust her diet—cutting back on processed foods and alcohol. Once she found ways to feel better without relying on those, she improved significantly. She became a calmer mom and physician, her staff and patients noticed, and she kept her job. She reconnected with her husband and kids, who started to see her as a “cool mom” again. Her labs improved, her blood pressure normalized, she reduced her medications, and she was so much happier. It was really about making these behavior changes that led to a complete transformation.
Kevin Pho: For physicians listening who may not be able to have a formal coaching session with you, could you offer a few high-yield tips to reduce stress?
Robyn Tiger: First, know that you are not alone. Many, many others feel the same way, so it is important not to feel ashamed or isolated. Second, bring yourself into the present moment. We spend so much time worrying about the past or dreading the future, and then we are not truly here. Right now is where everything happens, but we often miss it.
A quick way to do that is to focus on your senses: notice what you feel on your skin from your clothing or the air, what you are hearing, what you are smelling or tasting, and what you are seeing. We cannot think a thought and feel a feeling at the same time, so when you tune in to your body’s sensations, you come out of your busy thinking mind and create space for calm and clarity.
Kevin Pho: We are talking to Robyn Tiger, a radiologist and physician coach. Today’s KevinMD article is “Through a Physician’s Eyes: Living Twice as Long as Your Parent.” Robyn, let us end with some take-home messages that you want to share with the KevinMD audience.
Robyn Tiger: I want to share that you do not need to wait for a “special occasion.” Do not die with your dreams still inside you. Right now is a special occasion—this moment is the time to love, to grow, to serve, and to enjoy. As Confucius says, “We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.” So I invite you to go get it.
Kevin Pho: Robyn, as always, thank you so much for sharing your perspective and insight, and thanks again for coming back on the show.
Robyn Tiger: It is an honor. Thank you, Kevin.
