Shownotes
Burnout rarely announces itself. It shows up as brain fog, chronic stress, unexplained health issues, and a sense that you are doing everything right but still falling apart. Michelle Niemeyer spent years powering through a high-pressure career, a difficult marriage, and nonstop responsibility before her body forced a reckoning. This conversation explores how achievement can become a coping mechanism, how chronic inflammation becomes “normal,” and why real healing often requires changing how you relate to work, time, and control. Michelle’s story offers a helpful reframe of midlife burnout: not as collapse, but as an opportunity to build a life that finally fits.
Guest Bio
Michelle Niemeyer is a speaker, coach and former attorney who teaches professionals how to bend time so they can stay sharp, productive and profitable – without burning out. After finding her way to burnout and back in her own high-performing legal career, Michelle created The Art of Bending Time, a framework that helps people connect the dots across work, life, and purpose to magnetize success and reclaim their joy. She helps businesses retain top talent, boost development, and keep their people energized and engaged – all while making the magic happen.
Turning 40 and realizing burnout was the warning, not the problem
From the outside, Michelle Niemeyer looked like the picture of success. She was a high-achieving attorney, deeply involved in her community, and constantly in motion. Underneath that polished exterior, she was exhausted, chronically stressed, and living in a body that was fighting itself. In her mid-30s and early 40s, Michelle’s drive to achieve, her hyper-independence, and years of pushing through discomfort collided with burnout and a serious autoimmune diagnosis. What followed was not just a health reckoning, but a complete transformation in how she relates to work, relationships, time, and herself.
Episode Highlights:
- How Michelle’s childhood conditioning around achievement and responsibility shaped her relentless work ethic.
- What it looks like when burnout shows up as brain fog, detachment, and physical symptoms long before we recognize it as burnout.
- The moment her body forced her to pay attention, and how an autoimmune diagnosis changed everything.
- How lifestyle changes, stress reduction, and radical self-awareness helped Michelle reverse disease progression.
- The surprising emotional and personality shift that came with learning to slow down and ask for help.
- Why burnout is often less about time management and more about alignment.
Michelle’s story is a reminder that midlife transitions often arrive disguised as health crises, exhaustion, or emotional unraveling. For her, healing was not just about diet or medication, it was about dismantling a lifetime of hyper-independence, redefining success, and reconnecting with what actually brings energy and joy. Her transformation highlights a truth many listeners will recognize: when you stop living in constant survival mode, your body and your life respond in ways that can feel almost miraculous.
If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, follow, and share The Big Four Oh Podcast. It helps more people find these stories and reminds others in the middle of their own transition that they are not alone.
Guest Resources
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Download Stephanie’s guide to the Ick to diagnose whether you or someone you love is suffering from this insidious midlife malaise. www.thebigfouroh.com/ick
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Transcripts
Stephanie: Hi Michelle. Welcome to the show.
Michelle: Hi, it's so good to finally see you.
Stephanie: I know it's great to have you. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm really looking forward to digging into your story because you and I share,a fun word in the world called autoimmune, which is always a mystery and, a journey and oi.
Michelle: I consider it my greatest gift.
Stephanie: Oh, lucky you. I haven't gotten there yet.
Michelle: It took me 10 years. It's been 10 years, but I consider it my greatest gift.
Stephanie: That's funny 'cause I am at eight now, so maybe in the next two I'll, I'll, but, but really it's about, I, I can see where it would be a gift if you finally found the root cause and the underlying pieces and you could manage it successfully and consistently. I've done a lot to manage it successfully, but it will throw me for loops on things that I can't even figure out. It's well, I'm still on the restricted diet. I'm still only eating the things I always eat. What could it have been yesterday that today I'm non-functional? So, so I, but I can see how you would get there for it, for it being a gift because it has, changed how I live my life,as it does.
Michelle: I'll explain it. It's from a lot of reasons
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle: I see it as a gift.
Stephanie: Yeah. Let's go back to the beginning. Tell me a little bit about the forces that shaped you, and how you became the person you were when our story begins in your mid thirties.
Michelle: Okay, so the forces that shaped me. I probably on the outside I looked like your average suburban white girl.Married parents, they're still married. My dad worked for General Electric for a while and then we moved and he had some job changes, but basically, lived in suburbs and went to the public high school in that suburb and, National Merit scholar, straight A student, et cetera.
And I guess this force that made me that kid was probably the biggest forming factor, which was that I felt that I needed to achieve to get attention from my mother.And because of that, I lived my life in a way that always put achievement and accomplishment first.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: I think quite candidly, my mom was not a very happy mother, and she conveyed through her actions, if not her, she didn't say these things,
Stephanie: clear,that she felt trapped in being a suburban housewife with little kids, and not having finished college, and not having done the career thing. And so from the time I was very, very young, my mom was one of those, seventies moms who talked about you can do anything you want and you can have a great career, and you can do all the things I haven't gotten to do, which of course made me feel like she couldn't do those things and she was miserable because we existed.
Yeah.
Michelle: But I ended up, basically, my currency in my family was to get straight A's, to be on the swim team, to do all the things that equate to suburban school kids success.
Stephanie: And let me jump in though. It, it, it also became, I'm guessing, and tell me if I'm wrong, it also became, you can do all the things that I couldn't do. It almost became a prescription of you had to.
Michelle: Yes, and, and also, I became extremely hyper independent.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: So I, post high school into college, left home, moved away. My parents live in Indiana. I moved to Boston, worked for a couple years as a headhunter and then went to law school in Boston, and then became a lawyer. And ultimately moved to DC for five years in my first law job, and then ended up here in Miami. And in every relationship and in every job situation, et cetera, felt I had to be the one who took on the brunt of the work, who was the leader, who was the one pulling all-nighters when something had to get done, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it really became a very busy life. And at the same time as that was going on, I married somebody who was really emotionally difficult, let's put it that way.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: And I continued to stay in that relationship for so long. I mean, I literally had a marriage counselor say to me, I've never met somebody who stayed in the kind of circumstance you were in, didn't leave. Like I stayed because I felt obligated to stay married because of course that was another of those, marriage is hard work you're supposed to work hard, and of course I was like tuned to work hard,
Stephanie: right.
Michelle: to stay and do the right thing.
Stephanie: Michelle, are you the oldest daughter as well? Are you the oldest child? because I'm listening to you going check, check, check.
Michelle: I am the oldest child in my family and the oldest grandchild in my mom's side of the family. And they were the ones that we spent the most time with.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And thank God for me, I had grandparents who adored me. And I was not just the oldest, but by, a lot of standards, I hate to say it out loud, it's not nice but my cousins all resented me for it, so I guess I could say it, the favored grandchild.And that gave me a place that I could be me and be loved for that.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: So I, I did get like that, right?But they weren't obviously there all the time. And so moving forward, hitting that point in my thirties, I'm married to this very difficult person. I'm a partner in a law firm. I have a partner who's very hard to work with. I walked away from that business, literally walked away with $30,000 and two contingency fee clients, which as a lawyer is like financial suicide. But, I, I had to. I started my own practice and I dug in even deeper on working really hard and, and, added to the work, you know, just the work focus, community involvement, which was originally intended to be a way to meet people, to bring in business to my law firm, but ultimately also became my escape from my marriage.
I was working, I was on committees. I was on the chamber board. I was at events all the time. I was running this local group that was working with the city on a, basically like a master planning process.So it became the kind of thing where I'd go to work all day, and then I'd leave work, and then I'd maybe I'd go home and have some dinner, maybe I wouldn't, and then I'd be gone till nine, 10 o'clock at night.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: Then my ex and I would take our boat out and be gone for the whole weekend. But while I was there during the week, I was never, I was literally never home. I was working all the time.
Stephanie: And:Michelle: Yeah, there was mold on the boat. I tested it at one point, and that was part of the reason ultimately I moved off the boat.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: But we had, there was a place where there was a leak through the screws for a cleat. And I started noticing my clothes got wet in the back of the closet and I was like, where's that coming from? And I found that. And there was mold in that wall, like behind all the soft goods kind of stuff.Anyway, long story short, I did that. And it was during the time I was living on the boat, I had had a really burned out period in my law practice. I hadn't realized it as burned out at the time. I just, I was like, felt like I was just doing everything for everyone. I disengaged in a big way, didn't respond to a lot of my friend's phone calls for a while. I was just like detached. And that really detached lasted for a while, and then I realized I need to change something. And I was also, at the same time, and I didn't connect the dots. This was actually a little earlier. I had some really weird brain foggy stuff going on.I had received a phone call one day and I had a really good note taking system in my computer. So normally if a phone call came in, lawyers bill their time. So I would open up a phone note. I would click the timer. I'd take notes on the call. I'd put the information into a case file or whatever. And that was all set up and I was using it very consistently. This man calls one one day, and it's clear from the context of what he's saying, that we h ad spoken
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: and that he was following up on some things. He told me he'd get information about things and whatever. I had no memory of talking to him. None. Like zero. Like it never happened. And I got on my computer and I look, and sure enough, not only had I spoken to him, I'd spoken to him for almost an hour and I had five pages of notes.
Stephanie: And this was all just gone from your brain.
Michelle: Gone. Had no idea. And, and. And so that was a point where I was like, whoa. Like I was scared, right? I'm thinking, am I getting early Alzheimer's? Do I have something like really wrong with me?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Of course, do I go to the doctor? Oh, hell no. I knew that stress could cause that kind of thing, and I knew that one way I could deal with stress was to start running again. So I started exercising.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: Eating better. And I lost some weight. And I felt better. And it went away. And that would happen. Like I'd see these weird things, and then I'd change my diet, I'd exercise, I'd feel better.
And then in:Stephanie: right,
Michelle: gallstones, lifestyle disease. I can deal with that. I'm just gonna change how I eat.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: And at that point, I went on a Beachbody program and I lost 35 pounds. Within that following year, I was at my high school weight. I was in the best shape I've been in my entire life. I felt amazing. Everything's cool. The pain went away, never came back. So I'm like, okay, cool. Everything's good. And the reason they had diagnosed gallstones, they, they did an ultrasound and didn't see anything, but they had looked at liver enzymes and said, these liver enzymes are really off. And it's consistent with gallstones.
What they didn't tell me at that time was it's also consistent with an autoimmune condition called PBC.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: And so a year later, I go to my doctor for a UTI and he says, you know, haven't had blood testing done for a while. Why don't we run, a typical blood panel? And I get a phone call, this was like on a Friday. He calls me on Monday and he says, I got your blood test results. Can you come in to talk to me about them? And I'm like,
Stephanie: All right. That's never a good thing.
Michelle: Like, that's like, am I dying?
Stephanie: Yeah, that's never a good thing because usually they'll just give 'em to you right there on the phone. You're fine.
Michelle: Yeah, like who does this? So I, I go there and I have a conversation with my doctor and he says, well, because you listed me as your primary, I got the records from the hospital visit. I went to look at these, this file, I noticed they put this record in your file. I hadn't even, apparently he wasn't even aware of it except that was there.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: And he said, I'm, I'm concerned because these elevated liver enzymes that were in your hospital visit notes are now twice as high as they were a year ago. And, they were high then. Now they're really high.
Stephanie: The wrong direction. Yeah.
Michelle: We need to get you to see a gastroenterologist, find out what's going on. So I go to see somebody. That was ultimately what led me to a hepatologist and knowing what was wrong and the whole thing.
And, separately from that, and having nothing to do with a autoimmunity really, I have a friend here in Miami who is a naturopath and who has cured a lot of cancer with nutrition. He used to practice in California and he's done some work with people with autoimmunity, and so I knew that there were a lot of things you could do with lifestyle. And I also knew that the doctors basically tell you there's no cure for this, and we hope that you can get it into remission with the medications. However, if there's damage, it's done.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: But let's hope we can get you moving forward to be, in remission.
Stephanie: But you know what I ultimately did, I, I did a raw foods diet for probably eight or 10 months. And then I did the Amy Meyers Autoimmune Protocol Diet,
Michelle: mm-hmm. Which has a lot of elimination aspect to it, and discovered I am really, really allergic to gluten. And I took the drug that they have, which is not steroids. It's, it's actually, it's called Ursodiol. And what I learned is it, it acts like draino in your bile ducts.
Stephanie: Ooh.
Michelle: So your liver creates cholesterol. And if you have this disease I have, your bile ducts get kind of misshapen. And the cholesterol clogs them, then the bile gets stuck in your liver and it's highly caustic. So then it causes liver damage and you end up with cirrhosis. The long term, like the end stages of the diseases, you end up with cirrhosis and you'll either die or need a transplant.
So I started doing all these things. I mean, lots of things, right? I did the exercise, I changed my diet, I. I went to a health coaching school for almost a year to learn about holistic health, and to learn about stress reduction, and habit formation, and all those things, because I wanted to be able to help myself. And, there was a point after that was all done and I changed my lifestyle, and the drug was working. And, lucky for me, I have learned it is actually possible to reverse the damage. I've gone from stage two to stage zero of this disease with what I've done. But there's also, I, I just realized like my entire demeanor had changed.Where before I was sort of at a, like level 10 anxiety, stress, constantly thinking about the work stuff. Constantly talking about the stress or the conflict or the. I went from being that person to someone that, now I have a really close friend who literally refers to me as his calm. Like I am, like the calm in the storm because I've changed how everything is. And that's why I say it's like my greatest gift.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Because it, it allowed me to really go from a point where I was, always stressed out, chronically inflamed. My ex and I used to buy giant bottles of Advil, like those big, like
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: pill bottles.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: I would be popping Advil like candy every day. And I had migraine headaches all the time. And I had skin problems, and I, all these things. And nobody ever said to me, how much water do you drink?
Stephanie: right. What are you eating or how are you relaxing?
Nothing. Yeah.
Michelle: So, through all of this, I really learned a lot that has allowed me not just to change my lifestyle in a way that has helped with this disease, but that has changed my entire mindset, my entire way of responding to things.
Stephanie: Mm.
Michelle: I don't respond to things the way I used to at all.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: I used to take things very personally. I'd blame myself, and now I'm like, okay.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: It's, it's, if somebody is upset about something, I can deal with it very easily. Where before I would personalize it, and I'd ruminate about it, and I'd be very stressed about it, and uncomfortable about how to deal with it.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: All of that, I think really has come from these many different things that I've done over time that have helped with this.
Stephanie: And if you look backwards, there's not only your conditioning, and the the habits and patterns you picked up from home, of achievement and always going, and never stopping. Relaxing is bad, all of those things.
Michelle: Mm-hmm.
Stephanie: That, but then there's also your body, which ison attack all the time. SoI understand what you're saying because I, I've experienced a lot of the same thing of, of going from that really high strung, absolute type A, like, climb every mountain, attack every challenge, never say never. You know,
Michelle: Right,
And feel like everything's your responsibility.
Stephanie: Yes.
Michelle: If other people can't do it as well as you think you can do it, then you have to do it.
Stephanie: You better just do it.
Michelle: You know, all of that that, and you, you can't.
One of the things I've learned that I think, probably one of the biggest things that was huge for me was understanding that it's okay to ask for help.
Stephanie: Hmm.
Michelle: Because I was expected, when I grew up, I really, whether it was stated to me or it's something I picked up, 'cause you know how kids are, they pick these things up.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Then it's a belief. And the belief, it could be completely invalid and never what your parents intended for you to think.
Stephanie: Right, right.
Michelle: But, it's what happened.
So I, as a little kid, like I said, I became very, very hyper independent, even as a really little kid. As I got older, it just got worse. Then somebody said something to me once, and I thought it was a really awesome way of expressing this, that it, it was very meaningful to me, which was that when someone is offering you help, they're offering to connect with you.
Stephanie: Yeah,
Michelle: They want to be your friend. They want to have a relationship that's give and take.
Stephanie: It's a gift.
Michelle: When you reject that, you're rejecting them. And you're rejecting their offer of friendship, connection, and you're isolating yourself.
Stephanie: And, and yet in your brain, you are seeing help as weakness.
Michelle: Yes. And I don't wanna impose on people.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: Right? You, you know,
Stephanie: I do.
Michelle: Sometimes you're taught that, or you pick up, like I said, that if you ask for help, you're imposing on someone else.
Stephanie: Yep.
Michelle: And therefore you shouldn't do that. You're supposed to take care of everything yourself and be the strong one and whatever. One of the things that came out of all of this is I do something where I, I teach people about time.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And the reason I do that is be, it's not because it's about time. It kind of is. So, the concept I have is thatwhen you know how to live your life in a way where you're at your best, you have great energy, you have focus, you're not fatigued, you're connected with people and able to generate those relationships where there's a give and take, you get more out of every minute of the time you're spending doing things.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And you're gonna get a lot more done in a lot less time.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And you're gonna have the opportunity to have joy in your day everywhere you go. I looked one day and I said, when I was, I, I was looking back at that, before I realized I was burned out, me.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: and I said, what did I think was going on then? What was in my head? Why did, because I didn't know I was burned out.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: And I realized that the first thing I ever did to buy a course to teach myself a professional skill was a time management program. And it was because when I was at the worst of my burnout phase and I was spinning, my wheels not getting as much done, I thought I had a time management issue.I learned a couple things in that time management program that were helpful, but most of what I learned was not about time management at all. It was about how to live your life in a way that you get the best time in the time you're spending.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of it too is about alignment.
Michelle: Yeah.
Stephanie: When you are in that life that doesn't quite fit, but you've built it and it's yours and you've worked really hard, and so you wanna continue to work really hard, everything is hard work. And hard work feels like hard work. It feels like it takes longer 'cause it's hard.
Michelle: And sometimes it does take longer, and this is, I mean, there's science behind this.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Michelle: If, for instance, one of the things I talk to people about is, is how to avoid what I refer to as time sucks. I have a character that I use that's Time Suck Ninja.
And. my goal for my clients is that they all become a Time Suck Ninja. And when you're a Time Suck Ninja, you can cut out the time sucks, and you can protect yourself. And, one of the things that I read that really struck me was that if you are in a flow state activity, which a lot of us who have kind of intellectual capital types of professions like doctors, lawyers, accountants, et cetera, right? You need to be in flow state to be able to focus on things, and to think things through, and to write and all that stuff.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: If you're interrupted, you lose your flow state for about 15 minutes. One interruption, one text, one email pops into your screen and takes your focus away from that, you're literally just destroying the next 15 minutes of, productivity. You have to get to get back to that state, it takes about 15 minutes.
Stephanie: Well, and too though, again, when you're not in alignment with the life that suits you and fits you best,
Michelle: yes.
Stephanie: you're much more likely to take that interruption as an eject button, and, and not go back. Or, or again, it's hard work to go back, but what you're talking about with flow state isreally much easier to find and to achieve when you are in alignment with what it is you are meant to do, you're best suited to do, your talents are best used for. And yeah. And so just thinking about the difference of, in, in your life when, when things were hard and when things were easy, sometimes we discount the things that are easy because they're quote unquote, too easy. They're not work. And yet,
Michelle: Sometimes they're easy because they're what's natural for you and what flows best
Stephanie: right.
just what you enjoy and you can, Sustain. Yeah.
Michelle:
The other thing that I discovered was in the burnout place, you stop seeing what I call the sparks that light you up. Whatever our career is, most of us didn't just randomly end up in some job. Some people do. A lot of us have chosen to go into a particular kind of career because there was something we liked about it.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: We, we love to read. We love to write. We love numbers. We love science. Whatever it is, there's
Stephanie: Yep.
Michelle: something about that, that we've chosen, that we were excited about. And when we started, we probably felt pretty good about it, and we enjoyed it. You hit a point, and I think there's two things that happen to people. One of them is that they get promoted beyond the fun part. So for some people it's like they love the job until they hit the point where now they're the manager and they're spending more time dealing with warring factions of people than they are doing the actual work that they enjoyed. And some of it is that you get burned out, and then you literally lose your capacity engage and enjoy and see that positive side, and see that fun part.
That's huge. So one thing that I work, when I work with people, I always help them with that first. And it's about finding clarity in who you are, like you said in alignment. Who are you, what lights you up, and how do you get these, I call it sparks of joy, like it might be something really little. It might be that you accomplish something that you got to see a finished product and it's pretty cool. You hit send. It made you feel good. You, saw the look on somebody's face when they got it, when you talk to them about something. There's so many things. Like I love to teach people, and when I teach people and I see that aha moment, that to me is like one of the most wonderful things that I could do,
Stephanie: Sure.
Michelle: and it's a through line. What we find is that we have through lines in our lives, it doesn't matter what job you're doing. I could be working in a car wash and I could teach people.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.
Michelle: Or I could be working as a lawyer or as a coach, or in all kinds of different capacities. And one thing I realized when I was looking at these things and kind of trying to figure it all out was that, in every job I've ever had, I've mentored people and I've taught people. It's been part of what I've done. And it, it's part of who I am. And I think, for me that's, that's something that lights me up. For other people, it's different things. So we work on finding that.
Stephanie: Well I think the other thing too is, going back to your story specifically,there are clues along the way, and a lot of times when we're in those years of hard work, and building a career, and building a life, we're so focused on the things that we think we're supposed to achieve or that we think we're supposed to be doing, that we miss some of the more subtle or nuanced signs.
Some of the, the, the, the, lower volume signs until we've pushed so far that our body cries uncle and says, you're done. I, I Now I need your attention now. You've not been listening. And I think that really was a lot of your story, right? You, you worked so hard and you overworked as a coping mechanism.
Michelle: Yeah, for sure, for sure.
Stephanie: Um,
Michelle: One of the things I realized, and I'm sure, you know if you have people on in your audience, who are people who've gone through rough family circumstances, and they are overachievers, I know one thing I ran into that was really big that I realized, I was like, wow, I had no idea about this, was that my achievement professionally was what held, it's what held me together while I was having this very difficult home life. When I left my ex and I was free of that, I fell apart for a while.
Stephanie: Right,
Michelle: I fell apart. That was when the burnout hit bottom.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: It wasn't until then, and I think it was because that was a point where I recognized, now it's safe for me to fall apart. Now it's okay for me to let go, and just heal. And it took a while.
Stephanie: There's that, and then there's also the, the concept of I'm thinking of the way the Romans used to build those arched bridges with just stones and, no, connecting things, no screws, things like that. And, and once you take a piece out, you, you've been,
Michelle: The whole thing falls down.
Stephanie: You've been holding yourself together with the, with that effort and with that trying and, and, and once you, yeah, once you take that piece out, it's not only is it safe to kind of fall apart. Now the structure that you've built doesn't have, it's not shored up from every direction. So,
Michelle: Right.
Stephanie: for a lot of people, and, and I was one of them, you move one piece and it's like, okay, well now I'm outta that bad relationship. Well now I'm, being, escorted to the front door of my job. And, now my friends are,my friends are turning their backs on me.
And it's it dominoes and it, I just spoke to someone,this afternoon who will, who will be joining the podcast and, it was the same thing for her. It was, it was like dominoes. It was like bad thing after bad thing after bad thing after bad thing until, she was calling it rock bottom.
And, you know, you're calling it burnout. And, and those things can, can mean the same thing. It can mean different things, right? But, but your body finally cried uncle.
But, but also you said that had you been a little bit more attentive from a bigger picture perspective, you would've known that, you had some physical stuff that was kind of funky along the way that you just thought, ah, that must be normal.
Michelle: Right,
Stephanie: You had grandparents who also were dealing with what today we would call autoimmune issues.
Michelle: Exactly and, and I have extensive family history. So on my dad's side of the family, my grandmother had lupus. Her daughter, my aunt had lupus and I believe Raynaud's. She had like three different kinds of autoimmune conditions.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Her daughter has lupus. So in that side of the family, there are all these people with lupus. And on my mom's side of the family, there's a lot of depression and that like mental health stuff. And there's also gout. A lot of the women in the family have had issues with fibroids and stuff like that.My grandmother had thyroid issues and had to take Synthroid, so I'm sure like she may have had Hashimoto's. They weren't calling it that then. She probably started taking that in the seventies. So there's a lot of autoimmunity. Clearly there are genes that can be turned on in me.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And so, the philosophy that I think makes sense that medical realm is, the, the epigenetics model of what happens with these things. We have these genes. Some people don't have any of these genes and they're never gonna get an autoimmune disease. Lots of people do, and they'll only get it if the gene gets turned on.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: How does the gene get turned on? Too much stress. Environmental things. Things in your diet, whatever it is for you.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: People will say to me like, what, what did you do?
The first time that I had, had a fibro scan, which is this ultrasound they do for the liver thing I have. And it's used to measure the, the rigidity of your liver tissue to see if there's fibrosis or cirrhosis. It's how they stage the disease.
So the first time I had that, my score was 8.2, and it was stage two. And a year later, it had gone down like one and a half points. And the woman who did the scan looks at the machine and she looks at me. She did it again to see if she'd gotten a good reading. And then she just looks at me and she says, what are you doing?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Because they don't see that very often.
Stephanie: As far as, as far as she was concerned, that wasn't possible.
Michelle: Right. It's funny because I, after two or three experiences like that where each year it, it got better, I had a conversation with my doctor, and it wasn't her who said this isn't possible, it was actually her predecessor. I said, you know, when I was diagnosed, I was told that if there was damage that it wouldn't improve and that the best I could hope for was to keep it the same. And she said, honestly, she said, mostly we do tell people that, and we tell them that because virtually no one does what you've done. It's really hard for people to make these major life changes. And I'm like, it wasn't that hard for me. I was scared I was gonna die,
Stephanie: I, yeah, I agree with you.
Michelle: I'm saying? I mean, I was all, I was, I was right down that rabbit hole learning all the stuff.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And changing a lot because I was like, okay, I gotta figure this out.
Stephanie: Yeah, agree with you because people say to me, and I, have followed that, autoimmune protocol diet for probably six or seven years now, and that first year I was on the strict elimination phase.
Michelle: And I've added things along the way, but now I actually have a much better sense of what I'm reactive to and not reactive to because you're not just always in the reaction state, which is what I probably lived the, my life before I was, 40 in.
Stephanie: But people say to me, yeah,
Michelle: Chronic inflammation was your normal and you didn't know any different, so that's just what it was.
Stephanie: Yeah. And people say to me, you know, oh God, how can you, how can you eat? Like, what, what, what can you eat? And, it's just normal for me now. And if I were not doing this, I wouldn't be as stable or as steady as I am. And even though I haven't yet found the root cause and the, the thing that's underneath everything. It's like these are variables that I can choose to take off the table so that I'm not making myself worse on a regular basis.
Michelle: To me it's like not eating gluten is a no-brainer. I know. It makes me sick.
And the funny thing for me with that was that until I did an elimination diet, I had no symptoms that were ones that you would think meant anything. So, and I learned later that my, my doctor told me 40% of the people who have what I have also have celiac disease.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: Now, I've never tested positive for celiac, but they test for an antibody, and as far as I know, they've never done a test when I wasn't already off gluten.
Stephanie: Right, right. And it's not worth eating the gluten to get the test.
Michelle: Exactly. And you
Stephanie: Same here.
Michelle: told me? She said, you, you'd have to eat gluten for two months to get enough antibody for us to know that you had celiac. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing that. Like
Stephanie: Imagine how sick you would be for two months just to prove that you do or don't have the thing that you know that makes you sick.
Michelle: I would probably lose the immediate, like the extreme, like now I get like bad intestinal cramping
Stephanie: Yep. Yep.
Michelle: and all that. That never ever happened in the past before I knew I had this.
Stephanie: Right.
Michelle: But I'm guessing if I started eating gluten, that would happen.
Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.It's so interesting these stories of, of uncovering mysteries because it not only was about your health, which it was centrally about your health, but it also came with, I'm gonna describe it as a personality change, right? Your, your whole way of approaching life has changed.
Michelle: In a way. And, and the funniest part of it is for me, my life has happened in many different places.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: So I'm not somebody who's lived in the same place my whole life and people know me from when I was a child and that kind of thing where I am now. People who knew me and like high school and college see me and they're like, you haven't changed since high school. Like they remember the person I was back then really is a lot more like the person I am now.
Interesting. What happened with me, I think was like law school and working as a lawyer and the experience of this troublesome marriage and things like that had a big impact on my personality and my level of stress and that sort of thing.
Stephanie: Mm-hmm.
Michelle: People who met me when I was a stressed out lawyer who was on the brink of this, wouldn't recognize me today. In a sense that they're what are you on? Because I wanna be like that, right? They're like, they see you're so calm.
Stephanie: Yeah,
Michelle: Like your whole demeanor is different
Stephanie: yeah. There's a softness now.
Michelle: And that's something people notice
Stephanie: Yep.
Michelle: who met me when I moved here, for instance. I live in Miami and I moved to Miami as a lawyer. I'd been practicing like five years when I came here. So anybody who knows me in Miami, who met me in those early years would know that person who was
Stephanie: Right.
high driving, always stressed, and always on, and. Yeah. Yeah,
Michelle: Very different.
Stephanie: Yeah, yeah. And so tell me about,for you life as a healthier, softer, happier, more flow full person. What is that like?
Michelle: Oh, so much better. So much better.
Stephanie: I kind of set you up for that.
Michelle: Yeah, I mean, it says, so here's the thing. Like I said in the past, if something went badly, I was very fixed mindset. I've worked very hard to learn, not to be like that. I would take things very personally. I would ruminate on them, and I wouldn't handle things well because of it.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: mean, if I would look back at things about interactions with people and stuff like that from 20 years ago, I think I would probably handle things very differently now.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: And, learning those skills was incredible. Like I said, I mean an incredible gift.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Michelle: Having that. And, and that all kind of came at the same time, like when I had the hospital event and then I did the Beachbody program. I signed up as a coach for the discount. And they provide their coaches, well now they've shut down the coach network, but before that, they had a lot of personal development type of education for their coaches. And as a lawyer, I was never exposed to that stuff.
Stephanie: Right. Not in that form.
Michelle: Not at all.
Stephanie: at all. Oh, okay.
Michelle: Not at all.
Stephanie: right.
Michelle: Zero. Like even today when you look at, like the wellness education that lawyers get, generally if you went to the A BA, or you went to your state bar association or whatever,to this day, a lot of them won't give continuing education credit unless it's a substance abuse prevention program.
Stephanie: Oh, interesting.
Michelle: So if it's not, they don't care. They're like, oh, okay. They're worried about the impression of the public information out there about lawyers committing suicide. Lawyers have a six times higher rate of suicide than the general population.
Stephanie: Wow, I didn't know that.
Michelle: They're more than twice as likely to be alcoholics or drug addicts. A lot of stuff comes with that heavy responsibility and heavy workload and I know that firms are providing more now, but there's still a stigma attached. Firms might provide the opportunity to do certain things, but most people don't take advantage of it.
Stephanie: Right, right. Oh, Michelle, it's been so lovely, hearing your story and, and I thank you for, being so generous with it and letting us behind the curtains and really seeing how this transition happened and, and, and how you survived it and, and what it looks like on the other side. I, I thank you so much for being here with me today.
Michelle: Well, thank you. It's so good to see you again.
Stephanie: Likewise.
