Authors: Meghan Etsey, Vashti Price, Margaret Wang, LMFT – on behalf of AMWA Gender Equity Task Force
“Our Voices, Our Future” is a podcast by the Gender Equity Task Force of the American Medical Women’s Association that explores the challenges, stories, and successes of those working to advance gender equity in medicine. Through candid conversations with changemakers, advocates, and leaders, each episode dives into issues like pay gaps, leadership disparities, and inclusive workplace culture. Tune in to be inspired, informed, and empowered to take action. Full episode listening links are available below the transcription.
Meghan: Welcome to Our Voices, Our Future, a podcast where we amplify the voices driving change in equity within medicine and beyond. Brought to you by the Gender Equity Task Force, a committee of the American Medical Women’s Association. We’re here to challenge norms, break barriers, and ignite conversations that matter.
Meghan: I’m Meghan Etsey, and in each episode, we bring you candid conversations with leaders, change makers, and advocates, working to create a more inclusive and just world. No more silence, no more waiting. It’s time to get Our Voices, Our Future. Today, we’re welcoming Margaret C. Wang, LMFT. She’s a psychotherapist and Stress Management Coach. She is based in San Jose, California, specializing in anxiety and depression, woman-identifying non-binary people in the medical field, and women identifying in non-binary people of color.
To start off, can you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming a psychotherapist and stress management coach? What drew you to supporting women and non-binary individuals, especially those in medicine and communities of color?
Ms. Wang: It’s a wonderful question, and first of all, I wanna say thank you so much for having me, Megan, I really appreciate you. I would start off with, I think on a personal level, I have, a lot of friends and family members in medicine and as a result, that’s one of the reasons I feel like I can relate to your community, just because I see the day-to-day where you guys are on the front lines, you’re all like the firemen, the police department. It’s like a go-to and a non-question when you all have to be on call, whether it’s a holiday, the evening before a holiday, or on the holiday, it’s understood, taken without question. I feel like that’s very different from other professions. As a silly note, I watched one of those reality TV shows. She was paired with someone who was a fireman, and I think her, even though she had some family members in that area. She had to deal with these struggles of when her partner was going to be away, and kind of making sense of this, this balance or lack thereof. That’s one of the reasons I feel connected to the community with people working in medicine. I would say on a personal level, I started going to therapy around late high school, college, and I found that it was very important that I had the therapist I had at the time. Still, I noticed that there were some gaps when I was talking to my therapist, who identified as Caucasian, just because there were some things that I had to explain, which created some barriers in terms of being able to be myself in session. There were some things that I had to maybe protect her from, or felt like I couldn’t really talk about. So that was one of the reasons that I wanted to become a psychotherapist. It still took a while to get there, but I’m really grateful to be here as a psychotherapist on this podcast with Dr. Etsey.
Meghan: That’s awesome. I just recently started therapy myself, and my therapist is a man. He does not have any relation to people who are in medicine. So I find myself explaining medical school right now a lot, and that’s where many of my stressors are. I think that it does create those barriers. So it’s very nice to have people who know what you’re going through and can identify with you similarly, especially in therapy. That’s a very personal place to be. So that’s super awesome that you can cater to these specific niches of people who really need it. Can you tell me in your practice what some of the most common stressors you see showing up for your clients who navigate both professional and cultural expectations are?
Ms. Wang: I would say anxiety and depression. A lot of times, people come when it’s gotten quite bad, you know, people don’t come when it’s a good time, and you know, it makes sense. Why would you go to the doctor besides a checkup? Why would you see someone more regularly if there isn’t something dangerous or something you should be really concerned about? So I think a lot of this comes from this cultural understanding that emotions should be suppressed. So, whether this is Oh, you shouldn’t feel this way, you should feel grateful for this. As a result, that means you can’t have all these other emotional experiences. What I personally have dealt with and what I try to tell my clients from time to time is that sometimes you can feel grateful and hurt and angry. Because a lot of times, these emotions are less acceptable. You know, you have the ones where you don’t wanna get fired, so you can’t just go on a rampage and things that are kind of more acceptable, it’s more acceptable to be friendly and smiley people, quote unquote, appreciate that. In day-to-day living, if you do that over and over again, where is there time for those other emotions?
Meghan: That’s great. I know that many of us are raised with the idea to just constantly plan events, take emotional responsibility for not only ourselves, but others, and anticipate the needs of not only ourselves, but others, often without acknowledgement. How do these expectations uniquely impact the mental health of cisgendered women or women identifying people?
Ms. Wang: I think it’s really complicated. You know, I think there are a lot of layers I think about historically. I think around World War II, that’s when women started working, and then I would say around the 1970s and 1980s, it was more common for women to work full time.
Some freedom comes with that, and as a result, there’s this internalized expectation for us people identifying as women or cisgender women, too, to wear multiple hats all the time. Whether that be being the party planner, the scheduler, the person constantly talking to this person to schedule some kind of double date, or whatever the gathering may be. It’s tricky because it’s not something women ask for, but it’s sometimes expected. Unfortunately, there may be a lack of understanding coming from people who don’t identify as women.
Meghan: So on the flip side about that, like how do you notice the guilt that often shows up when people try to set these boundaries or say no to these things that may be expectations of us that are just set.
Ms. Wang: Great question. A lot of times, people are primed for our regular behavior. So when we push back, they’re met with this foreign response. Fortunately, like anybody, family members and close friends will start to adjust. Still, we must also let them take their time because they’re used to us acting a certain way. So it will feel kind of abrupt sometimes if we set a boundary that our close friends or family members aren’t used to us responding to.
Meghan: I think that’s great. I’ve never thought about giving others some grace in your life when you change how things are usually done. They aren’t expecting this either, as it may be hard for you to set the boundary and say no. It’s also hard for them to get used to the change in their world. I think that’s a great perspective. I’ve definitely never heard of it that way. I know especially here, just continuing on with these expectations and saying no, and our reasons as to why there’s a constant push to kind of justify our opinions to overexplain ourselves and systems, and prioritize maybe cisgender male voices a lot in the world. How does it show up in your clients, and how do you advise them to deal with this?
Ms. Wang: I think it’s, it’s, it’s tricky because I think there’s no solution that fits all. That’s the beauty of it, and that’s the hardship, right? We all want some magical bullet that cures it, but really, it’s figuring out what works for you and adjusting. It’s also kind of like different seasons in your life. So maybe if you’re in a busier state, you might have to do things one way, but let’s say that there’s more space and grace in another period. That’s where you can, you know, extend a little bit more, whether this has to do with figuring out. Do your personality traits play a role in this? Are you a very extroverted or introverted, or somewhere along the spectrum? A lot of us are, so how do we get fed in a way that makes us feel good and re-energized? It can be one of those things that’s kind of like one step forward, ten steps back. It can kind of feel like that. And it’s kind of like this dance. You figure out, okay, this works for now, and then we have to readjust.
Meghan: I think that’s hard. I think that we really like consistency and forward progress, especially those of us in the medical field, right? We’re very. I find a lot of us are very Type A. We want to see this progress, and sometimes it’s hard to take a step forward and then fall back, and those little inching steps. I think that. It’s very difficult, especially for women in medicine. You definitely work with a population that I feel like is a lot you probably talk about, and that’s hard to get these people to accept. When somebody looks at me and says, You know what, it’s okay to make backward progress a little sometimes. I’m not very accepting of that, you know that’s hard. We live in a culture where self-care is often sold to us as a product rather than a process of inner reflection. How do you help people reconnect with more of these authentic forms of caring for themselves?
Ms. Wang: You know I’m gonna bring up a loaded topic, but I feel like we need to understand the context. So there’s this really cool book by Trisha Hersey called “Rest is Resistance”. I like how she brings up some heavy stuff around how consumerism, capitalism, and white supremacy are linked together. As a result, it is difficult for us, as people of color, as people in general, to feel like it’s okay to rest, with the background of African American people being used as slaves, as objects. Then I think even now to this day, when you think about black and brown people being put in jail and prison and used as labor. So we have to take this context to understand how we can approach self-care as something beyond just your spa day, just beyond getting your nails done. Can we think about it as something that you’re healing your past ancestors who didn’t get the needs they needed to have been met? How can we talk to ourselves in ways we haven’t been able to talk to ourselves in the past? I think, you know, bringing it back to the discussion around beating ourselves up for progress, especially if you’re coming from this type A mindset. Can you be gentle with yourself and say, Hey, I don’t have to blame myself. I don’t have to come down on myself with a big hammer because I went backward. You know what? It really sucks to be going backwards, but here we are and let’s kind of hang out here and kind of be with it, even though it’s really uncomfortable.
Meghan: So, for any listeners who are navigating these layered experiences, whether in medicine, academia, from cultures who have had bad ancestries and they’re kind of working through it, those who are in other high-pressure environments, what would you want them to hear the most right now?
Ms. Wang: I think it’s just to recreate a new narrative. Whether that be how you go about doing things or how this sets the tone for the next generation. Then also in the immediate, can you also talk to yourself in a different way? I did some research on mindfulness, and one of my instructors does a lot of research on self-compassion. One of the tenets is kind of like acknowledging where things are and then bringing back, giving yourself some of that self-compassion you never got, whether in the past or present. That’s the thing about emotions. I tell many people that emotions aren’t rational, aren’t logical, and so they’re not gonna make sense, and as a result. We have to talk to ourselves and say, “Hey, it’s okay if it’s not logical. It’s okay if all the dots don’t connect, but you know how your system feels this way, and just giving space for that.
Meghan: I feel like that little phrase about emotions isn’t logical; it’s a powerful thing to remind yourself of in the heat of the moment. I feel like that is an extremely powerful takeaway from this little episode together. I wanna thank you for this little conversation that we’ve had. I feel like it’s been just full of a lot of great advice and a great talk. Thank you so much.
Ms. Wang: Thank you so much, Dr. Etsey. I really appreciate you.
Meghan: So that’s a wrap on this episode of Our Voices Our Future. We hope today’s conversation inspired, challenged, and reminded you of the power of raising your voice. The fight for equity doesn’t stop here. Join us in the movement. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you love this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Until next time, stay bold, vocal, and keep the conversation going. This is Our Voices, Our Future.
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About the Authors
Meghan Etsey, MS4
Meghan Etsey is a fourth year medical student from St. George’s University. She has a Bachelors of Arts in Biology and a Bachelors of Arts in Nutrition and Dietetics from Bluffton University in Bluffton, Ohio. She served as the President of the St. George’s University’s Women in Medicine chapter in St. George, Grenada where she expanded relationships with the community and worked towards educating women and helping the youth. She is also a member of the Gender Equity Task Force and Sex and Gender Health Collaborative Committees within the American Medical Women’s Association. When she is not pursuing medicine, you can find her with her friends and family on different road trips and adventures exploring the world.
Vashti Price, MS3
Vashti Price is a third-year medical student at St. George’s University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, a Master’s in Biological Sciences from Alcorn State University, and a Master’s in Health Sciences from Meharry Medical College. With a strong passion for public health and health equity, Vashti has dedicated much of her time over the years to volunteering with underserved populations, including individuals experiencing homelessness and children in need. Her commitment to service continues through her involvement with the American Medical Women’s Association, where she serves on the Gender Equity Task Force and the Sex & Gender Health Collaborative Committees. Vashti is particularly interested in the intersection of medicine, public health, and community outreach. Outside of her academic and clinical pursuits, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, attending festivals, exploring new cities, and winding down with a good Netflix series.