What if the very thing you're resisting is the thing your body needs most? In a world that celebrates constant productivity, many women feel pressure to push through exhaustion, ignore symptoms, and keep going, even when their bodies are asking for something different. In today's episode, Lindsie welcomes Kathy Hadizadeh, who spent 15 years leading global projects for Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies before a traumatic brain injury completely changed the course of her life. Living with post-concussion syndrome forced Kathy to rethink everything she believed about success, healing, and resilience. Instead of fighting her body's limitations, she learned the power of acceptance, mindfulness, and intentionally creating moments of pause. Together, Lindsie and Kathy explore how curiosity, nervous system regulation, and honoring your unique needs can become powerful tools for healing.
✔ Your body isn't working against you—it is communicating with you.
✔ Acceptance doesn't mean giving up. It means redirecting your energy toward healing instead of resistance.
✔ Curiosity creates space for healing where judgment cannot.
✔ Honoring your body's signals is an act of strength, not weakness.
✔ Slowing down isn't falling behind—it's creating the conditions for lasting wellness.
If this conversation encouraged you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode with someone who needs the reminder that healing doesn't always come from pushing harder.
Sometimes, it begins with permission to pause.
⚠️ Podcast Disclaimer
This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your health routine.
(0:23) Welcome back to PCOS Unfiltered, where we ditch the one-size-fits-all advice. (0:28) I'm Lindsie, nurse turned health coach, author of Healing Beyond the Diagnosis (0:32) and Body Wisdom Guide. Here, I help you understand the messages behind your symptoms.(0:37) Before we get into today's guest, I wanted to share some very exciting news. (0:43) The Healthy Ever After app is now live. It is your one-stop shop for our community, (0:48) podcast resources, recipes, exclusive content.And when you join, you'll instantly receive my (0:54) free summer sanity guide. Check out the link in the show notes to join. (0:59) So today, my guest is Kathy Hadizadeh, someone who knows the realities of high pressure work (1:05) firsthand.After 15 years of leading global projects for Fortune 100 and 500 companies (1:12) like DirecTV, AT&T, and Omnicom, Kathy experienced the impact chronic stress can have on both your (1:19) mind and your body. Today, she helps others find healthier, more sustainable ways to navigate (1:24) life's demands. As always, this podcast is intended for educational and informational (1:30) purposes only, and should not be considered medical advice.Please consult your healthcare (1:34) provider before making changes to your diet, exercise, or treatment plan. Now go ahead, (1:39) settle in, grab your favorite beverage, and let's dive in. Here is my conversation with Kathy Hadizadeh.
(1:54) Hello, hello. Welcome. Welcome back to the show and welcome to Kathy.(2:01) This is going to be a great episode. I'm excited. So let's dive in.(2:07) You speak a lot about the power of pause. So how can someone living with a chronic condition (2:14) begin to pause without feeling like they're falling behind? (2:19) That's one of the biggest challenges that comes up with any condition. Chronic, even if it is a (2:27) something that you have to take a pause from, take a break from your life and all that is happening (2:33) for a while, as what is happening to me, and especially considering that everybody's running (2:39) their lives at the hundred mile per hour or whatever that we normally see.And I wanted to (2:46) draw the attention of our audience to one important factor that comes into play, which is acceptance. (2:57) Accepting the condition without fighting it, because those feelings of falling behind, (3:07) or I'm not where I want to be, or everybody's getting there, I'm staying here, those kind of (3:13) feelings are feelings of resistance. And what you resist persists.And you need your energy (3:22) for far better and more important things in life than fighting this battle. So acceptance is key,
(3:32) and it is easier said than done. So I want to draw the attention to the fact that by just (3:38) knowing about this, you will not go and accept your condition tomorrow morning, and you wake up (3:44) tomorrow morning and you feel, oh my God, I accept things as it is.I'm at peace. I'm gonna be a Zen (3:51) monk with this. No, that's not how it works, honestly.And so I want to make sure people (3:56) understand the concept is acceptance. The implementation of it is a whole different ballgame. (4:03) Yeah.And remind us again, how did you get into this work that you do? (4:11) Well, I have a chronic condition too. So yeah, I'm not just talking the talk. I'm walking the (4:22) walk myself.I actually have a condition that is a very interesting condition, which sounds a lot (4:28) like PCOS, but it's actually PCS. So it doesn't have an O. It's called post-concussion syndrome. (4:39) I have learned whenever there is a word syndrome somewhere, it means, oh, we don't know what to do (4:44) about you.We know there is something not going well, but we don't know what to do with it, (4:49) at least in the medical sense and in the Western medical term. Years ago,
(4:57) I took my child to the playground. He was like three something year old at that time.(5:04) And it was the day after Christmas. It was great weather. The weather was still crisp, even though (5:09) I live in Los Angeles.And we were still in the wrapping paper kind of mode. There's like tons (5:16) of wrapping paper under the Christmas tree kind of thing. And we went to play piggy and wolf.(5:22) I mean, something simple or seemingly simple. And he was a little tiny boy. He was running (5:30) under the play structure and I was running after him.And I had a lot of velocity, I would say, (5:39) or whatever the word for it is. And I tried to come from under the play structure. (5:48) And it was the wrong time.And I tried to stand up and I bumped the top of my head against the (5:54) play structure. And the next thing was a huge, big concussion. And then it became a traumatic (6:01) brain injury.And then after two, three months, they said, oh, it's a post-concussion syndrome.
(6:09) When you do not heal from a concussion and the symptoms, like I wasn't able to talk, walk, (6:15) look at the screen at all, read. I wasn't able to do anything, drive, nothing.Then they said, (6:23) oh, it's a post-concussion syndrome. And we give it two years for you to get out of it. (6:29) And the body doesn't work that way.They can't say, oh, we need two years, you need to be back. (6:39) Yeah. It's on its own timeline.(6:41) But it has its own thing. And I still live with that situation. So I have limitations that I have (6:48) to be very careful about that.It has improved, but it's still a very big reality of my life that (6:55) makes my life very unpredictable. (6:58) Yeah. So how did you improve? How did you get to feeling better? (7:06) Well, it goes back to your first question.Actually, you said you talk a lot about pause. (7:11) So there is a reason why I came up with this. So basically, that accident brought my life, (7:19) as you can imagine, to a complete full stop.Because I was unable to do anything
(7:27) that you'd be normally doing in our life. I would try to come down the stairs to put (7:37) food for my kids at school, to take them for lunch. And by 7.30 a.m., my energy would be done.(7:47) Like, I would start getting the headache. And I had to lie in the bed the whole day and (7:55) suffer from this pain that wouldn't go away by any means. So my life was completely at the (8:04) full stop.And I went to the neurologist, and I said, what do we do? And he basically said, (8:15) I don't have anything to give you. And that's one of the hardest things to hear. I mean, I'm (8:21) sure many people in this listening to us, Lindsay, maybe have had some kind of a situation like this, (8:28) that they are like, yeah, basically, we don't know.We don't have anything to give you. You're (8:34) on your own. Go figure it out.Not in so many words, but the situation implies that. But that (8:43) neurologist said something that really shook me to the core at that time. He said, (8:52) you need to relax your brain.I was like, what does he mean by that?
(8:59) How do I relax a brain, an organ that never stops, really? And that became a very big (9:07) question mark for me, that I became curious about it, really. (9:15) And my life went in a direction that I became a seeker. And as I was seeking the answer to (9:23) that question without access to Google, without access to a screen, without access to things, (9:29) even without access to humans, because I couldn't talk on the phone or things like that at that (9:33) time, there were some things that came to my life.I guess when you ask the question, (9:44) the universe sends you answers. I believe in that. At that time, I could look at, (9:51) Facebook was in fashion at that time, and I could look at the screen for maybe a minute or two, (9:58) which is very, very little, considering that the screens engage us in a way that we do not feel (10:03) the passage of time.And I remember there was a person that was coming on my feed whenever I
(10:11) opened this Facebook thing, that our kids went to the same preschool. And I didn't even know what (10:18) she did. I knew that she was a doctor, but I knew that she was doing something else, but I didn't (10:23) know what she did.And she came a couple of times, very irrelevant, because we haven't been like (10:30) close buddies or anything. And I was like, why does she keep coming to my feed? (10:37) And one day I decided to see what does she really do. And then I discovered that she was a (10:45) mindfulness facilitator.And she had gone to one of the first places in the Western world that had (10:53) the mindfulness as a modality for chronic stress. And every time I could look for two minutes, (11:05) I had to remember what I had done so that I could continue the investigation.
(11:12) And so then I went to the University of Massachusetts, I went and looked at them, (11:18) and I was like, huh, there is something that talks about the stress, the brain and all of that.So (11:24) maybe I should look into that. And then it happened that one day I was with my kid at the play date, (11:31) and one of the moms said, yeah, I go to this, she was a curator for Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. (11:39) And she was like, yeah, we have this amazing thing on Tuesdays at 12 o'clock that their UCLA (11:46) Mindfulness Awareness Research Center comes and gives a mindfulness break to all of us.And I was (11:52) like, okay, see, I can figure out a way to go and experience that. I can go on about this story (12:00) forever, but of our conversation, but I want to tell you, and the reason I share this is that (12:08) the complete pause brought other things to my life, just because I was able to slow down
(12:15) and become curious and really seek some answers to something that I had no idea about. (12:21) Yeah, yeah.And I mean, it sounds like you were, you know, you were very open to that. I mean, (12:27) I feel like there's a lot of people that can be a little bit more resistant to, you know, (12:32) to change and something like that. So how do you feel that people can shift from resisting (12:38) that pace to actually working with it? (12:42) Well, this is the thing.These kind of things close us, close our world, close our mind. (12:55) They limit our exposure to other humans, maybe. And it is very key to be conscious of that, (13:07) Lindsay, really very key.But I had something that really happened, which was, (13:15) I was working with a craniosacral therapist at that time for my head. This is really funny, (13:24) because for anybody who has done craniosacral therapy, it's a very esoteric thing,
(13:31) because she holds your skull in her hands, and she's trying to tell you what she feels. (13:40) And one of the things was that she was like, oh, yeah, this right side is really heavy.(13:45) Your left side is really empty. And I was like, huh? In my head, I wouldn't say anything, (13:54) because she's doing whatever, and there's a lot of music. I was like, whatever.Can you help me? (14:02) I mean, I don't understand how part of my brain can be empty and part of it can be (14:11) full. And then I was working with an osteopath that was even more exciting than that, that he was (14:18) like, now we are going to move this part of your brain to the other hemisphere. And I'm like, (14:27) really? In my head, I'm like, whatever.I'm paying you, because osteopaths are expensive, (14:36) and they are not normally, at least at that time, they were not covered by insurance. And I was (14:39) like, just fix whatever is going on. My attitude was not the best attitude, I confess, because my
(14:47) attitude was just fix this, please.But the thing is, well, things are happening, (15:02) but at the same time, our attitude is a very important thing towards it. (15:08) I mean, they were saying all of these things that I couldn't relate to it. But one time, this lady, (15:15) the craniosacral person said, what do you do after you leave here? And at that time, I was (15:23) not able to drive or anything.So somebody had to come and pick me up and take me home. And (15:29) I was like, well, I go and I sit, and I had started meditating. I said, well, I meditate.(15:37) And she said, well, can you learn to surrender? I was like, surrender? What does that mean? (15:47) Well, I was like, okay, whatever, I'll think about it. And you will not believe this, Lindsay. (15:56) I was like, I really don't know what this surrender thing is.I really don't. I mean, (16:00) I understand the word, but I don't know what it is that you want me to go and do. (16:05) My desire was to just get me out of this misery.That was my desire and inclination. (16:13) And I came, and this meditation app that I was using, it sometimes has codes. And I can just (16:24) open it to just select the timer, because I was unable to look at the screen.And I opened this
(16:31) and it said, there was a quote from Rumi, and maybe I'm not doing justice exactly to the words (16:39) and to how it is written, but it was about opening your heart and let it be, and that being the (16:49) surrender. And that I could understand a little bit better than just go surrender. I was like, (16:58) okay, open your heart.All right, let me see where I can go with that. And I started shifting (17:06) my attitude towards this whole thing, little by little. Like, okay, this has happened.This (17:17) is my life now. Well, it is far from ideal. But what am I learning? I'm learning other things (17:25) that I didn't even know, like this surrender business that I'm telling everybody about it.(17:30) I didn't know about that. I was like, okay, there is something else. Let's see what else can there (17:37) be.So there could be signals for that opening. And I invite everyone to pay attention to their (17:50) own signals, because there is no universal signal that I can tell anybody. But there can (17:57) be signals that can guide us.Like in my journey, there were a lot of them. But because I had got (18:04) to the point that I felt like I am at the bottom of the bottom of the darkness, and it cannot become
(18:11) any darker. So let me just figure out my way around the darkness.It's a hard feeling. (18:21) Yeah. Yeah.So what does pause to rise look like when your body is in pain or just, (18:31) you know, unpredictability, you know, is part of that life? (18:36) Mm-hmm. So first of all, one of the biggest things about chronic conditions is (18:46) paying attention to our own signals. Like for me, I know sleep is a factor.I know (18:55) hydration is a factor. I know eating on time is a factor. I know that exhaustion is a factor.(19:02) I know that, like, I cannot be having this conversation with you and have another (19:08) conversation right after this. So I know my own limitations, and I have engineered (19:20) ways of honoring them. So the pause to rise has different connotations.(19:31) When it comes to these kind of cases, it's engineering your own slowing down, your own (19:39) pause, your own way of being with yourself and your symptoms. When it comes to the work, (19:45) it has a different meaning. When it comes to the leadership, we have a different meaning for (19:49) leadership.I don't want to go into those because I don't feel they are very relevant to our audience.
(19:55) But I coined that term because of watching a lot of the leaders and people in the organizations (20:03) going through different journeys that could be changed. But at the same time, with my own journey (20:09) and with the journey of some people that I had the experience of being with their journeys (20:18) in health challenges and in chronic conditions, we could see that same applies, that you have to (20:25) engineer a new way of being with your life and being with yourself.And that requires slowing (20:33) down, taking a break, getting the distance from what everybody is saying or whatever your mindset (20:39) is of how life should be. That you need to distance yourself because there is a lot of (20:45) pressure on us, all of us, from society, from social media, from our background, (20:54) our upbringing, our parents, our spouses, our friends, our whole universe.
(21:01) There is a lot of pressure in there.And really realizing, what is it about me I want in here? (21:10) I'm dealing with some new challenge right now in my life. And I decided not to share it with a lot (21:19) of people because I do not know how I want to manage the whole thing yet. And the two people (21:27) that I shared with them, I was very curious to see how it will go.And one of them is my childhood (21:34) friend. And she jumped right into, you're not going to die, you know, have your hopes high, (21:42) blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, that's not my concern at this moment with this.(21:49) So please do not take me to your space, because this is your space. That if you had heard the (21:56) same thing that the doctors told me, you would have gone to that space. It's your journey.(22:01) You're imposing your journey on me. And I have come to the place in my life that I have the (22:07) awareness, and I have the courage, and I have the ability to give myself permission to say, (22:13) to stop my friend and say, hey, this is not serving me. But a lot of people go with it.(22:21) Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.I like what you were saying there. Because I've even talked about, (22:29) I talked about that in my book. You know, you have to kind of get curious, I feel like, (22:34) you know, first, but then you do, you have to be able to communicate with your loved ones,
(22:39) with your friends, you know, your spouse, whatever, to say, this is what I need, you know, (22:46) so whether that's sleep, you know, this is what I need to actually feel better to be able to, (22:52) you know, perform and, and, you know, give what I need to those, you know, relationships.But (23:01) you have to kind of get curious first to realize what, what that is, you know, like you said, (23:06) each person is, is different. And then, and then be able to communicate that, you know, (23:12) be strong enough to communicate that I feel like even to because that's kind of hard, right? I mean, (23:16) that's hard. Yeah.It is really hard, Lindsay. I mean, you're going against the stream. (23:23) Right? You're going against the stream.So that's why I use the word engineer the pause (23:27) very, very methodically. I have arrived at this word. The word was not invented overnight.(23:35) In my work, I've worked with more than 2000 people. And I arrived at that word because
(23:42) I learned, you know, you just have to build it. You just have to build it.You have to design it, (23:49) you have to build it and you have to slow down to make it happen. Or otherwise you're carried by, (23:57) by this ocean. That was an amazing conversation with Kathy.I love hearing her perspective (24:05) and I'll be sure to link everything in the show notes for you. If you'd like to connect with her (24:09) now, if you're enjoying the podcast, come join us inside the healthy ever after app. (24:14) It's where we continue the conversation with community recipes, resources, and exclusive (24:19) content.Plus you'll get my free summer sanity guide just for joining the link is in the show (24:24) notes for you. And if you love this episode, make sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it (24:29) with someone who needs to hear it because healing doesn't come from doing more. It comes from (24:33) understanding better.I'm sending you so much love and I'll see you on the next episode of (24:38) PCOS unfiltered nourish, heal, thrive.