321. Feeling Restless in Medicine? One Pediatrician's Story of Leaving, Returning, and Finally Feeling Found
There is a particular kind of restlessness that many physicians experience — not quite burnout, not quite unhappiness, but a sense of not yet being fully found. Dr. Abhay Dandekar, a pediatrician and Jessie's co-resident, has lived that experience. In this conversation, he shares a career arc that moved through clinical medicine, hospital teaching, administrative leadership during a pandemic, and — most unexpectedly — back to the exact clinical home he left.
What changed when he returned was not the institution. It was him.
This episode is a generous, real conversation about all-or-none thinking, the stories physicians tell themselves about staying and going, how agency has to start from within, and what it means to build a career that is genuinely yours.
In This Episode, We Explore:
How to recognize when you are not yet found — rather than lost
Why all-or-none thinking makes career decisions harder than they need to be
What changes when you return to a familiar place as a different person
The distinction between anchors (what keeps you stable) and buoys (what keeps you navigating)
Why agency and sponsorship have to be cultivated from within before they can come from anywhere else
The difference between mentors and sponsors — and why both matter for longevity
How thought partners and daily reflection sustain a career in medicine
Pearls of Wisdom
The roses and the trash smell the same no matter where you are. What changes is how you show up.
You can be functioning well on the outside and paying a real cost underneath.
Agency has to start from within. The institution cannot do for you what only you can do for yourself.
You can take a step without calling it a misstep. Sometimes it is a sidestep — or a diagonal forward step that puts you somewhere truer.
Find thought partners, not echo chambers. Honest conversation opens paths that certainty closes.
Appreciating diastole — building pausing and reflecting into daily practice — is not optional. It is foundational.
Reflection Questions
Where do you feel the gap between how you look on the outside and what you are carrying underneath?
Are you waiting for your institution to solve something that might need to start with you?
Where is binary thinking shaping the choices in front of you right now?
Who are your thought partners — and where are you in an echo chamber when you need honest conversation?
What would it mean to appreciate diastole in your own career this week?
FAQs
What is this episode about? This episode follows the career journey of Dr. Abhay Dandekar — a pediatrician who moved from clinical medicine into administrative leadership during COVID and returned to clinical practice two years later. It is a conversation about self-discovery, binary thinking, agency, and finding your way in medicine from the inside out.
Is this episode about burnout? It touches on the restlessness and flatness that can precede or accompany burnout, but the frame is broader. It is about the search for meaning, growth, and a career that feels genuinely yours — even when the answer turns out to be closer than you expected.
What is the difference between a mentor and a sponsor? As Dr. Dandekar describes it, mentors offer support, advice, and counsel. Sponsors actively advocate for you when you are not in the room — they accelerate your cause. Both matter, and both require cultivation.
What does "appreciating diastole" mean? Diastole is the phase of the heartbeat when the heart rests and fills. Dr. Dandekar uses it as a metaphor for building pausing and reflecting into daily life — not as occasional recovery, but as daily practice.
Can you actually go back to where you started in medicine? Dr. Dandekar's story suggests yes — and that returning to a familiar place after real growth is not going backward. The place had not changed. He had.
Many physicians carry the feeling Dr. Dandekar describes — not exactly lost, but not yet found. It is a quieter kind of distress than burnout, and because it is harder to name, it is often harder to address.
What this conversation makes clear is that the path forward does not require leaving. It does not require arriving somewhere new. It requires something more honest: the willingness to hold up a mirror, to find thought partners who will tell you the truth, to cultivate sponsors rather than wait to be discovered, and to build pausing and reflecting into the ordinary rhythm of your career.
That inner work is at the heart of what Jessie does in coaching. If this conversation resonated, explore 1:1 coaching or one of the retreats — Connect in Nature at Muir Beach and Muir Woods, or the Nicasio Creek Farm Women Physicians Retreat.
Explore coaching: www.jessiemahoneymd.com
Learn about retreats: www.jessiemahoneymd.com/retreats
Nothing shared in the Healing Medicine Podcast is medical advice. The Healing Medicine Podcast was formerly known as the Mindful Healers Podcast.