How Do You Feel?: One Doctor’s Search for the Emotional Heart of Medicine

A poignant and thought-provoking memoir following one psychiatrist and four of her patients as they deal with the unspoken mental and physical costs of caring for others--perfect for fans of Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and The In-Between.

For Dr. Jessi Gold, everything was absolutely fine--until it suddenly wasn’t. As an assistant professor, practicing psychiatrist, university wellness leader, regular media expert, and dedicated friend and family member, Jessi was used to being constantly busy. After all, people--her patients, colleagues, and loved ones--needed her, so who was she to say no to any opportunity to help, be that an extra therapy session, corporate wellness talk, or favor for a friend. She was a doctor, trained to serve, to put the needs of others before her own. But when Jessi is so mentally overwhelmed that she commits an unthinkable error during a patient session, she’s forced to reevaluate everything that the medical system has taught her.

While reassessing her own complex relationship to the health-care industry, Jessi begins to examine it through the eyes of some of her healthcare worker patients--a thirty-something resident with OCD, a pregnant nurse suffering from PTSD, an aspiring medical student with crippling test anxiety, and an experienced ER physician who feels completely overwhelmed. In their discussions of burnout, perfectionism, empathy, and the emotional burden of working in health care, and through her own personal therapy sessions, Jessi recognizes that she is not alone in struggling to maintain her humanity, in a field that she chose because of its humanity in the first place.

Expertly weaving research expertise with unforgettable stories and raw emotion, How Do You Feel? demonstrates the unbridled capacity that we as humans have for connecting, learning, and growing. At once deeply personal, but also utterly universal, it reminds us all that when caring for others, we first have to remember to care for ourselves.

Psychiatrist Jessi Gold, MD, MS, is the Chief Wellness Officer of the University of Tennessee System and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. She is a fierce mental health advocate and highly sought-after expert in the media on everything from burnout to celebrity self-disclosure. Dr. Gold has written widely for the popular press, including for TheNew York Times, The Atlantic, InStyle, Slate, and Self. In her clinical practice, she sees health care workers, trainees, and young adults in college. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania (with a degree in anthropology), the Yale School of Medicine, and the Stanford University Department of Psychiatry, she spends her free time traveling with her friends, watching live music (especially Taylor Swift) or mindless television, and on walks with her dog, Winnie. Find her on X, Instagram, TikTok, or Threads @DrJessiGo