Transcript
Episode 1: Finding Meaning in Life & Genetics with Nerine Gregersen, MD
KEY TOPICS
Introduction to Nerine Gregersen, MD & logotherapy [0:00 - 00:02:57]
What drew you to genetics? [00:02:58 - 00:04:21]
What led you to the practice of logotherapy? [ 00:04:22 - 00:07:52]
Was there a specific case that really pointed to your desire to serve patients differently in your genetics practice? [00:07:53 - 00:11:39]
How did logotherapy change your genetics practice? [00:11:40- 00:17:30]
Uniqueness, genetic difference, and identity [00:17:31 - 00:20:50]
How do you think logotherapy might have helped me process my own genetic risks? [00:20:50 - 00:23:49]
How can difficult diagnoses or unexpected events serve as crucibles for discovering meaning? [00:23:50 - 00:25:03]
What relationship do you see in the meaning we make of our genetic programming and the meaning we discover in our lives? [00:25:04 - 00:26:55]
Paradigm within Western medicine that values all information as valuable and useful [00:26:57 - 00:30:20]
Approaches: delivering information v. being in service to a patient [00:30:21 - 00:33:05]
Empathy as a skillset [00:33:06 - 00:36:01]
How should genetic counselors and therapists collaborate? [00:36:01 - 00:37:03]
About Nerine Gregersen’s practice, Grateful Living & wrap-up [00:37:03 - 00:40:19]
Interview
[0:00 - 00:02:57]
Susanna Smith: Hi everyone. This is Genetic Frontiers. A podcast about the promise, power and perils of genetic information find us wherever podcasts are found and go to geneticfrontiers.org to join the conversation about how genetic discoveries are propelling new personalized medical treatments, but also posing ethical dilemmas and emotional quandaries. I'm your host, Susanna Smith.
On today's episode. I will be talking with Nerine Gregersen, who lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Nerine is a former practicing physician, who specialized in pediatrics and clinical genetics. She studied mind-body medicine and yoga, and is a certified facilitator with Brené Brown's Dare to Lead program. Nerine is also a logotherapist who trained through the Viktor Frankel Institute of Logotherapy.
Logotherapy is a form of psychotherapy and a theory of psychology that posits that the discovery of meaning is a person's primary motivational force, the thing that pulls us forward in life. Logotherapy was developed by Viktor Frankel, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who endured imprisonment in several concentration camps during the Holocaust. Unlike Freud, who argued that human beings are motivated primarily by pleasure, Frankel suggested that we are motivated by our need to seek and discover meaning and that meaning can be found in any kind of life circumstance. Frankel wrote many books over his life, including most famously, Man's Search for Meaning, which he published in 1946.
Logotherapy has three core pillars:
All people possess the freedom of will to find meaning in their lives.
People's primary motivation in life is to find meaning.
Life has an overarching ultimate meaning, which we can discover through connecting with something greater than ourselves.
Frankel wrote that we find meaning through the things we do or create, meaningful experiences like relationships, and how we respond to situations, especially those beyond our control, and in times of suffering.
And one of the things I'm hoping to chat with you about Nerine is what you see as the role of logotherapy in genetic counseling in genomic medicine. Because when my mother was diagnosed with CADASIL, a genetic counselor explained the diagnosis, the prognosis and my own risk of having inherited the disease-causing gene. But what I really needed help with was not understanding that information. It was how to get up and go to work the next day and the next day, and the day after that. Learning my genetic risk was life altering, and it demanded a complete rethink of what I cared about and what I wanted to do with my life. I needed support for the journey of finding meaning in a way that encompassed this new information about my genetic risk. It was very difficult and not something I found real support for in the medical system, which is something I feel needs to change. So Nerine, thank you for joining me today on Genetic Frontiers to talk about this.
Nerine Gregersen: Hello Susanna, and thank you for having me.
[00:02:58 - 00:04:21]
Susanna Smith: So I wanted to start with talking about your first career as a clinician and a geneticist. What drew you to genetics?
Nerine Gregersen: I was practicing as a pediatrician. And in that role I'd always been interested in dysmorphology and pattern recognition and making sense of those patterns and coming to diagnoses, I was still in South Africa at the time, and I was offered the opportunity to sub-specialize into the field of genetics. And initially, what drew me into genetics was the dysmorphology pattern, recognition, diagnosis, and the fascination with its science of genetics. But the more I got into the work the more it became about the connection with the families. In genetics, we have the luxury of often being able to connect with families and patients for an hour at a time and through these very complex situations that families are facing. You create a very special bond, and it was that process of being able to support families through complex and ethical decision-making that I really found the joy of the work. So as much as it was about the science, it was also about the connection with people.
Susanna Smith: Thank you for sharing that I think genetics is one of those unique fields in which often a diagnosis affects so many people in the family, or it can. So it takes on a life of its own that many families experience as a family.
[ 00:04:22 - 00:07:52]
Susanna Smith: What led you to the practice of logotherapy?
Nerine Gregersen: I only came to logotherapy once I was actually in the field of genetics. And it was quite surprising to me that it's not crossed my past before that, because I've always been quite broad in my approach to life. When I entered genetics initially, it seemed to me that how I was contributing to families was through giving them information, either being able to give them a diagnosis or being able to explain to them the genetics behind, maybe what had caused their or their child's condition that I was helping them, making a decision. Whether it was around treatment, no treatment, prenatal decisions, so initially, it was for me about information.
But there was always a sense within me that there was something missing because with genetics, even now there's very little treatment. Certainly they are very seldom, if ever, cures for genetic conditions. Yes, we can help people. We can certainly treat symptoms like seizures but we don't provide cure in genetics. And so for me, I was always left with, well, what else am I offering these people? What happens when they leave my office? How does this information really help them get up the next day. So when logotherapy crossed my path, it was for me the missing piece of the puzzle. I remember sitting in the audience the very first time that I was listening to a presentation on logotherapy. And I literally had this light bulb moment. I was sitting in a darkened auditorium, and it felt like this sun had just come out because I suddenly understood: this is what I can offer my patients. This is the conversation that I can have with people. Okay, this is your diagnosis. This is your reality. Now, what?
And not for me to determine for them what their reality was but for me to walk beside them as they tapped into their own inner knowing about what their reality was and what the meaning of that reality was for them. Because, as Frankel says, and this is a quote from Heidegger, I think: “Once I know the why, I can deal with almost any how.”
Once people have the meaning of a situation they know how to get through it. That, for me, was the missing piece. And that's the logotherapy.
Susanna Smith: I am fascinated by this idea because I think my experiences as a patient in genetic counseling and just speaking to clinicians, it is often structured as an information delivery vehicle, and then you sit with the information, and you have to figure out what that means in your life, and that's that can be a lifelong process that I personally have not found a lot of support, for in the medical system.
[00:07:53 - 00:11:39]
Susanna Smith: Can you tell me was there a specific case or a specific patient that you could remember, that really pointed to your desire to find something else, to be able to offer patients and serve patients differently in your genetics practice?
Nerine Gregersen: That's a beautiful question. And yes, there was. I was practicing pediatrics at the time and had an interest in genetics, and some of my colleagues knew that I had that interest. So my obstetric colleagues called me in to help them give a diagnosis to one of the pregnant patients. They had diagnosed that her baby had a severely life-limiting genetic condition associated with not only many medical problems, but also severe intellectual disability.
I remember walking into the room, and she was still sitting on the examination couch next to the ultrasound machine. She wasn't even seated in a chair and there wasn't really a seat for me. So here was this woman on this examination couch, confronted by me, two obstetricians. We were standing. She was in a recumbent position, and I was starting to talk to her about this diagnosis for her baby, which was a massive diagnosis. And I remember fumbling through it and getting to the end of the consultation and walking out, and that evening, feeling so dissatisfied with how I had given her the information and my interaction with her, and knowing that at a big level I had not done her any service.Sure, I'd given her the information, but that she would now have to go away and deal with this life-altering diagnosis. I wasn't sure that I'd given her many tools to do that.
It wasn't long after that that I was able to formally proceed with my genetic training, which involved upskilling in genetic counseling and improving my counseling skills. And of course, many years later, coming to logotherapy. Certainly had I had those skills I would have been able to have approached that situation very differently, and helped her in a different way.
But looking back on it now, and with a logo therapeutic framework. I also recognize that, that was a defining moment for me. I recognized my limitations. I recognized that I was being called to do better. I stepped up and said, I need to upskill. And I went and did that. In logotherapy, Frankel talks so much about, we have a responsibility to respond to what life asks of us. We have a responsibility to make the right choice, right as in the most meaningful choice for us in every moment. And so for me to step up and say I need to do things differently was me accepting that responsibility. It was deeply meaningful for me, and the journey thereafter continues to have meaning.
Susanna Smith: I love that story, Nerine, because I think it really shows that even if, you know, with one patient, you don't treat them the way you want to, there's always the option to learn more skills and do it better the next time, which I think is the challenge we all face in our lives in many different ways, right? Even when we don't show up the way we want to then we can try again. I think it makes possible change in the medical setting and in our lives. Thank you for sharing that story.
[00:11:40- 00:17:30]
Susanna Smith: So can you tell me once you started practicing logotherapy, and once you started training in this modality, what changed about your practice of genetics and medicine?
Nerine Gregersen: One of the most beautiful teachings of logotherapy for me personally but that also has influenced not only my life, and definitely my practice is the celebration of uniqueness, celebrating the uniqueness of the individual, the uniqueness of every moment, and the uniqueness of every interaction we have, including the uniqueness of every interaction between a patient and a doctor, a client and a therapist.
So I think, for me, that was the biggest shift in my practice was I dropped the expectation, the external expectation of you've got to get through this information. You've got to make sure you've covered this discussion. And just saying I embrace the uniqueness of this encounter and saying it is a genetic diagnosis that has brought us into this interaction, but now we are in this moment, how does it unfold from here? And once I dropped into that thinking everything changed.
I was still able to meet patients' needs because that was why they were there, and that was certainly my role, and it is helpful for patients to have information. But I was able to open the conversations up into those places that patients needed and wanted to go. They wanted to have a discussion about what does this mean for me at an existential philosophical level? We didn't necessarily complete those conversations in our genetic consultation, but even having somebody acknowledge that that was part of the journey was a shift. Those big questions are always there, and to constantly have them ignored or not acknowledged means that they are still taking up a lot of energy.
So even to be able to say to a person: this is life-changing. I know it's life changing for you. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And sometimes that was just a five-minute interlude in an information giving session. But just that five minutes deepened our connection and allowed them to acknowledge that part of themselves that needed to be heard and opened up, sometimes, new questions for them that they would go away and ponder after our consultation. But opening that door was something that needed to happen that wasn't happening until I encountered logotherapy.
Susanna Smith: So I actually feel emotional just listening to this, Nerine, because I think just the acknowledgement to say, receiving this type of genetic diagnosis or this type of genetic information in your family is life changing just those words. It is permission to know it is life changing like already you feel it in your body, you know, at some emotional level. This is something you will grapple with and wrestle with probably the rest of your life. But to hear that acknowledged on the other side, I think, is huge. I wish someone had said to me very early in my journey, and I'm many years into it now, this will be life-changing. And is perhaps, you know, your life's work to wrestle with this. So I think it gives permission to the bigness, the bigness of what it is to learn that information.
Nerine Gregersen: And it is big. Also, I think, what logotherapy brought me, and maybe put me at odds with some of my colleagues, is logo therapy, very strongly acknowledges that we have a body; we have a mind; but we also have a human spirit, our essence, our human essence. And to be able to say to people, yes, you have maybe a genetic diagnosis and a genetic condition, but who you are fundamentally at your core is so much more than a diagnosis, you are so much more than a test result. This diagnosis, this test result, does not determine: (a) who you are and (b) what your life is. And that is big, because so much of medical practice is reductionist in the sense that it focuses only on body and mind. It shies away from the discussion and the acknowledgement of you have a spirit, you have a human essence, and Frankel was very clear about this. This is not to make medicine about religion, because logotherapy isn't about religion, but this is about acknowledging you fully as a human being.
And that is where the healing happens, and that is where you find your strength to get up the next day. Log therapy provided me, I think, with a language and the framework. And I could always then shift the focus there because if you've got no cure, well, what else is there?
Well, there's everything. There's the rest of your life to live. You aren’t just this diagnosis. You are a person who finds humor in this, who finds meaning in that experience. Well, people can shift their focus like that. That is when they discover the meaning and how they move forward.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, I totally agree with you.
[00:17:31 - 00:20:50]
Susanna Smith: I want to back up to two ideas. One is the uniqueness of every person, which I think could really interestingly tie into this idea of genetic difference. We actually each have unique genetic programming but the idea of genetic differences is often equated in medicine with disability. So I think it's interesting if you expand it beyond that, and say each person has unique programming, and that we all carry genetic differences from each other. That's why we're not clones, right? We are not clones of each other.
Second, this other idea you’ve touched on, which is the idea of identity, right? And that genetic biology has often been used to circumscribe and limit people's identities.
But it need not be so, right? Those are choices we've made to define people by certain characteristics, sometimes pseudoscience, sometimes underlined by eugenics. Sometimes they're just physical characteristics that we can perceive, but these are all limited ways of perceiving a person. So I wanted to talk a little bit about that. The idea of uniqueness within logotherapy, and the person's unique experience and contributions, moment by moment, and how do you think about that with the idea of genetic difference?
Nerine Gregersen: As human beings, we have a shared DNA genetic blueprint. But as human beings we also each have an overlay above that, which is really the whole field of epigenetics.That changes throughout our lives. And these are, I mean, if I've said this once in a consultation I've probably said it a thousand times, you can have a hundred people with the same genetic condition, but none of them has the same experience. There is so much more at a genetic level that determines their experience and at their spiritual human essence level that determines their experience. And that's the uniqueness.
So your genetics is never your identity as a human being, never. And even the genetics are so complex because I might test your genetics today but if I tested it, even in a week at an epigenetic level, it will have changed because everything is changing your genetic expression all the time. Your environment, right? And that is not only your external environment, what you're eating, and what you're exposed to in exercise levels, but your internal environment. How you're thinking, how you're responding emotionally to things. And so the knowledge that you actually have control at some level over your genetics puts you the person entirely back in control of this entire situation.
Susanna Smith: And this has been shown clearly in twin studies, right? So twin identical twins actually have identical, initially, very initially, identical DNA. And yet their risks for certain diseases can be radically different. And it is the epigenetic influences, the internal and the external environmental influences that change their life experience broadly and including through their DNA.
[00:20:50 - 00:23:49]
Susanna Smith: I want to ask you if I had been your patient 16 years ago, if I had come to you for logotherapy. I received my mother's catalysis diagnosis. So that meant that I knew I had a 50% risk of developing the same condition which causes ongoing strokes, and currently is incurable and untreatable. I was twenty-eight at the time when I received her diagnosis, so I was fairly young. What would you have told me? How would you have coached me initially? You have this information, now what do you start to do with it?
Nerine Gregersen: Well, as a logotherapist first of all, I wouldn't have told you anything.
Susanna Smith: Fair. [laughs]
Nerine Gregersen: It is for you to discover the meaning for yourself in that situation at that time of your life. At twenty-eight, there were things that you were loving about your life. And I would have asked you to share some of that with me and encouraged you to engage in more of that, encouraged you to tap back into your biggest dreams, and to keep your focus on your big dreams and saying, Okay, what small thing can you do today to stay tapped into your dreams?
Because that's how you would have moved forward, and maybe your dreams were about, say, having a child. Okay, so you want to have a child. Yes, you have this diagnosis, and you have to factor it into your dream. So let's look at how you make that happen. So it's not about ignoring what's happening to you and the diagnosis that you have been given. It's about saying, look at your reality. That doesn't mean that you like it. Accept it because once you can accept your reality you immediately can broaden your vision. You lift your head up and you look to the horizon. And once you do that you begin to see solutions. If you don't do that, and you just get stuck in the information. And the oh, this is my diagnosis, and this is what the symptoms look like. Your head is bowed. It's almost like you're pulled up in the fetal position. And that will make it more difficult for you to take your next step forward, so I hope that what I would have done for you then would have been to help you to lift your gaze and start determining solutions for yourself.
[00:23:50 - 00:25:03]
Susanna Smith: So do you think, when people receive either difficult diagnoses or have just a sudden unexpected event happen in their lives, do you think that's a crucible for sort of distilling down this question of what matters?
Nerine Gregersen: Absolutely. This comes back to the uniqueness. The moments that focus us in life sometimes they're big events like accidents or unexpected loss or a big medical diagnosis but not always.
Sometimes it's just a breathtaking sunset that makes you realize you have to rethink your life or reset things. I think it's really important for us to remember that as much as moments of challenge or suffering make us refocus what is meaningful in life. That refocus can come in moments of joy, too.
But certainly important medical diagnoses definitely focus us. And that's as it should be. We aren't here to experience this life on autopilot. We are here to savor every moment.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, I agree with that.
[00:25:04 - 00:26:55]
Susanna Smith: What relationship, if any, do you see in the meaning we make of our genetic programming, which people are doing all the time now with 23andMe and all forms of genetic testing in clinical settings, and the meaning we discover in our lives. What connection, if any, do you see between those two?
Nerine Gregersen: So genetic information can be a moment that brings you back to discovery meaning. But genetic information isn't the meaning. We also have to remember that our information about genetics is limited. There is so much that we don't know.
People need to be clear about their motivation to have any genetic test done. And very often people will get a genetic test done because they think it's fun and everybody's doing it. The problem is, they then get a result. They can never know that information. They start telling themselves a particular story about themselves and it affects them. So people need to be very, very clear about their motivation in getting genetic test results. They need to do it within the context of having had a conversation with somebody about. If you get this information, what are you going to do about it. How's it going to change how you look at yourself? And if it's going to negatively impact you and in no way enhance your life or help you make important decisions then don't go there.
Susanna Smith: Yeah. And you and I have talked about this in an earlier conversation as well what I see as a widespread paradigm within Western medicine that necessarily values information, and that more information is better. And I think part of the assumption there is that if you get information, it will become a diagnosis, and a diagnosis becomes a treatment and treatment makes you better. But I think, given the amount of genetic information we can now detect it doesn't necessarily fit that paradigm.
[00:26:57 - 00:30:20]
Susanna Smith: What are your thoughts on this culture within Western medicine that I think gives preference to the idea that knowing is better, and that testing reveals valuable information?
Nerine Gregersen: I don't think it is an either-or situation. I think it is a both-and. There is no doubt that we have incredible technology in medicine that allows us to treat people in innovative and wonderful ways and improve and enhance their lives. And that needs to continue. But we also need to be very careful that at all times people have choice. And we have to, in a very nonjudgmental way, encourage people to be making good choices about all forms of testing, maybe especially genetic testing, so that they are very clear about the benefits and the pitfalls of having that testing. And that information is just that.
It's what you do with it that counts.
I've worked within the medical system, and you know you've experienced it. People say that patients have choice, but in practice there is often a very subtle pressure to either test or not test, to make a certain decision, and that needs to change. There truly has to be freedom of choice, that people will be treated exactly the same whether or not they choose to do what the doctor thinks is best for them. Because at the end of the day it is your life, and you get to determine what the meaningful decision is for you. And what is meaningful for you might not be the same as what is meaningful for the establishment or for society. And the decision that was meaningful for you at twenty-eight might not be the same now.
So all decisions about testing treatment, how you live your life these are things that we need to take our time with because it's a choice in every moment. And my hope is that going forward, healthcare professionals only become more skilled at supporting you by offering you more choices, not less.
Susanna Smith: Yeah. And I think that would require a much broader conversation than I've ever been a part of or seen happen about how people make meaning of that information, including that it is not a fixed state, because, as you pointed out, the same information given to you at different points in your life may mean different things. You, as an individual. may have many answers to that kind of question at different points in your life times, times how many different people. In my mind, there are so many right answers, and not to say it's right or wrong, but right for you. It's very hard to engage in that way in the medical system to see sort-of the breadth of ways to deal with information.
[00:30:21 - 00:33:05]
Nerine Gregerson: I think there's been an assumption within the medical profession for a long time that if we have very focused, very information-centered discussions it makes things easier because we can treat conditions with checklists. And we can put systems in place in medicine. On the surface that seems more efficient and more productive. And in my practice. I've actually found the opposite. When I started engaging with people in a more open way, and saying let's have this open conversation. How can I help you? And dropped back into that role of being a helper and truly being of service to patients our consultations were actually shorter; they were more productive; and they were definitely more meaningful.
I think the reason that there are fewer discussions about choice within medical consultations is because of the fear on the part of healthcare providers and the establishment that it's going to make more work. The truth is, it makes less because you start empowering patients and saying, “Tell me how I can help you achieve what you want for yourself?” And once we start opening that space, meaningful discussions happen, and we get to the solutions quicker. We do it together, we do it in a more meaningful and a more innovative way. It actually allows us to be providing true health care that our patients want.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, I think sort of following the lead of the person sitting in front of you and listening to what is most important or burning for them to discuss is the way to create a meaningful connection in that setting. And for me, I think some of what I've experienced in genetic counseling has been framed by the idea of non directive counseling which centers on the idea that if you just present the information in a neutral way, you're not telling the patient what they should do with that information.
And this is the idea of informed choice. Right?
But what I find problematic about that approach is, it doesn't really engage with the overarching emotional experience. So, as the patient, I might not be able to get out of my own personal overwhelm or my heartbreak, or my anxiety, or name any of the slew of emotions. It feels like what we're trying to do is work around or gloss over the emotion in the encounter. I think that just leads to fundamental disconnect. I can say for myself as the patient, and I can only assume for the provider as well. It's just this disconnect between the people because we aren't dealing with how the person feels.
[00:33:06 - 00:36:01]
Nerine Gregersen: I have a response to that. We need to upskill our healthcare providers. And this is why I love engaging with Brené Brown's work, and why I feel blessed to be able to facilitate her Dare to Lead work because for me this ties in so well with logotherapy. There’s one particular aspect of Brené Brown’s work that I wish I had earlier on in my medical career. That is using empathy as a skill set. You may be inherently empathic as a person, and many people who go into medicine are naturally empathic, but they don't know how to use empathy as a skill set. You need to be able to use empathy as a skill set. That means I need to accept what you are going through as your reality. I need to acknowledge the emotions that you are feeling. I need to name them in the moment I need to remain non-judgmental. I need to stay mindful that it's not me; I can't get swept up in your emotion. When I can do that for you I can truly serve you because until that is done you can't take on board information. And you can't start making good decisions. So we need a massive paradigm shift around us.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think genetic counselors need more counseling skills, really. And I've talked about this in other episodes. It's a very prescribed interaction. It cannot be a prescribed interaction if it's actually therapeutic to the individual patient sitting in front of you. It should be in response to, in guidance to the information you're offering them and the emotions you think they're having, which is particular to that person. And all the skills that being a therapist would involve so I would love to see that happen.
Nerine Gregersen: I also just want to add this. And Frankl was very clear about this. When health care providers, geneticists, genetic counselors, have more understanding and skill in paradigms like logotherapy, they're having empathy skills. We're not asking them to become the psychotherapists. But they need to have the skills to at least acknowledge the emotional aspect of the patient to be prepared to even have that conversation, acknowledge it, and say, I see you as a human being. That part of it isn't even happening anymore. Frankl was passionate about bringing the humanity back into not only psychotherapy but back into medicine. We just want human beings to be there to help other human beings.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful way to put it, and I do think it's the missing piece.
[00:36:01 - 00:37:03]
Susanna Smith: So could you just tell me a little bit about what you see ideally as how genetic counselors should work with therapists, and how those fields should work together to help patients?
Nerine Gregersen: I think this is where we need collaboration across fields. Genetic counselors need to be able to say, yes. I see that your needs are for a broader, existential philosophical discussion about this information than I've given you. It's not for me to necessarily have the discussion with you. It needs to happen in another space. And here I know who that person is who can have this discussion with you. So it's about cross collaboration and involving people across many fields to care for one person.
Susanna Smith: Yeah, I love that. I would love for there to be better referral networks between genetic counselors and therapists, and to be able to have an ongoing relationship with a therapist who can understand some of the aspects of, you know, processing a genetic diagnosis.
[00:37:03 - 00:40:19]
Susanna Smith: So Nerine, could you tell me a little bit about your practice, Grateful Living, what you offer patients and clients within your practice?
Nerine Gregersen: And thanks for the opportunity. So currently, I am a certified facilitator of Brené Brown's Dare to Lead program. So I facilitate workshops mainly for groups of individuals to complete that curriculum which allows them to obtain a certificate, to say that they trained in their program As much as it is a leadership program, it is really about personal growth and upskilling people to lead their own best lives, which then translates into them being able to lead in new ways as parents, partners, colleagues, friends, and relatives. So that's a big part of what I do.
I also often offer professional supervision, which is a form of coaching for want of an alternative word to colleagues within the medical profession, and I also offer logotherapy for individuals who are seeking to shift their perspectives, particularly when they're finding themselves in a challenging situation or a challenging time in their lives. I very much use all my principles from day to lead and logotherapy in my professional supervision.
And then a very small part of what I do is I offer weekly Yoga Nidra sessions online, which is a form of deep relaxation. Just as an aside.
Susanna Smith: I love Yoga Nidra. I may have to sign up for those.
Nerine Gregersen: Please come along.
Susanna Smith: So thanks, Nerine, for joining me today on Genetic Frontiers. For anyone listening who would like to learn more about Nerine’s work, please go to grateful living.co.nz.
Genetic Frontiers is co-produced by Brandy Mello and by me: Susanna Smith. Music is by Edward Giordano and design by Abhinav Chauhan and Julie Weinstein. Thank you for listening to this episode of Genetic Frontiers connect with us at geneticfrontiers.org or on Instagram and Linkedin at Genetic Frontiers, to continue the conversation. If you enjoyed this episode and would like to support our independent production. Please make a donation to Genetic Frontiers through our Patreon account.