Dr. Jeff Thomas

12/09/2025

Catastrophizing is a strange kind of imagination.

Although well intended, our mind's self-protective responses can sometimes be... a bit too protective.
Have you ever stood at the edge of a path and instantly mapped every possible way things could go sideways, off track, in circles, into pain?
As my boys and I immerse ourselves in the world of ninja warrior competitions, we intentionally place ourselves in situations designed to challenge us. And in those moments, it's remarkably easy to focus on all the things that could go wrong, all the ways we could get hurt.
Our brains work incredibly hard to protect us, sometimes so hard that they offer us a private screening for one, of - "101 Worst-Case Scenarios", running on repeat.
And yet,
beneath the blooper reel of imagined disaster, there's always a quieter voice.
Calm.
Confident.
Steady.
Saying, you can do this.
What surprised me most wasn't just how hard that quieter voice was to hear, but how clearly, I could hear it when it came through my boys.
Right beside me.
Guiding me.
Believing in me.
Supporting me.
For those that live with generalized anxiety, this is the daily tension: the nervous system shouting danger while something deeper whispers possibility.
The work isn't to eliminate the fear, it's to learn which voice gets the final say.

11/10/2025

Great news!

History in the making! The FDA has officially listened to physicians and is asking drug companies to remove the black box warning on vaginal estrogen.What a privilege to serve on the expert panel and stand alongside my incredible colleagues on this landmark day for women’s health. Read the full story from USA Today: https://ow.ly/Gf1g50XpwCM

09/18/2025

I like to think I show up steady: the calm physician, the measured thinker. Yet the moments that truly reveal me are the ones when my mental fortitude feels thin and my spirit buckles under pressure.

We're told to, and I often say, "surrender," to let go of what we can't control.
But surrender without giving up is its own art.
Sometimes the injustices of the world make me want to rage: it feels like people get away with things, like effort doesn't count, like meaning frays.

My practice when the weight becomes unbearable is not avoidance. It's deliberate, structured struggle. I throw myself into physical tests, mud, cold water, climbing, weighted hikes, because they are honest.

They translate internal chaos into a measurable, finite problem I can meet. The result isn't triumph so much as reorientation: a breath, a laugh, a hand to someone else, a small restoration of balance.
We don't always need to fix or solve every problem that comes our way. Sometimes we need to move through it, carry it for a short stretch, and find the thread that ties us back to ourselves.

08/18/2025

This weekend I had the pleasure to competing in local ninja competition. My son was there beside me encouraging me, coaching, and capturing every moment.
It was truly special.

Every move took effort. Some went well, some didn't. Fear showed up too, the kind that lingers after a hard fall.

But I kept moving. Out of my comfort zone, in front of my son.

Motivation isn't magic.
Willpower isn't fixed.
Both grow when you risk failing, when you climb back on after the fall.

Any maybe the best thing I give my son, and patients, isn't the perfection or a perfect score,
It's letting them and you see me mess up, hesitate, and keep going.

That's the lesson I hope it sticks.
Not perfection. Just persistence.

~ Dr Thomas

07/19/2025

Life doesn't always announce it's obstacles.
Sometimes they swing in without warning, tilt beneath our feet, or vanish just as we leap. We're not given time to prepare, only the moment to respond.
This race, which propelled me to the Top 16 in finals at the Ultimate Ninja World Championship, was not just a physical test.

It was a mirror.

Of all the unexpected challenges life hurls our way, and the truth that resilience isn't built in the spotlight, it's forged in the quiet repetition of showing up.

As a physician, I understand the body's mechanics.
As a poet, I hear its whispered metaphors.
As a teacher, I guide others to trust the wisdom of their own rhythm.

But in this race, it was instinct, not intellect, that carried me.
A dialogue between breath and movement.
A communion between fear and focus.

We don't always get the luxury of control.
But we can choose how we meet the unknown.

Not with panic, but with presence.

Because sometimes, life's most defining moments don't ask us to be ready.
They ask us to be real.

06/21/2025

Through my own unfoldings as a poet-practitioner, I find myself stretched across seeming polarities:
- Where coherence does not forsake complexity,
- Where agency bows with humility,
- Where the medicine is both molecule and metaphor

While it would be easier, more seductive to pit these truths against each other, to pledge allegiance to a single paradigm. The healing and understanding I seek will come with true integration.

Because coherence is not always certainty.
Agency is not infallible.
And healing is not a return to how things were, but a reconstitution, of meaning, of trust, of what it means to be well in a world that is always, somehow, breaking, and beginning again.

In a heartfelt flight from the sterile reductive corridors of conventional medicine, many have fled, sometimes unconsciously, into its inverse.

Their pain, even it its purity, carries both truth and danger. And so they arrive in the
the welcoming arms of narrative medicine, where every symptom is a story, every disruption a divine whisper, and every chronic ache a childhood wound in disguise.

Any herein lies a curiosity,
- Is every symptom a trauma?
- Every illness unprocessed grief?
- Every health influencer an oracle?

In our soul-seated hunger for healing that feels human, we often discard the sobering, unattractive fidelity of science, it’s rigor, it’s hard-won patterns of inquiry, it’s resistance to seduction.

To privilege narrative over data is not liberation, it is a different kind of captivity. And to worship data without story is to sever body from soul.

What I endeavor to hold is not allegiance to one temple or another, but the courage to walk the threshold between them.

05/06/2025

"First, do no harm"
The phrase is so familiar, it almost dissolves into cliché. Yet its Latin root - primum non noncere, holds a quieter, older resonance. Not a direct quote from Hippocrates, but a distilled ethic that has echoed through centuries of translation, interpretation, and medical tradition.
It's modern reading often implies: Don't intervene if your actions might cause injury. But perhaps there's something richer, more layered, in the original phrasing. Primum non nocere does not scream, command, or warn. It invites pause. It reminds us: begin with restraint. With humility. With the wisdom to know when not to act.
As a clinician, I've been in rooms where this principle is quietly tested. When a patient, fully informed and deeply reflective, chooses a path I wouldn't recommend. When they say, 'not yet," or "I'm not ready," or simply, "I don't want to."
In those moments, primum non nocere asks something harder of us than knowledge, it asks us to trust. To stand beside, not above. To remember that harm can come not only from medication or scalpel, but from coercion, urgency, or the subtle violence of dismissal.
I've seen what happens when patients are met with fear tactics or shame, when their autonomy is sidelined in the name of "help." Sometimes the harm isn't biochemical, it's relational. It's the rupture of trust. The erosion of safety.
And so I return to that ancient phrase, not as a commandment, but as a compass.
First, do no harm.
Then, listen.
Then, educate.
Then, let go, if needed, with your dignity and the patient's agency intact.

04/29/2025

The Candle of Curiosity

I've learned that a thorough exploration of health includes gently touching upon the subject of intimacy, not solely as s*x, but as something broader and more essential: transparency, access, safety, and yes, sometimes, s*xual connection.

Years of speaking with patients about his delicate terrain have taught me for many, it was the first time a medical provider had ever asked. The responses vary, from "It's great," to "It needs work," to "It's non-existent." Behind these words often lie the deeper currents of daily exhaustion, disinterest, feeling unseen in one's own body, or struggles with self-consciousness, erectile dysfunction, performance anxiety, and the silent weight of shame.

When I invite these conversations, I imagine offering a small candle in a darkened room, not a harsh spotlight, but a gentle flame of curiosity. A light that makes visible what has long been hidden, but remains soft enough not to startle what has been tucked away. In these moments, I stay attuned to subtle shifts, a tightening of the shoulders, a fleeting expression in the eyes, sensing when the warmth is welcome and when it risks feeling like exposure.

Often, the simple act of being asked, of being seen without judgement, softens the heavy cloaks of guilt, embarrassment, and shyness. Sometimes, it is enough to simply be heard, to feel less alone with the unspoken.
Other times, a conversation gently untangles the quiet assumptions that have slowly eroded intimacy, the unnoticed gaps where vulnerability should live, but where silence and misunderstanding have instead taken root.

There is a rare and sacred beauty in these exchanges, an unvarnished glimpse into a part of life often lived behind closed doors and closed hearts.
A single question, asked with care, can plant a seed: a seed of reflection, of compassion, of the quiet courage to rebuild bridges between ourselves and those we love.

Intimacy, after all, is not a performance to perfect, it is a living, breathing conversation, waiting only for the light to find it.

When was the last time you felt truly safe - seen, not judged, in the presence of another?

04/10/2025

Medicine is not magic.

We think if we buy the pill,
the powder,
the program -
we've done enough.

But healing is not a transaction.
It's an invitation.

You can spend hundreds on supplements
and still feed your fear more than your body.
You can inject the latest medication (think GLP-1s)
and still carry beliefs that keep your cells in survival.

We don't heal just by what we take.
We heal by what we tend.

Medicine without presence is a missed opportunity.
A supplement without alignment is just expensive hope.
A treatment without intention is a whisper lost in noise.

The body listens.
Not just to molecules -
But to meaning.
To consistency.
To care.

So take the pills, yes.
But also take the pause.
Take the walk.
Take the choice to become
a participant in your own transformation.

Healing is a relationship.
What you tend to, tends to you.

04/07/2025

I've recently returned from a weekend gathering - technically a conference, though to call it that feels too small for what truly unfolded. It was the first event of it's kind for Desbio in over 5 years, yet what transpired was less about structure and more about soul.
What I had the privilege to participate in and observe was a rare kind of beauty: generosity in spirit, unguarded gratitude, and a deep humility woven through every conversation. Some carried with open hands the ache of imposter syndrome. Others reservedly moved through the world with a sense of isolation, long misjudged as "too much" or "too strange" for the norms they quietly outgrew. And then there were those who bore a different kind of poetic prose - a light meant not only to heal those they encountered, but to mend fractures carried across generations, across lifetimes. Some brought sharp business acumen, yet had preserved a reverence for the tender complexity of the human condition.
While the occasion had a foundation in medicine, it transcended any single field. We were a constellation of explorers and sages, evidence-based thinkers, quantum biologists, ancestral healers, and soul retrievers - each bringing a unique strand of knowing to the collective tapestry.
It was more than a conference. It was a remembering. A home-coming. A shared breath. A reminder that what unites us is not only the data we carry, but the depth we're willing to go - to meet ourselves and one another.
The photo I'm sharing is but a glimpse into the many luminous conversations and connections I had the privilege of experiencing. I felt inspired, heart-stretched, and deeply grateful to have been apart of it.

03/28/2025

During this latest season of life, I've been contemplating the quiet yet persistent yearning to return home to myself, a journey often hindered most profoundly by own internal resistance. It fascinates and troubles me how external storms - the relentless pulse of the news, social tensions vibrating through the collective, and pervasive uncertainties - tend to resonate inward, magnifying the very barriers I build to keep myself safely distant.

Initially, I tried to counteract discomfort through distraction, keeping busy, plugged in, and ever alert. Yet, paradoxically, the more I turned outward, the louder the internal unrest became, leaving me agitated and deeply unsettled. I began to see clearly that avoidance doesn't quiet the internal storm; it intensifies it.

So, after much internal protest and gentle persuasion, I began a more delicate exploration - acknowledging those protective walls I'd built and softly negotiating passage into my inner world. This careful excavation felt simultaneously vulnerable and hopeful, a tender process of reclaiming lost fragments of myself.

Through this experience, I've grown acutely aware of the symbiotic dance between our inner landscapes and external environments. Coming home is not merely about internal reflection; it also demands mindful attention to how external forces shape and echo our inner worlds.

As such, I continue on this path, learning to gently step aside from own resistance, inviting a deeper integration - and welcoming others to journey toward their own profound reunion.

03/22/2025

The Slow Disappearance of the Self

No one wakes up one morning and says,
"Today I'll abandon who I am."
And yet - so many do.
Quietly. Slowly. Without even knowing it.
Not out of malice, but survival.
A thousand tiny concessions made in the name of love, or productivity, or peacekeeping.

They become a shape that fits the room, not a soul that fills it.

As a translator and guide on behalf of my patients, I've learned:
The body doesn't lie.
It sends whispers first - fatigue, tension, shallow breath.
Then comes the shouting: insomnia, migraines, chest pain, weight gain, digestive upset.
Not as punishment, but as a signal.

Too many were never taught the language of their own body.
Or worse, they were taught to fear it, dismiss it, silence it.
To deny the discomfort. To accommodate what hurts.

Until it was too loud to ignore.

I've witnessed identity erosion in relationships, both personal and professional. In healthcare workers whose compassion outpaced their boundaries.
In friendships strained by political fear and moral fatigue.
In patients who carry diagnoses that tell stories deeper than biology alone.

Healing begins not in erasing pain but listening to it.
What is the body trying to say that the mind has buried?
What part of you is asking to be returned?

We reclaim ourselves in moments:
- Choosing rest over relentless doing.
- Saying no even if our voice trembles.
- Remembering what we love, even if it's inconvenient.
- Letting yourself be angry - without guilt.
- Quiet refusal to quit shrinking.
- When you stop trying to earn your worthiness and start inhabiting it instead.

The self does not vanish in one grand act of betrayal.
It fades.
And then - if we're willing - it returns.

Bit by bit.
Word by word.
Breath by breath.