ReFRAME for Clinicians: Turning Healer’s Anxiety into a Compass

Welcome back, dear colleague!

As the year winds down, the questions that sit just beneath the surface tend to get louder. December has a way of pulling our attention back to meaning and reflecting on what we’ve carried, what we’re building, and what still feels out of alignment.

That’s why, for this edition of PPH Insights, we’re sharing a deeply personal reflection and framework from Dr. Momir Pantelic. His work, ReFRAME,  came from lived experience: the weight of caring for others, the dissonance between external success and internal strain, and the search for a philosophy of life sturdy enough to hold it all.

His piece speaks directly to that end-of-year moment when many clinicians and advocates feel stretched thin, successful on paper but uncertain inside. It’s honest, resonant, and needed.

You can read Dr. Pantelic’s reflection below and stay tuned for part 2.

ReFRAME for Clinicians: Turning Healer’s Anxiety into a Compass

My name is Dr. Momir Pantelic. I identify as a healer and a philosopher of life, living with the crisis of meaning. 

As it is the cliche story of many inventions, I needed something to help myself and I wasn’t finding it out in the world. I realized I had to build it - but, I didn’t build ReFRAME from a whiteboard; it didn’t come from a self-help book I read on a plane - even though I had read many, searching for an answer.

I built it from 3 a.m. wake-ups and a calendar that looked successful but felt strangely hollow. I was doing meaningful work on paper, but inside I was restless. I called it “anxious” - oscillating between over-productivity and numbing, unable to name what was wrong. I didn’t have a philosophy of life that could hold the weight of the work, the weight of responsibility of caring for others or the weight of my expectations for myself - it was the philosophy of life I was missing! 

I kept raising the bar: the next project, the next role, the next achievement. Each time, the relief faded faster. My anxiety didn’t look like panic (although to be honest, it did start off like that many years ago); it now looked and felt like always being “on,” grinding my teeth at night, and avoiding stillness because stillness asked hard questions.

What I finally realized was this: I wasn’t just stressed. I was misaligned. I had built a life around external expectations - some mine, many inherited - and I was missing the internal frame to make sense of it all.

Add to that the constant emotional giving to my patients … I’m always the one listening, they always like me the best, always wanting to be on my panel, always demanding, expecting, asking… and at the end of my days I’m an empty shell, lacking the inner compass - what am I doing it all for?

That realization became the ReFRAME: Reference Frame for Anxiety Management through Engagement. Not a shortcut, not a slogan - a structured path to engage with anxiety and the crisis of purpose as a signal, close the gap between expectation and reality, and reconnect with meaning through a philosophy of life.

If you’re a clinician or anyone caring for others, healing others, you likely know this terrain. Healer’s anxiety hides well: in nightly documentation, perfectionistic notes, a pager that never sleeps, irritability, emotional numbness, strange physical symptoms, ..(fill in the blank)... and the unspoken pressure to carry it all without complaint - you are the one, always available for others.

The work matters deeply; that’s precisely why the mismatch hurts. We want to heal, yet we’re often practicing inside systems that pull us away from the human moments that made us want to heal in the first place. That friction - between our expectations of purpose and the reality we navigate - creates a chronic hum of unease. The reality is fine, nothing’s wrong with reality, but how we are making sense of it all is on the wrong track.

Many of us carry a double burden. First, the anxiety itself. Second, the story that we shouldn’t have it because we’re the helpers, because we are successful, because our lives are so good (are they?). So we stay silent, overwork, or shut down.
Anxiety, approached skillfully, can be diagnostic. It points to misalignment: roles outpacing values, performance overshadowing purpose, productivity replacing presence. We don’t need more heroic willpower. We need a better reference frame.

ReFRAME was built for this. It integrates four strands that clinicians already respect:

• GAP Theory of Happiness: discomfort grows where expectations and reality diverge - We map these points - not only in performance, but in fulfillment. Name the gap; realign the expectation or the behavior. It’s a sober, compassionate audit: “What did I think would make me feel whole, and what does it actually feel like now?”
  

• Stoic practices for perspective: negative visualization, last time meditation, and prospective retrospection to name just a few techniques, to clarify values, reduce fear, and re-prioritize meaning.
  

• CBT tools for thought hygiene: thought records and cognitive restructuring to catch distortions (catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, mind-reading, should-statements, over-generalization) and replace them with accurate, compassionate alternatives.
  

• Logotherapy for agency: paradoxical intention and purpose-oriented action, because suffering changes when it has meaning. Through paradoxical intention, we loosen fear’s grip by leaning toward what we avoid (with humor and humility).

ReFRAME unfolds in six concise modules - across these, you’ll draft and refine a purpose statement, then install micro-habits that keep you close to it when life gets loud:

1. Illuminate – Map the gaps; see how avoidance shows up in high-functioning lives.
   

2. Reflect – Unmask the inner critic, inherited scripts, and “false self.”
   

3. Connect – Practice vulnerability safely; find values through shared stories.
   

4. Transform – Move from insight to action; test purpose-aligned behaviors.
   

5. Embrace – Build sustaining practices (gratitude, presence, identity alignment).
   

6. Resilience – Create rituals to return to purpose after setbacks; finalize a personal purpose statement.

Throughout, we treat anxiety as a compass - not the enemy, not the identity, but a guide pointing back to what matters.

This spring, I’m preparing ReFRAME for its first real-world pilot - an in-person cohort of clinicians and other healers, potentially hosted on Harvard grounds. We’ll keep it practical: we’ll try out a combination or all of the following components: short videos, structured handouts, guided meditations, CBT worksheets, and possibly a follow up weekly micro-challenges and sharing opportunities that fit inside clinical schedules to foster the peer reflection and support.

Over time, through engagement and sharing within the group, we’ll measure what clinicians care about: pre/post anxiety indicators, meaning and purpose scores, and adherence to simple, repeatable practices. The aim isn’t to add another burden; it’s to trade frantic coping for deliberate alignment.

If you’re feeling that hum - the healer’s anxiety that says, something here isn’t matching who I am - consider this your invitation.

Three things you can do now:

1. Try a 5-minute “Gap Map.” On one line, write what you expect from yourself; on the other, what your current reality looks like. Circle the row with the biggest friction.
   

2. Run a 2-minute “Meaning Note.” Today, note one moment that felt like you. What value did it express - curiosity, compassion, courage?
   

3. Join the pilot interest list. Bring your skepticism, your experience, and a willingness to test a better frame.

ReFRAME won’t remove the complexity of care. It will help you carry it differently - by returning you to your meaning and grounding you in purpose.

If you want to help shape a program built for healers by a fellow healer, join the early list. In the next two posts, I’ll share (2) the practical tools inside ReFRAME and (3) what scaling this for teams and systems could look like.

You entered this work to help people live. ReFRAME exists so you can keep doing that  - without losing yourself.