Podcast thumbnail for How We Really Feel

How We Really Feel

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by Dr Sula

5.0(2 reviews)
20 episodes
Updated Daily
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Podcast Overview

<p><b>How We Really Feel</b> is the podcast that takes an honest, evidence-based look at what it means to live in a body, especially when that body is doing something no test has fully explained, no appointment has had time to address, or no one has joined the dots on yet.</p><p></p><p>Hosted by Dr Sula Windgassen, PhD, health psychologist, researcher, author of <i>It's All In Your Body</i> and specialist in chronic illness, burnout and the mind-body connection. Each episode brings together leading clinicians, researchers and people with deep lived experience to examine the whole picture: biological, psychological and social.</p><p>Guests are chosen for their years of peer-reviewed research, frontline clinical practice or a rich lived experience of illness, injury and healing. Every episode is fact-checked by Dr Sula and the show researcher, a trainee health psychologist and PhD student. All studies and resources referenced are listed at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank">howwereallyfeel.com</a> so you can read further, question it and make it your own.<br /></p><p>Series one explores pelvic and bladder health. One of the least explored areas of health, especially from a holistic and integrated approach that incorporates mind and body and the human at the heart of symptoms. Episodes cover chronic UTI, bladder pain syndrome, the nervous system, pelvic pain, sex and intimacy after illness, and what it means to befriend a body that has fundamentally changed. Between guest episodes, Dr Sula shares her own therapeutic reflections: what stood out, what the evidence means in practice, and what might be worth sitting with or trying.<br /></p><p><b>How We Really Feel is for you if:</b> </p><ul><li>You're curious about how our biology, psychology and lived experience are woven together and what that means for how we heal</li><li>You're a urologist, pelvic health physiotherapist, GP, health psychologist, gynaecologist or clinician with an interest in holistic, integrated and evidence-based care</li><li>You've ever felt like medicine ran out of answers before you did </li><li>You're navigating bladder pain, pelvic pain, chronic UTIs, chronic illness or burnout and want to understand what's really going on beneath the surface</li></ul><p></p><p><i>New guest episodes </i><b><i>released weekly on Mondays</i></b><i> and reflective summary episodes with Dr Sula Windgassen on Thursdays. All resources at </i><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank"><i>howwereallyfeel.com</i></a></p>

Language

🇺🇲

Publishing Since

4/26/2026

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Recent Episodes

Episode thumbnail for My reflections on dismissal, medical misogyny and self-advocacy following episode 10

July 2, 2026

My reflections on dismissal, medical misogyny and self-advocacy following episode 10

<p>This is one of my solo reflection episodes. Just me, sitting with what the conversation with Dr Catriona Anderson and Neha Visavadia stirred up.</p><p>We covered a lot of ground in that episode: chronic UTI, the gap in the medical definition, what it means to be dismissed by the healthcare system, and what you can actually do about it. This reflection picks up on three threads that I couldn't let go of afterwards.</p><p></p><p>The first is the psychological cost of not being believed - not just as a frustrating experience, but as something that actively changes your behaviour, closes down your options, and makes the next appointment feel harder before it's even happened. Neha described this so clearly, and I've seen it in clinical practice more times than I can count.</p><p></p><p>The second is medical misogyny - the expectation, embedded across centuries, that women will absorb a higher baseline of pain and difficulty without it being fully investigated. Dr Catriona named it plainly in the episode and I want to sit with it plainly here too, because naming it is part of shifting it.</p><p></p><p>And the third is what self-advocacy actually looks like in the room — not as a performance, but as a regulated, grounded way of communicating that actually changes how the person in front of you responds.</p><p>This reflection is for anyone who has ever left an appointment feeling smaller than when they walked in. And for anyone who works with patients and wants to understand why that happens.</p><p></p><p>This podcast is supported by Convatec Continence Care and their Me+ programme, which supports people using intermittent catheters with both practical guidance and emotional wellbeing resources. Find out more at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec</a>.</p><p><br /></p><p>Show notes and resources at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.howwereallyfeel.com/episode-10-when-youre-not-believed" target="_blank">https://</a><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com/episode-10-when-youre-not-believed" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com/episode-10-when-youre-not-believed</a></p><p><br /></p>

Episode thumbnail for When you're not believed: chronic UTI, advocacy and medical misogyny

June 28, 2026

When you're not believed: chronic UTI, advocacy and medical misogyny

<p>If you've ever been told there's nothing wrong with you and felt worse, not better, this episode is for you.</p><p></p><p>Dr Sula is joined by Dr Catriona Anderson, a GP with a special interest in recurrent and chronic UTI and founder of the Focus Medical Clinic, and Neha Visavadia, a women’s health coach and product consultant in health tech with an MSc in Health Psychology who draws on her own lived experience of long-term health conditions to articulate what so many people struggle to put into words.</p><p></p><p>Together, they unpick why chronic UTI still has no formal medical definition, why that gap leaves patients stuck in a tick-box system, and what it actually takes to be heard, believed and properly treated when your symptoms don't fit neatly into existing guidelines.</p><p></p><p>Here's some of what you'll take away:</p><ul><li>Why a negative test doesn't mean nothing is wrong. The real limitations of dipstick testing, and why recurrent and chronic UTI are so often missed, minimised or misdiagnosed as a result.</li><li>The psychological cost of not being believed. How dismissal in healthcare can quietly fuel avoidance, and why that avoidance, while understandable, can make things worse.</li><li>Medical misogyny, named plainly. Why women's symptoms are so often expected to be endured rather than investigated, and what's changing.</li><li>How to prepare yourself to be heard. Practical, psychologically grounded ways to walk into an appointment ready to advocate for yourself, without needing to fight for it.</li></ul><p></p><p>This podcast is supported by Convatec Continence Care and their Me+ programme, which supports people using intermittent catheters with both practical guidance and emotional wellbeing resources. Find out more at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec</a>.</p><p></p><p>Whether you're navigating chronic UTI yourself, supporting someone who is, or working clinically with this patient group, this episode will help you feel less alone, better informed, and clearer on what to ask for next.</p><p>References and resources discussed in this episode, fact-checked and collated by our show researcher, are available at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com</a> <br /></p>

Episode thumbnail for My reflections on confidence, catheterising & finding your way back to yourself following episode 9

June 25, 2026

My reflections on confidence, catheterising & finding your way back to yourself following episode 9

<p>Sometimes the hardest part of a new way of managing your body isn't the technique. It's everything that happens in your head before you even get there.</p><p></p><p>This is my reflection following last week's conversation with Dr Angie Rantell, consultant nurse in urogynaecology at King's College Hospital, and Keira McGarrity, psychological wellbeing practitioner and intermittent catheter user. We talked about how long bladder symptoms can go unheard, what a negative test actually does to someone who knows something's wrong, and the moment everything shifted for Keira as she stopped trying to do it "right."</p><p></p><p>I keep coming back to that. How much of healing - physical, practical, everyday healing - depends on how we're relating to ourselves while we do it.</p><p></p><p>A few things I sit with in this episode:</p><p></p><p>Why self-blame so often fills the gap before a diagnosis arrives, and what that does to the nervous system over time.</p><p></p><p>What it really means when a test comes back clear but the symptoms don't.</p><p></p><p>Why easing up on perfectionism changed Keira's catheter use more than any equipment could, and what that tells us about the mind-body loop in chronic and intermittent health management.</p><p></p><p>This conversation connects closely with the work I'm doing with Convatec Continence Care and their Me+ programme, which supports people using intermittent catheters with both practical guidance and emotional wellbeing resources. Find out more at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com/in-partnership-with-convatec</a>.</p><p></p><p>More resources and references for this episode are at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://www.howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank">www.howwereallyfeel.com</a></p><p><br /></p>

20 total episodes available

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What is How We Really Feel?
<p><b>How We Really Feel</b> is the podcast that takes an honest, evidence-based look at what it means to live in a body, especially when that body is doing something no test has fully explained, no appointment has had time to address, or no one has joined the dots on yet.</p><p></p><p>Hosted by Dr Sula Windgassen, PhD, health psychologist, researcher, author of <i>It's All In Your Body</i> and specialist in chronic illness, burnout and the mind-body connection. Each episode brings together leading clinicians, researchers and people with deep lived experience to examine the whole picture: biological, psychological and social.</p><p>Guests are chosen for their years of peer-reviewed research, frontline clinical practice or a rich lived experience of illness, injury and healing. Every episode is fact-checked by Dr Sula and the show researcher, a trainee health psychologist and PhD student. All studies and resources referenced are listed at <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank">howwereallyfeel.com</a> so you can read further, question it and make it your own.<br /></p><p>Series one explores pelvic and bladder health. One of the least explored areas of health, especially from a holistic and integrated approach that incorporates mind and body and the human at the heart of symptoms. Episodes cover chronic UTI, bladder pain syndrome, the nervous system, pelvic pain, sex and intimacy after illness, and what it means to befriend a body that has fundamentally changed. Between guest episodes, Dr Sula shares her own therapeutic reflections: what stood out, what the evidence means in practice, and what might be worth sitting with or trying.<br /></p><p><b>How We Really Feel is for you if:</b> </p><ul><li>You're curious about how our biology, psychology and lived experience are woven together and what that means for how we heal</li><li>You're a urologist, pelvic health physiotherapist, GP, health psychologist, gynaecologist or clinician with an interest in holistic, integrated and evidence-based care</li><li>You've ever felt like medicine ran out of answers before you did </li><li>You're navigating bladder pain, pelvic pain, chronic UTIs, chronic illness or burnout and want to understand what's really going on beneath the surface</li></ul><p></p><p><i>New guest episodes </i><b><i>released weekly on Mondays</i></b><i> and reflective summary episodes with Dr Sula Windgassen on Thursdays. All resources at </i><a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://howwereallyfeel.com" target="_blank"><i>howwereallyfeel.com</i></a></p>
How often does this podcast release new episodes?

This podcast updates daily.

Where can I listen to this podcast?

This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.

Does this podcast accept guests?

Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.

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