The Gen Mess with Tess

Michele Molitor spent a decade as a creative director before being fired in the dot-com crash, discovered coaching through that experience, and has spent the past 25 years helping accomplished women break free from the subconscious patterns keeping them stuck. In this episode, Tess and Michele unpac...

Danielle Farage graduated from USC in 2020, watched her generation get locked out of entry-level jobs during COVID, and turned that experience into a career translating Gen Z for the rest of the working world. In this episode, Tess and Danielle unpack why organizations keep losing young talent befor...

This episode examines why dedicated, compassionate professionals in veterinary medicine and other caring fields burn out and leave, and what leaders should be considering in the modern workplace. Crystal Stokes, a licensed marriage and family therapist and doctoral candidate who founded Full Circle ...

This episode examines what it takes to heal when talk therapy and medication are not reaching the root cause. Neil Markey, co-founder and CEO of Beckley Retreats and a former U.S. Army Ranger who completed three combat deployments, shares how unresolved PTSD brought him to meditation and professiona...

This episode examines what happens after breast cancer treatment ends, and why the emotional, relational, and identity-based damage from a cancer diagnosis often goes unaddressed by the medical system. Tess Brigham, a therapist and breast cancer survivor, speaks with Hollye Jacobs, a nurse, social w...

For decades, there were two options when your drinking became a problem: a 12-step program or a residential treatment center. Both carries stigma, both requires a label,&...

Ask a Gen Xer how they're doing and watch what happens. They'll say they're "fine." Somewhere along the way, a generation turned that into an identity one that ...

There's a name for what a lot of young people are doing right now, and it's not laziness. Dr. Suzanne Degges-White calls it life shelving: the decision to put the big stuff on hold because the weight of choosing feels like too much. In this episode, Tess sits down with Dr. Degges-White, licensed cou...

The burnout conversation has been missing something. Not willpower, not better habits, not the right morning routine. What's actually missing is the body. In this episode, Tess sits down with Dr. Suzanne Bober, chiropractor, nervous system educator, and founder of the Infinite Balance Blueprint, who...

For most of modern work, being difficult was something leadership could get away with if they were brilliant enough. We didn't just tolerate the tortured genius, we romanticized them. And there was a logic to it. If someone controlled access to knowledge, skills, or connections you couldn't get anyw...