Episode 99: When Success Stops Feeling Like Enough with guest Dr. Stephanie Ganter

Topics Covered

• Why High-Achieving Women Start Questioning Success
• The Hidden Pressure of Being a Student Athlete and High Achiever
• The Emotional Side of Success Nobody Talks About
• Control vs. Dependence: Why So Many Women Feel Trapped
• Why a Successful Dental Implant Surgeon Decided to Go to Law School
• Protecting Your Energy Without Guilt or Burnout
• Why Women Are Trained to Suppress Emotion and Stress
• How to Feel Fulfilled Instead of Constantly Chasing More

“Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.”

I found myself repeating that empowering quote 24 hours later hearing it, while navigating a small dilemma in my own life.

My guest, Dr. Stephanie Ganter, is a board-certified periodontist and implant surgeon who, in the middle of building a successful career, made a decision most people never saw coming: she went to law school.

She also says, “Achievement alone doesn’t create fulfillment.”

This conversation is about the identity shifts high-achieving women go through when the version of success they spent years chasing suddenly stops feeling like enough.

Stephanie shares such an honest perspective on ambition, fulfillment, and learning how to listen to yourself instead of constantly performing for the next achievement.

Something tells me this conversation is going to resonate with a lot of you the way it did with me.

Find the full transcript and bonus resources for physician moms at inspiredmommds.com/99.

Why High-Achieving Women Start Questioning Success

Dr. Cindy: Hi, and welcome back to the Inspired Mom MDs podcast. Today's conversation is one I think so many high-achieving women will recognize themselves in.

I am joined by Dr. Stephanie Ganter, a board-certified periodontist and implant surgeon who at the peak of her clinical career made a decision that most people do not see coming. She went to law school.

What makes Stephanie's story so compelling is that her career shift reflects a question many high-achieving women may be wrestling with, and that is: Is this what success is supposed to feel like, or is there more?

And what unfolds from there is a much bigger conversation about identity and fulfillment and the often subtle moment that many women may reach when they realize they might want something different from the life that they worked so hard to achieve. Stephanie, I am really excited for this conversation.

Welcome to the show.

Dr. Stephanie: Oh, thank you so much, Cindy. I am so honored to be on your show. And like I said, I've been talking to my colleagues about it, and they are all pumped to listen to this as well. The topic, today is just, it is so applicable to so many women.

I find that females who are in healthcare are high achievers, and they love to work themselves right to the max. So I feel like this is gonna be the perfect topic for the perfect day.

Dr. Cindy: Yes. And I can see you're at work today, Thank you for carving out the time.

Dr. Stephanie: I am. I am being an example here, yes.

The Hidden Pressure of Being a Student Athlete and High Achiever

Dr. Cindy: So if you could just bring us all up to speed. I mentioned you're going into, or you're in law school, but just bring us up to speed on this part of your life.

What happened before law school?

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah, sure. So I have gone through many identity phases in life. I think like most of us, I… Well, I guess perhaps not. When I was about 12, that's when I started identifying as a student athlete. I excelled at athletics pretty naturally, and I just found a home there.

It was safe. I felt like I was good at it. That's where I made my friends. And so for the next roughly 12 years, I strongly identified as a student athlete, and there are some blessings to that and some baggage. One of the blessings is that you are, you're sought after. You gain confidence that you may not have otherwise gained at that age, and you just, you're rewarded academically, financially, and otherwise.

A lot of that confidence is built up on external affirmation and therein lies the problem. And so as you go through your 20s, you have this confidence. But as the world tests you, as life tests you, as it invariably will, you realize that it's really the internal affirmations and the internal confidence that gets you through life's toughest challenges and propels relationships.

So starting as a student athlete I went to NCAA Division I college on a full ride track and field scholarship. I was a bio major, and it felt like I had a full-time job. I didn't feel like I could lose races without the fear of having my scholarship pulled, and that was tough.

Even if that was real or perceived pressure, I would be in bed in college, like every night by 8:30, 9:00. I was not partying. I had my first sip of alcohol when I was in dental school. That was wild. Think about having your freshman college experience and have it in your professional school. I would not recommend it to most. It can be really tricky.

So I go through dental school. It was the first time I was not competing, so that was an identity shift. I didn't feel good about myself, so I replaced that as any normal person would do, with going out and drinking and trying to find relationships and friendships through those avenues.

And I was a great student. I had good habits, and so those habits got me through. But man, it was not the way to go. And then, I decided, you know, I wanted to go specialize, and so therein lied a different identity shift. I was married between dental school and residency.

Again, it works for some people. I don't know if I'd recommend it. And as I graduated residency, I shifted identities again into a business owner and somebody who's trying to suddenly grow a social arm that I've never had. When you're an athlete and a student you get to focus on you. Or it really is just about you.

And so if you're mad, sad, happy, angry, it doesn't really matter what everybody else thinks. And I found out very quickly when I became a business owner and in private practice, gosh, all of that matters so much more than how you are personally perceiving how you're doing. And so that's where I'm at.

And now introduce law. Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: Wow.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: So being so young when you got into being a student athlete, it sounds like kind of took away those transitional years that you did-

Dr. Stephanie: Well said …

Dr. Cindy: have a chance, you had a chance to do later.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah, 100%. And I always told myself, Cindy, I was always like, "You know what? I'm gonna do that later. I'm gonna do any– you can drink at any age. I'm just gonna start my teenage drinking-when I'm 30. It's okay."

Dr. Cindy: Fair.

The Emotional Side of Success Nobody Talks About

Dr. Stephanie: And unfortunately it was a big mismatch, and I tell people this all the time. You can grow your academic brain and you can grow your socio- emotional brain, but you can't do it at once, and you have to figure out which one, which phase of life you're in.

So right now, for the first six years of private practice, I really was catching up on that emotional intelligence and those social skills that my confidence said was like, "Oh, yeah, I got this." But, the outputs from my environment were telling me that I needed improvement.

Dr. Cindy: Okay. You mentioned a number of identity shifts.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: From 12 up till now. And I've noticed a lot of women describe at this moment, this pivot to a different part of their career, they've experienced fear resistance, hesitation. It sounds like you just flowed through all of these shifts.

How do you make that transition, that change?

Dr. Stephanie: I ride motorcycles, and so it allows…

Dr. Cindy: Explain how that works.

Dr. Stephanie: It may not have solved the problem, but it might give you some perspective on how I make decisions in life. I'm a go-with-the-flow kind of gal, and I have found that one of my greatest teachers has been my mom, actually.

And the reason is, is 'cause even though we fought, I strongly looked up to my dad now, when I was growing up. I wanted to be like him, but I learned the most from my mom. And the reason is because she was very open with how she went about just, how she did life and some of the choices she made, and especially when me and my brother came into their lives.

And so I grew up firsthand seeing some of the consequences of a strong, powerful woman like my mom perhaps not putting herself first all the time.

And so I wanted to make sure that no matter what I did in life, I put myself first, and that role model in her kind of gave me the, just the push to get over some of those well-founded fears.

You mentioned fear when you go through these identity shifts. That's what makes them messy, Cindy. Like, that's, that's why relationships get, they get broken sometimes or they have to bend and then reform is because as you go through these shifts of who you are, what you want, you grow and you change, and if some people, they don't like that or their safety zone is comfort, then there's gonna be some friction there.

And so for me, I 100% agree with you that fear is a huge part of this equation, but my why is largely my mom. And so it just pushes me forward.

Dr. Cindy: Mm. You hit the crux of it. You go back to your why.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah.

Dr. Cindy: And I love how your mom was such a strong role model, in addition to your dad.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah. Love them both. You know?

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Gotta bless the moms out there.

Dr. Stephanie: 100%.

Control vs. Dependence: Why So Many Women Feel Trapped

Dr. Cindy: We were talking the other day offline, and you mentioned something really powerful. You described this idea of control versus dependence. Can you break that down for us?

Dr. Stephanie: Yes. This is one of the fundamental aha moments for me, was this idea that we are in control of our lives. In a lot of ways we're not, but there's a lot of opportunity for women, high achievers, to be more in control of their life than they think.

There is a common saying, "We're all living in a cage with the door wide open."

All we gotta do is step out into that brave unknown, and that's the sense of control that I come back to and I center on. Because if you're not in control, then you're probably in a state of dependence, whether that is dependence on a job or dependence on a relationship or a dependence on a mindset.

Staying inside that comfort zone will inevitably make you dependent on something or someone. And although dependence can be good in some aspects, it can encage us.

There are so many strong, powerful women out there that are… they just need that extra motivation, that extra push to take back control of their lives, whether that is starting a private practice, or whether that's just carving out 30 minutes of your day for you. That can be a huge lever of control.

One of the things, you know, Cindy and I both did the Integrative Medicine Fellowship through the Andy Weil Center for Integrative Medicine, and one of the first things we learned was healing the healer. That's a state of control.

A lot of, what we know, a lot of the chronic inflammatory diseases come from chronic stress. The body senses naturally when you have lost that control. And I know many more women than I do, perhaps men that come home and they're exhausted. They are done. And then somehow they shift into this extra gear and run a family.

I become more and more impressed by women that I see and what they're capable of. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, and I think that women need to work on taking control of their own lives, carve out that personal time, and slow it down, which is what I find myself working on currently, is trying to carve out that time.

If I'm not intentional about it, in my family, there's a lot of inflammatory diseases that run rampant. And, I mean, I already have… I'm already saddled with one, and so it is so important for me to control my diet. It's important for me to control my stress levels. And, uh, yeah, I can't do endless cardio to make it go away.

Uh, so yeah. We're all living in a cage with the door wide open. You gotta figure out how to step out.

Dr. Cindy: And just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.

Why a Successful Dental Implant Surgeon Decided to Go to Law School

Dr. Stephanie: Right, which a lot of people, I say that, and then they say, "Steph, why in the world are you doing law school? Just 'cause you can doesn't mean you should."

And I go, "I love that. Hold me to the fire on these things. Absolutely love it."

So one of the reasons that I find that law school has been a positive addition is I love options. Options in life bring happiness, in my opinion. One of the things we know as providers and clinicians is that patients can be exhausting.

You know, healthcare is a passion of mine, for sure, but it's not the end-all be-all for me. I love having multiple definitions of success, and one of the things with law that I found more balancing than, just inflammatory, if you will, is that it's the liberal arts side of academia that I've never had before.

I'm a biology major. I have taken sciences, like, all my life, and these are the first… I used to love English. And it's not English classes, but this is the first real, you know, government class. I'm figuring out how our legal system in the United States works for the first time, how it works in Texas for the first time.

And I've always thought knowledge is power, and there's a comfort in that, especially as we step into a digital age where our future's a little bit… It's not that it's uncertain, but we're gonna step into a brave new world over the next decade or two, and I felt like law is a really good option for me at this point for a balancing factor.

Dr. Cindy: And your thirst for knowledge, I really resonate with that, and I'm just amazed, the older I get, the more I realize I don't know, and how exciting it is to learn these new subjects. It's like, what?

Dr. Stephanie: Oh, well put …

Dr. Cindy: This has been around for decades, and I didn't know it?

Dr. Stephanie: I'm the same way. I mean, some of my first classes, I'm doing property and contracts right now, and I'm like, Oh, man, I used to think I was smart, and then I am in my 1L year, and Cindy, I do not feel like a very smart person right now.

Dr. Cindy: Well, it's all new. It's new information.

Dr. Stephanie: 100%.

Dr. Cindy: But you'll conquer it.

Dr. Stephanie: Yeah. But that's the best thing.

Dr. Cindy: So I'm hearing you define success for you as having different options and different avenues to pursue in fulfilling this thirst for knowledge, while other people, it is both good, may be completely content with one avenue, and that's fine.

So we're not saying you need to have multiple avenues and multiple options to be fulfilled. It's just, it comes down to your own personal why.

Dr. Stephanie: 100%.

Dr. Cindy: What is it that fulfills you? And that is what is important, and I'm so glad you're sharing what fulfills you so we can see a different perspective.

Dr. Stephanie: I love that, Cindy, and that sense of fulfillment is so unique to the individual. And, one of the, one of the things that as I try to organize my life and as I try to, again, try to carve out those minutes in the day, is when you start to talk about fulfillment, you're talking about sources of internal affirmation, things nobody else can touch but you.

You can choose to be happy in a moment's notice, even if the whole day has been a series of just, you know, nonsensical moments all tied together and you can't really figure out why that day was going. You can be 100% fulfilled by sitting with those feelings, sitting with what you personally want to achieve on that day, which could be as profound and yet simple as having peace.

I heard a story recently. Everyone knows… or, not everybody, but a lot of people are familiar with the storyline from Harry Potter, and the actor that plays Ronald Weasley, a super successful guy. Never thought his acting career would take off and he would get this role as Ron Weasley. But now he is done with this show, and you know what he wanted to do?

He wanted to open an ice cream truck. That was his teenage dream. And so he is going back, and he says that he is more fulfilled pursuing something that truly mattered to him, that maybe to everybody else seemed nonsensical.

But to see that guy smile- you know, with him, he's in his ice cream apron and he's got his own thing. That is fulfillment, and that has nothing to do with degrees. That has nothing to do with success. And quite frankly, it wouldn't have even made the paper, with the exception of who he is.

That's fulfillment. That's what I aim for, personally. That smile.

Dr. Cindy: That's a great story. Great story. Ron Weasley.

Dr. Stephanie: Love him.

Dr. Cindy: What's the actor's name? I don't know what the actor's- Oh, I'll have to Google that …

Dr. Stephanie: yeah, we'll have to edit that one in.

Dr. Cindy: I don't have room for that fact in my brain.

Dr. Stephanie: I have no more space.

Protecting Your Energy Without Guilt or Burnout

Dr. Cindy: So you touched on this, just a hint of this, about energy. I read an article you wrote. I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I can't remember where I found it, maybe you can tell us at the end, where you talk about protecting your energy and that you had to unlearn some things about productivity to make your current life sustainable. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Dr. Stephanie: I love the question, and thank you for reading my article. I hope it did not put you to sleep.

Dr. Cindy: No, it was so good.

Dr. Stephanie: Oh, thank you so much. Yes, so energy. I have always been a super sensitive person, and I've realized recently that it doesn't make one weak.

The weakness is in not knowing thyself, and so the weakness is not honoring that sensitivity within you. I thought I was this big, bad athlete that could feel no pain and I could push through anything. But I wasn't honoring myself.

And I had to look at emotions and energy as not a weakness, but a strength, and something to be, not fulfilled, and not controlled, but just, to resonate within myself and have grounding. And it's my version of spirituality that is getting in touch with that energy.

There is a concept called congruence and alignment, and in some teachings you will hear that if your internal sense of being is out of alignment with your external facial expressions, what you're saying.

When you walk into a room, I know people talk about power stances, but when you walk into a room and you don't feel good, if you feel truly scared and if you feel threatened and anxious, you can have those power stances, but the energy within you is gonna permeate.

Instead, I push myself and others to sit with these feelings. Don't put a cap on them, but experience them to their fullest and celebrate them. If you're anxious before a meeting or if you're anxious before some kind of an event, that's something to be celebrated. That's normal. Guess what? There's a lot more people anxious in there the minute you walk in the room because you're probably eliciting certain energy in them.

If you keep your attention outward, if you focus on the human being in front of you, and if you focus on their facial expressions, what the information that they're giving you, that's gonna help have grounding energy, and the exchange will be much more fruitful than if just you look inside yourself and you're like, "Oh my gosh, Cindy's looking at me right now and she probably notices that pimple that showed up this morning, and there's no way I can continue onward."

None of that's right. Instead, I see a big beautiful smile on Cindy's face. She's conveying peace and love and gratitude. That's gonna be the connecting energy. That's what women need, especially within or between each other, is finding a way to turn your attention outward. And by the way, that's also how you can dominate a room quicker than anything else, is by turning that attention outward.

Why Women Are Trained to Suppress Emotion and Stress

Dr. Cindy: Well said. Yes, people can feel your energy, see your energy. And I also like that you've touched on feelings more than once now, and sitting with your feelings. And I was just listening to something about stoicism this morning, and it was about feelings, so interesting that you brought this up.

But yes, you have feelings , and they come and go like clouds. .. And you can sit with them, and you can stare at them and see what you pick out in the cloud, or you can let them go by. But what we have control over as human beings is our judgment about those feelings and what we decide to do with them.

And it's interesting how our judgment about our own feelings can help control our emotions. And this isn't my own brain coming up with this. I just listened to this this morning, so-

Dr. Stephanie: So well said …

Dr. Cindy: Isn't that fascinating?

Dr. Stephanie: Oh, I love it.

Dr. Cindy: That it's really neat that you bring up feelings.

Dr. Stephanie: I love that you bring up judgment. I used to, if I was having a problem, and I can say it super calmly now, but at the moment, my 16-year-old self, it definitely didn't come up calm. But if I was having a problem with how somebody was relating to me or how I was coming across, whether I was coming across super sharp, or I got my eyebrows going, I got that, you know, that killer look going.

I always would judge the situation, and I would… in my head, I'd be like, "Can't they see that I hate myself more than anything? Why are they also piling on and hating me?" And guess what? The world doesn't necessarily see that. What they see is that, again, kind of going back to energy, they see you projecting that judgment onto them, when really it's actually all that judgment was really just what you've been judging your own emotions by.

When I used to… I love my dad, and, in my family, I come from a very big family, and if any of my cousins happen to listen to this podcast they know what I'm talking about. I have a million cousins. We don't share emotions. I was asked to speak at a funeral because they said, "Yeah, I don't think Steph will cry." That's not good. That's not, that's not normal. I'm like yeah, I'm gonna cry. You give me a script, it's gonna go waterworks.

Yeah, crying's a superpower. I tell a lot of women that. It is okay to cry. It may not be socially acceptable in certain rooms. You may have to pick and choose the rooms you cry in, but anything in my office, I'm like, "Hey, tears don't bother me."

Yeah, there's a study, as we talk about judgment of our own emotions, in the animal kingdom. I think we had one of our classmates maybe have posted this or maybe did a study on this, I can't remember. But talking about people that shake during a stressful encounter. You think you know what I'm talking about, Cindy where there was a study done in a war-torn country, and the researcher stood in the bomb shelter and recorded the different reactions from an infant to the mother, the adults in the room, and then the teenagers in the room in this bomb shelter. The bombs started to go. So that was the stressful inducing event.

The child shook, but then was fine. The kids they saw would shake a little bit, cry a little bit, but then stop. They were socially trained to stop. You looked at the adults in the room, they were stone cold, flat affect. Visual displays of emotion have been socially trained out of us largely by the time we are 30.

It is not appropriate to cry. And there are double standards for men and women, but a lot of that is 'cause we judge ourselves. We judge ourselves for being sad or happy or too this or too that. Now I name it, and if it's the appropriate setting, then I show it in a controlled way, and sometimes I just have to let it out and sit with it, and then it passes, to your point, like a cloud.

But that judgment held me back for a long time.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah. Yeah, thank you for putting that in perspective. And if I find that study, I'll put it in the show notes for sure.

Dr. Stephanie: Please do. Shout out.

Dr. Cindy: I'll find it.

Dr. Stephanie: We'll find it. I'll try to look for you, too.

Dr. Cindy: Yeah, we'll get it to you guys.

How to Feel Fulfilled Instead of Constantly Chasing More

Dr. Cindy: As we close up today, I could talk to you for hours, any final words of wisdom, tidbits? What's on your brain that you want to share?

Stephanie: Give gratitude for the day and try to be as happy as you can for where you are in the moment, and that may not mean that you are doing the most. It may not mean that you're doing the least. But try to remind yourself that the little kid in you worked really hard for you to be where you're at, and gosh darn it, if you're not going to enjoy it find a way to smile about however the day ended up.

I'm someone who gets intimidated very easily by others, which may come as a surprise, may not. But I have really been intentional in the last 12 months to two years about trying to be real happy with just where I am at and what I am doing instead of being preoccupied by the next bigger fish or someone who comes in with amazing makeup, and I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. "They look so beautiful."

That would be my take home, my two cents is for women, is that you guys are, y'all are amazing, and there is some uniqueness about you that nobody else has. Honor that.

Dr. Cindy: Thank you, Stephanie. How can people reach out to you if they want to talk to you more?

Dr. Stephanie: If you want to talk more, uh, you can find me on Instagram @GanterSR. You can also email me and we can put it in the notes. I have a long email so I won't muddy the chat with this.

Dr. Cindy: Got it. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dr. Stephanie: Thanks, Cindy. You are fantastic. I've gotta say, I loved my time with you in the fellowship. Fellow Texan, shout out to that. And gosh, I love that you're doing this podcast. I love that you're a female doing it, and you're taking time out of your busy schedule.

You are an entrepreneur. You are someone who does not, to me, does not fear failure, and that is inspiring. We can all learn from that.

Dr. Cindy: Stephanie, you gave me chills. Thank you.

Dr. Stephanie: You deserve it.

Dr. Cindy: And Stephanie is a fellow podcaster also. So shout out to your podcast. Give us the name real quick.

Dr. Stephanie: Yes. Between Two Teeth.

We thought that between two teeth during the pandemic was funny, and so-

Dr. Cindy: It is. Still is.

Dr. Stephanie: That's what we went with. Yes. And so we go around. We're gonna be at a conference in Florida this coming June, I think. So yeah, follow the journey. We're excited. We usually go on motorcycle rides, and have a lot of fun doing it.

So yeah.

Dr. Cindy: Oh my gosh, so fun. Okay, I have to let you go. You have to get back to work. So thank you.

Dr. Stephanie: Appreciate you. Yeah. Thanks, Cindy.

Links for Dr. Stephanie Ganter:

Instagram: @gantersr

Email: ganter.s@northeastern.edu

Article from Stephanie’s Linked In page, click here.

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