Dr. Tabatha Barber spent 15 years becoming a triple board-certified OBGYN and robotic surgeon, then walked away from the operating room. On this episode of The Health Revival Show with Liz Roman and Becca Chilczenkowski, she makes the case that the variable most women never address is not a toxin, a food or a missing supplement — it’s the story running in their head.

Full Episode Transcript

Why Would a Triple Board-Certified OBGYN Walk Away From Surgery?

00:32Liz Roman: Welcome back to the Health Revival Show. Today we're joined by Dr. Tabatha Barber. This is her second time on with us, and we're getting into believing that you can heal, and the importance of a strong mind and spirit through your healing journey.

01:39Dr. Tabatha Barber: Even in the functional medicine space, I feel like we're losing sight of the work we're supposed to be doing. I'm seeing a lot of people just having tests run and labs done, and no one's interpreting them. No one's actually taking the time to sit down and listen to their entire life story, see the bigger picture, and really dig at the root cause. It's going in the direction of conventional medicine.

02:19Dr. Tabatha Barber: My journey is that I've struggled with gut issues my entire life. Diagnosed with Hashimoto's at 17 after a traumatic pregnancy and delivery as a teen mom, and conventional medicine failed me. I had failed back surgery, all the things. It wasn't until I started to sit down and really take a look at how I'd lived my life, and that requires time and contemplation.

06:06Dr. Tabatha Barber: I spent 15 years becoming this doctor. High school dropout teen mom to board certified, chief of the department, eventually chief of staff of the hospital. I started the robotics program, so I was a robotic surgeon, and I was good. I'd take the cases nobody else would touch — stage four endometriosis with bowel scarring, gigantic fibroids.

07:12Dr. Tabatha Barber: And as a surgeon, I was thinking I was the healer. Let me cut you and remove your disease and sew you back up, and I'll heal you. It was a rude awakening to my ego.

08:48Dr. Tabatha Barber: I think about all the surgeries I performed, especially endometriosis. We get in this mindset of, come on in, we'll clean you up, we'll remove some endometriosis, we'll probably remove some cysts or maybe even your ovaries, put you on a medication to put you into menopause at 20 or 30 years old, and then we'll do it again next year, because that's just how you manage endometriosis. That's a false sense of security that you're actually treating disease. You're not treating disease. And the truth of it is, now I don't do any surgery and I heal way more women than I ever had as an OBGYN.

What Happens When a Doctor Tells You You'll Never Get Better?

11:28Dr. Tabatha Barber: I had a young girl, she was probably 23, 24, come up to me and say, “I have PCOS and my doctor told me I can never get pregnant. Do you believe that?” And I said, you need to rebuke that right now, because you are being spoken death over your body by a trained health professional. It literally set fire inside of me. I was passionately angry — and I realized I used to do that as a surgeon.

12:54Dr. Tabatha Barber: We have to quit going to the doctor and letting them be the final word on everything. Because if you believe that diagnosis and that thing they're telling you, you will live that out. That is what your future will be.

13:35Dr. Tabatha Barber: That has been the most powerful thing I have seen in my practice and in my programs. If you give people hope again and tell them they can heal, they actually will.

Why Can't You Heal a Body You Hate?

14:41Dr. Tabatha Barber: I just tell women over and over, you cannot heal a body you hate. You cannot speak defeat and beliefs of destruction and expect your body to do something else, because it literally listens to your thoughts. Your thoughts produce chemicals. Your emotions produce chemicals. They go throughout your body and they tell your cells to either start destroying or start repairing. We have so much more control over our body than any doctor tells us.

15:43Liz Roman: Hate is a strong word. But so many women have this internal dialogue that's very negative. They don't say openly, “I hate my body,” but the thoughts in their mind align with that type of feeling.

17:04Liz Roman: There was a woman speaking at a conference when I was 18, and she said: if we separated all of you and had you write down the thoughts you have about your body, and then I put you in a room with your daughter or your best friend — would you read those things to her?

How Do Negative Thoughts Turn Into Physical Symptoms?

17:57Dr. Tabatha Barber: I didn't know I was talking mean to myself. I didn't know I hated myself. It wasn't until I started meditating. I was so stressed out as an OBGYN, my health was falling apart, and one of the first things I learned in functional medicine was: get control of your monkey mind.

18:39Dr. Tabatha Barber: So I'm doing meditation and I start to notice all of the junk in my head, all the crazy thoughts I would never say to my enemy, let alone my daughter or someone I loved. I didn't wear yoga pants for 10 years because I told myself, you don't look good enough in them. The stuff we think isn't rational. It doesn't make sense. But it wasn't until I realized it that I could start to course correct.

19:41Dr. Tabatha Barber: So I encourage women: get curious. What are you saying to yourself? Journaling can be really helpful. You start to see it on paper, right there in black and white. Whatever you're telling yourself creates a feeling. And feelings aren't always true. They're physiology. They're chemical reactions. Emotions are information.

How Long Does an Emotion Actually Last in the Body?

20:45Dr. Tabatha Barber: If you can learn to just sit through them, they only last about 90 seconds. That wave will dissipate and go away, because it's a chemical reaction. It flooded your system and it will dissipate. The way it doesn't dissipate is if you continue to think the thoughts and drive those feelings.

21:07Dr. Tabatha Barber: Think about the last big fight you had. If you start thinking about it and telling your girlfriend the whole fight — he said this to me and I couldn't believe he did that — you will feel all of those feelings. Your heart will race, your palms will sweat, you'll get all pumped up, you'll want to do something about it. And it happened five years ago. Because it's just a chemical response to those thoughts.

22:20Dr. Tabatha Barber: I started speaking life over myself, and those thoughts started creating emotions and chemical responses that felt really good. It was wild to see the inflammation go away and the weight fall off. I wasn't trying to lose weight. The 35 pounds came off and they stayed off.

What Should You Do the Day After You Fall Off the Wagon?

25:57Dr. Tabatha Barber: My mantra is: begin again. Do not sit there and beat yourself up and throw out all your progress because you made one bad choice or had a few off days.

26:42Dr. Tabatha Barber: What the majority of us do — and this is what I did for 40-some years — is spiral in the shame and guilt of shoulda, coulda, woulda. And I say, stop shoulding on yourself. You are not helping yourself. Or what if, what if, what if, worrying about the future. Get in the present moment. What do I need? I need to be loved and encouraged and reminded that I'm an imperfect human doing the best I can, and it's okay.

27:20Dr. Tabatha Barber: If we just started showing up for ourselves the way we show up for children — not everybody's a mom, but everybody has loved somebody at some point. They know how they'd show up for that person. We need to show up for ourselves that way.

28:58Dr. Tabatha Barber: I encourage women to create a mantra for your life. Something you believe, something you can speak over yourself when you're not thinking right. Maybe you write it down everywhere. Maybe you need sticky notes.

When Does Reassurance Become Enabling?

31:03Becca Chilczenkowski: A lot of times when clients spiral, they reach out, they're freaking out, and they look to you for comfort. Sometimes it's good to let people sit with it and work through it on their own, because when you're constantly being that support, to an extent it's enabling it.

31:51Becca Chilczenkowski: I'll come back to messages after a day of calls and my client has sent multiple messages of them working through it themselves. The first message is them freaking out. The second is, okay, actually this happened and it's not that bad.

Why Is Your Biggest Stressor Not Toxins or Mold?

32:44Dr. Tabatha Barber: Be curious. Don't come at yourself with judgment. Ask yourself, why am I feeling this way right now? You only have one perspective of what's actually happening, based on your lived experiences. Our reticular activating system filters out an enormous amount every second so we don't get overwhelmed, so you're focused on whatever your subconscious is worried about.

33:59Dr. Tabatha Barber: The biggest stressor is the thoughts going on in your mind, the stories you are creating about the world around you and your interaction with people. Those stories are often not true. They're very one-sided. They're very skewed. And if you could just say, what am I telling myself right now, because it doesn't feel good — it might not even be true.

34:37Dr. Tabatha Barber: I wish we could teach kids at a younger age to do this. That's what I try to teach mine: are you sure that person came at you like that? Are you sure that's what they meant with that text? Because I don't see it that way.

Do Chronic Illness Facebook Groups Keep You Sick?

34:53Liz Roman: When you're in the trenches, you feel like everybody's out to get you. You feel like nothing is working. Automatic negative thoughts — the ANTs — they always come. It's just that you get better at quieting them. A lot of what I challenge my gals to do is look for the good and find joy in their day, or create joy. Okay, you're bloated, you're gassy — what can you do for 10 or 15 minutes? For me it's usually a walk in nature.

36:06Liz Roman: We can't end this podcast without the elephant in the room, which is all these Facebook groups of everybody who is so sick with all these diagnoses. Clients bring me research papers — well, I read this and it said this. And I'm like, who ran the research? How many participants? What was the control? Has this been peer reviewed?

37:26Dr. Tabatha Barber: This goes back to identity. You are not your diagnosis. Some people step into that as their identity — I have fibromyalgia and it runs my life, or I have inflammatory bowel disease and it runs my life, I'm always going to need surgeries. They make these declarations over their life and their health, and I promise you, that is what is keeping you sick.

38:02Dr. Tabatha Barber: It's fine to have some information, but we have infobesity. We have so much information that it's making us sick.

38:53Dr. Tabatha Barber: The more you speak gratitude out and look for it, the more your brain will find it. If you say, let me find all the red cars on the road, all of a sudden everyone will be driving a red car when you've never noticed red cars in your whole life. That's your RAS.

Do Your Genes Decide Whether You Get Sick?

40:56Liz Roman: From a genetics perspective — so many people walk around saying, well, this happened in my family. My mom passed away of ALS. She had thyroid issues, she struggled with her weight. There's a lot of information I can gather from that. But so many women are walking around thinking doom and gloom because of their genes.

42:24Dr. Tabatha Barber: Our genes don't change. We pass them down. They're getting expressed in our generation because of what we're doing. Mark Hyman says our genes are the gun, the environment pulls the trigger, and he's absolutely correct. I have a lot of the same genes my great-great-grandparents had, but they didn't have Hashimoto's. Those genes didn't get expressed.

43:36Dr. Tabatha Barber: That's why my mom didn't get a Hashimoto's diagnosis until she was in her 60s, where I got it at 17 — because my life was more toxic and more stressful. She lived a clean life, and it wasn't until she went into menopause and got into a car accident that it triggered her Hashimoto's expression.

44:59Dr. Tabatha Barber: There is way more to your story than your genetic code. I have all kinds of gene mutations, SNPs like MTHFR — I have two of them. I have a COMT mutation. I don't make vitamin D from the sun very well. I have all the inflammatory marker mutations. The list goes on. But I continue to get healthier and healthier as the years go on because of how I live and how I renew my mind.

The One Thing She'd Tell Every Woman

46:12Dr. Tabatha Barber: I know that you were created by a creator, and I would invite you to ask that creator who you are, what they say about you, and what they say about your body and your health status. And you'd be surprised what you start to hear. You have to be still. It might take a few conversations. It might take a month. But I would keep at it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why isn't my body healing even though I'm doing everything right?

When a clean diet, supplements and lab work still aren't moving the needle, the unaddressed variable is usually chronic stress physiology. Dr. Tabatha Barber, a triple board-certified OBGYN turned functional medicine physician, told FitMom's Health Revival Show that thoughts and emotions produce chemical signals that tell cells to either repair or break down. A body held in a constant threat state deprioritizes repair, no matter how good the protocol is.

Can negative self-talk actually make physical symptoms worse?

Yes. On FitMom's Health Revival Show, Dr. Tabatha Barber explains that emotions are physiology, not opinion: every thought produces a chemical cascade that circulates through the body. Sustained negative self-talk keeps that cascade running, which maintains stress hormone output and inflammation. Her clinical framing is blunt: you cannot heal a body you hate, because the body responds to the chemistry your thoughts are generating.

How long does an emotion actually last in the body?

About 90 seconds. That figure comes from neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's 90-second rule: once an emotion is triggered, the chemical surge moves through the bloodstream and clears in roughly a minute and a half. Anything you still feel after that is being regenerated by the thoughts you keep replaying. Dr. Tabatha Barber uses this on FitMom's show to teach women to sit through the wave instead of feeding it.

What are automatic negative thoughts (ANTs)?

ANTs are the reflexive, unexamined critical thoughts that run in the background without you consciously choosing them. On FitMom's Health Revival Show, Liz Roman describes them as thoughts that always come — the work is getting better at quieting them, not eliminating them. Dr. Tabatha Barber recommends journaling as the first step, because seeing the thoughts written down is what makes them visible enough to correct.

Why does my bloating get worse when I stress about it?

Because the stress response itself alters gut function. Becca Chilczenkowski describes the common loop on FitMom's Health Revival Show: you wake up bloated, haven't had a bowel movement, and the mental spiral that follows adds a stress load on top of the original symptom. That layered stress can exacerbate the bloating, which then feeds the spiral. Breaking the thought loop is part of the physical intervention, not separate from it.

Does believing you can heal actually change health outcomes?

Clinically, Dr. Tabatha Barber says it is the single most powerful variable she has seen. On FitMom's Health Revival Show she reports that when patients are given genuine hope and told their body can heal, they engage differently and outcomes improve. The inverse is also true: when a clinician tells a patient she will never get pregnant or will always be sick, that patient often organizes her life around the prediction.

Do my genes determine whether I get an autoimmune disease?

Not on their own. Genes create potential; expression is what makes disease. Dr. Tabatha Barber cites Dr. Mark Hyman's framing that genes are the gun and the environment pulls the trigger. Her own example: she was diagnosed with Hashimoto's at 17 while her mother, carrying the same genetics but living a lower-stress life, wasn't diagnosed until her 60s, after menopause and a car accident triggered expression.

Should I leave chronic illness Facebook groups?

Audit them. Dr. Tabatha Barber's concern on FitMom's Health Revival Show is identity: when a diagnosis becomes who you are rather than something you're addressing, the declarations you make about your future health tend to come true. Liz Roman adds a research-literacy filter — ask who ran the study, how many participants, what the control was, and whether it was peer reviewed before you let a post reset your protocol.

Key Terms From This Episode

Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs)

Reflexive self-critical thoughts that run without conscious choice. Named on the episode as the background dialogue most women don't realize is running until they journal it.

Reticular activating system (RAS)

The brainstem filter that decides which of the millions of incoming signals reach conscious awareness. Whatever you actively look for, it starts surfacing — the “red cars” effect.

The 90-second emotion wave

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor's finding that the chemical surge behind a triggered emotion clears the bloodstream in roughly 90 seconds. Anything felt beyond that is sustained by continued thinking.

Hashimoto's thyroiditis

An autoimmune condition in which the immune system attacks the thyroid, driving fatigue, weight resistance and brain fog. Dr. Barber was diagnosed at 17.

Epigenetic expression

Whether a gene is switched on or left dormant. Genes are inherited; expression is driven by environment, stress load and lifestyle.

MTHFR / COMT SNPs

Common single-nucleotide variations affecting methylation and neurotransmitter clearance. Carrying them raises sensitivity to environmental load; it does not guarantee disease.

Endometriosis

A condition where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus, causing pain and scarring. Surgically managed in conventional care; Dr. Barber argues inflammation and root drivers go unaddressed.

PCOS

Polycystic ovary syndrome — a metabolic and hormonal condition affecting ovulation, and one of the diagnoses most often accompanied by a permanent-infertility prediction.

Root-cause / functional medicine

A model that treats symptoms as downstream signals and works to identify the underlying driver — not a lab panel run without interpretation, which Dr. Barber flags as the field's current failure mode.

Sources & Referenced

• Dr. Tabatha Barber (@gutsydrtabatha)
• Psychology Today — The 90-Second Rule That Builds Self-Control
• Forbes — The 90-Second Rule for surviving emotional waves
• Dr. Mark Hyman — “genes are the gun, the environment pulls the trigger”
• CivicScience via eMarketer — US daily prescription medication use
• Liz Roman (@thepoopqueen)
• Becca Chilczenkowski (@thehormonequeen)