Healers with Hustles New career, new you? The science of personality change with Dr Shannon Sauer-Zavala
Oct 16, 2025
43:31
A career pivot might change more than your work… It might shift your personality too, if you let it.
Clinical psychologist and researcher Dr Shannon Sauer Zavala joins Caitlin to share the science behind intentional personality change and how values can guide the traits we grow. We talk burnout, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and how the very traits that once drove our success might now hold us back.
Shannon shares how she’s taking her work beyond academia by building a public-facing platform, writing a book, and making science useful in real life.
This ep is a must-listen for any health prof rethinking how they work, lead, or show up in the world.
Tune in to learn:
- How one statistic made Shannon question everything she believed about therapy
- How targeting a single personality trait can treat multiple mental health conditions
- What happened the moment she realised academia isn’t always about merit or meaning
- How rejection from book agents sparked an unexpected creative chapter
- The surprising lesson behind her first book cover being rejected
- Which personality trait predicts whether you burn out or bounce back
- How “supportive care” can sometimes hold clients back from deeper change
- What shifted to make her fall in love with marketing after months of resistance
- What she discovered when she stopped hiding behind data and started telling stories
Connect with Shannon
Connect with Caitlin: