Dr. Bojana Weatherly On Overcoming Victimhood, the Benefits of Meditation and Mindfulness, and More

Modern life can be overwhelming, and it’s increasingly common to feel not only constantly stressed out, but like you’re a victim to all that’s happening around you. Besides being quite unpleasant mentally, this state of stress and victimhood can actually have a serious and lasting impact on your physical health. Fortunately, as we learned in our conversation with Dr. Bojana Weatherly, there’s an evidence-based way to combat this: through mindfulness. Read on to learn Dr. Weatherly’s personal healing story, the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, how to stop being the victim, and more. .

*This is a short clip from our interview with Dr. Bojana Weatherly. Click here to watch the whole thing.*

You can also listen to an audio version of our interview with Dr. Bojana Weatherly on The WellBe Podcast. 

Discovering the Benefits of Meditation and Mindfulness 

Dr. Bojana Weatherly is the mother of two, a double board certified physician (practicing both internal and integrative medicine) and a board member and medical advisor to several organizations. In other words, she seems like a super woman. But while she was a resident, she woke up one night sobbing, overwhelmed with her life and convinced she couldn’t do it all. 

She spent her days racing around the hospital, in and out of the ICU, running herself ragged trying to save lives. She also became pregnant two times during the course of her residency. 

It was during one of her pregnancies that she hit a wall. She became flooded with negative self-talk and fell into a victimhood mentality, feeling unable to control her circumstances. Her lowest point came when she woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, overcome with the belief that she couldn’t be a good doctor and carry a child at the same time.

So Dr. Weatherly got on her computer and began doing research on PubMed (a medical literature search engine) on the link between stress, long work hours and pregnancy. What she found reinforced her fear: the studies showed that being under stress was associated with negative pregnancy outcomes.

Seeing those results, she was faced with a pivotal decision. “I had a choice that night,” she says. “I had a choice to say, ‘I’m a victim. I give up. I can’t do this.’ Or I had a choice to say, ‘You know what? This is a challenge and I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to step up to this challenge.” She chose the latter.

For Dr. Weatherly, stepping up to the challenge meant finding the best possible tools to allow herself to be the best doctor she could be, as well as the best mom-to-be. Those tools included prenatal yoga, hypnobirthing classes, acupuncture, and chiropractic visits. One thing those tools all had in common? They all tapped into the benefits of mindfulness, and they completely transformed the way she viewed her situation and reacted to her circumstances. They allowed her to leave her victimhood mentality in the distant past. 

During her work at the time, she was seeing patients with a wide variety of chronic conditions — depression, anxiety, IBS, chronic pain, inflammation — who felt completely powerless and overwhelmed in their situation, just as she had. To better understand how she could help these patients tap into the benefits of meditation and mindfulness, she took a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR. Then, she began gradually implementing mindfulness techniques to see what would happen. The results spoke for themselves: “I just started seeing some beautiful, wonderful responses that are backed by the evidence we’re seeing with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,” Dr. Weatherly says. 

From then on, mindfulness exercises became an integral part of her practice. “This really became a tool that I universally started using with all of my patients,” she says. “It can be truly transformative, but the key is that we actually practice it. It’s not a magic pill. It’s not a magic supplement. It’s a practice.”

How A Victimhood Mentality Impacts Healing and Immunity

In that pivotal moment when Dr. Weatherly woke up in the middle of the night sobbing, she felt like a victim of her own life, and made the conscious choice to shift away from that mindset and stop being the victim. Along with the mindfulness exercises she implemented, it turns out that the very act of stepping out of that victimhood mentality may have been a major factor in transforming her physical and mental well-being. That’s because, as she explains, victimhood actually physically impacts our brains and bodies.

To understand how this works, you need to understand the concept of neuroplasticity, or the idea that our brains are constantly changing and rewiring themselves based on your neural activity, which is defined by your thoughts and actions. As Dr. Weatherly puts it, “neurons that fire together, wire together.” 

So when you’re in a negative thought pattern — which includes things like negative self-talk or a pessimistic outlook — your brain reinforces these negative pathways. “What we establish is a certain pattern of negative self-talk, of ‘this is happening to me,’” she says. “The more we have those thoughts, the more we will have those thoughts again, because it’s the path of least resistance.”

Fortunately, the opposite is also true. If you take a step back from the victimhood mentality and challenge it by reframing your circumstances positively, you can help your brain create more constructive patterns. When you do that, you help push yourself toward a growth mindset, where you can take advantage of your brain’s neuroplasticity and the fact that our brains are always learning and growing. 

Victimhood is also associated with stress (think about it: if you feel like you’re a victim of your circumstances, you feel powerless and overwhelmed by your life and always expect the worst. Stressful, right?). Stress, in turn, is associated with heightened cortisol levels and being in a constant state of fight-or-flight mode. That means your sympathetic nervous system is constantly turned on, raising your heart rate and preventing the parasympathetic nervous system from kicking in.

That’s important for your health because the parasympathetic nervous system, aka the “rest and digest” system, is responsible for many of our vital functions, including digestion. So when that system is perpetually turned off, there are consequences. “It’s not allowing for a normal digestive process. It basically just goes into survival mode, and that’s no longer a priority,” says Dr. Weatherly, noting that this can lead to or exacerbate conditions like IBS or Crohn’s. 

The parasympathetic nervous system also controls our immune function, and so your overall immunity is lower when you’re living in a state of victimhood. That means you’re more likely to get sick or develop chronic conditions, and have a harder time healing once you do contract something. Fortunately, none of this is permanent: stepping out of the victimhood mentality allows you to reduce your stress levels and allow your parasympathetic nervous system to turn back on. 

So how do you make that mental shift? You guessed it: by leveraging the benefits of meditation and mindfulness.

The Science of Mindfulness and Stress Reduction Practices

For Dr. Weatherly, it’s absolutely essential that any practice she implements for herself or her patients be backed by evidence showing its effectiveness. That’s one of the reasons why mindfulness has been so integral to her life and career: because study after study have reinforced the scientific basis for the benefits of mindfulness.

“It’s so fascinating to me as a physician to actually see that there are biochemical studies that look at markers of inflammation — objective markers — and can correlate them back to a mindfulness practice or stress reduction practice,” she says.

One such study that she cites involved patients with inflammatory bowel disease, such as Crohn’s disease or colitis. They randomized the subjects into those doing a mindfulness meditation practice, and those not doing a mindfulness meditation practice, and compared their inflammatory markers over time. What the researchers found was that inflammatory markers like CRP (C-reactive protein) went down significantly in the group with the mindfulness intervention. 

Another incredible scientific argument for mindfulness is the fact that it can actually change your gene expression, which effectively means it can change your genetic fate. We’re all born with genetic material — DNA — in the nuclei of our cells, but that genetic material is not an inevitability. As Dr. Weatherly says, echoing another WellBe expert, “our genes are not our destiny.”  See, not all genes are always turned on, or “expressed” into a protein with a function in the cell. “Our body very, very carefully regulates what genes are being turned on and off and when and in response to what circumstances,” she says.

And one of the circumstances that’s been shown to have an effect on gene expression is mindfulness. Dr. Weatherly explains that people who engage in mindfulness impact the expression of several genes that are implicated in inflammation, “so we’ll get less prone inflammatory genes expressed in people who are meditating versus those who are not. It’s mind-blowing.”

Proven Mindfulness Exercises to Implement

One of the biggest influences in Dr. Weatherly’s practice is the concept of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, a very specific practice of mindfulness. Basically, what MBSR does is utilize specific mindfulness techniques to help people reduce their stress. While the idea of mindfulness is very buzzy in the wellness world, many of us don’t fully understand what, exactly, it entails. Dr. Weatherly explains that it’s simply the practice of being present and fully engaging with what’s going on in the current moment in time. “So it’s not worrying about the past or thinking about the future. It’s about the right now. Engaging in the present moment purposefully and intentionally,” she says. 

In terms of MBSR, Dr. Weatherly highly recommends a structured course to fully understand and implement the practice (there are many courses available, both online and in-person). But if you can’t commit to a course right now, Dr. Weatherly suggests a few simple mindfulness exercises you can utilize right now:

• A body scan (simply pausing for five minutes and slowly noticing every piece of your body, from head to toe)
• Noticing the different objects in the room you’re in 
• Paying close attention to your emotions or thoughts 
• Focusing on your bodily sensations — what you feel, see, hear, smell, and taste
• Journaling

However, according to Dr. Weatherly, mindfulness doesn’t even have to be that structured. “I think we can be mindful when we’re doing anything,” she says. She describes one mindfulness class she took, where the instructor challenged students to simply do one mindful thing per day. That could be brushing your teeth, eating a meal, making your bed — anything, as long as you’re fully present and paying attention to the current moment.  

No matter what mindfulness exercise or exercises you choose, there’s an important second step to all of them: you need to be able to observe and pay attention without passing judgment on anything. Dr. Weatherly points out that this is an impossible goal, because as humans we’re constantly judging ourselves and others. But the point here is to practice acceptance, and continue to strive for a zero-judgment mindset by simply noticing your own judgemental thoughts.

“We’re going to have a lot of thoughts, so mindfulness or meditation is not about suppressing thoughts,” says Dr. Weatherly. “It’s about getting curious.” That means that when you notice you’re judging yourself for, say, eating a chocolate bar instead of an apple, or thinking negatively about the future, you can take a step back and observe that thought objectively, rather than believing or reacting to it. “You can say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. I’m judging myself. Is this judgment trying to tell me something?” Dr. Weatherly explains.

Dr. Weatherly also recommends meditation as a way to tap into the benefits of mindfulness. She explains that there are many different types of meditation, and none are better than any other — what matters is finding what works for you. “What I often tell my patients is that there is no one-size-fits-all, and we really have to find what we respond to,” she says. Some types of meditation she suggests are: 

• A structured meditation program, like Deepak Chopra’s 21 Day Meditation Experience
• A meditation app, like Calm, Headspace, Simple Habit, Ten Percent Happier, and many others
• Breathing-focused meditation, where you simply pay attention to your inhales and exhales
• Mantra meditation, where you focus all your attention on a particular mantra

Dr. Weatherly is also quick to point out that mindfulness isn’t the same thing as meditation—so if meditation is not something you want to practice right now, don’t worry, you can still reap the benefits of mindfulness by trying some of the mindfulness exercises outlined above. 

Watch the full interview to learn how how many thoughts each of us has in a given day, what to do when you feel like there are too many “self-care” tools to choose from or you’re struggling to make something stick, the one wellness practice she does everyday that increases your ability to fight off respiratory illness, and more!

You can also listen to an audio version of our interview with Dr. Bojana Weatherly on The WellBe Podcast. 

Have you successfully implemented a mindfulness practice? How did you do it? Tell us in the comments below!

Citations: 

1. Niazi, Asfandyar Khan, and Shaharyar Khan Niazi. “Mindfulness-based stress reduction: a non-pharmacological approach for chronic illnesses.” North American journal of medical sciences vol. 3,1 (2011): 20-3. doi:10.4297/najms.2011.320
2. Puderbaugh M, Emmady PD. Neuroplasticity. [Updated 2023 May 1]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2024 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557811/
3. Kenney, M J, and C K Ganta. “Autonomic nervous system and immune system interactions.” Comprehensive Physiology vol. 4,3 (2014): 1177-200. doi:10.1002/cphy.c130051
4. Zhang, Dexing et al. “Mindfulness-based interventions: an overall review.” British medical bulletin vol. 138,1 (2021): 41-57. doi:10.1093/bmb/ldab005
5. Villalba, Daniella K et al. “Mindfulness training and systemic low-grade inflammation in stressed community adults: Evidence from two randomized controlled trials.” PloS one vol. 14,7 e0219120. 11 Jul. 2019, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0219120
6. González-Moret, Rafael et al. “The effect of a mindfulness-based therapy on different biomarkers among patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a randomised controlled trial.” Scientific reports vol. 10,1 6071. 8 Apr. 2020, doi:10.1038/s41598-020-63168-4

The information provided in this article comes from our interview with Dr. Bojana Weatherly, MD. Her training and education includes medical school, a masters of science in experimental medicine and a bachelor of science in biophysics degrees all from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She completed a residency in internal medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and West LA Veterans Affairs, and a fellowship in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona. She was recognized as the Southern California Top Doctors’ Rising Star in 2016 and 2017, and was awarded the Top Doctor recognition in 2018 and 2019 in New York. She is also currently training at The Institute for Functional Medicine. You can learn more about her work here.