Distress Rx™
The Distress Prescription: Identify, Interact, Integrate — A 3-Phase Framework for Understanding and Regulating Emotional Dysregulation.
You were trained to lead.
You were trained to heal.
But no one trained you how to handle stress—at this level, in this system, with this much at stake.
Let’s Normalize What’s True:
Every physician has stress.
Not just the ones who “can’t cope,” but the ones who lead, who stay late, who carry teams, who hold the pulse of the entire system in their hands.
And yet, the cultural silence around stress remains.
That silence fragments teams, widens empathy gaps, and leads physicians to internalize what is, in fact, systemic.
But stress is not a personal flaw.
It’s a biological signal.
And learning how to respond to it—individually and relationally—can change everything.
A Nervous System Solution for Individual Burnout and Systemic Renewal
Distress Rx™ —a neuroscience-based system that helps physicians decode their unique stress patterns, transform relational friction, and recover sustainable energy from the inside out.
It’s not just about surviving another shift.
It’s about creating systems of trust, emotional fluency, and shared humanity—where leadership starts with nervous system literacy.
When Physicians Learn to Regulate, Teams Start to Thrive
This isn’t just burnout prevention.
It’s the foundation for emotionally intelligent medicine.
When we understand our stress subtype—and how it interacts with others—we can co-create environments where:
Boundaries are respected
Feedback is constructive
Conflict is navigated with clarity
Compassion doesn’t cost us everything
And every voice—quiet or assertive, anxious or confident—feels heard
Distress Rx™ equips leaders, educators, and care teams with a shared language for regulation, empathy, and cohesion.
What Becomes Possible When We Transform Stress Together:
✔ Retention: Restore purpose, pacing, and passion before the point of no return
✔ Team Trust: Build emotionally safe teams through co-regulation and clarity
✔ Mental Health: Offer recovery before crisis—and dignity through shared understanding
✔ Leadership: Equip your top performers with relational tools, not just task mastery
✔ Longevity: Shift from chronic wear-and-tear to nervous system sustainability
This Isn’t Just About Burnout.
It’s About Creating a Culture Where Physicians Can Be Whole.
Distress Rx™ is how we start:
With clarity about who we are under pressure
With compassion for how we impact each other
And with science-backed tools to build a healthcare system that feels human again
Let’s stop pretending stress isn’t universal.
Let’s start transforming it—together.
You’ll Learn to:
✔ Understand the root cause of your stress and burnout
✔ Identify your Distress Subtype and regulation profile
✔ Apply evidence-based strategies across 12 psychology-informed stress lenses
✔ Communicate more effectively with patients, teams, and loved ones
✔ Create boundaries that support your values and vitality
✔ Learn how to feel safe off-duty — not just in the clinical zone
✔ Transform the very patterns that keep you stuck in overdrive
What’s Inside Stress Rx™
A 3-phase transformation pathway:
Phase 1: Identify and Understand Your Distress Type
Start with the Stress Subtype Identification Quiz™
Discover your Distress Type — your dominant coping style under stress.
The 6 subtypes:
Assertive Distress – Reactivity & conflict under pressure
Isolation Distress – Withdrawal & shutdown
Control Distress – Rigidity & micromanaging
Validation Distress – People-pleasing & perfectionism
Catastrophizing Distress – Worst-case spiral & hypervigilance
Impulsivity Distress – Quick fixes, poor pacing
✅ You’ll learn:
— Subtype Traits
— Burnout Risk Factors
— Core Regulation Strategies
— Workplace Impact Map
Phase 2: Understand How Your Type Interacts in Relationships
The Distress Interaction Matrix is a groundbreaking tool that maps the dynamic between six core Distress Subtypes—both when individuals are regulated and when they are in distress.
Rooted in behavioral neuroscience, attachment theory, and executive coaching principles, this model helps clinicians, coaches, and organizations:
Decode interpersonal friction
Build trust-based teams
Improve co-regulation in high-stakes settings
Prevent burnout and emotional misattunement
What It Offers
Regulated × Regulated Matrix
When both individuals are in an emotionally balanced state, their unique strengths synergize to produce calm, creativity, clarity, or deep connection.
Example Pairings:
Assertive × Control → Strategic execution with structure and drive
Impulsivity × Validation → Playful, emotionally safe innovation
Isolation × Catastrophizing → Calm presence meets thoughtful risk awareness
Use it to:
✔ Design high-functioning teams
✔ Build coaching or therapeutic rapport
✔ Improve physician-patient or provider-leader interactions
Distressed × Distressed Matrix
When both parties are dysregulated, conflict loops often emerge:
Assertive × Assertive → Power struggles, escalated control
Validation × Catastrophizing → Shame meets fear, no one speaks up
Control × Control → Planning paralysis and mutual rigidity
Use it to:
✔ Identify common relational breakdowns
✔ Interrupt emotional spirals in teams or coaching clients
✔ Support burnout prevention and recovery
Regulated Supporting Distressed Matrix
See exactly how a regulated person can anchor and stabilize someone who is currently dysregulated—across all 36 possible pairings.
Regulated Control → Distressed Impulsivity → Grounding scattered energy with calm presence
Regulated Validation → Distressed Catastrophizing → Emotional safety without enabling spiral
Regulated Assertive → Distressed Isolation → Structured space to reconnect gently
Use it to:
✔ Train leaders in relational regulation
✔ Coach clinicians or executives through interpersonal stress
✔ Offer team scripts for real-time emotional repair
Who It’s For
Medical Educators & Leaders aiming to enhance team dynamics and psychological safety
Organizational Development Teams focused on relational intelligence and burnout resilience
Peer Support & Faculty Development Programs building trauma-informed, emotionally literate environments
Outcomes You Can Expect
✔ More emotionally attuned team communication
✔ Fewer escalated conflicts and unproductive spirals
✔ Personalized tools to support every stress subtype
✔ Greater empathy, flexibility, and co-regulation capacity
✔ Research-informed interventions rooted in lived relational patterns
Phase 3: Integrate Your Subtype with the 12 Neuropsychological Stress Lenses
Mismatch Theory
Theme: Evolution vs. Modern Life
Explore how ancient biological stress mechanisms struggle to keep pace with modern demands like technology, overstimulation, and reward overload—leading to chronic stress.
Attachment Activation
Theme: How Early Bonds Shape Adult Stress
Learn how attachment styles formed in childhood resurface during stress, influencing emotional reactivity, trust, and coping. Begin tools for reparenting and emotional security.
Cognitive Appraisal Theory
Theme: Perception Shapes Stress
Discover how your interpretation of events drives your stress response. Develop reframing skills, explore mindset shifts, and learn to spot cognitive distortions that escalate pressure.
Role Identity Conflict
Theme: Identity Strain and Burnout
Understand the internal conflict between personal and professional roles. Unpack people-pleasing, identity loss, and misaligned values to restore integrity and reduce burnout.
Safe Space Dysregulation
Theme: Stress in Close Relationships
Examine why we often express the worst of our stress in our safest relationships. Learn about co-regulation, rupture and repair, and setting healthy emotional boundaries at home.
Somatic Baseline Shifts
Theme: Body-Based Stress Dysregulation
Identify how chronic stress subtly shifts your physiological norm. Build awareness of breath, posture, tension, and somatic patterns that reflect deeper stress dysregulation.
Narrative Disruption
Theme: When Life Doesn’t Fit the Old Story
Explore how major transitions and internal crises disrupt your sense of self. Learn to rewrite your narrative with coherence, self-compassion, and a forward-focused lens.
Emotional Containment vs. Spillover
Theme: Managing Emotional Overflow
Learn how unprocessed emotions affect work, parenting, and leadership. Gain tools for emotional regulation, containment, and healthy expression to prevent spillover.
Hidden Grief & Micro-Stress
Theme: The Weight of the Invisible Load
Recognize and ritualize grief that goes unacknowledged—minor losses, disappointments, and stress accumulation. Create space for micro-recovery and emotional release.
Stress Type Temperament
Theme: Personalized Coping by Distress Subtype
Integrate the six Transform Distress Subtypes into real-world scenarios. Learn how your temperament affects reactivity and regulation, and apply type-based coaching strategies.
Boundary Collapse
Theme: When Saying “Yes” Becomes Costly
Explore how stress erodes internal and external boundaries. Build clarity, self-trust, and skillful refusal to protect your energy and avoid burnout.
Anticipatory Nervous System Hijack
Theme: Stressing About Stress
Address the phenomenon of pre-stress anxiety, catastrophizing, and nervous system priming. Rewire anticipatory loops with somatic tools, mindset shifts, and safety anchors.
System Change Starts with The Individual…
Program Impact Report
We conducted a rigorous pre- and post-program evaluation across our physician participants to measure the true impact of our work. The results?
Statistically significant improvements across all 12 measured domains (p < 0.05).
Key Outcomes:
+2.33: Feeling equipped to guide sustainable behavior change
+1.92: Increase in compassion, reduction in clinical judgment
+1.83: Confidence in counseling on nutrition and physical activity
+1.58: Alignment with professional purpose as a healer
Beyond the Data: Real Transformation
Participants consistently reported:
Increased emotional resilience and stress management
A more consistent application of healthy lifestyle habits
Greater connection to their role as healers and leaders
A mindset of compassion over criticism—in both patient care and self-talk
Integration of motivational interviewing and coaching in clinical practice
Participants described:
Increased commitment to self-care and wellness
More consistent application of lifestyle strategies personally and professionally
Stronger support systems for stress
Participant Reflections
"I feel like a true model of health."
This program gave me the confidence and authenticity to walk the talk. I can now tell my patients with full integrity: these practices truly work.
"I’m more present and patient—with myself and my patients."
Transform® helped me manage my own stress better, which has translated directly into how I show up in my clinical care.
"Perfection isn’t required—just progress."
The program shifted my mindset. I now guide my patients toward sustainable, incremental changes instead of all-or-nothing thinking.
"My clinical conversations have completely changed."
I now use coaching techniques like open-ended questions and curiosity to truly connect with patients and support lasting change.
"I’ve found balance—and I’m sharing that with my patients."
Transform® taught me new strategies that I not only apply in my own life, but model and pass along to those I care for.
Meet the Founder: Dr. Ali Novitsky
Triple Board-Certified Physician | Obesity Medicine • Pediatrics • Neonatology • Master Certified Coach
Founder & CEO, The FIT Collective®
I’m Dr. Ali Novitsky, a triple board-certified physician in obesity medicine, pediatrics, and neonatology. Eight years ago, I founded The FIT Collective® to address a crisis I saw unfolding in real time: women physicians—high-performing, deeply compassionate, and mission-driven—were burning out.
What began as individual coaching quickly grew into a movement.
As I worked with thousands of healthcare professionals, clear patterns emerged—what I now call Transform Tolerance™ Stress Types—distinct, neuroscience-rooted stress responses that shape how we show up in our work, our relationships, and our leadership.
I discovered that emotional regulation isn’t just self-care—it’s the foundation for systemic transformation. Whether in the OR, the clinic, the boardroom, or at home, how we respond to stress determines how we lead, how we heal, and how we connect.
That realization led me to create Stress Rx™, a CME-accredited curriculum designed to help medical teams identify their stress subtypes, build relational trust, and restore sustainable energy—individually and collectively.
Why It Matters for Systems
At its core, this work is about more than burnout prevention or lifestyle medicine.
It’s about rewiring the culture of medicine from the inside out.
Physicians who can emotionally regulate lead teams that can thrive..
When teams learn to co-regulate, they communicate with clarity and trust.
When systems value create space for physicians to feel seen, retention improves—and whole-person care becomes the norm.
This isn’t just coaching. It’s a scalable, systems-level solution.
The change in medicine starts here. With nervous system literacy.
With sustainable metabolic care.
With clinicians who are seen, supported, and empowered to thrive.
Delivery Options
Individuals and Organizations can utilize full asynchronous delivery with a comprehensive 12-week format.
Accreditation Info
This course is CME Eligible.
Reserve Your Spot — Waitlist Now Open
Stress Rx™ opens soon with limited seats for first-time enrollment.
Join the waitlist now and get:
First access to the launch
Exclusive founding member pricing
👉 Join the Waitlist for Individuals
👉 Join the Waitlist for Practices and/or Systems
The Distress Prescription: Identify, Interact, Integrate — A 3-Phase Framework for Understanding and Regulating Emotional Dysregulation
Lecture 1 – The Science of Stress Subtypes
Practice Gap:
Most healthcare professionals and leaders do not have a shared, evidence-based framework to categorize stress response styles. Without this, communication around coping behaviors is often vague, limiting targeted interventions and team alignment.
Objectives:
Define the six core stress subtypes and their distinguishing traits.
Explain the neuroscience underpinning stress coping styles.
Apply subtype identification results to inform personalized regulation strategies.
Lecture 2 – Deep Dive: Assertive, Isolation, Control Distress
Practice Gap:
While many professionals recognize their own stress reactions, they often cannot distinguish between different subtype patterns such as Assertive, Isolation, and Control distress. This lack of precision reduces the effectiveness of burnout prevention and regulation strategies.
Objectives:
Differentiate between Assertive, Isolation, and Control distress subtypes in terms of traits and behavioral patterns.
Analyze burnout risk factors unique to each subtype.
Design subtype-specific regulation strategies for clinical and workplace contexts.
Lecture 3 – Deep Dive: Validation, Catastrophizing, Impulsivity Distress
Practice Gap:
Leaders and clinicians often misinterpret people-pleasing, worst-case thinking, or impulsive decision-making as personality flaws rather than stress subtype responses. This mislabeling can hinder appropriate support and perpetuate maladaptive coping.
Objectives:
Describe key characteristics of Validation, Catastrophizing, and Impulsivity distress subtypes.
Evaluate the impact of these subtypes on team dynamics and personal well-being.
Implement targeted regulation tools to reduce maladaptive patterns in high-stakes environments.
Lecture 4 – Burnout Risk Mapping & Core Regulation Strategies
Practice Gap:
Although burnout is widely recognized, most prevention strategies are generalized and fail to address the specific burnout triggers tied to individual stress subtypes. This reduces their long-term effectiveness.
Objectives:
Identify the link between stress subtype profiles and specific burnout risk factors.
Construct a personalized burnout prevention plan using regulation strategies.
Integrate burnout mapping tools into team and organizational wellness initiatives.
Lecture 5 – The Regulated × Regulated Matrix
Practice Gap:
Many clinicians and leaders are unaware of how regulated subtype pairings can be intentionally leveraged for synergy. Without this understanding, team potential for innovation, trust, and psychological safety remains underutilized.
Objectives:
Describe the strengths of regulated subtype pairings and their potential benefits in team dynamics.
Analyze how to intentionally design team roles based on regulated interactions.
Apply regulated pairing strategies to enhance collaboration and creativity in practice.
Lecture 6 – The Stressed × Stressed Matrix
Practice Gap:
When both individuals are dysregulated, relational breakdowns often escalate quickly. Many leaders lack structured tools to identify and interrupt these spirals, resulting in unresolved conflict and team dysfunction.
Objectives:
Identify common maladaptive patterns when both subtypes are stressed.
Evaluate the organizational impact of unaddressed stressed pairings.
Implement de-escalation strategies tailored to specific stressed subtype interactions.
Lecture 7 – Regulated Supporting Stressed Matrix
Practice Gap:
Leaders and peers often lack a framework for stabilizing dysregulated individuals without enabling maladaptive patterns. This gap limits the ability to restore group function and maintain psychological safety.
Objectives:
Explain the role of a regulated individual in supporting a stressed counterpart.
Demonstrate subtype-specific stabilization techniques.
Integrate regulated-to-stressed intervention scripts into leadership and coaching practice.
Lecture 8 – Applying the Matrix in Real-World Systems
Practice Gap:
Although the Stress Interaction Matrix offers robust relational insight, many organizations have not operationalized it in policy, training, or coaching. This limits its impact on burnout prevention and relational resilience.
Objectives:
Assess organizational contexts where the Matrix can be most impactful.
Develop an implementation plan for integrating the Matrix into team training.
Evaluate the outcomes of Matrix-based interventions in leadership and healthcare settings.
Lecture 9 – Lenses 1–4: Evolution, Attachment, Perception, Identity
Practice Gap:
Clinicians often lack awareness of how evolutionary mismatch, attachment patterns, cognitive appraisal, and role identity conflict interact to shape stress responses, leading to incomplete intervention strategies.
Objectives:
Explain the theoretical basis for the first four neuropsychological stress lenses.
Analyze the interplay between these lenses and stress subtype expression.
Apply lens-informed strategies to optimize regulation in clinical and leadership contexts.
Lecture 10 – Lenses 5–8: Relationships, Body, Story, Emotions
Practice Gap:
Providers may miss the somatic and relational cues of stress dysregulation, failing to integrate narrative reframing and emotional containment into care and leadership practices.
Objectives:
Identify key mechanisms underlying Safe Space Dysregulation, Somatic Baseline Shifts, Narrative Disruption, and Emotional Containment.
Demonstrate techniques for somatic awareness and narrative reframing.
Integrate emotional containment strategies to improve outcomes in stressed environments.
Lecture 11 – Lenses 9–12: Grief, Temperament, Boundaries, Anticipation
Practice Gap:
Grief, boundary collapse, and anticipatory anxiety are often overlooked in stress management training, resulting in unaddressed drivers of burnout and decreased resilience.
Objectives:
Describe the impact of Hidden Grief, Stress Type Temperament, Boundary Collapse, and Anticipatory Nervous System Hijack on stress responses.
Assess personal and professional patterns related to these lenses.
Apply interventions to address grief, restore boundaries, and reduce anticipatory stress loops.
Lecture 12 – Integration & Action Plan
Practice Gap:
Participants may leave training without a structured plan to integrate subtype awareness, relational intelligence, and neuropsychological lenses into daily practice, limiting long-term impact.
Objectives:
Synthesize knowledge from all retreat modules into a cohesive personal and professional strategy.
Develop a written action plan for ongoing subtype and lens integration.
Commit to measurable behavior changes that support regulation and resilience.