Podcast · Business

The Gen Mess with Tess

by WRKdefined Podcast Network · English · Business

Host Tess Brigham (licensed therapist, certified coach) tackles the generational challenges and complexities of navigating life and work. From the unique struggles of Gen Z to the evolving perspectives of Millennials, Gen X, and Boomers, Tess offers practical advice, expert insights, and real conver

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest: 14 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

14 Oct 2026 · 52 minNew

Ep 82: Why You Feel Empty Despite Accomplishing Everything (with Neil Markey)

This episode examines what it takes to heal when talk therapy and medication are not reaching the root cause. Neil Markey, co-founder and CEO of Beckley Retreats and a former U.S. Army Ranger who completed three combat deployments, shares how unresolved PTSD brought him to meditation and professionally facilitated psychedelic experiences, and how that personal path became a professional one. Tess and Neil explore why high-achieving professionals often feel empty despite accomplishing everything on paper, how trauma is stored in the body rather than just the mind, and why psilocybin retreats…

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Earlier episodes 29 most recent

E81 · 7 Oct 2026 · 59 min
Ep 81: The Emotional Cost of Surviving Cancer (with guests Hollye Jacobs & Dev Meenagh)
This episode examines what happens after breast cancer treatment ends, and why the emotional, relational, and identity-based damage from a cancer diagnosis often goes unaddressed by the medical system. Tess Brigham, a therapist and breast cancer survivor, speaks with Hollye Jacobs, a nurse, social worker, and resilience coach who was diagnosed at 39, and Dev Meenagh, who was diagnosed at 28. Together they discuss the gap between ringing the bell and actually feeling better, what fear of recurrence looks like years after treatment ends, how relationships shift when a partner becomes a…
E80 · 30 Sep 2026 · 49 min
Ep 80: Reframe Your Relationship With Alcohol (guest: Vedant Pradeep)
For decades, there were two options when your drinking became a problem: a 12-step program or a residential treatment center. Both carries stigma, both requires a label, and neither fits the vast majority of people who weren't maybe physically addicted but were drinking more than they wanted to. In this episode, Tess sits down with Vedant Pradeep, co-founder of Reframe, an app for helping people reduce their alcohol intake or quit drinking altogether. With six million downloads and research partnerships at Emory and Harvard, Reframe was built on a simple but powerful idea: you have agency…
E79 · 23 Sep 2026 · 13 min
Ep 79: Why Gen X Wears Not Caring Like a Badge of Honor
Ask a Gen Xer how they're doing and watch what happens. They'll say they're "fine." Somewhere along the way, a generation turned that into an identity one that prides itself on low maintenance, toughness, and some who is never going to make a big deal out of anything. Host Tess Brigham makes the case that this isn't actually who Gen X is. It's who they had to become. And the real cost isn't the armor itself. It's what happened when they started wearing it like a medal. Drawing on research into latchkey kids, family systems theory, and Trevor Noah's concept that we can only dream in the shape…
E78 · 16 Sep 2026 · 57 min
Ep 78: How Too Much Information Is Paralyzing Younger Generation (with guest Dr. Suzanne Degges-White)
There's a name for what a lot of young people are doing right now, and it's not laziness. Dr. Suzanne Degges-White calls it life shelving: the decision to put the big stuff on hold because the weight of choosing feels like too much. In this episode, Tess sits down with Dr. Degges-White, licensed counselor, professor of counselor education at Northern Illinois University, longtime Psychology Today contributor, and author of several books on relationships, including her upcoming title Was It Something I Said? Understanding Family Estrangement. With over two decades of teaching and clinical…
9 Sep 2026 · 57 min
Ep 77: Why Your Burnout Recovery Keeps Failing (Guest: Dr. Suzanne Bober)
The burnout conversation has been missing something. Not willpower, not better habits, not the right morning routine. What's actually missing is the body. In this episode, Tess sits down with Dr. Suzanne Bober, chiropractor, nervous system educator, and founder of the Infinite Balance Blueprint, whose 25 years of clinical work led her to one conclusion: burnout isn't a character flaw, a motivation problem, or a generational weakness. It's a nervous system at capacity. And no amount of rest, yoga, or time off changes that if nothing physiological changes first. Dr. Bober is the author of…
2 Sep 2026 · 14 min
Ep 76: Why Authority Doesn't Work the Way It Used To
For most of modern work, being difficult was something leadership could get away with if they were brilliant enough. We didn't just tolerate the tortured genius, we romanticized them. And there was a logic to it. If someone controlled access to knowledge, skills, or connections you couldn't get anywhere else, you put up with them, because the trade was worth it. That trade is over. And most leaders haven't noticed yet. In this solo episode, Tess breaks down why the authority structures that ran workplaces for the last century are collapsing, and why Gen Z didn't cause the collapse; they're…
26 Aug 2026 · 50 min
Ep 75: Are We Losing Empathy in Our Connected World? (Guest: Mimi Nicklin)
We've lost 48% of our empathy in the last 30 years. In a world that's more connected than ever, that's not a coincidence. It's a biology problem. In this episode, I sit down with Mimi Nicklin, bestselling author and founder of Empathy Everywhere, who has spent years traveling the globe training senior leaders to treat empathy as the competitive advantage it actually is. She's shared stages with Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak and reached over five million people worldwide with one core argument: empathy isn't soft. It's the hardest, most measurable skill in the room. What we get into in this…
19 Aug 2026 · 51 min
Ep 74: How to Rewire Your Brain and Break the Patterns Running Your Life (with Thais Gibson)
Most people think self-awareness is the goal. It's not. It's the starting line. In this episode, I sit down with Thais Gibson, founder of the Personal Development School, who spent over a decade earning a PhD and 13+ certifications across cognitive behavioral therapy, hypnosis, somatic experiencing, and more to answer one question: How do you actually change what's running your life at the subconscious level? Thais grew up with fearful avoidant attachment in a chaotic family environment and spent years learning how to rewire the patterns quietly controlling her decisions, her relationships,…
12 Aug 2026 · 16 min
Ep 73: How to Stop Avoiding Conflict For Good
Someone corners you at your desk to vent about a coworker. You listen, you nod, you leave them feeling a little lighter. You didn't do anything wrong. But you just became the container for someone else's unresolved conflict. There's a name for this. It's called triangulation. And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. In this solo episode I walk through the psychology of why this pattern is so hard to give up, drawing on Murray Bowen's family systems theory and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar's research on gossip as social bonding. I cover the three real reasons people avoid going…
5 Aug 2026 · 51 min
Ep 72: ADHD, Autism, and the Myth of Productivity with Genie Love
Most managers have at least one person on their team who is hard to read. They resist changes. They go quiet after a pivot. They seem disengaged, or they overdeliver one week and disappear the next. And the usual management advice does not seem to reach them. In this episode I sit down with Genie Love, an executive functioning and relationship coach with over 25 years of experience working with neurodivergent adults. Genie spent 13 years supporting students with ADHD and autism in schools before shifting to adult coaching, helping people whose brains were never designed for the systems being…
29 Jul 2026 · 17 min
Ep 71: Why Your Best Manager Is Burning Out
She is the manager first to respond to a message, even outside of normal business hours. She takes on every project nobody else wants. She quietly rewrites deliverables before they go out, even when she technically does not have to. Her team loves her, leadership loves her, she is the best manager you've ever worked with. And she is running on fumes in a way that will never once show up on paper. In this solo episode I go deep on a pattern I see repeatedly in my work with high-performing managers, particularly women. This is not about a leadership style or a personality trait. It is about a…
22 Jul 2026 · 59 min
Ep 70: The Part of Your Brain That's Quietly Killing Motivation with Dr. Kyra Bobinet
Have you ever watched a talented employee just stop trying? They know what to do. They have the skills. And still, nothing. What you are witnessing is not a character flaw. It is a brain event. And until now, most of us have had no name for it. Dr. Kyra Bobinet is a public health physician, scientist, and behavioral designer who has spent her career closing what she calls the know-do gap: the space between knowing what you should do and actually doing it. She has identified the specific brain region responsible for killing motivation, generating negative self-talk, and driving everything…
15 Jul 2026 · 11 min
Ep 69: Why You're Scared to Give Gen Z Feedback
There is a fear spreading through management right now that nobody is naming out loud. Managers are scared to give feedback to their Gen Z employees. And because it stays unspoken, it is quietly destroying performance culture inside organizations everywhere. In this episode, I walk through exactly why this is happening, what it's costing you, and what works when it comes to delivering feedback to a younger workforce. This is not a Gen Z problem, and it is not a manager problem. It is a product of a generation raised with a very specific relationship to evaluation, criticism, and their own…
8 Jul 2026 · 57 min
Ep 68: Why We Need More Black Therapists and What Institutions Are Actually Doing About It
Are our educational systems actually built for the people who need them most? For students who are also parents, caregivers, veterans, and full-time workers, the traditional model of higher education was never designed with them in mind. And in the Black community, where those layers of responsibility are often even more pronounced. The gap between who the system was built for and who it needs to serve has real consequences. In this conversation I sit down with Dr. Alvin McLean, clinical psychologist and dean of psychology at National University, and Cherina Shaw, PhD candidate in…
1 Jul 2026 · 11 min
Ep 67: 3 Signs Your Gen Z Employee Is About to Quit That Most Managers Never See Coming
I had no idea anything was wrong. They seemed fine and then they just quit. This is the most common thing I hear from managers and HR leaders right now. And here is what I need you to understand: The silence is not the problem. The silence is the symptom. In this solo episode, I break down exactly what is happening psychologically when a Gen Z employee goes quiet, why this generation responds to stress by withdrawing rather than speaking up, and what you can do to catch it before it becomes a resignation letter you never saw coming. I walk through the neuroscience behind this pattern,…
24 Jun 2026 · 48 min
Ep 66: The Health and Financial Crisis of Fertility Care for the Next Generation
In this episode, I sit down with Laura McDonald, co-founder of Flora Fertility, the first individually owned insurance solution for fertility and women's health. Laura is a bestselling author, former financial media personality, and the founder of Canada's largest financial media company focused on women and wealth, which she built, scaled, and sold. Now she is tackling one of the most urgent and under-discussed financial crises facing the next generation: the cost of fertility care. We talk about why 72% of Gen Z women are already thinking about fertility anxiety before they are even trying…
17 Jun 2026 · 14 min
Ep 65: Why "I Don't Feel Safe" Is the Phrase Every HR Leader Needs to Decode Right Now
When a Gen Z employee says they don't feel safe at work, most leaders have one of two reactions. They either panic, thinking they have a legal problem on their hands, or they get quietly frustrated, assuming they're dealing with an overdramatic employee. In this episode, Tess Brigham, licensed therapist and certified coach, breakd down why both of those reactions miss what's actually happening and what to do instead. Tracing the psychological and generational roots of Gen Z's emotional vocabulary through the work of Dan Siegel on interpersonal neurobiology and the yes brain concept, John…
10 Jun 2026 · 43 min
Ep 64 : How to Build a Team That Actually Follows Through with Jon Dario
How to Manage Without Relying on Authority Most managers walk into their first role thinking the job is to tell people what to do and hold them accountable when they don't do it. Jon Dario spent 30 years in retail leadership (Macy's, Gap, Travelex, and Bank of America) learning why that instinct is exactly wrong. Out of that experience came AIM: Action Item Management. This system gives frontline managers the structure, follow-through, and daily accountability that actually gets results. He has written it all down in his new book, AIM: How Managers Get Radically Reliable Results. Jon and…
3 Jun 2026 · 10 min
Ep 63: Why Gen Z Feels Hopeless
Every generation has faced a broken world. Wars, poverty, injustice, economic collapse. None of that is new. So why does this generation feel more hopeless than any that came before? In this episode, Tess makes the case that it is not the world that got worse. It is the exposure. And for the first time in history, there is nowhere to look that is not the world. Tess walks through what the research actually says about why this is happening, why it hits Gen Z harder than any other generation, and one reframe that genuinely changes how you relate to all of it in this psychologically grounded…
27 May 2026 · 46 min
Ep 62: From Baby Boomers to Gen Z - The Workplace Pattern That Never Changes with Meagan Johnson
Never before have so many generations shared a workplace at the same time. And never before has the opportunity for both collaboration and conflict been this high. This week, Tess sits down with Meagan Johnson, generational keynote speaker and co-author of the bestselling book Generations, Inc.: Managing the Friction Between Generations at Work, written with her father Larry Johnson. Meagan has spent over 30 years helping organizations from Harley-Davidson to Boeing to the CIA navigate the very conflicts most leaders are still trying to figure out. The conversation covers every generation in…
20 May 2026 · 16 min
Ep 61: How to Build Self Trust to Break Toxic Patterns in the Workplace
Last episode, Tess told you why the toxic workplace pattern repeats, and identified each of the patterns: avoidance, disconnection, and measuring the environment instead of looking inward. This follow up episode provide 3 exercises to disrupt those patterns. These exercises are designed to go to the root of where you actually get stuck. If you haven't listened to Episode 60 yet, start there first. This episode will make a lot more sense once you've identified which pattern is yours. In this episode: Why avoidance is an anxiety problem, not a communication problem, and why that distinction…
13 May 2026 · 11 min
Ep 60: How to Stop Feeling Stuck in Toxic Workplace Patterns
You left. You reflected. You did the work. You asked better questions, watched for red flags, and turned down offers that didn't feel right. And then six months into the new job, the same feeling came back. This isn't bad luck. And it isn't a failure of effort. It's psychology. In Part 1 of this two-part series, licensed therapist and certified coach, Tess Brigham, breaks down the real reason so many people, especially Gen Z workers entering or re-entering the workforce, end up repeating the same patterns at work even when they're actively trying to avoid it. The answer is uncomfortable but…
6 May 2026 · 1 hr
Ep 59: What to Do When You've Done Everything Right But Still Feel Off with Malaika Smyth
You did everything right. The school, the job, the hustle. You followed the path, and you're good at it! So why does it still feel like something's missing? This week, Tess sits down with Malaika Smyth, a coach for high achievers who have checked every box and still find themselves asking a surprisingly hard question: what do I actually want for myself? Malaika brings a rare combination of experience as a Division I athlete background, nearly eight years scaling coaching operations at BetterUp from 50 to over 3,500 coaches, and her own winding path through quarter-life crisis, identity…
29 Apr 2026 · 24 min
Ep 58: How to Give Gen Z Employees Feedback That Actually Lands
You gave the feedback carefully. You were constructive. You even thought through every word. And they still shut down. If you're a manager or HR leader wondering why feedback conversations keep going sideways, this episode is the one you've been waiting for. Tess Brigham breaks down the neuroscience of why feedback feels like a threat, why Gen Z is particularly activated by it (hint: it makes complete psychological sense), and why the feedback models most leaders were trained on were built for a different era. You'll walk away with a completely different understanding of what's happening in…
22 Apr 2026 · 46 min
Ep 57: AI in the Workplace - Will AI Replace Jobs? with Erin Turnmeyer
Is AI really replacing jobs, or are we misunderstanding AI's role at work? In this episode of The Gen Mess with Tess, Tess Brigham sits down with People Operations executive Erin Turnmeyer to break down what leaders, employees, and organizations are getting wrong about AI in the workplace. With 15+ years of experience building talent systems, including time at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Erin brings a data-driven perspective on how AI, automation, and analytics are reshaping work. 💡 In this episode, we cover: Why AI is a force multiplier, not a replacement The real…
15 Apr 2026 · 10 min
Ep 56: Why Work Feels So Personal (Part 2) Early Career Stress: What Young Professionals Are Really Experiencing
No one really warns you how psychologically hard early career can be. You learn how to write a resume, interview, and get hired, but almost no one explains what it feels like once you’re inside the workplace. You're being evaluated constantly, questioning yourself, guessing the rules, and trying to build confidence without experience. In this episode of The Gen Mess with Tess, Tess Brigham explains why the beginning of your career can feel so mentally intense, and why that experience is often misunderstood. She breaks down the psychological weight of uncertainty, self-doubt, comparison,…
8 Apr 2026 · 53 min
Ep 55: 3 Ways to Take Back Your Morning Routine with Movement, Mindfulness, and Mastery with Amy Landino
Think you're not a morning person? Think again. This week, Tess sits down with Amy Landino, bestselling author, content creator, and founder of Vlog Boss Studios. Together, they blow up everything you think you know about morning routines, productivity, and what it actually means to start your day on your own terms. Amy's newly expanded book, Good Morning, Good Life, isn't about waking up at 5am or turning your morning into an Instagram aesthetic. It's about reclaiming ownership of your day before the world gets a vote, and her simple three-bucket framework (Movement, Mindfulness, and…
1 Apr 2026 · 11 min
Ep 54: Why Work Feels So Personal (Part 1) The Psychology Behind Stress, Feedback, and Gen Z at Work
Why does one vague comment from your boss stay in your head all day? Why does being left off a meeting invite suddenly feel personal? Why can work feel emotionally exhausting even when you’re technically “doing fine”? In this episode of The Gen Mess with Tess, Tess Brigham explains why work is never just about tasks, productivity, or performance—it’s psychological. From feedback and comparison to belonging, safety, and identity, Tess breaks down what’s happening beneath the surface when work stress feels bigger than the moment itself. She also explains why so many leaders misread performance…
25 Mar 2026 · 54 min
Ep 53: How High Achievers Burn Out Twice: Stress, Joy at Work, and What Leaders Still Get Wrong with Amy Leneker
In Episode 53 of The Gen Mess with Tess, Tess Brigham sits down with Amy Leneker, founder and CEO of the Center for Joyful Work, to explore why burnout keeps happening even to highly successful leaders who know better. Amy has helped more than 100,000 leaders and teams, including Fortune 100 companies, rethink leadership, workplace stress, and employee well-being. A former public policy executive and recovering workaholic, Amy shares how burning out twice forced her to confront the internal patterns that kept driving overwork, achievement, and chronic stress. Together, Tess and Amy unpack…

About The Gen Mess with Tess

The Gen Mess with Tess is a English business podcast from WRKdefined Podcast Network. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: WRKdefined Podcast Network
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 46 min
Latest episode: 14 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1797064230

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