08/09/2026
I have built three businesses. My nervous system kept the receipts.
For years I measured success the way most of us were taught to measure it. Revenue, growth, bookings, the next credential. I hit the numbers. I was also sleeping five hours a night, running on cortisol, and calling it discipline.
Here is what I understand now, as a clinician and as a woman who learned it the hard way. Chronic stress is not a personality trait. It is a physiologic state, and it bills you eventually. Sleep architecture, fat distribution, skin quality, hormone balance, and the rate at which your face ages are all downstream of a nervous system that is never permitted to stand down.
Ambition is not the problem. Operating without regulation is.
Build the practice. Regulate the person running it.
Dr. Tara Delle Chiaie, DNP, MSN, FNP-BC, APRN, ABAAHP