How emotional overwhelm shows up in the body — and why real care means healing inside-out.

What if your skin isn’t just reacting to the outside world — but to everything you’re holding inside?

In this eye-opening talk, Dr. Jeanne Retief explores the intimate connection between emotional trauma, anxiety, and the skin. Diagnosed with panic disorder during a high-pressure legal career, Jeanne began noticing how her skin mirrored her nervous system — hypersensitive, inflamed, and overwhelmed. It wasn’t vanity. It was survival.

Blending science with soul, Jeanne unpacks the biology behind stress and skin responses, and why truly sensitive skin often signals deeper internal chaos. She challenges the superficial fixes of the beauty industry and offers a radical reframe: skincare as self-care only works when it honors the emotional body too.

Audiences leave with a deeper understanding of how trauma lives in the body — and how to begin the real work of soothing it.

“Your skin is talking. It’s time we learned to listen with compassion, not control.”

Additional topics available.