Everything In Our Ongoing Life Affects Us ‒ Interview With Dr. Annika Sorensen
- Jan 6, 2023
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 1, 2024
Dr. Annika Sorensen is a Medical Doctor, Stress Management Mentor, Author and International Speaker on topics revolving around the successes brought by less stress including financial and business success.
She specializes in health and stress strategies and has a solid background in Swedish Public Health Care for 30 years. With profound personal, clinical and scientific knowledge about the subject of stress, she made it twice to TEDx. She is officially certified by The Big Talk Academy Today Dr. Annika is Helping Stressed out Business Leaders slow down, reflect, feel less stress, and then ramp up and get more done and create bigger success without having to work harder. She does it through speaking, workshops.
Annika Sörensen, MD, Stress Strategist & Calm Creator
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I always wanted to study medicine, but my high school grades were not good enough. I did not let that stop me. I found alternative paths. At that time, you could apply in different categories. One was taking a special test and working for 4 years. So, I became a laboratory technician, worked as such for 4 years, and took the special test twice a year until I was 29 years old. Then I was admitted to medical school – I used resilience and some stubbornness to get there.
During those 4 years, I also trained to be professional Hand-Weaver weaving tablecloths, blankets, curtains, rag rugs, and more. I sold my products or gifted people with them. Textile work has been a favorite since I was a small girl. I always loved knitting, sewing, crocheting, and alike. I sewed most of my clothes myself during my teenage years. I also sewed many of my girls’ clothes from the material of old worn-out garments when they were young. It is so calming to feel the material in your hands and see the physical result of what you do. It is a kind of mindfulness. You can even do things from worn-out textile materials like beautiful rag rugs.
After the exam, I worked as a doctor and gave birth to our 3 girls, who today are beautiful, independent young ladies. I became a specialist in primary care and later also in clinical chemistry. Life was work, work, and more work. It was also caring for the family and our girls until around 15 years ago when the stress wall came close.
That made me take a course in stress management – just to save myself.
That was when I realized this is what I need to work with, helping people to not become patients from stress and lifestyle. It became so obvious that illness often comes from how we live, and it also became obvious that we have all the solutions in ourselves – we don’t need to buy all this stuff. We just need to learn how biology works and listen inwards to how we feel.
So, at the age of 55, I started my business. It has been ups and downs, including bankruptcy, but I don’t regret ever that I took this path. I have had some good, fun, and prosperous years.
I am now at that age where you are called retired, but I have never understood what that word means. Do nothing??? That is not me. I plan to live until at least 100 years of age, and I plan to be healthy and active all the way. Of course, I can maybe slow down later and become pickier about what assignments to take on, blink, blink! What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
My business name is today AskDrAnnika. I changed from my original Swedish business name about 10 years ago when I decided to go from Swedish to English as my primary marketing language. Stress is a global problem and I want to do good globally.
Today I help busy Business Executives slow down, reflect, feel less stress, and then ramp up and get more done and create bigger success without having to work harder. I do the work through speaking, workshops, my online course, and of course personal mentoring. What is your work inspired by?
It inspires me to keep on doing this work with the stressed-out bosses every time I see someone “get it”. That is when I see and hear that what they have done is affecting them in a positive way. And it sends ripples from there. Ripples in their business organization but also to their families and friends.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
Everything in our ongoing life affects us. Sometimes you don’t see the true impact of that until much later. Around 15 years ago I was heading for the stress wall and that made me start on a journey inward. That was when I for the first time acknowledged and realized how much an extremely stressful situation had affected me, at the time when I took my medical exam. Within one week I lost both my brother and our firstborn baby. Both died from severe illnesses totally independent of each other.
Now in the retrospective, I can see how much this formed me both as a human and as the doctor I became. I can also see why it fascinates me to work with mindset and lifestyle because of the lessons I learned to be able to come back to a normal life after that hard blow in my face.
What kind of audience do you target your business towards?
One group of patients that always stuck out in the health care clinic was the business leaders. They are not the most frequent patients but at an early stage in my career as a doctor I noticed that these people, both men, and women, came with factual symptoms and questions, they wanted things to be fast because they did not have time to care for themselves. They had more important things to care for like, employees, buyers, the economy, suppliers, machines, you name it. They take care of everything but themselves.
When I scratched the surface a bit, they were all very stressed out. But as a leader you don’t feel it is okay to talk about stress, that is seen as a weakness and a no-no to mention. And still, it is just a normal reaction when you reach your capacity.
When I started my business, I realized that this is my favorite group of people to help. They want quick results and are most often open to new ideas if you can prove this will give a good end result in the business. Giving them a safe space to be in they can relax and go from stress to calm in their leadership, leading to more efficiency, happier employees, and in the end more profit. It is such a win-win for everyone involved.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
The Stress Management business today is swamped with quick fixes. Gadgets, Apps, “methods”, courses, and so on, all focus on doing things outside of you and as quickly as possible. As I mentioned above, I realized during my journey through life that working with stress is not about all the things, it is all about inside work, our mindset, and how we care for ourselves. That is what we need to work with to get less stress – our mindset. The challenge is that mindset work is not a quick fix since the stress system is part of our natural biology. We must care for this our entire life until the day we die.
We need long-term solutions and more preventive work and that is not where the quick money is and therefore harder to sell – but these are the only products we really need.
What are your current goals for your business?
My goal for the rest of my career is to help hundreds of busy Business Executives find some peace and calm in their passion and find their best leadership and by that help thousands of people through their ripples.
And I plan to be active in the field as long as I can breathe myself!
You can read more about what I do at www.askdrannika.com – feel free to reach out
