Managing Work, Energy, and Career Growth With Autoimmune Disease

Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

Release Date: 10/20/2026

Managing Work, Energy, and Career Growth With Autoimmune Disease

Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

Living with an autoimmune disease can affect far more than your health. Changes in energy, mobility, concentration, stress tolerance, or physical capacity can influence how you work, what support you need, whether advancement still makes sense, and how you think about your career over time. In this episode, Julia Toothacre speaks with Dr. Amy Behimer about what it looks like to manage your career when autoimmune disease is part of your reality. Amy is a board-certified health and wellness coach, pharmacist, healthcare leader, and founder of Amy Behimer Coaching. She also lives with multiple...

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

A job description can look specific, but that does not mean everyone involved in the hiring process agrees on what the company needs. A candidate can meet the stated qualifications and still lose out to someone with a referral, a particular background, a degree the job may not require, or a profile that better matches what a hiring manager has in mind. In Part 2 of Julia Toothacre’s conversation with Francis “Tank” Rhodes, they continue examining assumptions about hiring from both the candidate and employer side. Tank draws on his experience in recruiting, HR systems, and hiring while...

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Control Your Career: Career Growth and Strategy for Ambitious Professionals

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More Episodes

In this episode, Julia Toothacre speaks with Dr. Amy Behimer about what it looks like to manage your career when autoimmune disease is part of your reality. Amy is a board-certified health and wellness coach, pharmacist, healthcare leader, and founder of Amy Behimer Coaching. She also lives with multiple autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis, which was diagnosed when she was 27 and already several years into her career.

Julia and Amy discuss the pressure many high achievers feel to keep pushing even when their health requires a different approach. They explore how autoimmune disease can affect capacity and career decisions, why growth does not always mean climbing higher on the organizational ladder, the personal considerations involved in disclosing an invisible illness at work, and what it can mean when your health changes the kind of work that realistically fits your life.

What Julia and Amy Discuss

How autoimmune disease can affect energy, mobility, cognition, stress, and work
Why Amy’s multiple sclerosis diagnosis changed her relationship with achievement and career success
What happens when working harder is no longer a sustainable professional strategy
Why career growth does not always require another promotion
How employees and managers can think more realistically about workload, strengths, and capacity
How to think about disclosure when an autoimmune disease or chronic illness is not visible
What happens when changing health makes a job, career path, or professional identity harder to sustain

About Dr. Amy Behimer

Dr. Amy Behimer, PharmD, NBC-HWC, is a board-certified health and wellness coach, pharmacist, and founder of Amy Behimer Coaching. Living with multiple autoimmune diseases herself, Amy combines evidence-based science with practical behavior change strategies to help people with autoimmune disease feel better, function better, and stay consistent with habits that matter most.

With nearly two decades of experience as a clinical pharmacist and healthcare leader, Amy has developed and led innovative clinical programs while building a coaching practice dedicated to sustainable health behavior change. She is passionate about translating complex health information into simple, practical habits that fit real life.

Through her coaching programs, speaking, podcast, and writing, Amy helps people move beyond overwhelm, build confidence, and make sustainable improvements in their energy, health, and quality of life.