There is a subtle tension that lives beneath our desire to help. Most of us have felt it. Someone we care about is hurting, struggling, or overwhelmed, and something inside us immediately moves toward fixing, soothing, or carrying what they are experiencing. But what if that impulse is not always about compassion? What if, sometimes, it begins with our own discomfort? In this special Circles | Edges episode, Aaron shares a conversation from his appearance on the Create Magic At Work Podcast with Amy Lynn Durham, exploring empathic distress, leaky identity, and the hidden ways our sense of self can become intertwined with the suffering of others. Together, they examine the difference between empathy and compassion, the social conditioning that shapes caretaking behaviors, and why presence often asks more of us than intervention. This is a thoughtful exploration of emotional responsibility, identity, and the possibility of showing up for others without losing ourselves in the process. As the conversation unfolds, you are invited to notice where helping becomes fixing, where compassion becomes exhaustion, and where a deeper, more sustainable form of connection might be waiting.

Invitations to Consider:

• Why the urge to help can sometimes be driven by our own need for relief rather than another person's needs.
• Aaron's concept of "leaky identity" and how identity can become dependent on helping others.
• The hidden ways empathic distress can create exhaustion, overwhelm, and unhealthy relationship patterns.
• The difference between empathy, empathic response, and compassionate action.
• How presence and witnessing may be more healing than fixing.

About the Guest Host:

Amy Lynn Durham, known by her clients as the Corporate Mystic, is the founder of the Executive Coaching Firm, Create Magic At Work®, where they help leaders build workplaces rooted in creativity, collaboration, and fulfillment. A former corporate executive turned Executive Coach, Amy blends practical leadership strategies with spiritual intelligence to unlock human potential at work.

She’s a certified Executive Coach through UC Berkeley & the International Coaching Federation (ICF) In addition, Amy holds coaching certifications in Spiritual Intelligence (SQ21), the Edgewalker Profile, and the Archetypes of Change . In addition to being the host of the Create Magic At Work® podcast, Amy is the author of Create Magic At Work®, Creating Career Magic: A Daily Prompt Journal and the founder of Magic Thread Media™. Through her work, she inspires intentional leadership for thriving workplaces and lives where “magic” becomes reality.

Connect with Amy:

https://createmagicatwork.net/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/create-magic-at-work

https://www.facebook.com/112951637095427

https://www.instagram.com/createmagicatwork

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnEm4h3fUgaq8qgvZpz6dGg

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

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If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

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Mentioned in this episode:

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

This week Aaron explores the teachers, mentors, parents, guides, and unexpected strangers who leave emotional imprints on the architecture of our lives. Moving through stories of nursing school, fatherhood, rideshare conversations, and the subtle transfer of wisdom across generations, the episode gently asks what it means to truly shape another human being without trying to possess or control them. Along the way, Aaron reflects on discernment, legacy, apprenticeship, and the growing tension between authentic guidance and performative influence in modern life. This conversation unfolds as an invitation to slow down, notice whose voices live inside you, and consider the quiet responsibility we all carry as teachers to one another, whether we realize it or not.

Invitations to Consider:

1. How certain voices remain with us for decades, quietly shaping the way we move through the world and understand ourselves.
2. The transformative experience of being recognized by another person in a way that awakens something previously unseen within us.
3. What apprenticeship truly asks of us beyond knowledge: integrity, discernment, emotional maturity, and the embodiment of wisdom.
4. The growing tension between authentic teachers who cultivate freedom and modern forms of influence that seek certainty, dependency, and followership.
5. Why openness to outcome may be one of the deepest expressions of love, mentorship, parenting, and human connection.

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

In a quiet room lit by candlelight and softened by rain, this episode invites you to settle into the living rhythm of friendship as something more than connection, something closer to a shared becoming. Drawing from moments of reunion, long-held bonds, and a story that didn’t last, the conversation gently explores how the circles of fellowship shape us over time. There is a sense of returning here, to people who have known us across seasons, and also a quiet reckoning with the edges they reveal in us. What does it mean to truly tend a friendship, not just name it? What do we learn when a relationship asks more of us than we can give, or reflects something we are not yet ready to face? Moving between memory, story, and reflection, this episode becomes a space to notice who walks beside you, who has fallen away, and how each connection has quietly shaped your path. It is an invitation to sit with gratitude, to feel the weight and warmth of belonging, and to consider how friendship, when deeply lived, becomes one of the most powerful forces in who we are becoming.

Invitations to Consider:

• The idea that friendship is not just connection but “tending what we tame,” requiring care, presence, and reciprocity
• How friends act as companions of emergence, shaping who we become beyond our family of origin
• The evolving nature of friendship circles, including growth, distance, repair, and renewal
• A deeply personal story illustrating how friendships can expose moral boundaries and identity edges
• The concept of fellowship as shared investment, drawn from both personal reflection and literary influence

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

There are moments when a stranger’s story feels like a mirror, quietly revealing something we’ve carried for years without naming. In this episode, Aaron invites us into the layered terrain of family origin stories, where identity, belonging, and inherited narratives begin to take shape long before we have language for them. Through a deeply human encounter and a series of gentle questions, the conversation settles into the quiet realization that much of who we believe ourselves to be may not have been chosen at all. As the night unfolds, listeners are asked to sit with the stories they’ve lived, the roles they’ve carried, and the subtle edges where those inherited patterns begin to soften, shift, or ask for release.

Invitations to Consider:

• A powerful real-life encounter that opens the doorway into reflecting on human resilience and chosen identity
• How family origin stories shape identity, often before we are aware of it
• The role of belonging, attachment, and emotional conditioning in early development
• The hidden influence of family roles, myths, and power structures on adult life
• The possibility of rewriting inherited narratives and choosing new ways of being

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Email: [email protected]

There are moments when the world feels heavy with brokenness, when problems gather around us and something inside wants to move quickly toward repair. Aaron gently lingers in that space, exploring the quiet pull to become the fixer in every room. With steady presence and thoughtful questioning, he invites us to notice the subtle line between compassionate presence and identity built on being needed. What happens when helping becomes who we are? What tightens inside us when conflict appears, and what softens when we choose to sit with discomfort instead of controlling it? Through reflections on burnout, empathic distress, and relational tension, Aaron opens a path toward deeper self-awareness and spiritual growth. Rather than rejecting service, he encourages a more spacious way of showing up, one rooted in wholeness instead of fear. The conversation settles into a simple but profound question: who are you if you are not fixing?

Invitations to Consider:

• The difference between fixing as control and presence as companionship in service.
• How empathic distress can drive reactive helping behaviors.
• The emotional cost of attaching identity and self-worth to being needed.
• Why sitting with discomfort can deepen relationships and reveal truth.
• The societal consequences of collective “fixing” rooted in fear rather than awareness.

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Aaron invites listeners into a quiet inner space where uncertainty is no longer something to overcome, but something to notice and meet with care. Through personal reflection and thoughtful inquiry, the episode explores how uncertainty shapes our sense of self, revealing the ways we cling to certainty for safety and how that grip can quietly limit us. Rather than offering guidance or resolution, the reflection lingers with questions of identity, creativity, and courage, suggesting that uncertainty may be the very condition that allows us to choose who we are becoming. This is an invitation to pause at the edge of what cannot be known, to soften our resistance, and to consider how we show up when the future offers no guarantees.

Key Takeaways:

• An exploration of uncertainty as a constant condition of human life rather than an interruption.
• A personal story of standing at a life crossroads and the paralysis that certainty-seeking can create.
• The idea that creativity depends on uncertainty and cannot exist without it.
• A reframing of courage as curiosity applied in moments of resistance.
• An invitation to define identity not by outcomes, but by character and presence in uncertain times.

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

Our lives move in patterns long before we notice them. We learn what keeps us safe, what helps us belong, and what allows us to move through the world with less risk and less pain. In this first quiet gathering of Circles | Edges, Aaron invites listeners into a candlelit, late night space to reflect on those familiar cycles and the masks we wear to survive them. Beginning with a story from his nursing education and expanding outward into the ways we protect ourselves emotionally and socially, the episode lingers at the moment when awareness begins to stir. This is not a search for answers or solutions, but a place of arrival. A pause at the edge of what feels familiar, and an invitation to consider, together, what it costs to stay protected and what becomes possible when we start to notice.

Key Takeaways:

• A reflection on why late night talk radio once mattered and why that intimate, solitary voice still feels necessary today
• The origin of Circles | Edges and its intention to explore shared human patterns without chasing solutions or certainty
• A nursing school story that becomes a metaphor for how emotional and social masks interfere with real connection
• An exploration of how masks form, why they feel necessary, and how they quietly create cycles of disconnection
• A gentle invitation to consider what it might mean to pause at the edge of a familiar pattern rather than rushing past it

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: [email protected]

Thanks for listening!

Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page.

Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!

Subscribe to the podcast

If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you are enjoying the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/

In this trailer, Aaron Tabacco introduces the heart of the show and the two forces that shape our human experience. The circles are the patterns, rituals, relationships, and rhythms we move through every day. The edges are the moments of choice, the boundaries we meet or create, and the thresholds where growth quietly begins.

This podcast is a space for reflection, attention, and connection. A place to notice what often goes unseen and to listen inward during moments of transition. Circles | Edges is not about fixing or forcing change. It is about awareness, presence, and understanding who we are becoming.

Intro music "Unraveling the Night" composed by Miriam Milewska provided under license through Pond5