Conquering Treatment Fears with Emily Miller

In this episode of “Anti-Aging Insights,” Dr. Teri Fisher welcomes the highly acclaimed Emily Miller, a registered nurse and certified aesthetic medicine practitioner. Emily, who also serves as faculty with the Canadian Board of Aesthetic Medicine, shares her expertise on managing patient anxieties during aesthetic treatments. Operating her boutique clinic in North Vancouver alongside her husband, Dr. Vishal Gupta, Emily draws from her extensive background in dermatology and international speaking to provide valuable insights into building trust, addressing common fears, such as concerns over looking “overdone” and fear of needles, and maintaining a safe and comfortable practice environment. Listen in as Dr. Fisher and Emily discuss the importance of communication and patient care in the world of non-surgical cosmetic medicine. Tune in for actionable tips and hear firsthand how Emily and Dr. Fisher alleviate patient worries to enhance their clients’ overall experience.

Today’s Guest

Emily Miller

Emily Miller is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Yale University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Science in Nursing. Emily is a Certified Aesthetic Medicine Practitioner through the Canadian Board of Aesthetic Medicine (CBAM). She is a lecturing CBAM faculty member and clinical instructor. Emily is the founder of Emily Miller Aesthetic Medicine – a boutique aesthetics clinic in West Vancouver, BC where she delivers evidence-based, patient-centric care that is both detail-oriented and holistic.

Episode Summary

In today’s episode, Dr. Teri Fisher welcomes Emily Miller, a highly credentialed registered nurse and certified aesthetic medicine practitioner. Emily is also a faculty member with the Canadian Board of Aesthetic Medicine and the founder of Emily Miller Aesthetic Medicine in North Vancouver, BC.

Featured Guest: Emily Miller
Emily brings a wealth of knowledge and experience in aesthetic medicine, with a particular interest in dermatology. She runs her boutique clinic alongside her husband, medical director Dr. Vishal Gupta. Emily is also an international speaker featured on major television networks. She joined us to discuss a prevalent yet rarely addressed topic: patient anxieties about aesthetic treatments.

Discussing Anxieties Around Aesthetic Treatments
Emily and Dr. Fisher delve into some common anxieties faced by patients when they consider aesthetic procedures for the first time or are trying new treatments. Key concerns include fears of looking “overdone” and the discomfort with needles.

Fear of Looking Overdone
Emily notes that many patients worry about appearing unnatural or drastically changed post-procedure. They seek a balance—noticeable improvements without making it obvious they’ve had work done. Both practitioners stress the importance of maintaining a look that is subtly enhanced rather than overtly altered.

Fear of Needles
This is another widespread anxiety. Emily highlights that even people with tattoos or piercings can find the idea of facial injections daunting. She reassures her patients by using strong numbing creams, allowing breaks, and maintaining open communication to ensure they feel in control and comfortable throughout the treatment.

Addressing Safety Concerns
Though rare, some patients express concerns about the safety of aesthetic treatments. Emily emphasizes that comprehensive informed consent and educating patients on what to expect can significantly mitigate these fears. She ensures her patients understand the normal post-treatment symptoms and knows how to identify and address any anomalies.

Final Thoughts and Contact Information
Emily’s approach to patient care is profoundly empathetic and patient-centered, much like Dr. Fisher’s. Both professionals share a commitment to making aesthetic treatments a comfortable and rewarding experience.

To connect with Emily Miller, you can find her on Instagram at [@emilymiller_aestheticmedicine](https://www.instagram.com/emilymiller_aestheticmedicine), or visit her [website](www.emily-rn.com).

Key Insights

• Emily Miller is a registered nurse and certified aesthetic medicine practitioner, recognized for her work and contributions to the field.
• A common anxiety among aesthetic clients is the fear of looking “overdone,” which Emily addresses by ensuring natural-looking results.
• Needle phobia is another major concern, which Emily mitigates through validation, distraction, thorough consultations, and the use of numbing agents.
• Emily emphasizes educating clients on what to expect during and after procedures, including normal and abnormal reactions, to ease their anxieties.
• Many clients’ fears are often based on sensationalized cases seen on social media; however, most aesthetic treatments yield undetectable yet positive results.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Teri Fisher: Hey there and welcome to this episode of the podcast. Today I have a fantastic guest for you. It is none other than Emily Miller. She is a registered nurse. She is a certified aesthetic medicine practitioner, and she is also faculty with the Canadian Board of Aesthetic Medicine. In addition to all of that, Emily has a special interest in dermatology and she was actually awarded a scholarship for academic excellence in this area. She’s the founder of Emily Miller Aesthetic Medicine, which is a boutique aesthetics clinic in North Vancouver, BC, and she runs it with her husband and medical director, Dr. Vishal Gupta. Emily is an international speaker and she has regularly been featured on major television networks. I have had the pleasure of working with Emily personally and I can tell you that she is awesome. So with that being said, today, I have Emily here to chat all about patient anxieties and how she approaches that when someone is coming in to see her and they may be anxious about one or another aspect of an aesthetic treatment.

So without any further ado, let’s get to the podcast episode and the interview with Emily Miller.

Hello, Emily, and welcome to the podcast. It’s so great to have you here.

Emily Miller: Thank you for having me. I’m really happy to be here.

Dr. Teri Fisher: So, Emily, I am thrilled to be able to chat with you. I’ve had the honour of working with you and learning from you as part of the courses through CBAM, which was fantastic. And I wanted to have you on to get your perspective on aesthetic treatments.

Before we get into all that great stuff, can I ask you to introduce yourself a little bit to the listeners? Tell us a little bit about your background and your story.

Emily Miller: Yeah, I’m Emily Miller. I’m a registered nurse. I work in aesthetic medicine. I have a clinic in North Vancouver that I operate with my husband. It’s a family run business, and I do teach for Canadian Board of Aesthetic Medicine, which is how I met Teri, one of my star students. And so I’m really happy to have this conversation today.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Wonderful. So we’re going to talk a little bit about treatments and specifically anxieties that clients may have when they’re coming in. I think it’s a fantastic topic that you suggested and we haven’t really talked about that much on my podcast before. So I’m really excited to hear about that. So it’s quite a broad question, but maybe we can just start with, you know, when you see a client for the first time, what are some of the most common anxieties that you see? And then how do you deal with those?

Emily Miller: So I suggested this topic because I do think that it’s really a recurring theme that I find in most of my clientele that come to me for an initial consultation and treatment. And it might be their first time branching out into cosmetic treatments or maybe their first time trying a new cosmetic treatment and sort of, you know, doing a little bit more than they had in the past. And a common anxiety that people have is that they don’t want to look overdone and they want to look like themselves.

And we’ve all seen cases where it’s like cosmetic treatments have just been taken just a little too far. You know, we just tipped the balance a little too far and then it no longer serves that person. It’s no longer flattering to them. And so I think that that’s a really common anxiety that people have that if I’m going to do this, I want to trust you with my face that I’m not going to turn out looking weird or abnormal or not like myself or have too drastic of a change.

And that being said, they also want it to be noticeable. They’re making a financial investment in this and investing their time. And so they want, they want to appreciate a change, but not have it be obvious to anybody meeting them or looking at them, or even people who know them that they’ve had work done but that they might just notice, like, you look great, you know, you look refreshed, you look rested. And that’s what people are looking for.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Yeah, that’s great. That can sometimes be a challenge to find that balance between not looking overdone, but doing enough that they see a change. And I think the way you describe that then is really you want them to be able to see, but maybe not necessarily the other people. Is that generally how you explain it then?

Emily Miller: So the feedback I get from my clients, other people notice that they look great. So you do want people to give you compliments and be like, are you, like, have you done something? You know, like they can’t put their finger on it and it looks wonderful, but you do want it to be noticeable.

But say, for example, with lip filler, you wouldn’t want anyone meeting you for the first time or seeing you for the first time to look at your lips and think those lips have filler in them. You would just want it to be undetectable.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Right. So the overdone issue is potentially one of the anxieties and you’ve described your approach to that. What are some of the other things that people will be concerned about or potentially concerned about when they’re coming in?

Emily Miller: Oh, I think it’s really common for people to have a fear of needles.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Yes.

Emily Miller: Yeah, you know, it’s such a normal anxiety and I’ll have clients that come see me who almost apologize for it, you know, and it’s great that you’ve prepared me and let me know that this is anxiety of yours.

I really do want to know that so that we can just take that extra time and effort to make you feel really comfortable. But it’s such a normal fear to have a fear of needles. And even people who will be like, you know, tatted up full sleeves and all these piercings, for some reason it’s different, the anxiety about getting a medication or a product injected into your face and sort of the depth that the needle goes to and things like that.

It’s a different experience, so I’m told. I don’t have tattoos but people could even like sit in a tattoo chair for hours and bear that kind of like superficial needling. But the thought of like a Botox needle going in is really anxiety producing for them. So I can understand that. I can respect that. I think it’s totally normal to have a fear of needles. And yeah, just let your provider know so that they can really help you to feel calm and comfortable and in control throughout your procedure.

Dr. Teri Fisher: So that’s my next question. So say somebody is really, really terrified of needles, Do you have certain things that you’ll say? Do you have certain tips that you’ll do during the consultation or during the actual procedure that will help them to feel a little bit more relaxed?

Emily Miller: Sure. So first of all, I think just validating, that that’s okay. And it’s like, they almost feel like it’s an imposition to you, like they’re going to make the treatment so much harder for you to get through. It’s like, I don’t care. I’m okay. I do this all day, every day. We’re, we’re fine. And so don’t worry about me. This is about you. And what we can do to keep them comfortable is like distraction, a really good consultation so that they feel like we’re on the same page and they can look forward to the result that they’re going to get out of this, you know?

So that’s the motivating factor. Like I had a gal in my chair the other day who she’d wanted for years to get her lips done and she wanted them done so badly, but she was really nervous to do it. And she finally made the commitment, you know, she’s getting married a couple of years down the line and she wants to start her wedding prep, and it’s really important to her. So, I think that like also getting them excited about like, it’s okay, it’s going to be worth it. You know, just like imagine how great it’s going to look and that can be motivating and they can sort of get in the zone and get through it. Also you can take breaks. I like to check in with them about their comfort. We use numbing cream. So most people, if we’re doing lip injections, for example, we’ll leave that numbing cream on. We use a really strong topical product and we’ll leave it on for longer so that, you know, they can hardly feel anything. People will say it’s like a one out of 10 or a three out of 10 if they’re rating their pain and I’m always checking in to make sure, and is that okay for you? Like, is that tolerable? If I get the go ahead, then we kind of just keep going. And I think if you, the provider, have a calm presence to just get through the procedure then that helps them to feel calm as well, because it’s like, okay, they can just sit back and somebody’s got me there. You know, they can just meditate and close their eyes and and it’s over in just a few minutes.

Dr. Teri Fisher: And I’m glad you gave those examples of one out of 10, three out of 10, because I don’t want people to go away from this thinking we’re talking so much about needles and pain and all this stuff that these are very, very painful procedures. Because by and large, most people tolerate them extremely well.

Emily Miller: Extremely well, yeah. So that’s the whole thing about the anxiety going into it, is like, a lot of times people will work it up in their head a lot more than it actually is. And then the feedback that I get is like, oh, that actually wasn’t that bad. But it may have even prevented them from getting a Cosmetic procedure for years because of their anxiety and their head leading up to it. But then it’s much easier for them to come for return visits because once they’ve experienced it once and realize, oh, it’s actually that’s really doable, it’s not that bad, then that alleviates a lot of their anxiety.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Perfect. Yeah. Any other things that come to mind as far as concerns that clients have or other anxieties that they may have coming in or chatting with you?

Emily Miller: I think the looking overdone or abnormal thing is something that I’d love to hear your thoughts about. I think that it is such a phenomenon that we see more and more faces now that like as dermal fillers, let’s say become more and more commonplace, there’s tons of good results out there. Tons of good results. But our eye isn’t drawn to them. We don’t know unless that person is going and broadcasting their face and saying, hey, look at me. I’ve had fillers and I look amazing. You know, like we’re only seeing the cases that look off in some way or, you know, have had too much and it’s tilted that, that balance.

So it’s skewing our perception of how common it is for things to turn out not well, when actually in most cases it’s looking phenomenal and undetectable, and that’s why you never noticed because it was undetectable.

Dr. Teri Fisher: It’s a really, really good point. There’s that inherent bias when we’re looking at social media. A lot of people are going to, first of all, whether we’re talking about aesthetic treatments or anything in life, people that aren’t happy with things tend to then want to broadcast that and they’re going to show the possible complications or issues with that. There’s this natural bias to see those that are not happy with what has happened, and many people that are completely happy with it, they don’t have any reason to go and broadcast that. They came in to look better, to feel better, to feel confident, and that’s what they got and they go about their life and enjoy what they had done. So yeah, I think you’re right. There’s always a bias about what we’re seeing on social media.

Emily Miller: You can look at like celebrity faces too. So I do a series on my Instagram looking at celebrity cases, like celebrity do’s and don’ts it’s called. And so there are so many cases of celebrities getting work done. Pretty much everyone in Hollywood has had something done. It’s just like the nature of the business. And by far and large, they all look great, but nobody knows that they’ve had anything done until they no longer look great, right? Like, until it’s one of those cases where it’s like, oh no, like, what happened to their face? They don’t look like themselves anymore, and we all kind of grieve for them, and are concerned that a medical provider, you know, didn’t take great care of them. I would argue it’s never the patient’s fault. We should never shame anybody for having an unideal aesthetic outcome from a treatment.

You know, they placed their trust in the medical provider and many of these cases can be resolved with the use of dissolving as well. So I would just hope that they could be taken care of like through that course of treatment and correct any work that turned out to have a complication. But, you know, we see it with the celebrities too, where we have that bias, where we see it didn’t turn out well, it was too much surgery, it was too much filler. It was over time just like repeated treatments, like a lot of these treatments don’t actually take that much maintenance. Once you do your, your base, very little is required to maintain and I think that’s where people get into trouble with like overfilling We see cases of people being overdone everywhere. It is like the influencers on social media which, by the way, none of their images are real. They’re all edited, using photo editing apps nowadays. So you can’t, you can’t compare yourself to these faces online, because they’re all edited, and they’re also the majority of them getting work done.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Yeah, that’s another that’s another really really good point. For the sake of time I’ll ask you about one other type of anxiety that I know that some people may have when they come in, and that’s just around the safety. I know this is really important to you with all your procedures to make sure that everything is done in a really really safe manner. So if somebody comes in and says I’m worried about this thing that I’ve heard that could happen, how do you approach that type of anxiety?

Emily Miller: It’s very rare. So it’s rare that people come in with an anxiety about that. And you know, we have to do a really thorough informed consent where we’re talking through that this is an elective medical procedure and all medical procedures carry risks. These are the risks of, you know, this particular procedure and what I do is I educate my patients of what to expect. What’s normal versus what’s not normal. And if you see something that’s not normal, what to do in that case? And when, when would you contact me? So that’s how I handle that. And I think that if people feel empowered with that information, I don’t want to set them up for more anxiety going into the procedure, you know? So I think that if you can just empower them and say like, bruising and swelling and some pain and tenderness after a filler treatment, for example, are very normal. And you can take Tylenol, you can ice it, you know, this is what you can do. This is how long you can anticipate from your healing. This is how long the filler takes to settle in. And then we go into the things that are not normal. And in what case, would you contact me and what would we do in that case? What would that look like? And I think if people have that information in sort of a digestible way, then they feel comfortable going through with the procedure.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, Emily, thank you so much. You are an incredible practitioner. Hopefully listeners will realize that. You have a very successful practice in North Vancouver and I’ve seen you work and you’re fantastic.

So I want to first of all, thank you. And then secondly, I’d love for you to share with all the listeners and the viewers a little bit about your practice, where you are, how they can contact you, any social media links or anything like that so that people can get in touch with you as well.

Emily Miller: Sure. So thank you for having me, Teri. I enjoyed talking to you. So viewers can find me on Instagram. I’m also on YouTube and TikTok, but my Instagram handle is @emilymiller_aestheticmedicine. And my website is That’s www.emily-rn.com.

Dr. Teri Fisher: Fantastic. Well, thanks, Emily. I hope that we’ll have another chance to speak at some point in the future and yeah, I look forward to following all of your work as well.

Emily Miller: Thanks, Teri.

Dr. Teri Fisher: So there you go. I hope you enjoyed that podcast episode. And if you are looking at getting some aesthetic treatments, I hope this has helped to alleviate any anxieties, if you have any. As you heard, Emily goes out of her way to make sure that you are as comfortable as you possibly can be. And I am very similar to Emily in that regard. That’s the reason why we wanted to do this podcast episode together, because anxiety is totally natural. It is part of undergoing any type of procedure, whether we’re talking about aesthetics or anything else, and I think communication is key. I think having an approach is key and just as Emily described it, I fully believe in what she said. And I hope that that helps to alleviate any of your anxiety, again, if you happen to have any.

Thank you for tuning in this week. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I hope you enjoyed meeting Emily. Please feel free to reach out to her as she mentioned, if you would like to connect with her. And of course, feel free to reach out to me as well, if you’d like to connect with me. Happy to chat with you as well. I look forward to speaking with you again next week. Until then take care and be well.