The RV Book Fair 2026: Interview with Dr. Christine Silverstein

Your career has taken you from nursing and education to peak performance coaching and authorship. What inspired this remarkable journey, and how have these different roles shaped who you are today?

Nursing: Nursing, teaching, peak performance coaching, and authorship all came naturally to me during the different stages of my life and blended together. What might seem like a career change to some was a life transition to me, like climbing a set of stairs from the bottom to the top. That’s how you can see it. You just take one step at a time—one after another in your life until you reach the top floor. For me it all started with nursing.

My idea of becoming a nurse came to me at 15 when I witnessed my friend having a seizure in the middle of the street outside the candy store where we hung out. He collapsed in front of me and was shaking all over with his eyes rolling back and was unconscious. Up to that point, I did not know he had epilepsy.

My friends and I did not know how to help him, but we thought we should put a stick down his throat, so he would not swallow his tongue. We probably saw this on TV. When he awoke, he had soiled himself, and being embarrassed, I never saw him again.

At the same time, my mother told me that at 15 she had had a ruptured appendix and had an extended hospital stay. From this experience, she aspired to become a nurse. Since there were no antibiotics, she almost died. She never had the opportunity to study nursing while raising five children, which was her biggest life regret. With my mom’s encouragement and my friend’s seizure I decided to apply to nursing school at 16 to help people with their health issues.

The nurse director who interviewed me for entry said I had to be 18 to study there and asked me why I was so young to graduate from high school. I paused for a moment and told her that I was smart. This plus my aptitude for nursing, demonstrated by a high score on an exam, further helped me gain admittance, and I graduated as an RN at 19.

Teaching: The natural flow into teaching from nursing came early on in nursing curriculum when, at 18, I taught young mothers-to-be how to eat nutritiously during their pregnancies and instructed patients on how to take prescribed drugs, such as insulin.

I earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN) some years later, and a master’s in public administration, culminating in a Doctorate in Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and was inducted into the Nursing Hall of Fame there. I wrote journal papers and traveled worldwide giving presentations on nursing history and coaching.

Peak Performance Coaching: I coached myself to win roller-skating races at 10 and became the champion of Queens in NYC. From an early age at nursing school, I learned how to interact with others therapeutically starting from my internship at a mental hospital and in mental health clinics. As an extension of my work, I studied hypnosis for personal use when I was deemed infertile, and taught others how to use the power of the mind with Mindful Toughness® skill sets I developed and opened my office, The Summit Center for Ideal Performance, in 1996. There I worked with helping people of all ages to improve their performance in health, athletics, academics, education, and performing arts.

Authorship: I started writing poetry as a young adult. An example of a poem I wrote is in the Epilogue of my book titled: “The Phantom Limbs.” After earning my doctorate, I published research papers in professional journals as a historian. However, I never thought of myself as a writer and never studied writing formally. That is, until my father made me promise to become an author and writer on his deathbed because he never accomplished his goal as a journalist and saw my talent in a letter I had written to him to help him become well again.

The commencement of writing my book came about in 2021 when I was drowning at the Outer Banks of NC, and a professor who was reading a book on a beach chair during a storm heard my screams, dragged me out of the water, and saved me. I knew then that it was my dad speaking to me in spirit, so I wrote my book: Wrestling Through Adversity: Empowering Children, Teens, & Young Adults to Win in Life and published it in 2023.

Your book is titled Wrestling Through Adversity. What does “wrestling” symbolize for you beyond the sport itself, and why did you choose it as the central metaphor?

I began studying peak performance coaching and hypnosis in 1994 simply out of personal and family need because I saw that my four children were having challenges with their performances in sports, school, music, and socially, and although I sought professional assistance for them, I found none. So, I opened my private practice in my hometown to help them help themselves and then branched out to work with other families and team members.

Since my son was a wrestler from the age of 7, I gave peak performance coaching sessions at his wrestling club at first, to teach their team members how to de-stress, focus and score, and I worked with many individual wrestlers from his club. By1997, I had the opportunity to present a workshop to high school coaches in Pennsylvania along with the Olympic Champion, Kurt Angle.

This event was intimidating for me at first, because I was the only woman present, and I never wrestled a day in my life. Of course, this was true for most women at the time because of bias against them. Looking back, I was very brave to come with hand-drawn graphics of “The Highway to Succes” and “The Humpty Dumpty Syndrome” (that are now in my book under Mindful Toughness® skill sets).

At first the group members were skeptical of my hypnosis session during the workshop. That is, until Kurt, who navigated many injuries during the Olympic competition, said they should listen to me because that is how he became a Champion. Overall, the workshop was a success in the unique way I introduced wrestling to the world as a “holistic” sport in body, mind, and spirit, whose story I included in Chapter 3 of my book.

Although I have worked with many sports, I’ve learned so much from wrestlers because of their work ethics, their discipline, their culture, and their desire to become winners, no matter what. They are the true grapplers, and they teach all of us so much, especially this one wrestler and coach I found in my research named Phil Nowick who was the author of the book: “Wrestling with Life,”

In his book, he wrote about how he was in the World Trade Center when it was attacked and how he ran out of the building but later succumbed to cancer and died. Phil showed us how to sprint faster away from the towers, when his lungs burned like wildfire.

Looking ahead, what is coming next for you?

Since I have worked for three decades successfully assisting children, teens, and young adults to reach their best performance through accessing the power of their minds by teaching Mindful Toughness skill sets, I feel a sense of urgency and obligation to continue my work with young people.

In doing so, they can have a “How-to-list,” learn what to do hands-on, and benefit from my wellness programs, such as “Winning Ways for Teens.” I believe that more research is needed on prevention of mental illness and on how to nurture the growth and development of our youth with the natural resources of the mind— innate within them through imagination so that the positive habit patterns learned are integrated into who they are as persons throughout their lives.

Since the launching of my Arabic edition on January 13, 2026, I have been excited to promote it in Arabic-speaking countries and have presented it in bookstores in France where I recently visited. In addition, just last month my press release came out in Arabic, French, and British English to countries in the Middle East and in Africa. My book was presented in both English and Arabic at the Dublin Book Festival at Trinity College there on August 15.

During the epiphany I had in Egypt, I promised to join with others of different Faiths and cultures globally and holistically in body, mind, and spirit, to help young people to overcome adversity during tumult. As a common goal in the family of humankind, I will continue to focus on community around the globe.

Won’t you join me on this communal adventure to secure a better future for our young people by engaging in my book? Thank you for your support and bless you.

Dr. Christine Silverstein is a compassionate author, Peak Performance Coach, hypnotherapist, and educator who works with children, teens, and adults. Through programs such as Winning Ways for Teens, she uses Hypno-Coaching, imagery, storytelling, and therapeutic techniques to help clients overcome challenges and build resilience.

Her work also focuses on behavioral health and mind-body healing. Operation Heal helps reduce stress and support recovery surrounding surgical procedures, while Winning Ways for Wrestlers teaches athletes mindful toughness and peak-performance skills.

Her other specialized programs include Metamorphosis, which supports fertility enhancement, and Train to Regain, designed for stroke recovery. Through her coaching and writing, Dr. Silverstein helps clients achieve personal growth and lasting transformation.

Find out more at https://drchristinesilverstein.com.

Interview published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - The RV Book Fair 2026 - Special. Download the full magazine for free at The RV Book Fair | Relatable Media.