Most of us treat mental health reactively, waiting until things are truly falling apart before seeking help, which Dr. Emily Anhalt likens to waiting for a heart-disease diagnosis before doing any cardio. A year of pandemic uncertainty, doom-scrolling and isolation has pushed anxiety sharply up, and founders, who often skip meals and privilege every meeting over their own wellbeing, are among the most exposed.
The clinical psychologist and Coa co-founder reframes emotional health as a proactive practice, a gym for the mind, built on seven traits including self-awareness, resilience and play. In conversation she offers concrete tools, from guarding news-free and phone-free hours to using exercise as an antidepressant, and makes a pointed case for leaders: burnout is easier to prevent than fix, your emotional runway matters as much as your financial one, and founders who model self-care and boundaried vulnerability give their whole company permission to do the same.
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Welcome back. We're on day two of week two of TuringFest twenty twenty. So earlier on, we had some some roundtable discussions with Emily Tate from Mind the Product, with Jeff Gardner from Graphy. Our friends at Eyes Edel hosted a a fireside chat about remote working and the future of work.
So we've had a lot of a lot of cool stuff already today. All the previous week sessions and last week sessions, of course, are available for for delegates to check out in the in the event platform. Before this afternoon, we we have our next fireside chat.
We spoke with Eamon, Eamon Carey from Techstars last week. This week, we have one of our twenty nineteen alumni. She joined us in Edinburgh last year, she spoke at Turing founders and at Turing Fest, actually. And everybody was totally blown away by by what she had to say.
So we decided we'd get her back in, particularly given the kind of crazy year that it's all been. So who better to talk to then a clinical psychologist. So today we have joining us Doctor. Emily Anhalt. So we'll bring her in now. Emily, hi, how are you?
Yeah, you too. How long is it be expected in a pandemic? Yeah, yeah, it's, in my in my emails, actually, now I've started saying to people, I hope you're intact. That seems like the sort of thing I might have got that from you.
I think I did get that from you, actually. Yeah, I did. So thank you. I've totally stolen it. So, let's let's, I thought we'd maybe split this chat into a few different parts. We'll talk about a little bit about you about your career, about twenty twenty anxieties, I guess that we're all really sort of feeling and then a little bit about mental health and startups, and the particular flavor of stress that you get in startups.
So maybe first of all, just a little bit on your background, you want to just give us the one minute version of Doctor. Emily Anhalt. Absolutely. So I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been practicing about eleven years now, but I grew up in Silicon Valley and I've been exposed to the world of tech my whole life.
So I really developed an interest in the psychology of the entrepreneur. So when I started practicing psychology, I specialized in working with founders and VCs and people in tech. And it helped me understand that our current mental health system is very reactive. People are made to feel like things have to be absolutely falling apart to necessitate any kind of support, and people tend to wait till things are really bad to work on their mental health.
But in my opinion, that's a little like waiting until you've been diagnosed with early signs of heart disease to do cardio. I really wanted to redefine mental health as a proactive practice, more like going to the gym instead of going to the doctor.
And so a number of years ago, I did some research where I interviewed a hundred psychologists and a hundred entrepreneurs. And I asked them, how would you know if you were sitting across the table from someone with good emotional fitness, ongoing proactive emotional health?
And I took all of the answers I got from these interviews and I coded them for themes. And what came out of this research were these seven traits of emotional fitness. The seven traits are self awareness, empathy, the ability to play, mindfulness, resilience, curiosity, and communication.
So I started building out all kinds of workshops and classes around these seven traits. And along the way of doing this, I met my now co founder, her name's Alexa Meyer. And together we decided that it was time to start a company that was essentially the world's first gym for mental health.
Visible spaces where people can tend to their emotional health, build their resilience muscles, and make sure that they're better equipped to handle the inevitable difficulties that life throws at us like the entirety of twenty twenty. So I'm now the co founder and chief clinical officer of Koa, a gym for mental health, And people can tune into our classes, all of which are created and taught by licensed therapists from anywhere in the world.
So the website is joinkoa dot com. And it's just been so amazing to see how eager people are to build community around working on our mental health without it feeling so stigmatized and so much friction. So we're trying to increase access, reduce friction and build community around being emotionally healthy humans.
That's, that seems like a very timely thing to be doing. You you I don't know, feels like you couldn't have picked a better year to be to be kicking off. You also Koa just recently closed this past month, wasn't it? A seed round for three million.
I guess you're onto the next phase. Right, so we actually raised the money late last year And just recently this month, we were really excited to bring on an NBA superstar, Kevin Love, who is a really big advocate of mental health. And so yeah, TechCrunch just announced our raise, which is really exciting.
And the response has been pretty insane. I mean, I would say in the past couple months, demand for our services has gone up nine hundred percent. Like I think there's just no denying that people need this kind of support, not just because of everything that's going on right now, but I think because there's this realization that we can't prepare for every tough thing that'll happen.
So we really have to make sure we have tools in our toolkit and that we're coming together as community to get through tough times. Yeah. From a personal perspective, I've never thought so much about my mental health as I have this year. I'm just speaking to friends, to family, like even my parents who never, you know, they're from a generation where they probably never really talked about mental health before.
But now they're very open and talking about, you know, how lonely they've been or difficult it's been for them, not seeing not seeing their kids and their grandkids and all of that. So yeah, I mean, this year has just been been wild for for everyone.
And you mentioned that you you grew up in in in the valley. It's, it's kind of funny from from looking at the valley from outside, it seems like a place where people go to build a startup, rather than where people actually, you know, have their childhood.
What what was that like? Did you enjoy growing up in the valley? Is it a is it a good place to be a kid? Yeah, I thought what was interesting about it was that everything was kind of ripe for innovation. You know, people were really encouraged to try new things and start something new and be your own boss.
And, you know, there's a lot of kind of academia, right? Silicon Valley is right in the heart of a lot of amazing universities and institutions in that way too. So I think there was just this sense of anything is possible. You don't have to accept the status quo.
And part of that was the culture of my family too. I'm very lucky to have grown up in a family where I was encouraged to think big and do important things in the world. And so I'd say it wasn't always a great place to be a kid, maybe not.
But I don't know if anywhere is a great place to be a kid all the time. It's hard being a kid sometimes. But I feel really grateful that I was exposed to this particular group of people. There really is a particular psychology of an entrepreneur.
It's a slightly masochistic path to take. You really are dealing with so much rejection and setbacks and failures. And it's a tough thing. And you have to have a particular way of thinking about life and about the world and about yourself. I think one of the quotes I heard a while ago that I love is a true entrepreneur is someone who's willing to work for five to ten years like no one else will, so that they can live the rest of their life like no one else can.
And that resonated with me. There really is such an investment when it comes to running a company. But if you are up for it, it's just mind blowing and profound what's possible. So, it was amazing, amazing environment to grow up in. And it's, so that that obviously had an impact on you and kind of shaped your your view of what what might be possible.
But then you you you went into, into your profession in psychology, did your PhD, then you've been you said eleven years practicing. When when along those eleven years, when did you go? You know what, maybe maybe there's a startup in here somewhere? I feel like the startup chose me.
I knew that I wanted to do something unique with my degree. I have ADHD. And one of the characteristics of my ADHD is that I actually focus better when I'm doing twenty things at once than when I try to only do one thing.
So I always knew I wouldn't only see patients. And that's what inspired this research. And I started doing workshops for tech companies. A lot of my community was in tech, I was going to amazing organizations like Google and GitHub and Bloomberg and Salesforce and doing workshops.
And they were just being so well received. It was like I was catching the crest of a wave of people realizing that we bring our emotional selves to work, especially in tech where people really define a lot of their identities by their company and what they do.
So it just felt really clear that there was this opportunity for a pivot. I didn't see a startup coming though, until I met my co founder. Her background is in startups and business. And she and I were testing the waters through something called a mental health pop up.
We would go into spaces. We did these all over the country, New York, San Francisco, LA, several other places. And we would have people come in, we'd help them match to a therapist to just give therapy a try. We would do a workshop on one of those seven traits that I talked about.
And then we'd set up a community lounge. And we really tried to help people understand like this isn't a stuffy clinical waiting room. You can look each other in the eye, you can talk to each other. And what we found was that people were really eager to connect other people.
And sixty percent of the people who we matched to therapists kept seeing their therapist after the pop up. And when we surveyed people afterwards, they said, because I knew everyone was there for the same reason as me, it felt safe to build community.
It felt like we were all in it together. And that was what really proved to us that we were onto something and that it was time for there to be actual spaces where people could come and work out their mental health the way that you go to the gym.
Like something we say a lot at COA is emotional fitness is an individual journey, but it's a communal pursuit. So think about when you go to the gym, you have to lift your own weights. No one can do it for you, But it's a lot easier to do that if there's someone spotting you, if there are people around you who are working out, if there are people who are stronger than you and you wanna work toward that, and there are people who are newer and it reminds you where you've been.
And that's what we're creating with mental health is community and a space where you really feel like, okay, I've arrived, I can do this kind of work. And out of that came this very clear opportunity to start a startup. And we were really lucky to find investors who saw our vision, which originally by the way, was brick and mortar spaces.
COVID kind of got in the way of that. And so we are focusing everything online for now. And once it's safe, we will still absolutely be opening those spaces. Yeah, the soul soul cycle of, of mental health coming soon. It's funny you mentioned about the gym analogy and it's easier to work out when you know, you've got to do your own workout, but it's easier when you're in a place where there's other people working out, etc.
I kind of feel that way about about offices as well. Excuse me. How what have you seen from from just from your psychology practice? What have you seen with people speaking about their their anxieties this year? And what trends have you seen maybe over the past couple of years and what's been exacerbated?
I would say that there is zero doubt that anxiety is way up. Because when you think about what anxiety is at its heart, it's essentially fear of an uncertain future. Trying to understand what's going to happen before we have all the information or worrying that something's going to happen.
And everything's just really unclear right now. We don't know what's going to happen with COVID or how long it's going to last. Here in the US we don't know what's going to happen with our elections. There's just so much uncertainty. So anxiety is really intense right now.
And then in terms of remote, you mentioned remote work, that's also complicated. I've seen some people are loving that. All of a sudden they have an opportunity to work from home. The introverted population, I think is actually feeling kind of supported in a unique way.
But I'm also seeing there's a really big section of the population that gets their energy from other people who are really struggling to maintain passion and focus for what they're doing because they're feeling really isolated. They're not feeding off the energy of their coworkers.
They're not getting up and moving in the same way. And so I think that mental health struggles, you know, it's not really a binary where you either have mental health struggles or you don't. Everyone has mental health struggles. And I think we're all now very in touch with the idea that none of us is immune to struggling with things like anxiety and to feeling really overwhelmed by the things we can't control.
Yeah, that that that totally resonates. I mean, just on a personal level, I've I've I've got two small kids. My wife and I have two small kids, four and one. And working from home with the kids at home. They're back in nursery and everything now.
But for three or four months, were, we were all at home together. And it's kind of been a really good time actually hanging out with the kids and spending more time with them and seeing seeing how, to be honest, how resilient they are, and how they look, they're not worried about anything.
They, you know, as long as this, they get their next meal, and they get to watch TV, whatever before dinner and all that kind of stuff. But then on the other side of it, I've seen like a lot of my friends who live who maybe live alone.
You know, in the early days, they were like, oh, this is great. You know, I've I've got total freedom. I'm, you know, I've got my regular routine. And then a couple of months later, they were the ones that were really struggling. And that maybe, you know, certainly for us, the kids have kind of kept us on the straight and narrow to a little, a little degree, but we're definitely all missing each other.
So, you know, we're, we're finding other ways through zoom, etc. And, but the there is also the sort of other aspect of it I wanted to ask you about, which is information overload. You know, we talked a little bit about anxiety, you mentioned about the election coming up in the US.
From a from a mental health perspective, I mean, it just seems social media is really not very good for us. What what are we what how do we handle that? Yeah. So our brains really didn't evolve to handle this capacity of information to be forced to reckon with the absolutely infinite number of terrible things that are happening or could happen.
We're just not able to process that in the same way. And I think for people who intellectualize, which is a lot of tech, and that's people who are more comfortable thinking about feelings than feeling feelings, what can happen is it can feel like scrolling social media, we call it doom scrolling, or tuning into the news in every moment.
That can give us a sense of control. It can make us feel like, okay, if I just learn everything there is to learn, I'll have a little more control. I won't be as uncertain. Unfortunately though, we're so bombarded with all this information that we're completely overwhelmed.
It's paralyzing. I think we have apocalypse fatigue. Like there's only so much that we can be prepared for something that we don't really know if it's going to happen or what it's going to look like. So I'm really suggesting that people give themselves time where they're not checking social media and they're not checking the news.
You don't need to be on ten different news sites. A lot of the news sites are saying the exact same thing in slightly different ways. There's also a lot of false information out there. There's a lot of trolls out there. And so allowing yourself to be exposed to this in every moment of the day, I think is actually really not good for us.
And we have instituted a couple things in my household and I suggest to patients that have been really helpful. One of them is no phones after ten pm. And I try not to check my phone first thing in the morning. Because it's important that what everyone else thinks and what everyone else wants from us is not the first thing in our brains when we wake up and the last thing in our brains before we go to sleep.
We have to create some space where we can just tune in with ourselves and with the people that we live with, our families, our loved ones. That's a little bit separate from all this stuff that's happening in the world. So I really recommend making sure that you have a break.
The other thing is I picked one or two news sites that I trust to give me my information, and I've blocked all of the rest so that I'm not feeling completely overwhelmed by a constant stream of information that's ultimately saying the same thing.
So make sure that you have some news free and social media free spaces. Have conversations with friends where you all agree that instead of catastrophizing about everything in the world, they just connect as human beings. I also think infusing play back into our life is really important at this time.
Play is often the first thing to go when we're feeling worried and actually play is psychologically really important and healthy. I read a study that showed that people who play regularly live longer by a significant number of years than people who don't play regularly.
That's how important it is. And so I don't that can look like all kinds of things, starting meetings with a game, just being silly. And, you know, play is really just about removing constraints and thinking big, like brainstorming is a type of play.
So just making sure there's some levity and that there's human connection outside of the bounds of the news is really important. And I hope to empower people to to schedule that in so that it definitely happens. Yeah. It's funny how scheduling has become, such a well, for me, anyhow, I'm not a I'm not a naturally very organized person, but my life is now the last time my life was this scheduled, I was in high school.
So it's every if it's not and if it's not on my calendar, you know, doesn't exist. So that that's, it's funny how like, for people who are disorganized, it feels like we've become a lot more organized. And people who are introverted have sort of, you know, are having their moment, the moment to shine their superpower come to the fore in twenty twenty.
And on the subject of startups and mental health and startups, From the founders that you talk to, and when you when you run through the the emotional fitness framework with them, what's the response that you get? How do finder? Are they? Is there an awareness that that startups are really bad for your mental mental health sometimes?
I mean, I think that founders know that they should probably be doing more to take care of themselves. It's pretty common for the founders I work with to just skip meals and not exercise for a week and privilege meetings over spending time with their friends and all kinds of things.
So I think there's an awareness of that's probably not ideal. But what I've seen when we run people through this framework is there's always a little bit of hesitance at first, and then this immense relief afterwards that they've been given permission to prioritize this kind of work in their life, and then also really actionable tools of how to do that.
But I'd say if I were to name the thing that's most useful about everything we're doing, it's really the community aspect. It's founders connecting with other founders and realizing, oh, I'm not the only one who feels like I'm making it up as I go.
I'm not the only one who feels like I have no idea what I'm doing sometimes. I'm not the only one who is just absolutely burnt out to the point of exhaustion. And sometimes I don't even know if I care about what I'm doing anymore because I'm so tired.
And other times this is everything to me and my whole life has been leading to this. And just hearing people share their stories and share resources, I think has been really powerful. Because the tricky thing about anxiety is it's pretty good at convincing us that we're alone.
It's pretty good at telling us you're the only person who feels like this. Everyone else is doing okay. And to hear stories of other people in your position who get it and who can reassure you, I'd say that's what most people come out of it feeling really changed by.
And we're building this community of people who are hustlers. They work hard. They're making real change in the world, but they also have come to understand that if they don't prioritize their mental health at least a little bit now, it's going to really hit a wall.
And the thing about burnout is it's a lot easier to prevent than it is to fix. So it's really important that you're working on this now instead of waiting until you're a puddle on the floor and trying to figure out how to put yourself back together.
So it's been very humbling and beautiful to see how connected people can be when they're just given a little bit of space and permission to be vulnerable and to be honest and to share their experiences together. Yeah, I totally agree. I've and on a personal level, I've really experienced that.
And, and it's funny, actually, this year, we're we're, we're not getting everyone together in, in the conference center in Edinburgh, like we did last year, we do most years. And I've really missed that. And talking to the team, you know, we've we've all missed it.
And it's one of the reasons we do what we do is because we love getting lots of people together and building that community. And it, you know, it's sort of a we're, of course, we have, you know, we have all the online stuff, and we're all connecting in lots of other ways.
But there's definitely, I think we all value the community maybe more than we did before. And on the just on the founder stress thing you mentioned about play and about the sort of, I guess, separation between your your work life and the rest of your life.
I found a few years ago, I was super stressed. I was a co founder of a startup before Turing Fest, and it wasn't going well. And it was I just couldn't stop thinking about it. I was thinking about it all the time and at night not able to sleep because I was thinking about it.
And so eventually, started rock climbing, with a friend of mine. Because when you're thirty feet up in the air, you're pretty focused on what you're doing. And you you just exclude every other everything else. And so between that, and then doing cycling, road cycling, which is this road cycling is this weird sort of therapy that you, you just your mind can wonder whether mountain biking is different, you've really got to pay attention to that.
But it just definitely, I think we all need to add through this year, I've known tons of people perhaps you do too, who've been just getting into running, who've never done any running ever in their lives. And now they're just running like five days a week.
So yeah, it feels like we may all come out of this year with better mental health practices through through the adversity of it. Is that is that how you how you're seeing it? That's how I'm seeing it for some people. And one of the things I'll say is, in addition to exercise being a nice distraction and a place to put your mind that's not, you know, your company and all this other stuff.
Exercise is also one of the most powerful antidepressants and anti anxiety practices that you can do. Like our mind and our body are a lot more connected than we give it credit for. And so I really recommend that. And I'm definitely seeing that there's this section of the tech population who's really like, okay, this is the time for me to get into shape, for me to develop great habits.
But I'd be remiss if I didn't also honor that there's a section of people who I think are really having trouble with that actually. And they're feeling just drained and that there isn't any energy to do the self care habits that they might have done before.
You know, there are people who really depended on going to a gym who don't work out outside as well and who aren't able to do that because the gyms aren't open. And there are people whose companies are in really precarious places because of unexpected curve balls that COVID has thrown, who are now scrambling to make things work at their company that they've completely sacrificed their health.
And so I think both are happening. And I think part of it is, I think people need more permission to prioritize themselves during this time. So Brian, it's so amazing to hear that that's something you're doing. There's actually a term in psychology called sublimation.
Sublimation is when we channel unhealthy feelings into a healthy place. So let's say you have a lot of anger and you don't know what to do with it. Maybe you take a boxing class and it's a place to feel and work through some of your anger in a healthier way than, you know, fighting people in the street, obviously.
So if you have a lot of pent up energy and going for a run or or cycling helps you get that out, that's fantastic. And I guess I also wanna say, for those of you out there who are struggling with this and who are like, how are people going to the gym or working out five days a week on top of running a company?
I'm barely treading water. I see you too. I know that this is really tough. I think that we're all really doing our best. And I hope that you'll remind yourself that you are worthy of your attention even more than your company is worthy of your attention.
That if you are not in a good state to run your life in a way that feels good, then your company is gonna feel that. Prioritize yourself. Make sure that you understand that your emotional runway is just as important as your financial runway.
If your emotional runway runs out before your financial runway runs out, you'll find a way to sabotage your company because you're gonna wanna get out of it so badly. Think about, like, if you've ever played a card game and it's going on for a really long time and you you wanna stop, maybe you start accidentally making bad choices that you can get out of that game.
I see the same thing with startups. Founders that are so tired that they'll, without even realizing it, make bad choices just to get out of the hustle. And the way to prevent that is be more proactive and more thoughtful about your emotional health and fitness.
Prioritize yourself. Prioritize being with other people, resting, sleeping, exercise, eating well, all of that. I promise you in the long run, your company will be better off for it. Good good advice. Makes makes a lot of sense. We have some questions coming in, that I wanted to fire over to you.
Interesting one that came up last year, actually, when you were when you were speaking at Turing Fest. You and I spoke a little bit about this before before you went on stage or before you when you were putting your talk together. And the question is, how do you navigate cultural differences in attitudes to mental health?
And how can we facilitate more open conversations about mental health in places where there's still significant stigma. So I think this person is quite possibly referring to the UK. Yeah, how do you how do you think about that? Yeah, I work with several people from the UK, and I definitely do get the sense that there are some differences there.
But the truth is the stigma of mental health is in a lot of places and a lot of cultures. And what I generally say is there are some people who just don't feel safe talking about these things or leaning into them. And so what I believe is for anyone who does feel like they can be vocal and share and be honest about their own mental health journey, that will benefit everyone around you.
Because stigma is changed through experience. So when someone who thinks, oh, mental health, that's only for people who are crazy. When they see someone who's pretty high functioning and they're running a successful company, when they see that person say, hey, the reason that I'm successful running this company is because I'm in therapy every week, working through everything that I'm going through and making sure I have another person who is supporting me through this.
That's going to change that the very chemistry of what that first person thinks of mental health. Right? And so I think it's our job, those of us who are comfortable enough with it, to talk about it where we can, to share where we can, to try to spread permission about it.
I really believe that there's a ripple effect. If you start with yourself, then people around you will start to feel more able and more supported to do their work. So I'd say I've probably gotten maybe about five hundred people into therapy over the course of my adult life.
And I almost never do that by talking about myself as a therapist. The way that I've encouraged other people to feel like they should try therapy is that I talk about my therapy. I talk about the work that I'm doing and how it's changed me and how it's made my relationships better and how it's made me a better founder and a better therapist and a better partner and a better friend and a better family member.
And I'm really candid about what that works looks like. And what I notice is that people who might never have considered therapy suddenly think, I mean, seems like it's really working for you and you seem like you're mostly functioning okay in the world.
Maybe I will give it a try. And then the thing about this kind of work is it's better experienced than explained. So when you go give it a try and feel the effects in your life, that's very compelling. So the advice I give for managing cultural differences is you can't force anyone to want to lean into this stuff.
But you can do your work and share it and be honest about it. And I can almost guarantee you that that will shift the way people around you think about this stuff. And it will ripple out and you will notice that all of a sudden people start to think, well, maybe I do wanna learn a little bit more about this, or maybe I do wanna talk to you about it and hear your experience a little bit more.
So just talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. I I totally agree. Another question that has come in, is about the role this is interesting. The role and the responsibility of employers to their team's mental health, especially I guess now we're we're not all sitting in the same office with each other.
And another part of that question is, how do as a as an employer or a manager, how do you provide support while respecting boundaries between personal and professional? Yeah, that's a great question. It's gonna look different in every organization. The first thing I wanna say is for a really long time there was this idea that we had our work life and our personal life.
And I think in tech, that's just not a thing. I don't know where I would draw the line between my work and personal life myself. And so because who we are anywhere is who we are everywhere, we are bringing our emotional selves to work.
And if you are having trouble emotionally, I promise you it will show up in your work. So this idea that employers think that that's not their problem is just not true. Because just like if someone doing physical labor has a physical injury that obviously is going to affect their work, tech is intellectual and emotional labor.
And so if our intellectual and emotional lives aren't healthy, we're not going to be able to do our work as well. So for that reason, I really want to empower the HR and leaders of companies to realize this is something worth supporting. In terms of how to kind of toe the line between professional and getting into a, you know, less professional space, something we talk at COA a lot about is this concept of boundaried vulnerability.
Meaning our work is not therapy. It's not the place to process our deepest traumas, but it is important that we feel like we can show up as humans. We can be honest about where we are with things. We can hopefully advocate for our needs.
So for companies, what I recommend is you yourself should not be the person who's trying to help people through all of their mental health problems, But you as the company should definitely be supporting and providing resources for people to do that work. So that can look anything like providing mental health days.
Like if someone felt like they had the flu, they would probably feel like they could take a day off. But for some reason, when we're feeling like we're really struggling and having a lot of anxiety or just really having trouble thinking, that should also be a day that we feel like we can take off occasionally to take care of our mental health.
It also looks like, think about what kind of benefits you're providing. Do your benefits cover therapy and mental health services? Do you have workshops and trainings to help people mitigate the effects of everything going on in the world and to bolster their emotional health?
Like, what are you doing to communicate to people? Listen, we understand that you're a human being with mental health, with feelings. We wanna support you in taking care of that. There's so many companies that have a budget for physical health. Like, they'll pay for your gym membership, all kinds of things like that.
And just now, are starting to realize, oh, we should probably also provide a budget for mental health. Because if you invest in it now and you help people take care of themselves now, it will save you so much money down the line. Like, think of how much money you lose every time an engineer has to take a big break.
And they're much like more likely to have to take a really big break when they completely fall apart out of absolute burnout and exhaustion than they are to just take a day off here and there to make sure that they can rest and tend to their mental health, etcetera.
So invest. It really it pays off. Healthy founders, healthy employees lead to healthy returns, essentially. Yeah, yeah, I, and I've seen, I've seen quite a few teams. It's funny that you said about the people having a budget for physical, you know, like, we'll cover your gym.
I think if I if I were, if I had the choice between two companies that I was looking to work at, and one was going to pay for my gym, and the other was going to offer me options to look after my mental health, I think I would probably be more attracted to the company thinking about mental health.
And it feels like that feels like something I wouldn't have even thought of five years ago. Right. Yeah. And they're showing, especially this next generation of people are much more likely to move toward a company that feels comfortable talking about mental health, that provides mental health resources.
Like, the stigma is dropping. And I think that the younger generation of tech people understand that they really do need to be working on this stuff. So I'd say if you wanna attract the best talent, think about the importance of supporting people with this in all kinds of ways.
And you don't have to pay for every aspect of it, but you do need to communicate. We care about this. We support you with this, and we're gonna do what we can do to make sure it's possible for you to prioritize it. It feels like founders, and leaders in in startups have maybe put themselves under more pressure when it comes to mental health.
And even when they're thinking about the team and making sure, know, they're worrying if people are okay, making sure people have enough time off, etc. But maybe don't feel it's okay for themselves to show vulnerability or if they're struggling with their mental health.
And I think, frankly, in startups, the people who shoulder the most stress, without a doubt, are the founders. How how how do how do you see founders or how would you suggest founders tackle that, you know, trying to be strong for the company, but maybe actually being, putting putting the company under more pressure by not taking care of themselves?
This is a huge problem. I totally get that as founders, more does fall on our shoulders. We do have to protect people from some of the realities of things, etcetera. But this idea that it's our job to shield people from all things is really problematic because ultimately, anything we're dealing with, it's trickling down into our company anyway.
Something I talk about a lot is this idea that being a founder is a lot like being a parent. In the sense that as a founder, you are determining the ethos and culture of your company. People are looking to you to decide what's okay to do, how they should act, how they should be.
And just like parents who don't work through their stuff, it leaks onto their kids and their kids then have to deal with those traumas themselves. A founder who's not dealing with their own problems are going to leak that stuff into their company, which is really problematic.
The other thing is the founder is the person who's giving people permission to take care of themselves. So a founder who never takes their vacation days, people who work for that founder aren't gonna feel like it's okay to take their vacation days. A founder who never talks about struggling is gonna create a company where people don't feel like it's okay to talk about struggling.
A founder who doesn't feel like they can fail occasionally, that that person's gonna teach everyone who works at their company that they should never fail. So we really do you know, it really is do as I the whole do as I say, not as I do, it doesn't work.
You have to model the kind of behavior, the kind of self care, and the kind of sway of being that you want people at your company to follow suit on. So really prioritize yourself. Talk about it. Tell people, hey, I wanted everyone to know that I've put lunch on my calendar every day.
I've put exercise on my calendar every day. And that I'm making sure that I'm taking care of myself in an ongoing way. Because I wanna make sure all of you know that you should be eating, you should be exercising, you should be taking care of yourself.
Yeah, yeah. There's a question that's come in actually, which is a sort of extension of that. In the chaos of twenty twenty, is there a risk that we over index on the external turmoil as the problem, and that that obscures a more candid evaluation of what's going on with us internally?
That seems very, very relevant. Yeah, I would say yes. And the opposite is also true. There's something I talk about sometimes. There's a concept in psychology called institutional transference. Institutional transference is when we take feelings and problems from somewhere inside work and put them outside of work or vice versa.
We take problems that aren't about work and we put them into work. So an example would be, let's say at work you're really feeling unsupported by your boss, but you don't really wanna you don't wanna admit that to yourself because you don't feel like you can do anything about it and you don't wanna lose your job.
And so what'll happen is all of a sudden at home, you start to feel really unsupported by your spouse. And what you're not realizing is that actually some of those feelings are really about your boss, but you've put them on your spouse. Vice versa also.
Maybe you're really struggling at home because you have the kids at home and you're super overwhelmed and you just don't know how to hold it together. And the way that it shows up is feeling really overwhelmed by even small tasks at work. And you might not understand why you're having such a strong reaction at work.
So this kind of thing happens all the time. We put feelings from one part of our life into another part of our life. But I'm seeing it happen a lot more right now because there are so many feelings about everything happening in the world.
And add to that, that I think a lot of people feel guilty complaining about small stressors when there are people dying and there are people that have lost their job. And so they can't really confront their feelings and so they show up in all of these places.
So I am seeing that there are all these problems happening in the workplace that are partially a result of people not realizing, hey, I'm actually just really stressed and overwhelmed and scared. And it seems like the problem is my coworkers when really the problem is, you know, we're in a global pandemic.
The opposite is also true. There'll be problems at work that really need to be confronted, but that people don't wanna confront. And so we'll say, oh, well, this is just a COVID problem. So what do we do with all this? The idea is just slow down and make some space to examine problems when they pop up.
If you're suddenly fighting with your cofounder a lot more and you don't know why, make some space to think, maybe this isn't just about my cofounder. Maybe this is partially that I just am really overwhelmed and need some space and and need to process.
Or if you know, it seems like everything's fine at work but you get the sense that some like things aren't being said. Maybe say, hey everyone, I want to make space for us to talk about what's going on for us. I know it can be hard to complain when there's such bigger problems, But these feelings are real.
We're all allowed to to have our emotions right now. Let's, you know, let's confront them together. So I love this question because I think it's really astute. And I hope that people will honor the idea that when something seems worse than it should be, it probably means it's about more than it seems like it's about.
That's a lot of layers to that. Probably a good, probably a good point for us to to wrap on what we're, we've covered a lot, it feels like we could be here for talking about stuff for ages. And just before we go, is COA something that so you talked about bricks and mortar stores being the future in the future plans.
For now, everything's online, of course. Do do you I think you have some free intro classes. Is that right? I I think I saw that before. Yeah. So right now we have a lot of free classes just to introduce people to this concept of emotional fitness and to get to know the community.
We have one coming up that's specifically for founders and leaders. That's just called Emotional Fitness for Leaders. It's free right now. And it's pretty powerful because normally, you know, these are classes that we bring into corporations, etcetera. And it's a chance just to to wrap your mind around it to see what it's all about.
You can tune in from anywhere. We have people from all over the world who join these classes. And then we have another kind of class called the q and a, which is where you submit questions sort of like what we're doing right now, and a therapist answer those questions while people talk in the chat.
So that's a nice way if you don't wanna be necessarily interacting. Cause our workshops that we do are really interactive. We don't just talk at you. You are doing breakout rooms, you're in the chat, you're doing polls. It's really a chance to practice skills and meet each other.
And then finally in the fall, we're launching a really exciting eight week emotional fitness series. There's one specifically for leaders and founders again, and that's a chance to deep dive on these traits and to really develop a toolkit for how to work emotional health into your life in an ongoing way.
And I feel really proud of these classes. They're not pop psychology BS. It really is an opportunity to figure out what are my unique struggles as a leader, as a human, and how do I build shock absorbers around that, and how do I connect with other people who understand who I can do this work with in an ongoing way?
I love it. I love it. The whole thing sounds like a great concept. I I think you're doing something really valuable. You know, you're you're bringing mental health and emotional fitness to people that might otherwise not have availed of it and and done the work.
And I frankly, I'm probably gonna sign up. So you'll probably see. Yeah, I will. I will. So you'll see me in there, I think. Emily, I think that's all we have time for today. But it's been a great, great conversation really enjoyed talking to you.
And I think I think we'll all get a ton out of this that we can we can reflect on and try and work on work on our emotional fitness and get that a little bit better. So thank you for joining us. And I hope we'll see you again at Turing Fest.
Thank you. I really appreciate the effort that your whole organization goes to to support your community with this kind of thing. It is still a little bit more the exception than the rule, and you are destigmatizing this kind of thing just by building a platform for it.
So thanks for everything you do. You're a true gem, and I'll see you again soon. Thanks. Thanks, Emily. Take care. Bye, all. Okay, folks. So that's, that's that concludes week two. We have, six more weeks of content ahead, which seems kind of incredible, actually.
But we're, yeah, it's it's very different this year. There's no doubt about that. But I think I mean, that conversation with Emily, the chats we've had with Eamon, some of the presentations we've had, I'm having a lot of fun with it so far.
It's a it's a very different setup. And I'm on this sort of weird TV situation rather than on the stage with all of you. But so far, so good. I hope you're enjoying it. We are. And we'll be back next Tuesday for for the next round of keynotes and chats.
So we'll probably pop you some emails between now and then to let you know what's going on. But we'll see you next next Tuesday. So enjoy the rest of the week and take care.
