The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Mental Strength in Entrepreneurs — with Dr. Emily Anhalt

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

We’re revisiting one of our favorite interviews featuring Dr. Emily Anhalt, who joins Scott to discuss her tips for becoming mentally strong and her work helping entrepreneurs become emotionally fit leaders. Dr. Anhalt also talks about the implications of mixing technology with mental health. Dr. Anhalt is a clinical psychologist and the co-founder of Coa, a mental health startup. Follow her on Twitter, @dremilyanhalt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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NMLS 1617539. Episode 189. Field of Dreams premiered in 1989 as did dead poet society and driving miss daisy people born in 1989 taylor swift daniel radcliffe and elizabeth olsen i found harry potter unrealistic i mean a red-headed kid with two friends come on go, go. Welcome to the 189th episode of the Prop G pod. In today's episode, we're sharing a rerun of one of our favorite interviews featuring Dr. Emily Anholt.

Dr. Anholt is a clinical psychologist and the co-founder of Koa, a mental health startup that offers therapist-led emotional fitness classes and therapist matchmaking. We spoke to Dr. Anhold back in January where we discussed the traits that make an emotionally fit leader, what it means to be mentally strong and the implications of mixing technology

with mental health. Here's our discussion. Dr. Ann Holt, where does this podcast find you? I am in the Mission District of San Francisco. The Mission District, where the dog used to live. I was on Guerrero and 21st, or Dolores. I was on 21st between Guerrero and Dolores. True story, true story. Let's turn this interview back to me. I own the home that is next to where Mark Zuckerberg lives right now. Oh, nice. That's very close to me as well. It's great seeing his guards out there 24-7.

Yeah, I figure I could have held out and charged like $100 million just for security detail. And what I would have done to take the price of my house up is sat out with a lawn chair. And every time he rolled in, just be like, hey, bitch, what's it like to depress America? I think that would have absolutely motivated him to put his crazy offer. But anyways, enough about me. So we're big fans of your work here. And can you walk us through your background in clinical psychology and how it's informed your work with entrepreneurs? Absolutely. So I grew up in Silicon Valley. I think that was really the heart of it. I had raging ADHD as a kid. I still do. And so I didn't really feel like I fit into a lot of the systems that I was subject to.

And then in high school, I had a psychology teacher who told me that when you know a lot about psychology, you know a little about everything. Because the world is spoken in the language of relationships and psychology is the study of relationships. So I went to school for psychology, went to grad school right after college. And because I was in Silicon Valley, a lot of the people I was seeing were in tech and my community and my family and my friends were in tech. And so as I was doing this work, I was starting to realize that there was this huge blind spot to how all of the things I was learning about general human psychology were really messing things up in the world of tech and not being seen as an important factor in the success or lack of success in a company and in leaders. And so I started

specializing and working with founders and entrepreneurs. And this led me to an interest in figuring out a more proactive approach to mental health because the average entrepreneur is fairly high functioning. They're not suffering from seriously debilitating mental health issues, but that doesn't mean that they don't have a lot of work that they need to do and support that they should have. And I also realized quickly that the leaders at the top of these tech companies were deciding a lot about society. And so the more mentally healthy they are, the better it is for everyone. So I had my private practice for a while

and then I co-founded COA, which is a gym for mental health. And it was really interesting after working with leaders and founders for a long time to become a founder myself and seeing that it's a lot easier to tell people what to do differently than it is to do it yourself. So I learned some of those lessons along the way. And so tell us about COA. It's essentially therapist matchmaking and physical fitness is. And so we do this through these therapist-led emotional fitness classes, and then we do one-on-one therapy matching, and it's all really rooted in community. And tell us about, you have this interesting notion of emotional push-ups. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start with what emotional fitness is because it's a relatively new term. So

emotional fitness is the ongoing proactive a relatively new term. So emotional fitness is the ongoing proactive practice of strengthening your mental and emotional health. It helps build the internal tools we need to face and move through the inevitable ups and downs of life. And I wanted to know what that actually meant. So a number of years ago, I did a big research study, something called an interpretive phenomenological analysis, which is just a fancy way of saying that I interviewed 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs about what makes a leader emotionally healthy. What does that look like? What does it feel like?

What do those people do? What do they not do? And out of this research came these seven traits of an emotionally fit leader. The seven traits being self-awareness, empathy, mindfulness, curiosity, playfulness, resilience, and communication. And so all of our classes at COA are based on these seven traits. And what we've essentially worked to do is to figure out what an emotional workout looks like and what an emotional push-up is. So to speak to this idea of an emotional push-up, if you think about what a regular push-up is,

it's a small physical exertion that puts you just a little bit outside of your comfort zone and it helps you grow. And when you do them often, not only are you going to be able to do more push-ups, but you're also going to be able to do more of other things and it's going to prevent issues down the line. And so we are figuring out what is the

emotional equivalent? How can we put ourselves just a little bit outside of our emotional comfort zone so that we can grow and be able to do more emotional work and also to prevent mental health issues later? So, you know, every person's version of an emotional push-up is going to be different. Like some examples are, if you're someone who says yes to everything that's asked of you, and then you end up feeling overwhelmed and resentful, an emotional push-up for you might be just saying a kind but firm no to one small thing today. Whereas if you're a person who tends to focus on yourself, an emotional push-up might be to offer to help someone else with a task once today. Some other examples are like apologizing for a mistake or asking for feedback

from a direct report or meditating for five minutes in the morning or celebrating when, letting yourself feel sadness about a loss, pausing before you pour yourself a drink to ask why you're having that drink and what you might be trying to avoid or putting your phone away after 10 p.m. And based on what I've read of your writing, Scott, it sounds like an emotional push-up for you might be a small expression of admiration or affection toward a friend, something like that. And then the most important part of this is the reflection of how the push-up made you feel. Because it's not really our experiences, it's our reflection on our experiences that leads to change. So after expressing your

affection, you might pause and think, okay, how was that for me? It was uncomfortable, but why? And did I worry about it more beforehand than it actually ended up being uncomfortable? And what might I have gotten out of it? Things like that. And over time, we get stronger and help ourselves in all areas of life. And those seven traits that you sort of, the pillars of leadership or emotional fortitude, or I don't know, the emotional ingredients to the cocktail of a successful entrepreneur, which of the seven do you find that most entrepreneurs are usually most lacking in? I would say probably self-awareness. And that's just because it's a really complicated moving target. And just when you become self-aware, there are new things to become aware about. So you have

to really commit to it as an ongoing forever practice. And what I hear from a lot of leaders, unfortunately, is that they don't have the time or the space to do that, which to me is hilarious. That's a little bit like being an Olympic athlete and saying, yeah, I want to work on my physical health, but I'm too busy training for the Olympics. So all I eat is fast food. It's like, if you're a leader, you need these traits to succeed, I strongly believe. So I'd say self-awareness is also kind of foundation for a lot of the other ones. It's hard to know where you're lacking before you know where you're lacking. It's hard to change before you know what you need to change.

So tell me if you think there's any truth to this, but I always thought that the cold reality of being an entrepreneur or the CEO, I should say, is that there's a certain amount of sociopathy that's required because you have to make very difficult decisions that sometimes impact people's lives in sometimes a negative way. You have to, the term is exaggerating, exaggerate. The line between exaggeration and vision is, you know, that line is kind of drawn after you ship or don't ship a product. There's some emotional attributes of successful entrepreneurs that I oftentimes think aren't exactly like hardcore grounded, emotionally balanced attributes.

You've got to really figure out a way to, and maybe I'm just not a good entrepreneur, but you have to drive yourself and others pretty hard. A lot of this sounds like what ideally the small business workplace should be like, but there's some other unhealthy attributes that are oftentimes not only common across entrepreneurs, but sometimes a function of their success in a capitalist hard knocks society. Oh, yeah. Big time. I talk about this a lot. Like a classic cocktail you see in founders is the narcissism posture syndrome cocktail, as I call it. Like for sure, you need to be a little narcissistic because there are all these

people telling you that your idea isn't going to work and that you're not going to make it. And you have to be able to say, okay, well, fuck you. I'm going to do it anyway. And I can do it better than anyone else. So I believe in that. And I believe in all of the other things that make it sometimes tough to live in regular society that push you to being a founder, like being bad at celebrating wins and always wanting more and having a chip on your shoulder. The thing I'm trying to put out there is the idea that the things that are your strengths that might get you towards success are also going to be your undoing if you're not paying attention to them and watching them over time. So yes, you want a little bit of that narcissistic defense, but you don't want to get to the point where you're not listening to people who are giving

you good feedback and showing you your blind spots. And yes, you want to always be pushing to the next goal, but you don't want to be at the point where everyone's quitting because you don't believe in vacations or rest. So it's really just our weaknesses are the other side of our strengths. You can play psychologist. When you, Mark Zuckerberg, when you observe his behavior or Sheryl Sandberg, and you kind of see a lot of them, what would you diagnose it with? Is it we're hating the player, not the game? Or is there something wrong here? These individuals to me strike, well, I'll stop there. When you see a guy like Mark Zuckerberg, if he showed up and said, how do I become more emotionally fit? What would you say his issues are? So it's a little known ethical code that psychologists are actually not allowed to diagnose public figures.

Really? Yeah, because they're not our patient and we hold some kind of gravitas because we have expertise. And so, yeah, we're not allowed to do that. So I couldn't give you a diagnostic code here. But I could tell you that when I see these instances, I think that power is just complicated and corrupting and our minds weren't designed to have that much control over that many people's lives. And I think it's impossible for all of our own shit to not leak into what we do. And when what we do is make decisions that change the course, society, then that can be really problematic. I do think if some of these leaders had thoughtful, depth-oriented, ongoing emotional fitness support, maybe they wouldn't have reached unicorn status quite as quickly, but they perhaps would have done so more ethically and with a better impact on society. But isn't it, and I'm not, of course, speaking about Mark or Cheryl

here, but you recognize some incredible success. The people around you have made a lot of money, so they're grateful to you. The press fawns all over you. And you kind of start developing this, they call it a reality distortion field, but that was talking about jobs approach to products or the marketplace. But you become delusional, I think. I try to be cognizant of this. You have some success and you have domain or command over people's future and how much they make. They tend to want you to like them, and so they're nice to you. And you slowly but surely detach from reality. And then you get, you know, the worm turns on you publicly and you get attacked so much that you have to become almost just numb to it. And you end up just

incrementally becoming, I don't know, just detached. I don't know if the term is a sociopath or I generally don't understand how these people got there, got this way. It strikes me that they have become so immune from any signal around them. Is that an incremental process? Are you born that way? Well, when it comes to the great nature versus nurture debate, I tend to think that nature loads the gun and nurture pulls the trigger.

So it's both. That's great. Let's just stop there. Nature, wait, nature loads the gun and nurture pulls the trigger. So it's both. That's great. Let's just stop there. Nature loads the gun and nurture pulls the trigger. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, and I apologize for interrupting you. I've always said, if you want to believe nature over nurture, just have two kids. Yes. Because you don't treat them that differently and boy, they are different. Anyways, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Twins even, identical twins. Yeah.

So, you know, there are some people who, no matter what position they're in, they're not going to get corrected. That, say, is a smaller percentage of people. And there are some people who, even with all the support in the world, might end up getting corrected. But, you know, my work has shown me in all kinds of profound ways that each one of us is deeply capable of hiding the things from ourselves that we would need to, to proceed on in our life in particular ways. And these people doing these horrible things and sleeping well at night, it didn't happen

by accident. And the average person who's living a perfectly lovely, kind life is still doing a poetic job of hiding what feel like basic truths to someone else who might be looking in from themselves. We all do it. And it's just on a bigger scale when so much is on the line. Yeah, I'm reminded and I'm going, I always go to dark places because I always look at stuff through kind of gray or clouded lenses, but I wish I knew his name, but the lawyer who was charged with prosecuting members of the Third Reich in the Nuremberg trials, and they asked him what his sort of takeaway from all of this was,

getting to know the story and the individuals that had just committed these, you know, simply put, crimes against humanity. And he said that what I take away from this is that war turns otherwise decent people into murderers. And I thought that was very, it was kind of rattling because we want to believe that they're just evil people. No, that's not a thing. And I started thinking about tech and capitalism, and I feel as if a lot of it comes down to the incentives. That in a capitalist society that is consistently figuring out new ways to extract money from you with more amazing services

and products, the incentives to be wealthy are just so incredibly dramatic. You get more respect, you get more service, you get people laugh at your jokes, and some to be wealthy in America is to be loved. And we all want to be loved. And so when it's raining money, it clouds your vision. And you just find yourself incrementally on this path to hell because the incentives are just so strong to do whatever, whenever is required to make money and create shareholder value. Do you ever think about linking incentives to how some of this emotional fitness can come off the tracks? Yeah, what you were talking about reminds me of a quote by Susan Sontag when she was asked what she learned from the Holocaust. It was that 10% of any population

is cruel no matter what, 10 is cruel, no matter what, 10% is merciful, no matter what, and the remaining 80% can be swayed in either direction. So yeah, the incentives are really important. I think again, though, the idea of emotional fitness as a practice is important here because you can change the incentives, but a person's still going to move in a particular direction if they're not constantly examining what motivates them, what their values are, what's important to them, what they're moving away from, all of that. But yeah, I think that's a big part of it. You know, clinical integrity is my truest North Star with COA because it's tempting in the world of mental health tech to do something that moves quickly

and has magical solutions. There's a pull for that from investors and from people. And I feel that pull. And I think if you're not constantly examining whether that's really gonna get you where you wanna go, it's really easy to be taken off track. We'll be right back. Hey, it's Scott Galloway. And on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all

your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. What software do you use at work? The answer to that question is probably more complicated than you want it to be. The average US company deploys more than 100 apps, and ideas about the work we do can be radically changed by the tools we use to do it. So what is enterprise software anyway? What is productivity software? How will AI affect both? And how are these tools changing the way we use our computers to make stuff, communicate, and plan for the future?

In this three-part special series, Decoder is surveying the IT landscape presented by AWS. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk a little bit more about COA. The thing I find about therapy or services in general, and I always struggled with this because I always had services companies, is how do you scale it? Is it simply just finding, using technology and remote work technology such that you can find great therapists and then figuring out tools and diagnostics to match people the right therapist and there's enough margin in that that you can build a big business? Because most VCs want to back technology that takes humans out of things. And this feels very human-centric. Yes. And it's human-centric by design. My biggest nightmare is these companies that are using technology to replace what I think is the true mechanism of healing,

which is relationships, instead of support relationships. And so at Co-Ar, our goal is to use technology, but to support more interactions and relationships. And so at Co-O, our goal is to use technology, but to support more interactions and relationships. And that can look like a lot of things at scale, but I will say there are really sharp business minds on my team who have an eye on scale. And my focus is to keep an eye on integrity and on making sure that we're not doing something that's actually causing more harm than good, which I see a lot of, unfortunately. And so we've got a good 10 minutes without talking about me. So let's go back to me.

I struggle with anger and what I'd call mild depression. And I'm not good. My blessings don't foot to my mood or happiness. And that is I have enormous blessings and good fortune. I know this rationally. And yet I still find an incredible ability to be pissed off and angry all the fucking time. Pissed off just talking about it. Pissed off at myself that I get pissed off so much.

What are some push-ups someone who wants their mood to foot better to their blessings? What are some ideas and push-ups for that type of problem? I mean, even this idea that if you have certain blessings, you don't deserve your emotions, I think is problematic. Like, you have beautiful blessings, but I know enough about you to know that you come from complicated circumstances. And a lot of times are complicated circumstances. And this don't have to be wildly trauma with a big T complicated. It can just be as simple as, you know, the key relationships in our life early on weren't everything that we needed them to be. Those are happening when our mind is forming, our neural networks are being created. And that's really hard to undo. And I think even this idea of like, how can I just make that not a thing is a pull that we all feel, but just, you know, is easier said than done.

So I think the first step is like understanding it. Why might I be angry when I'm angry about this thing in the present? What are the other things I actually might be angry about? And this is just a convenient place to put that anger. Or why is that, you know that circuit so much shorter for me? Why do I go to that place so much more quickly? Once you understand it, you can have some compassion for it. And you can decide, is it still actually serving me now? Or did this serve me before and it's not serving me so much? And then from there, you can put shock absorbers in place. And that can look like a lot of things. For some people, it's sublimation, which is a word that means channeling societally unacceptable impulses into societally acceptable places. So like taking a boxing class or journaling or whatever that may be to get out some of the physical aspects of the emotion, but there's a whole branch of psychology called humanistic existential psychology. And it centers around this idea that just being human is a total

clusterfuck because we are trying to make meaning in an intrinsically meaningless existence. And that's so complicated and so painful sometimes that even someone who led a really charmed life is still going to feel angst and overwhelm and anger and confusion that is worthy of being understood. So I think a lot about this and I want you to critique. I think self-awareness is something that I think most people as they get older hopefully get better at. And I know the triggers and the signals when I start feeling down or especially angry, specifically I become just awful to be around. And I developed this algorithm for ways of addressing it.

And I'd love to run it by you and tell me what hits for you, what should be modified or what's just not a good idea. And I've distilled it down to what I call SCAFA, S-C-A-F-A. S stands for sweating. And that is whenever I really feel myself, you know, I can recognize I'm getting especially angry or depressed, I really hit the gym and physical activity really hard. I find that sweating just kind of sort of almost like turning a computer off and on. It kind of resets me. So let's stop there. Real exertion and exercise around mental health.

Oh, yeah. Hard agree. The two are so tied. It is amazing that people will come in and they'll say, my mental health is really off. And I'll ask a little bit about their life. And they're only sleeping five hours a night. And they never exercise. And they're only eating fast food. And they're working all day long. and they're only sleeping five hours a night and they never exercise and they're only eating fast food and they're working all day long and they're confused about it. So yes, definitely in for the S. So the C, these are pretty obvious and I think you'll

mostly nod. The C is what I call clean and that is I try and not eat out, not a lot of trans fats, really clean organic food, a lot of water, just for lack of a better word, just eat really clean. I'm going to assume that that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, definitely. I mean, everything in moderation, including moderation, but for sure. There you go. My A is abstinence. And I'm not a Puritan. I love alcohol. I love marijuana. Actually think some of that is the drawbacks and the harm. I don't want to say they're overstated because they ruin people's lives, but I think a lot of people manage it really well and it enhances our life.

And I think I'm one of those people. But when whatever that chemistry is that's in my brain that's gone off, I just don't. I just cut out all THC and I try and really reduce alcohol intake until I'm feeling kind of more back to normal. Oh yeah. Anything that can be used to enhance life can also be used to escape it. So that's my barometer is, are you using this to enhance your life or to avoid or escape your life? And if you see yourself heading over that tipping point, then pulling back, I think is a great idea. And then family, it sounds a little bit like a Hallmark Channel, but I find especially time

with my boys is just grounding because they're so needy and can be such jerks that I don't have time to be the usual self-absorbed person I am. I'm just kind of focused on them and it kind of takes me out of my head. So family, again, I can't imagine that you're not going to agree there. No, of course. I mean, I think emotional fitness in general, it's an individual journey, but it's a communal pursuit. We are communal creatures. We need each other. We are who we are in relation to other people.

We don't exist on our own. So absolutely surrounding ourselves with loved ones. I like that. We don't exist on our own. And then the final thing is affection. I live with beasts and dogs. The beasts are my boys, but I find that just piling on the couch

and being in proximity or touch, we all have this thing where we kind of flop on each other and watch TV. I find that as very, I think as mammals we're meant to touch, but I try to dial up the affection, if you will. Oh yeah, absolutely. Oxytocin is the best drug I know.

And we get it from affection. And it's the one responsible for bonding and, you know, the feeling of being loved and cared for. And, you know, it's key between mothers and infants. And really, we all need it. So, absolutely. I mean, they have all kinds of studies that have shown that like orphans who were not picked up enough have horrific mental and emotional problems down the line because we so need the touch of other people. Yeah. I read that kids, I think it's probably the same study that kids with a lack of affection and good nutrition had worse outcomes than kids with poor nutrition, but a lot of affection, that affection trumped nutrition.

Yeah, we need each other in that way. What am I missing? If you were gonna add to my SCAFA acronym, is there any other letters that you would say when you feel yourself struggling? I mean, the first thing is, I find it helps to just say to someone in my life or whatever, like, you know what? I get the sense I'm struggling.

And it just helps to like, it's almost like verbalizing it. Maybe there should be a V, you know, a scaf of V or something, but just kind of acknowledging it to yourself and other people. What am I missing? What would you also throw in there? So I like verbalize because a lot of our emotions exist differently inside of our minds than they do when we speak them out loud. We have this kind of distance from them when we say them that can give a new perspective and it gives someone else the opportunity to reflect a different reality to us. And I think, you know, putting your thoughts into words changes the chemistry of those thoughts. It changes your relationship to them. So I like that one a lot. I think another one is like a P,

pausing, like sitting in the feeling for a moment instead of immediately rushing to change the feeling. I feel like so much of what we do in life is in service of moving away from discomfort. But so often the discomfort is less intense than whatever we end up doing to avoid that discomfort, like whatever we do to avoid it ends up causing more discomfort. And so if we can, you know, the mindfulness trait in the seven traits is not just like meditation, it's becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable, like sitting with those emotions for long enough to understand them. And that opens up more choices for you about what you actually want to do about them. And you've And you were a practitioner and you're still a

practitioner, but you're also an entrepreneur now. What do you like least and most about being an entrepreneur versus being just a straight practitioner? Being a practitioner is an interesting kind of work where you are doing work with a person for a really long time and it can feel like nothing's happening. And then you have these profound moments of change and they don't always happen all at once. Sometimes you just realize, oh shit, everything's different. I don't know when that happened, but there's a lot of delay and gratification to it. And as an impatient person, that's both tough and also hugely beautiful and validating when it does happen versus, you know, there's sort of a version of that in tech where you're working toward this large goal. But there are a lot of little mini goals all the time that you're achieving that I think are really nice.

I, of course, feel really honored to be speaking up for this kind of change at a bigger scale. But I also think that the deepest changes don't happen at scale. The deepest changes happen in a room with other human beings, getting your hands dirty, doing the work. So I feel really grateful to be doing both. I'd say what can be tough for me is the landscape of mental health tech sometimes is very frustrating to me. I think that there's such a deep desire for this silver bullet. And I understand why, like no one wants to sit with their pain and people want things to get better quickly, but that's just not how it goes. And I think sometimes the concept of do no harm and the mantra of move

fast and break things don't always support each other. So balancing those two things and knowing that we'll get there if we're willing to be a little bit patient. Dr. Emily Anhalt is a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the co-founder and chief clinical officer of COA, the gym for mental health. She is a leading researcher into the seven traits of emotional fitness, specialist in therapy for entrepreneurs and executives, and international speaker and author. Doctor, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. It's been a real pleasure. Our producers are Caroline Shagrin and Drew Burrows. Claire Miller is our associate producer. If you like what you heard, please follow, download, and subscribe. Thank you for listening

to Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you next week. A quick reminder before we sign off, my new book, Adrift, America in 100 Charts, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. Please pre-order it. Pre-ordering is super important in terms of building momentum. The team, we put a ton of work into this. I think you'll enjoy it. It's an attempt to sort of distill down the macro and microeconomic trends, societal trends that make up the fabric that is America, including some suggestions on how we become more and more to each other, connected, and how this great American experiment continues to be the best experiment in the history of mankind. Anyways, in sum, Daddy Wants a Best Seller. Pre-order now.

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