Unlonely with Dr. Jody Carrington - Flex Your Feelings: Emotional Push-Ups & the Power of Self-Awareness - Emily Anhalt

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

TWO psychologists walk into a podcast… and absolutely blow your mind.This episode is a masterclass in emotional fitness, connection, and the power of self-awareness. Dr. Emily Anhalt joined me for a conversation that stopped me in my tracks. We’re talkin’ tech, therapy, grief, growth, and why most of us don’t actually know ourselves as well as we think we do.Why do we do the things we do? How does grief sneak into our everyday? What the hell is an emotional push-up?Emily's new book Flex Your Feelings is a game-changer, and you’re gonna want to hear her take on bouncing FORWARD, not back, and how empathy isn’t about carrying everyone else’s pain — it’s about boundaries and brave curiosity.This is the reconnection revolution, friends. Are you in?Check out Emily here:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dremilyanhalt/Twitter: https://x.com/dremilyanhaltLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dremilyanhalt/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dremilyanhalt Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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where so much sacrifice was made. And I think what's really critical in this process is that the ask is just that we don't forget. So the importance of saying these words at the beginning of every episode will always be of utmost importance to me and this team. So everything that we created here today for you happened on Treaty Seven land, which is now known as the center part of the province of Alberta.

It is home of the Blackfoot Confederacy, which is made up of the Sixika, the Kainai, the Pikani, the Tatina First Nation, the Stony Nakoda First Nation, and the Métis Nation Region Three. Our job, our job as humans is to simply acknowledge each other. That's how we do better, be better, and stay connected to the good. Well hello, welcome and welcome back. Whatever you're doing today, here's what I'd like you to try right now. Drop those shoulders.

Thank you for being here. And I brought somebody special today. I thought you needed not one, but two psychologists to shake up your little lonely world today. If it's lonely, if it isn't, I'm so glad you're here because you're gonna need to spread it for the rest of us. But today, Dr. Emily Anholt is joining us, and she's a psychologist and international speaker

and the co-founder and chief clinical officer of COA, which is the gym for mental health. She's, like, we're constantly in sort of trying to figure out how we can make the analogy between the importance of mental health, debunking the stigma, if you were. If you were, if you will. And what I loved the most about Emily when I met her was she's really taken the world of the complexity that is mental health and made it so much more consumable,

really aligning it with this idea of physical health. And listen, she comes with a background that will knock your socks off. She studied psychology at the University of Michigan and attained a master's and a doctorate degree in clinical psych in Berkeley, Cali. For the past two decades, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees, and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness. Dr. Anhalt has matched more than 800 people into therapy

and has collaborated with some of the fastest growing tech companies in the world, including Google, Salesforce, NBC, Universal, NASDAQ, and the NBA. Her debut book, flex your feelings by Penguin Random House is available in May and we're going to talk all about it in this 45 minutes. And I got to tell you, I, I was so invested in this interview. I usually take notes and at the beginning of the session, I was taking notes at session.

You're gonna laugh when you listen to this because I felt like I dove deep into some of the biggest questions I've had around therapy and anxiety and what we look for when we're trying to align ourselves with people, partners, employees, employers, business associates, she has all the answers. and I'm telling you, blew me away. I cannot wait to hear what you think. Okay.

Listen, this is your lucky day friends because because you got not one, but two psychologists at the ready today for this podcast episode. So turn us up loud, uh, and dig in deep because we're going to talk about all the things I, so, I mean, I gave you this little intro about Emily already, but I got to tell you, Dr. Ann Halt stopped me in my tracks because we ended up at the same speaking gig together and we were both learning how to be better speakers at this place and I was so blown away by her ability to articulate so many of the things that I believe in my heart. So I mean she's phenomenally trained as I've already told you Berkeley she's got

this beautiful background but also is now entered deeply into the place of tech Has worked for people Consulted Google Salesforce NBC, and I'm such a big fan around here about going into the hardest rooms. I love Corporate spaces. I love police officers I love the people who feel entirely disconnected and what I love the most about Emily's work is that she's like, listen, the tech force is the place where we are gonna have the biggest and most important conversations in the years to come.

And there's very little support in that way, in that area. So I've been growing up in Silicon Valley. She's like, you know what, here's the thing. This is where I need to be. There's a new book coming. So we're gonna talk about that today. But mostly I just wanna welcome you into this this community Emily, because you are, you are our people. So welcome to us.

Where are you today in this very moment? Oh, first of all, thank you. It is a pleasure to be part of this community. I've been a big fan of yours for a long time. I am currently tuning in from San Francisco. I split my time between San Francisco and New York, but you have me on the West coast today. Oh, amazing.

And okay, so give me a background. Why, why psychologist? I mean, and what I love about you and me, we're very different because you're psychodynamically trained. I'd love you to explain that and how it has led into the way that you are seeing the world and helping people see the world.

Sure. So my background is, I was this little rambunctious ADHD child in a school full of really well-behaved kids. So my my childhood was kind of hard and and I was lucky to have a very psychologically minded family that supported me in things like therapy really young and you know took the stigma away from me a bit. And I grew up in Silicon Valley exposed to all of the big tech waves that have happened over the past several decades. I went to the same high school that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak went to and I was just really immersed kind of in that energy.

And then when I was in grad school I also went to grad school in Silicon Valley and so the people I was training with, the patients I was learning how to be a therapist on, were mostly people in tech. So I had this opportunity to peek behind the curtain of all of that while my friends and family were also working in that industry. And just became apparent to me really quickly that the people who are running these big tech companies are making decisions that are affecting everyone in society. And they're not all the most mentally healthy people. And the more emotionally healthy they are, the better it's going to be for all of us. So

I decided that that was going to be a good niche for me. When you say that I train psychoanamically, psychoanalytically, essentially what that means is I just trained to focus on the relationship between the therapist and client as a really important part of the work. And also that I believe that there is this whole world of unconscious life that we're each grappling with, meaning there are all kinds of feelings and needs that we have that we're not totally aware of and that those feelings and needs are driving a lot of our actions without us realizing it. And so the more we

can get to know ourselves, our patterns, our biases, our traumas, the more in control of our lives we become. And so that's a lot of the work I do is helping to make what is unknown to us more known to us so that we can make use of it. Oh, okay. That is where we're gonna start. Why do so many of us, okay, so first of all, how many, how much of the way we interact with the world is known to us, generally speaking?

I know everybody's in a different place, but how often do you see, if you could give me like a visual or a number, how often are many of us walking around not knowing why and how we do the things we do? Well I saw a research study that showed that most people would guess themselves to be very self-aware, but that only 10 to 15 percent of people actually are at all self-aware. So that only 10 to 15 percent of people actually are at all self-aware. So, you know, we tend to overestimate that because you don't know what you don't know. You know, I remember going to therapy in grad school thinking that I was really self-aware.

You know, I was the person my friends came to for advice and I just thought I knew so much about myself and my mind was absolutely blown by how much I didn't know I didn't know. You know, through therapy, I realized all of these ways that I was getting in my own way and all of these ways where it felt like life was happening to me. And I realized through therapy, no, I'm pulling for these things. I am invested in these things happening even as I'm unhappy with them. And I need to own that if I want anything to change. So I would say every single person out there has more awareness to gain, but that the vast majority of us have a lot more than we might guess. And can you help us understand how we become aware of things? Because if we don't know

what we don't know, how do we get to know them? And what does that process look like? What does it feel like? Because part you know, part of your take, it flex your feelings is the title of, of, uh, Emily's book. And I think I'm most impressed with you because you align so much with the way that I hope to influence this world, which is to make the complexities of mental health so much more, um, consumable, right? Because it's sort of like for a long time, it's like, okay, especially from a psychoanalytic perspective, you know,

you're going to lay on a couch till you're 187 and you know, talk about eatable complexes and what your ego is, you know, and people are like, holy shit, like I don't understand what that means. And you take all of that and put it into a way that gets understandable. So can you help us? Where do we start in that? How do we, start if we don't know what we don't know? Right. So in the so this book that I that I have coming out is about these seven traits of emotional fitness. The seven things that we should all be working on to be more emotionally healthy. And one of those traits is self-awareness. And I suggest

a three-pronged approach to becoming a more self-aware individual. The first one is therapy. You know, a lot of people wait till shit really hits the fan to go to therapy and it's actually a lot better to do before things are wrong because then you can avoid a lot of the problems and you establish this relationship with someone who can help you navigate life's twists and turns. And therapy is also just powerful because we're so close to ourselves. There are some things that are just going to be hard to see. We need someone to reflect them back to us, someone to practice our relationships with. So therapy is the first thing. The second thing is an ongoing journal practice of some kind. Our thoughts feel

really different in our head than they do written down, so even if you just write down one line a day about how you're feeling that day, you'll start to notice patterns over time, you'll start to get a little distance from yourself that you can use to grow your awareness. And then the third thing is gathering feedback often and proactively. Reaching out to the people in your life and asking how you can do better. And the format I love to suggest is send a text to a couple people in your life every month or so that says something like, hey I'm working on my self-awareness and I'm curious if you'd be willing to share what's one thing I'm doing well as a friend and what's one thing I could be doing 10%

better as a friend. And pay attention to what people tell you. You might be really surprised by both what's going well and what's not going so well. And that's one of the ways that we peek into our blind spots a bit and can start to look at whether the way we perceive ourselves matches the way other people are perceiving us. I love that because, you know, it reminds me of this place, you know, when I'm talking to leaders often where part of this feedback is, you know, let's ask the questions of the people we lead. And, you know, I've talked about this with my team sometimes asking this

question, what am I missing? Right? Not even like, how can I be better? What do you know? Cause sometimes that gets a bit, all of us are like, I don't want to talk about my fucking self-awareness. But so start with a basic question like this, right? What do you think I'm missing? And what's ridiculous to me. And you know, this is back a couple of years ago when I would spend lots of time with my team of, you know, I think there was 30 of us back then. And I would say that question just because like I said, people should say it. So I just tried it on my team one day.

And guess what they fucking told me? All of the things I was doing wrong. And I was like, well, well, just a second. Like you guys have felt this way, for example, you know, we were talking about our new book and going on a book tour and all those kind of things. Right. So I remember pitching to them, I think we need to do 10 cities. I think we need to continue with this.

I would really like to start to launch an online course program. And I was pontificating all these ideas that I thought were just fucking brilliant. And they were taking notes and doing the things and people were executing what I was asking and some of them weren't and so, you know, what is the problem here?

And so then one day at a meeting, I was like, okay, I better check in here. And I was like, hey, what am I missing? And then they fucking told me and they had like this list of things, like this is impossible, Jo. We're not gonna be able to do this. You cannot be in all these places.

Like we have families. What do you think? And I was like, why didn't you tell me? And they, do you know what they said to me? You never asked. That's exactly it. Most people aren't gonna tell you what they think about you unless you ask.

So we have to make a practice of asking. God, and like, here's the problem. I actually don't want to fucking know most of the time. Well that is the thing most of us both do and don't want to know. I only want to know the good stuff. If you don't mind, could you start with the stuff that's really good and if there's nothing else we could just wrap it up there. I mean, I relate to that so hard.

And in the book, the trait before self awareness is curiosity, which is kind of about lowering your defenses and being willing to hear difficult things because it's hard to let yourself know something that you're working really hard not to know. So by learning how to get more curious with ourselves and other people, we make more space to see things that we might've been turning away from. Okay. So then doing that on purpose is sort of allows you maybe to sort of prepare for that a little bit more. I love that idea of curiosity, right? If I'm going to step into somebody,

I'm just thinking about this in our, as we're developing our speaking practices or writing the next book, if I say to my agent things like, so give me some feedback, right? And I'm ready for that. I think that becomes so much more acceptable sometimes than it is in those moments where you're just like, what? When it comes out of nowhere, right? And I'm ready for that. I think that becomes so much more acceptable sometimes than it is in those moments where you're just like, what? When it comes out of nowhere, right? So I love this idea of like being curious on purpose. Hey, totally.

That's exactly the goal. Oh my gosh. Okay. Um, now we got to, we might as well get the seven. Can we do this? Cause I'm like, this is brilliant. Okay. So hit me, hit me with a seven. We got two down. All right. So the first one is mindfulness, which I define as becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable. And that one is first because just like working out at the gym is not always gonna feel comfortable,

working on your emotional fitness is not always going to feel super easy and comfortable, and you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone a little bit. So the first trait is mindfulness. Then comes curiosity, which is pursuing growth over defensiveness, always striving to learn about yourself and other people. And as your defenses come down, you make way for the

third trait, which is self-awareness, understanding your emotional strengths and your struggles, your triggers, your biases, the things that you need to know about yourself in order to make change. After that comes resilience, which I define as bouncing forward from setbacks and failures. And I say bouncing forward instead of bouncing back because we can't ever really go back to the people we were before we went through hard things. And so instead of trying to get back to an old version of us, we should look at using what we've gone through as a springboard into a better version of ourselves when possible. Okay, time out.

I love that. Bouncing forward, if I think about, you know, a lot of the work, and I know you speak about this too around burnout in organizations, and I just did a consultation this morning, I get to step into a big school division next week in a different province, and they were like, okay, we're so close to getting back, you know, like we know that like, you know, the burnout has really taken a hold and everybody's really done and like, but we're, you know, we're incrementally getting back. And I just, it just hit me so much that I was like, no, no, no, we're not getting back. Like I don't know why that is

this elusive goal that we're going to get back to the good old days. No, no, thank you. Nor do we want to like we're different then. And so it's that permission a little bit. And I love that reframe around bouncing forward because isn't that the truth, right? Like even as if you lose a child or if you went through a divorce or you're into the next relationship, it really is, can you bounce forward?

That's the fucking point of going through hard things is that there better be a lesson that makes you better or it's just fucking bad, no? 100%. Exactly, and you know, the hard things we go through can often end up being really beautiful information about what we wanna change moving forward. So one thing I do say though is it's okay

if every tough thing you've experienced isn't for the best though. Thank you, thank you. You know, it's okay if your trauma just made you angry. It didn't happen for a reason. Right, it didn, it's okay if your trauma just made you angry. It didn't happen for a reason. Right, it didn't happen for a reason. It just made you angry. And you know, if you survived, then that's enough.

But often we can take the things we've been through and use them to learn and grow for whatever comes next. Right, and to your point, it doesn't mean that it was a good thing. It doesn't mean that it was God's will. It doesn't mean that it should have happened or that you did or did not cause it. I think that's a really important distinction because I think often in grief as well, and I know you speak about grief a lot, is, you

know, that's really the thing. Like we try to sugar coat it to get you back out of that place, which is, well, at least they lived till they were this long or at least, you know, like let's plant a tree and let's do all the shit. And I think that, you know, part of resilience that we don't understand the most is really that sinking into that it's supposed to hurt. That we're allowed to experience it. You intuited it so beautiful, beautifully.

Most of the chapter on resilience is about grief. How can you grieve, even the small losses, even the things that you wanted, but didn't happen, the disappointments. When we learn how to grieve more effectively, we become more resilient individuals because we stop carrying the past around with us in a way that doesn't feel generative. And we acknowledge it and honor it and move forward so that we can grow into something new.

Okay. So I love that. So when we think about like going into tech companies, for example, I've never really put those two together. So you think grief is very connected to resilience. Yeah, I mean in a way grief and growth are inextricably intertwined because for every choice you make in life you have to grieve the loss of all of the choices you can no longer make as a result. Anytime you choose a path, there are a bunch of paths you can't take. And when you can acknowledge that and grieve them, you will step more authentically into the path that you have chosen. And I think we

should be doing this all the time for all kinds of little things. Grief isn't just for the death of a loved one. It's for the promotion you didn't get. It's for the lunch spot you were looking forward to that ended up being closed. It's for the lunch spot you were looking forward to that ended up being closed. It's for the friend who cancelled on you at the last minute. There's something about pausing and taking a moment and saying, you know, something that meant something to me isn't to be. And that's hard and I can feel my feelings about it for a moment and then I can move forward without it building up like plaque in my body and causing much more problems down the line. up like plaque in my body and causing much more problems down the line. If you want a recommendation that really sticks, put your brand in their hands. Book a HostRed sponsorship today by visiting go.acast.com slash ads.

I really love that grief and growth are intertwined. I don't, because I think we also, I think, I mean, I'm so interested in that chapter because I think there's so much, when we think grief, we just think about, you know, a parent grieving and the loss of a child. There's like some big hit of grief, right? When somebody dies. But I really think particularly in this disconnected lonely world, there needs to be so much more

conversation about how much grief weighs us down every single day. We're not the parents we thought we'd be, we were not the leaders we thought we'd be. Why isn't the team responding the way I thought it would be? You know, and the grief can become really debilitating. Is this true? Like, what does it do to your body? I think what you're saying is absolutely true. Although I'd add that I think it's often the unfelt grief that really weighs us

down. You know, when we let ourselves grieve, when we make space for it, it can actually really be this beautiful thing. You know, I just posted a quote today that I absolutely love about grief that says that grief is really just love with nowhere to go. You know, grief is that feeling that gathers in different places in our body and there's nowhere to direct it to. And by creating space for grief, we kind of let it out of our body and to move towards something. And so, yes, there's so many things to grieve in life, but you know, there's a reason why most cultures have traditions around grief. And that's because when you make space for it, it is less likely to

follow you around forever. To eat you whole. Yeah. Exactly. Oh my God, I love that. Okay, and I want to talk about that more in a minute. Okay, so four, so resilience is four. Tell us five. Okay, so the fifth trait is empathy. So if self-awareness is understanding your own emotions

and struggles and feelings, then empathy is understanding the emotions and struggles and feelings of other people. And one of the things I distinguish there is if you intellectually understand what someone else is feeling, but you are not feeling it at all, that's not empathy. That's sympathy. Empathy means actually allowing yourself to feel what other people are feeling in order to best support them.

And one of the things I really stress in the book is that empathy and boundaries are not mutually exclusive that most people who think they're too empathetic, most of the time the problem is really just that they don't have strong enough boundaries and that as you learn to have really strong boundaries, you can be much more empathetic with the people in your life. So that's the fifth one. Okay, wait, I'm not done there. I love that because can you just expand on that a little bit?

I think that there is this, I don't know if social media is to blame for this, obviously it's to blame for many things, but I think I hear this all the time. I'm such an intuitive, I'm such an empath. I am feeling everybody's feelings. Holy fuck. No you're not. So I think, I think like, I want to be very clear about the, the absolute superpower that empathy is. And when it is used correctly, when you understand the concept of empathy, as I understand it in my body, it does not deplete you. It is understand, it is such a skill. Nobody's born with it. This is the problem. You know, I would, I do consultations with really,

really ill kids who have ended up a juvie or murdered people or done things. And people are like, Oh, they have no empathy. They have no empathy. They're like a sociopath. You can't give away something you've never received. Somebody has to have created that experience of empathically being with you so that that neural pathway was created in your brain in order to be able to give that away. Okay. The more disconnected we become on this planet, one of the things that I fear is going to be in paucity is our capacity to empathically be with another, which doesn't mean I jump

into your skin and take on your emotion. It means I am seeking to understand it by temporarily suspending my judgment of it and wondering what it might be like. Can you have empathy for somebody else? Schizophrenia if you've never had schizophrenia? Yes. Can you have empathy for somebody who's buried their own baby? If you have never buried a child? Yes, you can. This is about suspending judgment and stepping in. It doesn't mean owning it.

Can you, do you feel right about that? What am I missing? Can you explain it any better? I love that you asked the what am I missing question. So, I mean, I think that's a beautiful perspective on empathy for sure. I do think empathy is not an endless well, you know? We do have to sort of refuel our tank

in order to have empathy all the time. And that to me is where the boundaries come in. Like if you think about what therapy is in a way as a therapist, I am empathizing professionally. What I am doing with each of my patients is I'm going deep with them. I'm letting myself be with them in their experience. And therapy is extremely boundary for a reason. You know, it starts on time, it ends on time. I see people in the same place every week.

I'm not their friend. I'm not going to parties with them. And the reason why that is, is that the stronger those boundaries are, the more empathy I can actually have for them within that space. And so I think there's something to be said for each of us learning how to bring that into the rest of our life. When we have strong boundaries with our friends and our colleagues, then we can have much more empathy

for them within those boundaries. And I think that part is super important. Oh, I think it's huge. And I think it took me a very long time to learn that. Most people, I mean, most people aren't taught what good healthy boundaries look like. And like you said, it's hard to practice something you've never seen.

Right, and especially as a woman, if you've been told your greatest contribution is to give, give, give and hold, hold, hold. Totally. And I think that I wrote about this in feeling seen because I don't even like the word boundaries to me. I mean, I, I'm a human connection expert. So that feels like the antithesis of human connection. When we start to use the word boundaries. And it took me a long, I mean, I said this all the time.

I think I told you this time, but I worked at the Children's Hospital for 10 years on a long psychiatric and patient unit. And those babies and families taught me more than anything grad school did. In the beginning, when I didn't understand this, my thought, my job was to serve these kids and families because I came from this position where I was educated to do that and I was privileged enough to hold trauma again and again and again. So I would stay late. I would come in early. I would come back to the hospital, put babies to bed. I would support nurses.

I would do all the things. And I thought that was great. I thought that was like the expectation because what do you mean boundaries? No, I'll take another case. No, absolutely. I can. What becomes clear to me is that boundaries are not for anybody else other than you. And if I'm going to continue to serve in that way, it is my only protection to refuel. That's what a boundary is.

It's your only protection to refill. It's not for anybody else. How anybody else receives it, perceives it, actually is not your responsibility. And I think it took me so long to understand that because it just feels so yucky to be like, no, I'm unavailable here or like, no, that's not going to work because you are asking too much. No, there's a big difference between a boundary and an ultimatum. And I think we often feel that ultimatums

are boundaries. You can't come in my house if you're a smoker. That's... What I need is this house to be a place where it's clean and safe because my kid has allergies because I'm concerned about whatever, right? So here's what I'm gonna need to be able to love you fully. You can't smoke while you're in here. That's different than an ultimatum, no? Yeah I often say boundaries are the best way to deal with the fact that we can't control anyone but ourselves. So rather than trying to change everyone else, we are just very clear and firm about what we need and what we are and are not willing and able to give.

Amen. That's exactly what I meant. That's good. 100%. Okay, number six. Okay, so the sixth trait is communication. So communication in the sense of putting words to your needs and expectations and boundaries, being able to listen as well as you speak. Communication in a way is the glue that holds relationships together. So in the book I talk about all kinds of communication, not just verbal communication, but how to pay attention to body language and tone and introducing silence into your conversations,

making space for the things to be shared that might not be right on the surface, all of that. And then finally, the seventh trait is playfulness, which is essentially being a yes and person and fostering space that deepens connection, meeting people where they are and expanding on their ideas and getting somewhere together that neither of you could have gotten alone. Whoa.

Okay. I love that. Tell me about how joy fits into that. You know, it's a great question and I have sort of a personal soapbox that our culture focuses so intensely on happiness and joy. And that those are two beautiful things, but they're almost fetishized in our culture. Like if you're not joyful and happy all the time that something's wrong with you.

And then people who have normal levels of emotion feel like they're broken when they're not. And there's this full range of human emotion we should all be experiencing. So I think joy is so important and playfulness is certainly one of the ways to create joy, but it's not the end goal. It's not a sign that you've made it. It's one of the beautiful things you experience along the way when you are pursuing a normal, healthy, fulfilling human experience.

Deeply feeling them all, all the emotions. Yeah. Exactly. Oh my God, I love that. Okay, so those are the seven and tell me how you came up with those. Like is this just as a result of, because Flex Your Feelings is really focused on, you've drawn the parallel between the physical experience of caring for our bodies with the necessity to sort of do that from a mental health perspective. Yes. Yes.

And so tell me how this sort of these seven came together. How, where did that metaphor start to work? Because it's also is related very much to your other company called Koa, right? Right, right. So, right, the idea is when it comes to physical health, there isn't just you're either sick or you're healthy. You know, there's this other thing which is fitness. It doesn't just mean that you don't have the flu.

It means that you exercise, sleep well, eat healthy. Your body is set up to handle the inevitable difficulties that it's going to experience. And there really wasn't an equivalent that was being talked about with mental health. It felt like there was this dichotomy where you're either mentally ill or you're mentally healthy. And most people actually exist somewhere between those two extremes. And so I wanted to introduce this idea

of mental and emotional fitness, a practice of strengthening your mental and emotional life so that you're more set up to handle the inevitable difficult things that you face. And I needed to figure out what the hell this actually means. How do you do an emotional push-up, right? So about a decade ago, I did a big research study, something called an interpretive phenomenological analysis,

which is a very fancy way of saying that I interviewed 100 psychologists and entrepreneurs. And I asked them all kinds of questions, essentially trying to get at the idea of, how do you know if you're sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy person? What does that look like? What does that feel like? What do those people do? What do they not do? And I transcribed all of these interviews, I coded them for themes.

And what I saw come out of these, this research was these seven traits, these seven things that both therapists and entrepreneurs pointed to as signs that someone is in good emotional health. And the goal of the book was to help people figure out, all right, if these things are important, how do I develop them? How can I actually practically and in a data-driven way strengthen these things, flex these things in my life so that I am a more, you know, sort of a well-rounded and emotionally healthy person. Amazing. I, and I love that. Okay.

Can you tell me a little bit more about that emotional pushup? You described it when we first met, you did a little bit on stage around anxiety and you blew the crowd away with your explanation of how anxiety works in a body. Can you take me through that again? Do you remember that? Do you want to hear the story that I told? I would like, would you mind? Because I still think about that all the time. Okay, go. Happy to share. So this is a story that I shared about the best piece of advice I've ever received in my life,

which happened to be about managing anxiety and uncertainty. So essentially years and years ago I was in the hospital with my mom who had been in a coma for 30 days and it was this roller coaster of anticipatory grief and anxiety because every night the doctors told us she wasn't gonna make it and every morning she was just barely hanging on and so it was just all over the place trying to figure out what was gonna happen, how we were going to handle it. And I was lucky to have this amazing family friend come visit at the hospital one day. His name was Bill and Bill was an oncologist. So he had a lot of experience working with loss and grief and you know,

all of these things. And he had this really lovely calm demeanor. And he sat with me one day and I was sort of tearfully telling him, Bill how the hell am I going to deal with it if my mom dies? You know, how will I handle it emotionally? How will I handle it logistically? I don't know anything about what it means to be a young person without a parent in this way. I was still very dependent on her and I just didn't know what I was gonna do. And Bill put his hand on my shoulder and he looked me in the eyes and he said, Emily, the version of you that will handle it, if that terrible thing happens,

will be born into existence in that moment. And that version of you will have more life experience and more context and more ability to handle that tough thing than you do now. Of course you don't know what you're going to do because the version of you that will know what to do doesn't exist yet. So you need to trust your future self to handle future problems. So this was this unbelievable advice. Really, really changed my life. And I think about it anytime I'm going through something big. This idea of, okay, the version of myself that will handle this tough thing, if and when it happens, I have to trust that she will be born into existence in that moment.

And I think about it even when I'm having little anxieties, like, oh shit, what am I going to do if I miss this meeting? I'll tell myself, you know what? Future me is a badass. She will figure out what to do if she misses the meeting. For now, my only job is to get there as quickly as I can. If I miss this meeting, I'll tell myself, you know what? Future me is a badass. She will figure out what to do if she misses the meeting. For now, my only job is to get there as quickly as I can. And so it's just this beautiful reminder to come back to the present, handle what's true now and know that future you has your back and will figure out anything that they need

to figure out then. And how has that, how does that play into this concept of anxiety? Because I think there is often a misunderstanding, you know, there is certainly a neurochemical basis to many clinical anxieties. A lot of what happens around anxiety is not rooted in reality. And so can you, can you take us through that when, you know, because it's, it's this beautiful response to this very big thing that often lives inside our heads. So anxiety is really the stress and sort of threat warning that we have about anything that may or may not happen in the future. And for

many of us, the threat warning is really loud and disruptive even when it doesn't have to be, even when there's nothing we can do about a situation, even when we feel like it's kind of been figured out, we'll still have that feeling of overwhelm. And the idea is with this trust your future self is that when we pull ourselves out of this future that we have no control over We can come back to the present and sort of direct our efforts into the things that we do have some

Agency over so, you know some of the tricks I use for anxiety is one of them is If I'm thinking of the worst-case scenario, which we often do we kind of play out this worst-case scenario And you know, it makes sense. Anxiety serves a purpose. It helps us feel prepared for things. The goal here isn't to get rid of your anxiety completely. It's to figure out when it's actually helping you and when it's just getting in your way.

So when I do find myself playing out a worst case scenario over and over again, I will stop myself and force myself to think of the best case scenario and then the most likely case scenario as well so that I am left with this more realistic idea of what will likely happen and Then another trick that I use for anxiety is to schedule a worry hour a time when I can be as anxious and overwhelmed as I want to be because when we tell ourselves Oh, just don't worry. It's not effective because some part of us thinks that there's something that needs to be prepared for. So when we schedule time, when we set aside some

time specifically to worry, then the rest of the time we can tell ourselves, okay, I have time on the calendar for that. I'm not gonna focus on that right now. And then the last tip I like to share is make a control list. Write down everything that's surrounding this worry you have and cross out everything that you don't have control over and redirect your efforts toward the things that you do have some control over. I really love that because I think that's that's a Trust your future self. I did not ever think about it until I heard you say it that day. I I did not ever think about it until I heard you say it that day.

I think we all get caught in this place where like we know what we know. And so this is probably the pinnacle of what we are going to know, right? Like we're obviously very smart in this moment, you know, and the fact that that you have to trust your future self, that she will also learn more things and will be in a different place when those things come, if anything happens to your children, if your marriage is going to stay together or not You know what that's gonna look like and I and I love that because you also do a lot of couples work Yes, and tell me some of how this applies, you know in this world of now

Relationship and connection and and and what have you noticed particularly as you in your practice in particular as we become more and more Disconnected in this world, have you seen that effect, have an effect on relationships? Where do you think we're going in terms of the sanctity of marriage or long-term relationships? I'm fascinated by this right now. Yeah, it's interesting that there's a way in which we're more connected than ever. And yet we still feel so lonely. And I think it's because this digital connection is sort of like the fast food

of connection, you know, it's, it's better than starving maybe. But if all you eat is fast food, then you're actually going to cause a lot of problems for yourself down the road. And that's how I feel about this. We need actual in-person connection in order to nourish our bodies and our, and our souls. So I think that's so important. In terms of the sanctity of marriage, I have sort of a philosophy about all that, that our culture has this really intense black or white idea about success in

all things, whether they're relationships or a business or you know, job or whatever that if something doesn't last forever that it's failed. And I just don't believe in that. I think that it's much more true that life changes, that we change a million times, and the more flexible we are to move with that change, the better off we'll be. And so I personally would rather be in two or three or five healthy relationships than one relationship that

lasted forever but didn't end up being healthy and good for me. So you know, I've gotten trolled pretty hard for this philosophy. I think there are a lot of people who feel like it's a really big threat to disrupt this pact that you make that you're gonna stick with someone no matter what. And I think there's something really beautiful about pledging to work through hard things and and you know show up for the people you love but I also think that we focus so much on this idea of forever that we forget that life happens between now and then and you should probably really enjoy the journey not just the end goal.

Oh and so talk to me more about that do you think that's gonna switch because here's my I agree wholeheartedly and here's what I think about. Here's my counter argument. Maybe not my, what I worry about. Okay. I think what is going to become more difficult is the depth of relationships to maintain because the breadth are so easy. So when we talk about creating a healthy relationship, a healthy relationship happens when there's conflict. A healthy relationship happens when we grow at different speeds. When, you know, the commitment to, and I'm not in no way romanticizing historically, you know, when couples were married for 57,000 years and did nothing together.

I'm really grappling with this place right now because I believe wholeheartedly with you. God, why are we making shit work? Because we, we made a promise to some fucking deity that said, I'm going to be here forever, right? Or that we don't want to let down our parents. We don't want to do all these kinds of things, right? I, I, I think that makes so much sense. Doesn't it make sense? That's what I would wish for my children that you would be in two or three healthy relationships rather than committing to one. Are we giving permission to people?

My fear is that we're giving permission to then not dig deep because the ease with which you will be able to find another in a superficial way will not overcome the fact that in those deep dark moments when we bury somebody we love, when we get the cancer diagnosis, when you need somebody who knows you without words, how we're going to have to walk through those things when we have not had a continuous connection. Because the data is also really clear. If you can maintain, for example, a friendship from kindergarten, they know you very different. Doesn't mean you should stick through shit because you're supposed to. But also there's a perspective there that

When this world is so disconnected those written without words become so critically important in the healing process Yeah, I mean, I think it's so true that Conflict and pain and all of that are inevitabilities of relationship in life And actually I talked about this idea that conflict to a relationship is a lot like exercise to a muscle. Meaning, you know, when you exercise your muscles, you're actually damaging them a little bit. But when you repair, when you eat protein and rest, they grow back stronger than they were before. And in a way, this is true with relationships. We have to have that conflict and do that little bit of damage to them.

And as long as you repair, then the relationship will be stronger than it was before. And to me, the big problem is that we tell people that they should stick with someone forever, but we don't teach them how to repair. We don't give them faith that if they go through a hard thing, it can come back as as something better if both people are committed to making it so. I think if people had that example more and more practice and more faith in that process, that there would be less of a temptation to jump ship every time

something didn't feel great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, and I really want to sort of be clear. I don't think, I don't think people are jumping ship, you know, when things don't feel great. I think that there's every now transition. I don't think we prepare ourselves enough. And I'll tell you, this is like, you know, a mom of three teenagers. I, I could navigate my relationship with my partner so much easier. Actually, it was, I don't know, the baby phase

was so difficult for me because I'm not a huge fan of parenting, turns out. And but I think we're also in this generation, particularly as women, as being the problem solvers when it comes to the emotional fitness of our relationships, of our family systems, right? And so I'm so fascinated to see what happens for our daughters for our sons When it comes to this idea because the data is really clear, you know single men are not nearly as happy as single women

Why? Why is the burden still really falling on people to maintain that emotional connection? Which we know is true in this human race. We're neurobiologically wired for connection. We're not going to automate relationship in the sense that what it provides for us from a neurochemical, neurophysical perspective, okay? We're not going to be that good anytime soon,

if ever, I hope. Maybe I hope. But the allure, if I watch what's happening in the, you know, the Tate world of things if ever I hope maybe I hope and but the The allure if I watch what's happening in the you know the tate world of things or the incel option of like let's just get a robot for a girlfriend and like How much could they respond to us because then I don't have to I don't have to have that emotional piece that emotional connection Holy fuck like I just see there's so many ways that we can go in this way that I agree. Where's the freedom to be able to sort of be who you are and grow and find partners who

grow along with you. And then where's that responsibility to be able to, to, to work hard and go deep and you know, where does that end? How do we know when to cut bait? I guess is a question. Right. I mean, I think it's so funny that we tell people that they should stay in a relationship forever, no matter what. But then we're, we're putting up AI as the solution to replace relationships in so many ways.

Like technology is replacing so many of the relationships in our life. And most of our struggles, most of our pain is a result and reaction to unhealthy relationships. And I don't think artificial relationships are going to be the thing that fixes that. I think that true connection, true love, that is what actually fixes it. You know, Freud said therapy is just a cure through love. Ultimately, in therapy, you are just caring about someone in a way that they have needed to be cared for and that teaches them to care for themselves in a new way.

And you know, yeah, an AI chat bot can give you advice about what to do, but you're never going to believe that it truly cares for you. And that is the real mechanism of healing. Yeah. Amen. So seeking that in relationship becomes the thing. I think when I speak to parents, it's about, and this is my big soapbox that I speak a lot about

in terms of child therapy, like taking kids to therapy and using this as a platform to sort of normalize or have good conversations, which I think is brilliant in so many ways. But I rarely will see a kid without seeing their system. Because what I think is really critical is that, yes, I wanna normalize the experience of therapy and you being able to sort of access this possibility,

but the vast majority of change is gonna happen in the system that surrounds you. Definitely. If I don't have access to that system, fine. So many times I've worked in foster care system or where babies are just sort of left alone and really struggling in and of themselves. Okay.

Can we retell those stories together in a therapeutic setting? Absolutely. But generally what happens is outside of that process, right? What are the big people think about this? And so when you just drop your kid off to therapy and you wait in the parking lot, hoping that like they're fixed, like, did you give them the things? No, no. I, The issue is how does this dynamic occur? What is your expectation of them? What do you, why do you think they're acting out

or connecting or disconnecting in this way? And so I think it is, it is such a process of having those conversations with the systems that operate and your connection to the tech world, my focus on the education world, the world of police officers is so I'm so passionate about it because I think it's like where the stories are told about the expectations of the world need the greatest shining on of understanding. Right. How do you feel about that? I remember in grad school, we had someone come and talk to us about working with children

and he said something that stuck with me so much, which was he said, when you make change within a child, it takes a truly extraordinary and, you know, meaning like extraordinary, like not the average type of child to be able to take that change and run with it if their parents are not on board with that same change. And so ultimately we do work with systems because we are so ingrained in those systems that it's very difficult to make change. And I talk a lot in my book about the individual agency we each have and that change we each have to make,

but I'd be remiss if I didn't also acknowledge that we are part of this societal system and it's really hard to be healthy in an unhealthy world and it's quite a lot to expect of ourselves to be responsible for emotional health all the time in an environment that's not emotionally healthy. You know it makes sense to have an unhealthy reaction when you're in an unhealthy environment. So just as we need to work on ourselves, I think we do each have a responsibility to try to fix the system as well so that we can actually make sustainable change for everyone. Amen. And I think it's a privilege to be having those conversations.

I was just reading, I'm halfway through just killing me, Paul Segoski's, I think, I don't know if I said the name right, but determinism. So the concept that none of us have free will, which, you know, upon first reflection, I was like, get fuck Paul. And then as I'm reading it, I'm like, oh my, we all live within ancestral stories that those thoughts are on our own and can be argued.

And so there's so much within this system that we're up against in this moment. So as we start to kind of consider our relationships, our disconnection from them, how we show up in them, the patterns in which seem to keep happening, right? Like, it is not possible that you're in a relationship with a narcissist 87 times in your life, okay? Because there's just not that many narcissists in the world.

This is a problem in my world right now, where they're like, he's a narcissist. I left her because she's an, okay, no, fuck, listen to me. Listen to me. There's a dynamic that happens within relationships, and the point of therapy is to really reflect on who you keep attracting, and how you keep perpetuating things.

Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it. You don't have to, no judgment. Just notice. And all of us have it. I mean, like, I, what I love about your initial take here back in the earlier part of this session was really, session. That's a nice slip.

Thank you, Freud. Thank you, Freud. But this, you know, this idea that like, to this moment, I can't tell you how many, I mean, I think I can count maybe on within 10. I've had maybe 10 therapists as I've grown throughout the different places that I've lived in and whatever.

And, like, as recently as two weeks ago, I was like, huh, you don't say. Where did this resistance to authority come from? I've never considered myself resistant to authority until this moment. Then I was like, oh, people are going to tell me not to swear. Get fucked. You're going to like, wow, interesting.

Right. And I think that it's not, it's this unknown that we don't know that sometimes comes to us in, in different seasons. I didn't need to know that before the earlier version. I didn't need to know that before. The earlier version of myself didn't need to know that. But now a version of a, as a mom, as a CEO, as a business owner, as a person in a marriage who, you know, we've been together for 18 years and making decisions about where we go from here.

You either didn't need to know that or you couldn't know it yet. Tell me more. You know, I think we are invested in not seeing certain things because changing them would be painful. And so sometimes it's not that we didn't need to know something. It's that we just weren't able to until a particular set of circumstances put us in a place that we could face this hard thing and know this complicated thing about ourselves. Oh, yes. that's so true. And then sometimes I say these things too, like it served a purpose up until now. Yeah exactly. Every frustrating thing about anyone you've ever met served them at some point in their

life or they wouldn't be that way. And to me that's really the seed of my ability to empathize is I've just seen it enough that I really trust it that like anytime someone's pissing me off or even the most extreme people in society who are doing the most horrible things, I have a very deep trust that they wouldn't be that way if it didn't serve or protect them at some point. And it just ultimately is each of our responsibility to examine whether the things that protected us at one point are still protecting us now or if they're actually getting in our way and causing us harm. Boom. I don't, we can't even continue because that is probably the most profound thing that's

ever been said on the Unlonely Podcast. I want you to go back. Oh my gosh. I want you to go back and listen to that last line again and again and again, because listen, Dr. Anne Holt, you are a goddamn gym and I'm gonna put this the link to the book because the book comes out in May flex your feelings I think you've just done such a beautiful job of articulating some of the hardest concepts that many of us in this field work very very diligently at trying to sort of disseminate the knowledge and

you've just done this so beautifully in conversations about emotional pushups and traits that, you know, that's what we should be looking for in partners. When we're hiring people in companies, you know, when we're trying to maintain or continue a friendship, making those decisions, I think it's all located in these pages and anything else, anything else I miss and anything else you want this community to know, because I know they're now going to be a part of yours. Well, I'm just really grateful for you and how you show up in the space that you're creating for people to lean into all of these things.

And I would love to just connect with your whole community. I'm on socials at dremilyanhalt on all the different platforms. So I hope to stay in touch and thank you for all that you do. You're amazing. In line with that everybody, I want you to take care of yourself, take care of each other, and I'll meet you right back here again next time. Unlonely Podcast is produced by three incredible humans, Brian Siever, Taylor McGilvery, and Jeremy Saunders, all of Snack

Lab Productions. Our executive producer, my favorite human on this planet, is Marty Piller. Soundtracks were created by Donovan Morgan, Unlonely Branded Artwork created by Elliot Cuss, our big PR shooters are Des Venot and Barry Cohen. Our digital marketing manager is the amazing Shana Haddon. Our 007 secret agent from the talent bureau is Jeff Lowness. And emotional support is provided by Asher Grant, Evan Grant and Olivia Grant.

Go Liv! I am a registered clinical psychologist in Alberta, Canada. The content created and produced in this show is not intended as specific therapeutic advice. The intention of this podcast is to provide information, resources, education, and the one thing I think we all need the most, a safe place to land in this lonely world. I'll need the most. A safe place to land in this lonely world. We're all so glad you're here. We all have that one friend whose opinion we trust on everything. For 63% of podcast listeners, that friend is their favorite podcast host. When Acast's podcasters endorse a brand, their audience listens and takes action. So if you want a recommendation that really sticks, put your brand in their hands.

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