Anxiety Is Your Superpower: Rethinking Anxiety for Leaders with Morra Aarons-Mele
Morra Aarons-Mele - Author and Host of ‘The Anxious Achiever’
In this conversation we explore what it means to be an anxious overachiever and how Leaders can harness their anxiety and fear to use it for good.
Perfectionism, imposter syndrome, social anxiety and burnout are all issues that can impact leaders and high achievers, in this conversation with Morra we unpack what these are and and give Leaders evidence-back support to move through them.
Morra not only speaks from expertise, but from a place of lived-experience - she knows first-hand what it’s like to be an anxious over achiever.
As an “extremely anxious overachiever,” Morra Aarons-Mele is passionate about helping leaders understand what their anxiety is telling them, and how they can put this knowledge to work.
Morra Aarons-Mele is the host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. Morra founded Women Online and The Mission List, an award-winning digital-consulting firm and influencer marketing company dedicated to social change, in 2010, and sold her business in 2021. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations. Named among LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Mental Health in 2022, Morra lives outside Boston with her family.
To find Morra’s books and to contact her directly, see her website here.
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Sally Clarke Spk1 Morra Aarons-Mele Spk2 Alexis Zahner
[00:00:09] spk_0: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. Anxiety is a word we've heard more and more in recent years. For many of us, it's a day to day lived experience that can feel debilitating and yet by developing the skills and insight to understand what our anxiety is telling us. This expert believes we can turn it into a leadership superpower. I'm Sally Clark2 and today Alexis Zahner and I are speaking to self described, extremely anxious, overachiever, Morra Aarons-Mele. Morra founded the award winning Social Impact Agency Women Online, which she sold in 2021 today. She hosts the successful podcast, The Anxious Achiever and is the author of a brand new book, The Anxious Achiever. Turn your biggest fears into your leadership superpower. This conversation is raw and personal as each of us shares our experiences with anxiety and Morra unpacks what it means to acknowledge and tap into anxiety and how with some self, compassion and courage, anxiety can nourish rather than inhibit our leadership. Let's delve in. Morra’s personal journey that's brought you to doing the important work that you're doing now.
[00:01:40] spk_1: Thanks. It's really good to be with you. My journey is long at this point as I'm about to turn 47 this summer. But, you know, my mental health is something I've managed my whole adult life. Really. I got my first clinical diagnosis of anxiety and depression when I was 19 years old and I have off and on since then had episodes and you know, sort of chronic anxiety. And the reason why it was so important to me to embark on this storytelling project that is the anxious achiever was that, you know, I was really ambitious. I worked in politics when I was younger and, you know, people just never talked about their mental health and sometimes we would talk about it at the bar. I wanted role models and I couldn't find Danny. I knew there were so many people out there, right, who manage anxiety and depression and other mental health challenges. And I felt it would be so powerful if leaders told their stories. And that was really the birth of the anxious achiever.
[00:02:47] spk_2: Well, thank you for sharing that, Morra. It is a challenging road to walk when you feel like the role models you so seek potentially exist but are hidden from you. So I imagine that would have felt like a daunting path. And before we go further. I'd love to just unpack for a minute. What is anxiety and how does anxiety differ from fear and from stress?
[00:03:09] spk_1: Yeah. So anxiety is an internal state. It often shows up as a fear of the unknown, a fear of the future. A sense that things are not. Ok. It's a threat response. It's a very ancient response. And the thing that's tricky about anxiety is that we need it. It definitely has kept our species alive, but it's not always correct in that the threat it anticipates is not always a real threat to our body. It could be an imagined threat. It could be our five PM sales meeting that we're really dreading. Fear is an external threat, right? So imagine you're driving on the highway and the truck cuts in front of you and you slam on the brakes, right? That's fear. Stress, stress could be when your boss comes and piles a huge pile of paper on your desk and says I need this brief done by five PM. They placed that external stressor on you. Anxiety is what you might feel when you get that stressor. Is it gonna be good enough? I'm never gonna make the deadline. Oh, my gosh, my boss hates me. He didn't give Laura this assignment. So anxiety is a much more sort of if you will anticipatory or imagined state. Hm. Thank
[00:04:31] spk_2: you for unpacking that Morra So just so I'm clear, anxiety is sort of the repercussion of our internal reaction to that threat. Is that right?
[00:04:41] spk_1: Yeah, you could say that the weird thing is that stress, anxiety, fear, even anticipate, they all feel similar in our physiology at times. Right. That racing heart, that sort of shaky hand, that increased energy. So it can feel the same, but the origins might be different.
[00:05:01] spk_0: It's interesting that, you know, that or a lot of the work that I do in explaining the concept of burnout to our clients, you know, I often get the question then. Well, I have sort of those symptoms that does that necessarily mean that I'm in burnout. And I think because there are similarities in some of those stress responses that we may or may not experience that it's really important, I think to delve deeper as you do so beautifully in your book to understand that it does take many forms and have many different sort of origins for it. So we'll delve into that more deeply shortly. You know, we know that there's data showing that mental health challenges really are the norm for many high achievers. And you shared so candidly beautifully your own experience. And yet there is still such a strong stigma around talking about them, particularly for leaders. I'm curious to know why does this stigma remain, do you think? And what can leaders do about it?
[00:06:00] spk_1: Stigma remains because I think in many business cultures, you know, we're still living out an old outdated view of what leadership looks like. And leadership tends to be masculine, it's strong, whatever that means. And we conflate anxiety and frankly fear any feeling that feels vulnerable as feminine weaker. And so we run up against these stereotypes at work. And the good news is that we're changing. And I think that we see men feeling much more comfortable in expressing emotions that they may not have been comfortable expressing even five years ago. Men typically is certainly in Western cultures are very, you know, they can express anger, but when it comes to anxiety, not so much, the other piece is more complicated but important to address, you know, leaders have to be competent. We don't want leaders who feel like they're a mess. And when we're talking about mental health, things can really get messy. And so it's challenging, especially if you're in the middle of a mental health crisis because you want to keep boundaries as a leader, you want your team to feel like yes, I'm human, I'm vulnerable. I feel things as you do. But ultimately, I'm still here for you. And that's a really tough dance. And so in a way, it becomes easier to ignore it and not to talk about it.
[00:07:34] spk_2: I think that's a really important point, Morra, and something that came to mind as I was listening to you use language like competence is that often as an employee, we hope or we expect that our leader is in control. And I think so often it may feel to individuals like mental health or some of the emotions or underlying things that we're feeling can feel like we don't have control over. And is that perhaps part of this puzzle why people want to keep it hidden? They don't want to seem like they haven't got a handle on things.
[00:08:07] spk_1: Oh, my gosh. Alexis. I think that is such a great insight. I wish I thought of myself, you know. Yes, I think that people feeling vulnerable, makes a lot of us uncomfortable. We're not raised with mental health literacy. We're not raised to sit with our own uncomfortable feelings, much less other people's. And so yeah, we think that control equals looking like you're, you know, swimming as smoothly as a swan, right? To use that old cliche while, while underneath you may be frantically paddling your webbed feet. What I want leaders to acknowledge is that when you're in touch with and I don't have to tell you to this. Like when you're in touch with your emotions, when you're willing to accept those vulnerabilities and move through them and manage them is when you are really ready to lead and control is an illusion. Anyway. So, you know,
[00:09:04] spk_0: I love that you touched on that in your book as well or that, you know, that change is inevitable and that kind of tension, I think for those of us who struggle with anxiety between acknowledging and understanding, perhaps at a rational level that uh control is an illusion, change is inevitable and yet so very much wanting it simultaneously.
[00:09:26] spk_1: Yeah. You know, and it's so funny, I'll never forget when I interviewed Doctor David Barlow from Boston University, who's one of the fathers of cognitive behavioral therapy. And he said, you know, the illusion of control is healthy, some illusion of control is healthy. And so again, it's that line of accepting that I can't control the macro economy. I can't control the global pandemic. I can't control other people. But there are things that I can control and I'm gonna work towards that and leaders can do that.
[00:09:57] spk_2: Yeah, thank you for sharing that Morra. Now I know in my journey as both an employee and then as a young leader, actually, identifying anxiety in myself was actually quite a process. There was a period of time where I was getting things like headaches, like back pain, racing, heart. I was prescribed things like reading glasses from migraines from really resulting in things like chronic stress and unmanaged anxiety. So I'd love if we could to take a moment to look at anxiety and all the forms in which it comes and how it manifests in our bodies, our emotions and reactions that can really differ from one person to next. Can you help us sort of unpack that a little bit to help someone listening who may be suffering perhaps symptoms of anxiety but doesn't know how to identify or know their anxiety. Yet.
[00:10:48] spk_1: I'm curious, like, how did you start to match the migraine with the anxiety? Do
[00:10:53] spk_2: you know? It was quite a long process. To be honest, I think for a long time I ran from it and was very, I would say, emotionally dysfunctional. And so when things got really challenging in my young career, I would quit jobs and move to new jobs. Me too. Yeah, I would leave relationships. I would move towns. I would really try and start again when things started feeling like they got challenging. And I think it's because the discomfort in my body came to a point where I needed to sort of go and create chaos somewhere else to feel like I could move through the fixing of things again. And so probably took me almost until 30 years old to realize that I was anxious. And as a high achiever, it felt easier to just simply run from those things or the fear of failure than actually try and move through it. So it took me a long time and, you know, elements of therapy, of mindfulness of supportive friendships who were able to sort of share their experiences with me as well. So quite a few things, to be honest,
[00:12:03] spk_1: the thing is that it, it is a process and you sometimes have to throw the kitchen sink at it. The process of sort of pinpointing what is anxiety can be difficult and really also depending on how you grew up. Was your family in touch with mental health? Did you talk about it? You know, I come from a culture, I always joke like everybody in my life was a therapist. Literally therapy was just part of my world from when I was a tiny little kid. So I have high mental health literacy. But I know many people who the very word anxiety is just sort of foreign, right? So yeah, I always tell people, you know, and then you pointed out Alexis, it starts in your body and to really get in touch with what is not feeling right in your body is really, really helpful. I'll give you a really concrete example, you know, so many of us are on zoom. We're all in little boxes right now and when we're on zoom and we're working and we have normal sort of workplace anxiety, we constrict, we may hunch our shoulders, we may hunch over our belly, we may clench our jaws, we're contorting ourselves to fit the camera and the impression that we want people to have of us. And by the end of the day, we may feel like we have been put through a wringer, like we're tight and we have a headache. I get migraines. Think about how much of that am I responding to anxiety or stress or a feeling of not feeling great in the zoom? Environment that I've just been in. Does my neck hurt? And is that because I accidentally was turning it the wrong way or is it because when my boss talks to me on Zoom, I feel frozen. That can be so instructive.
[00:13:54] spk_0: Think that's such an incredibly important point. Maura. And I know that in growing up in a very intellectually driven environment and then entering a career as a lawyer, it took me even longer. I think to really even think below my neck as it were. I remember a therapist asking me, you know, where do you feel that in your body? And I looked at her like she was crazy because that to me was, I don't feel things in my body. Yeah, I have a whole lot of tension. But even though the question didn't even make sense, I think so to come to an understanding that actually the body is sending us these wise signals of imbalance or manifestation, perhaps of an emotion. It's starting to get that literacy and that curiosity around what our body is telling us. It's been a long journey for me. And I imagine, I think for a lot of people that the body's intelligence is kind of a new thing. We're also not told a lot about it in our education
[00:14:51] spk_1: systems. No. And we tune out, right? We tune out, we power through. There's no shame in not knowing. I think it's actually an amazing process when you start to tune in. It definitely can take practice. But, you know, you sort of have these aha moments along the way. What's so amazing is I see my kids and they are being raised with such a level of emotional literacy. They already know how to breathe in elementary school. They already learn how to breathe. It's amazing.
[00:15:18] spk_0: That's so wonderful to hear and does really give me a lot of encouragement. I think that there are starting to be those shifts. And you know, there are mindfulness practices, meditation practices starting to be used and introduced at an earlier age. It's potentially transformative. As I mentioned, as a former lawyer, I'm particularly curious to ask you more. I have spent a lot of time around perfectionists and you write in your book about how this can be something that crops up for anxious achievers. I was wondering if you could share with us what the dangers of perfectionism can be and what steps we might be able to take to start to disentangle ourselves from perfectionism as leaders,
[00:16:00] spk_1: perfectionism is funny because it's often misunderstood and was only part of my journey over the past, you know, many years writing and studying that I learned that perfectionism is really much more about anxiety than it is about doing a great job. And even when I see the media calling people perfectionists, leaders, who we admire so much, I'm like, you don't actually know if they're a perfectionist. They could just be amazing at their job. So, perfectionism is really about anxiety. And when you look at it from a sort of psychodynamic perspective, it's about a voice inside you a sense inside you that if you don't achieve you're not good. I interviewed Julie Lico Hames who's an amazing educator and thought leader. She was dean, a freshman at Stanford University, which is probably the most competitive university in the world. And we laughed because she said, you know, when I was growing up, I knew my parents loved me, but I knew they loved me more when I got perfect grades basically. And so a lot of us especially achievers, you know, we grow up, we internalize that. And so when we're faced with a challenge at work or something that feels new, the voice comes on, the thought trap comes on and it says this must be perfect. And so the way I have found because I am such a recovering perfectionist is to really manage my emotions, my investment in the outcome because I want to do a great job on most things. But I have really been able to reduce the temperature and my own personal investment in the outcome. If I only do like an 85% getting some distance around the automatic idea that you must achieve. And that if it's not perfect, you're not good is so amazing. And what it does also in, in a work context is it lets other people be awesome. Like when you don't have to be so awesome, other people can be awesome.
[00:18:09] spk_2: That's a very important point, Maura. And again, as you were speaking now, I was reflecting on my own journey and one I'd assume probably not too dissimilar from both of yours around, you know, the need for accolades and achievement. That was a similar environment that I grew up in. Something that I've noticed in myself through the years, as I've perhaps recognize these things in myself is that you mentioned sort of detaching from the outcome or that 85%. Whereas for me, it's felt like a shift in motivation. So rather than feeling like I'm dragging myself through the process to do a really good job because of how it will look to others and wanting to control people's sort of perception of me to make sure it's perfect. It's felt like I can actually enjoy doing the work now versus pushing myself to do the work because I'm allowing myself to appreciate the learning that might come with the challenge, whether it's a work endeavor or a study, end whatever it may be. And I just wonder if that is also something that you've perhaps experienced in your sort of inner world as well moral through your experience and overcoming that
[00:19:17] spk_1: I love that as a technique, I think for me, it's really about managing my emotional investment because I do like doing my work. I'm pretty joyful in my work. That's one of the few good things about my anxiety profile. But I think for a lot of people, anything that you can do that puts a distance between that anxious sort of motivation and yourself is really healthy. And I think we're both doing that. We're both saying, hey, wait a minute, I'm not gonna act automatically and just like, instantly dive into all these like very comfortable, perfectionist feelings that I've had for 20 years. I'm gonna like, say, hey, wait a minute. Is this what I want?
[00:20:02] spk_0: I love that you use the word comfort them or because I think that's exactly, that's the key aspect of it. For me that it's almost this automatic response to fill the gap to block the discomfort, immediately rushing into those perfectionistic tendencies as an action and starting to build space for the discomfort of not having that response and not perhaps being perfect and then allowing that space to grow bigger and bigger to the point where we can get to the 90% 85% and start to discover that we are still completely lovable, capable, still great leaders, still doing great work. It's a really beautiful journey. So I think I love that you highlighted that word as well of creating comfort almost with the discomfort.
[00:20:49] spk_1: I think for me, you know, the experience of being an author is such a perfect example of why being a perfectionist just doesn't get you there because I mean, yesterday I went to a Barnes and Noble big bookstore chain here in the US and there was one copy of my book and it was sort of sadly sitting on the shelf and I felt so dejected, I just felt awful, you know, and then today I got a huge call from Harvard and they want to buy tons of books. And I thought, ok, in 24 hours, you have had these two poles of experience on something that you really, really, really care about. And even 10 years ago, the rejection would have made me stop, it would have made me spend the day in bed, maybe even. But when you grow, like when you grow in your career, when you grow up, you have to learn to sort of ride with it. And it's hard when you're a perfectionist to do
[00:21:41] spk_2: that. I resonate with that emotional roller coaster, deeply morea not an author. However, those experiences where you feel like everything's going really well one day and then it feels like it's crashing the next, then perhaps really going well the next day. And you realize that for me personally, so much of my validation is rooted in that feedback I'm getting from the external environment. Are people listening to our podcast or are people booking our workshops or whatever the case may be? And you kind of can sometimes overly attached to that as a signal of I'm good enough. No, Maura, negative self talk is certainly something that's been part of my journey as a leader, really developing the capacity to even notice that. And I imagine that this is a common and potentially debilitating experience for anxious leaders. How can we break free from this inner critic? I
[00:22:37] spk_1: think for so many of us, the inner critic is comfortable. It's habitual. The inner critic is almost our friend who's been sitting on our shoulder. And I've studied a lot about sort of habit forming, habit breaking. And I really have come to believe that for many of us, if we work on breaking the habit of instantly going to our inner critic, we can make a lot of change and she'll always come back, you know, and, and you could have a conversation with her and be like, you know, OK, maybe you're right that I'm the worst and I'm definitely gonna get fired, but maybe you're not because I have this in my performance review and I sold this many millions of hardware or whatever, you know. And so for me, honestly, and I love cognitive behavioral therapy, which I know, I think Alexis, you're a practitioner of, you know, again, the process of learning how to break the automaticity of going to my inner critic was so transformative because at least I can have a dialogue with her and tell her to buzz off.
[00:23:53] spk_2: I resonate with that deeply moa. And again, I think for me, the first or the biggest part of that challenge was actually cultivating the self awareness to realize that that mental chatter was even present so often through my day and especially through situations that of anxiety and stress and those moments of fear as well. Is that something you found perhaps in your experience working with leaders, as many of us actually aren't even aware that there's that constant voice in our head.
[00:24:21] spk_1: One of my favorite interviews that I've done recently on my podcast is with Newton Chang who's an executive at Google. And you know, Newton, he's awesome. And he's also a world champion power lifter. He holds world records. OK? And Newton had a really tough time, went on mental health leave and is very open about it. And you know, we had this funny conversation where he said, you know, my inner critic, my voice says you're lazy. It's not my parents because my parents were great. I don't even know where it comes from. But when I got in touch with it, I realized it was almost as old as I was. You're lazy. And now this is a man that nobody could call lazy. So where do we get these critics? Sometimes? I don't even know. But again, they become so much a part of us that the process of beginning to hear them and then telling them no, is just unbelievable, right? It can be really transformative.
[00:25:19] spk_0: Yeah, I think that's such a powerful insight, Maura being able to start that dialogue, as you mentioned, talking to her, I think for me, it's been quite a long journey of that first, that realization that that was even happening when it does. And just to share a personal example, recently, yesterday, we had to delay our conversation with you slightly because I was going to see Barack Obama speak. And even in the 24 hours since we had that email correspondence, you know, I've been in, particularly after reading your book, I've been really thinking about that my relationship with anxiety and I know it's been a lifelong one but just observing this immediate response, oh my God is very heightened fears around the consequences of shifting an appointment, which seems, I feel really silly saying it, but I find it fascinating to watch and I've actually got to a point where I can kind of have a smile on my face in a kind of loving way towards myself because I see that panicked response, which really goes down to, I think an underlying belief of I'm not good enough or that my worth is contingent on me pleasing everyone at all times. And so these fears that crop up when I want to, you know, maybe shift a schedule is quite amusing. I find it amusing in a kind way I think towards myself these days. But uh simply to say that bringing that awareness and being able to, I think for myself earlier and earlier allow there to be compassion towards that voice, compassion towards, as you said, that friend on my shoulder that's been there for so long that in some ways is actually very much trying to look out for me and being able to enter into dialogue with. It is actually come to be something that's quite a loving aspect of my relationship with myself. I
[00:27:09] spk_1: love that and humor is a great tactic, right? To sort of look at your anxieties and be like, really, I tell this anecdote in my book, but I had a therapist who told me to call my inner critic sweetheart, but I was really calling myself sweetheart. And she said, you know, when you're feeling that say sweetheart, is this really such a big deal or you could say my dear or whatever, maybe you have a nickname for yourself. I talked to a sound engineer recording the other day and he said, I call my anxiety frank and we have a lot of conversations.
[00:27:44] spk_2: Yeah, it's interesting because I think they do take on a persona. I know my inner critic is that very stereotypical, like furious sports coach. You know, the guy that's on the side of the pitch, like just screaming instructions at kids, getting them to do it, do it, do it don't make mistakes. Like I, my inner critic really shows up when I have a very clear fear of making mistakes, becomes really prevalent for me. That's when my inner critic is like, don't screw this up, you idiot, you know, don't train over and over and over again. And perhaps that's manifested from years of playing competitive sport, collegiate sport. I'm not too sure of where that voice necessarily comes from, but that's the inner critic for me. And it is funny because now I can sort of laugh at it as well because you realize when you witness that in the real world, like a parent screaming like venomously at a children's, you know, sporting game, you think? Wow, like this is not the World Cup calm down. And so that's kind of how I address my inner critic these days. It's like no one's watching this game. You can relax like literally no one cares if you win or lose this made up sporting match today. So yeah, it's fascinating how they show up differently, isn't it?
[00:28:59] spk_1: I love that. Yes, I played sports competitively as well and I had a lot of really mean coaches and I actually quit high level volleyball. And I think for me, that's always been a sense of you gave up, you're lazy, you weren't willing to give it what it took. It's
[00:29:14] spk_0: really interesting that you mentioned that Mara, for me, actually, the work that I do now in burnout is actually part of my self healing after the shame that I felt from having burnt out as a finance lawyer. So having been on that journey to now come full circle and discover from the research that it really wasn't my fault. Yeah, I think there's so many sort of journeys that we're on through anxiety and through maybe finding ways to build a relationship with it. So as you say in your book, you can turn your biggest fears into your leadership superpower.
[00:29:45] spk_1: Can I just say one thing about it not being in your head, Which is that, you know, mental health is super intersectional. It's intersected by all of our identities and especially in the workplace when we are other, when we are not a white man, usually in most workplaces, we are often treated critically, we're often treated like impostors. We are often given reasons to be anxious, right? And data to support this. And so what I want people to feel is not like, oh, this is all my fault. These are me and my silly thoughts. No, they are not in your head and they may be very real every day in your interactions, but you can still develop tools to help yourself.
[00:30:31] spk_2: Mm That's such an important point, Mara and it's just so valid. So thank you for sharing that. And I can't help but thinking that it goes back to almost that control piece to an extent, doesn't it? You know, what do we actually have agency over and where can we take our power and control back? But also we're acknowledging that for many of us, you know, the three of us in this conversation are women. There are very real challenges in our environment that we face in addition to the inner critic as well. And I think that you're so right, that's such an important acknowledgement for us to make.
[00:31:03] spk_0: I do want to zoom in a little bit on one of my favorite topics which is self compassion. And because I feel like this is a little bit of a through line in your book. And you refer to, you know, the work of Kristin Neff among others. And really the lens of self compassion can actually help us develop our anxiety, develop it into a superpower as it were. And I guess to almost reframe how we think of our anxiety and rather than this kind of almost us versus them, I have to squish it. I have to get rid of it. It's a bad thing. But actually how can I own and almost embrace this aspect of who I am? I'm curious what makes self compassion so powerful in this context for anxious leaders?
[00:31:52] spk_1: Well, I mean, there's a lot of research on this and I'm not a scientist, so I've just read the research. But I think, you know, it's almost that sense of we can give ourselves positive self talk as well as negative self talk and the sense of being there for ourselves and giving ourselves compassion helps interrupt the tapes. I think that that's like just on a practical level. I really look at it that way for me, you know, reframing myself. And this has been a real process because my anxiety has affected my marriage. It's affected my relationships, it's affected my kids. It's real. And even though I've been in treatment for decades and I've been on many different medications and so many different modalities. I finally had to come to a place where I loved my anxious self and I could give her compassion and I could also lessen her grip on me. But I also could come to value the fact that I'm a little bit hyper. I'm a little bit motivated by everything I vibrate at a 12, all of us all the time. It is who I am and it has led to so many gifts as well as challenges and I love the neuro divergence movement. I have really learned that it is only when we come to love our brains and our histories and all of that, that we make peace with ourselves and, and we do less in the grip of the anxiety and the depression and, and all of it.
[00:33:34] spk_2: Um I think that language of embracing that part of ourselves feels so important, Maura. And I know, you know, there is also some contemporary research now from folks like Dr Gabor Mate who talk about, you know, supporting that those parts of ourselves versus repressing or telling them they're wrong. And you know, to quote him is the myth of normal. Like what does normal look like? Should we not have these parts of ourselves or why are we telling ourselves these parts of ourselves shouldn't exist? How do we embrace them as part of the whole beautiful being that we are and learn how to be in those parts without the discomfort. And that sounds to me like the journey you've been on much like mine and probably Sally as well. It sounds like,
[00:34:20] spk_1: yeah, it's, it's a journey of integration, right? As trauma specialists would call it. And I don't mean that we should have trauma theater. I do worry sometimes that our culture of social media, you know, the relentless selling of our stories means that we have to be too vulnerable and too sort of positive with all of the terrible things that have happened. I think there's a line. But I think if you can find that internal integration, it is powerful
[00:34:52] spk_0: and I just wanna take a moment also to highlight that. I think what you've observed just there is so relevant. You know, it's something that we do need to, we can be mindful of that tendency perhaps to create theater around it or to almost externalize immediately rather than allowing exploring these things to be a very beautiful sort of process for ourselves. And I love in your book, how you also do acknowledge that it can be helpful to look at things like adverse childhood experiences and look at the past and not necessarily, you know, with the intention of getting stuck there, but simply to bring perhaps even greater self compassion and understanding to how things have manifested. So I think that's really important as well because I think there is a tendency for us to kind of skate over and go well, how can I solve it now? But I think actually having that deeper understanding can be very profound in building a healthy relationship with our anxiety.
[00:35:52] spk_1: I always tell people like you don't have to tell your story of mental health at work. It's not your job. You don't have to tell anyone you don't want to. But doing the work is really useful. Yeah,
[00:36:03] spk_2: that's a really important point. Mara, thank you for that. Now, finally, Maura to paraphrase a question that you pose so beautifully in your book. How can leaders take one small step towards freedom and mental health and joy when they feel locked in and overwhelmed
[00:36:23] spk_1: in the moment? Right? We can breathe, we can get active, we can just do anything, right as they say. But I think that therapy is so important. If you have the resources as a leader to start clearing that space, you know, you're gonna give it a lot of mental space in one way. But I think when you get to a point where you're not just operating anxiety on autopilot, you do make that space for more good things and anything that you can do to make that space is really helpful.
[00:37:04] spk_0: Beautiful Mara, I could not agree more. And I see Alexis nodding to you really and you know, share that belief very strongly also from both of our personal experiences. And I just want to thank you so much for being with us on. We are human leaders today. This has been a really beautiful conversation. We really appreciate your time, your expertise and your candor.
[00:37:25] spk_1: Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
[00:37:35] spk_0: Thank you for joining us at. We are human leaders. This conversation really meant a lot to Alexis and myself, partly because of our own journey with anxiety, but also because it is something that is so prevalent for leaders around us. If you're struggling with anxiety at the moment, you're not alone. We've included some links in the show notes of places that might be helpful for you. Of course, always feel welcome to join us as a human leader at W W w dot We are human leaders dot com. We'll see you next time.