Founders and mental health
blog.zactownsend.com
blog.zactownsend.com
"But whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, other people have it. People in the community have gone through it. Many people have gone through it, in fact."
The technical name for this is universality. It is one of the most helpful parts of group therapy. You hesitantly share what is on your mind and then suddenly discover that in a small group there are usually at least 1-2 other people that can really identify with what you are describing. For us, as founders or startup people in general, we can tell ourselves, "I'm really struggling with X right now. Okay, it is very likely that many other people are struggling with X right now or have struggled with X in the past. They've made it to the other side and I will as well. It is just going to take time."
X might be normal startup concerns like growth, retention, co-founder issues, employee issues, client issues, bugs, investor issues etc. Or, it might be more personal issues that are often tied to startups: pressure, unrealistic high expectations from self or others, stress, anxiety, depression etc. Whatever X is, there are many other people that are currently experiencing it or have made it through to the other side. It helps to know that we are not alone and we can keep moving forward by taking one step at a time!
The brain is the organ here. We all have brains that get tired, damaged, and diseased. Substituting "brain" within "mental issues", "mental problems", or "mental disorders" would go a long way toward changing how we think and address the underlying concerns. In fact, just simply talking about your concerns is therapeutic. Good friends as in effect therapists. But who would want to if they think they have a "mental" illness?
The brain is a bodily organ like any other. Let's start treating it as such - get good sleep each night, exercise often, and maintain good friendships. If all three of those are being met, and you are still concerned, absolutely talk to your doctor. But keep in mind that depression and anxiety appear to now follow from sleep disorders.
I understand the point of view; for about the first 8 years of my journey I treated it as purely a physiology problem - and I did make some progress.
But since more recently turning my attention to the concept of emotional health - particularly subconscious linked to early-life traumas - the improvement in my life has been far more dramatic.
I hope to write on this topic soon to explain my experiences in more detail.
The problem is simply shown by the vast array of medical professions trained to treat the brain: neurologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, neuropsychologists, brain surgeons, and neuroscientists. By contrast, cardiologists treat the heart.
To put into practical terms, increasing evidence is showing how sleep disorders precede brain health concerns. The role of sleep appears to be critical for trash collection at the cellular level in the brain. Yet, few on the mental health "side" treat sleep problems. You see one specialist for sleep, another for therapy, and a third for medications. The whole paradigm is stuck in a dualistic paradigm of the 19th century. Then we used to drill a hole in the head to let the evil spirits out.
Your excellent comment brought those words back to me. Thank you for that - this is a lesson that I seriously need to internalize.
By which I am not asking, do we have things to worry about. Of course we do. But do we have greater reason to worry than a single mother, a middle-aged construction worker, or a 70-year-old accountant?
Kind of like back when they might have, you know, signed up for that machine learning course with all that tricky linear algebra and stuff (which they never really learned the first time around -- perhaps because they were figuring that, like Peter Thiel, they were probably just going to drop out anyway).
Except this time around the consequences aren't about having some professor get grumpy at them, or wasting their tuition fees. It's about people -- who once considered them as friends, and trusted them implicitly -- being laid off, missing mortgage payments, having romantic partners leave them... fun stuff like that.
So "anxiety", "depression" are nice ways of saying that they've bitten off more than they can chew, and are basically shitting their pants... and praying for some higher power (an investor, an advisor, or a customer) to bail them out. Except it's not gonna happen. There's nothing going to stop their car from hitting that brick wall at 50 miles an hour this time, without a seatbelt.
So what's happening isn't that they're succumbing to mental illness... it's that they're learning, through their bodies and their minds, the way the world really works, and what impact their actions (and naïveté) can sometimes have, in terms of real consequences.
In, you know, that big scary world out there.
But I agree with your argument.
In my opinion the current strong social pressure to be a "founder" has led many people to attempt it who are unfit to handle the challenges it brings.
Its the way of nature. Attempting to lead and failing is painful and possibly fatal. If you're a lion you don't start a convention celebrating your and other beta lion's failure to unseat the alpha. You either get busy plotting your attempt, or ctfo.
What is anyone railing against anyway? Founders risk depression. Alpha chimps test extremely high for stress. If you play the game for the biggest rewards it will be brutal, full stop. If your potential upside is 50 zillion dollars, you have just run out of sympathy points with everyone but your own kind.
The point I was trying to make is what's touted as "mental illness" may be better looked at as a normal human response to the highly unusual, and extremely stressful circumstances these people have chosen to place themselves in.
That is to say: to the extent that we might subscribe to the concept of a "pain signal", and that depression and anxiety are among the various kinds of pain signals our body creates for us -- the "signal" in this case is not that they're "broken", or that something is systemically or constitutionally wrong with them. But rather, an indication of the fact that they've embarked on a course that perhaps they shouldn't have, and threatening to become (or perhaps already has become) unmanageable for them.
Getting back to the original comment and how it was received, at the beginning of your comment you make a claim that is going to be controversial. From that point on, any introduction of sarcasm will push anyone not allied with your view towards open hostility.
How do I choose between therapist, psychologist, and psychiatrist? How do I pick one therapist out of the many therapists in my city?
A therapist primarily talks to you. Teaches you coping mechanisms. Works with you to understand yourself over time -- usually sessions every week. They often work in conjunction with a psychiatrist, who is a medical doctor who can give you prescriptions. Most people, or I think most, do both -- drugs and talk therapy combined I think have proven to be the most effective through clinical studies.
I did not want to take any drugs though. That has to do partially with my own family's history of addiction but also the uncertainty in the science around the drugs. SSRIs are particularly scary to me. My Dad is a research psychologist (he has a PhD in psychology but is not a clinician) and I was very scared of those drugs, how hard they are to get off, etc. I choose to to intensive talk therapy without the drugs, which is very hard, I think, but worked for me. The human brain is very complicated and questions about the long-term effects are mostly unanswered. I didn't want to be taking an anti-depressant for the rest of my life.
As for how to find a psychologist, I always tell friends that they should go shopping. You really need to jive with the person. You need to be willing to tell them your life story and to think that you could speak with them week after week. In the two times in my life that I have had to find therapists, I've gone to five or six and basically told them about myself. From that -- which isn't so much an interview as it is a practice session -- I've chosen the one I want to work with. This can be a real pain in the ass, as you're wasting insured sessions, but I think it's worthwhile.
The practical reality of finding that list of five people: once I just asked some friends and another time I just used my insurer's database.
A colleague (from the PM office) comes in in the morning and says to my hard working co-worker (working since 7 everyday, 10 hours a day, wanting to make a career): "You look so down, what happened?"
He was just working. He didn't say "Hello" or "Good morning". Out of total lack of empathy (it seems) he was totally fully convinced that this was appropriate (I questioned him)
Our business has really hard constraints
Nobody outside of it can fully grasp it
I AM NOT SURE if therapy can help