The Anxious Achiever
Morra Aarons-Mele
Host Morra Aarons-Mele is on a mission to reframe how we think about anxiety and mental health in the workplace. Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. We desperately need better models for leadership and a more holistic view of mental health. Our culture tells those of us who suffer from anxiety and depression that we can’t succeed, but we tell a different story — without sugarcoating the tough stuff. We feature stories from people who’ve been there and experts who can help you thrive.Listen in your favorite podcast app: https://pod.link/1480904163
Episodes
Mentioned books
Dec 7, 2020 • 39min
Lessons in Uncertainty, Anxiety, and Resilience
Journalist and author Aarti Shahani tells host Morra Aarons-Mele how she managed overwhelming uncertainty during her father’s 14-year legal battle and channeled her anxiety into productive work. Later, her anxiety also fueled her voracious drive for career success.
Nov 30, 2020 • 37min
Anxiety, Depression, and Working Moms in a Pandemic
Sociologist Jessica Calarco has been studying women struggling to balance work and parenting during the Covid-19 pandemic – and how workplaces can help. She says societal pressures, ideas about motherhood, and systemic failures are causing working mothers to suffer greater anxiety and depression than before the pandemic.
Nov 23, 2020 • 37min
Why Start-Up Culture Still Hides Mental Health Struggles
Host Morra Aarons-Mele speaks with veteran tech journalist Catherine Shu, of TechCrunch, about improving mental health culture in Silicon Valley. And Shu shares her own journey with depression, including the time she spent in a psychiatric ward as a teenager, and how she found her way from there into tech journalism.
Nov 16, 2020 • 38min
Kevin Love on Trying to Achieve His Way Out of Depression
For a long time, the NBA star hid his battle with mental health. But after a very public panic attack in 2017, he started speaking out. Love talks with host Morra Aarons-Mele about role modeling openness about mental health, how he manages his social anxiety as a celebrity, and why basketball both aggravates and relieves his depression.
Nov 9, 2020 • 35min
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and the Stress of Creativity
Aaron Harvey, successful advertising executive, discusses his struggle with OCD and the impact of the disorder on mental health. Topics include coping with pure OCD, the misuse of the term OCD, the importance of education in managing mental health crises, accepting an OCD diagnosis, and the impact of the pandemic on OCD and depression.
Nov 2, 2020 • 38min
Finding the Funny – and Embracing the Pain – of Depression
John Moe took a bold step when he decided to start a podcast featuring frank, but funny, conversations about depression. Moe was recently laid off, and his show was cancelled. He tells us how he approaches ups and downs in his career, when he seeks help, and what he does to keep everything in perspective.
Oct 26, 2020 • 38min
Success, Stress, and Money: Lessons from a Financial Therapist
Amanda Clayman, a psychotherapist specializing in financial wellness, helps her clients uncover the motivations and roots underlying their money anxieties, so they can make better financial decisions. It’s a problem she understands intimately, as an entrepreneur who struggles with financial anxiety.
Oct 19, 2020 • 40min
Why Learning to Label Your Feelings Makes You a Better Leader
Many managers and leaders misunderstand what emotional intelligence really means, despite the trendiness of the phrase. Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, urges leaders to learn to understand themselves and their teams using a Mood Meter, a tool he developed to help people explain their emotions.
Oct 12, 2020 • 39min
Notes to My Future Manager Self
Priska Neely, the new Managing Editor of NPR’s Gulf States newsroom, has always wanted to manage people, and she’s long thought about the best way to communicate and lead. As a Black woman, she’s also been writing about organizations and race throughout the past year. Neely joins host Morra Aarons-Mele to talk about how anxiety makes her a better manager and how she injects empathy into hard conversations at work.
Oct 5, 2020 • 39min
Art Critic Jerry Saltz’s Reckoning with Trauma and Anxiety
Early on in the pandemic, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Jerry Saltz wrote a piece about his unusual eating habits that grabbed the attention of many with anxiety, depression, or just Covid-related sadness. In the essay, Saltz recounts a lifetime of using food to cope with trauma and anxiety – until art helped him find a new path forward. In this conversation, he tells host Morra Aarons-Mele how his pursuit of work and paring life down to basics helped him manage trauma and anxiety and find a life he loves.
