This is me in deep burnout in 2017. On vacation. 😩

But the backstory started in 2014.

I was running a venture-backed technology company to solve a huge problem I faced as a parent — constant screen time for my children.

I never worked so hard in my life – endless 80-hour weeks, four solid months of sleeping 3-4 hours a night, working Thanksgiving and Christmas days, sacrificing my health and, ironically enough, precious family time. The nobility of my mission — I’m saving children from the evils of the internet — justified the sacrifices.

I spent the better part of three years marinating in cortisol. To cope, I was washing down a couple of Benadryls with a bottle and a half of Sauvignon Blanc almost nightly, waking at 3 AM (unable to sleep), and then on to a full day of CEO-ing. Rinse and repeat.

Several tests confirmed that my body was revolting from all the stress. At 42-years-old, I had the cardiovascular health of a 65-year-old.

On Thanksgiving Day in 2016, I woke up and couldn't move my body out of the bed. My husband had to physically move my legs from under the covers and help me stand up. Overnight, it was like I'd turned into an old woman. I went to several doctors only to find I had been having recurring flare-ups of the Epstein-Barr virus over the past year. This last flare-up, the most intense, finally got my attention. Because of the shape I was in, my immunity didn’t have a chance.

After three years of operating my company, the money dried up, the product still didn't work consistently, the team was falling apart, and I was a shell of a person. My skin was intact, but not much else. It would be another six months before I finally dissolved the company.

The experience brought me to my knees with the deepest exhaustion I’ve ever experienced. It produced debilitating burnout, depression, and anxiety, compounded by an unsettling humiliation that would take a full year to recover from.

With the help of an amazing team of professionals and mentors, I recovered. I found my way out of the unsustainable race that was (quite literally) leading me to an early death. As I’ve learned, too much stress does that. Duh.

But the most important part of my recovery was confronting deeply held (and mostly unconscious) beliefs about my worth and identity and cultural messages around “success.”

I re-examined my relationship with work. I got honest with how I abuse my body on the altar of productivity. I re-evaluated my unrealistic expectations of myself and the people I love. I realigned with my core values. And I deconstructed a belief that having needs is synonymous with weakness.

There is a better way.

Our mental health system is broken. This isn't news.

The demand is too great; the supply is too small. The economics are twisted and make no sense. Therapists and trained professionals are stripped of their power and ability to earn a comfortable living. The system (and society) have created an over-reliance on private, one-to-one models due to stigma, shame, and reimbursement. None of this is sustainable.

The emergence of LLMs and advanced AI technologies, if done ethically and with deep care, can change the game. That's what I'm betting on with Emma.

A new paradigm in mental health is emerging. It's moving us away from a treatment-based model and into a practice-based model. What do I mean by that?

The future of mental health will move away from pathologizing symptoms (medically diagnosing and treating conditions) and move toward a holistic model of well-being -one that's anchored in daily practices that regulate our nervous systems, challenge our default beliefs, and push us to re-engage with life rather than disconnect from it.

This new paradigm, most importantly, will reenlist the soul in our mental health care.

While treatment and medication are required interventions for some mental health challenges, especially to return us to our baseline functioning, they aren't required for everything. And it certainly shouldn't be our only strategy. 

If anesthetizing symptoms is our go-to strategy for mental health, we are bypassing the important messages being sent by the psyche/soul to practice a new way. Where there is suffering there is an opportunity to inspect what’s not working, realign, and take action in a new direction.

This is where Emma comes in.

Emma is being trained to:

1. Help you reflect and observe what’s not working and, more importantly, why it’s not working. What are the emotional and mental bottlenecks (mostly unconscious) you use to keep yourself from living a flourishing life?

2. Help you develop an Inner Witness to ‘clean up’ your inner monologue so that it’s based on truth and acceptance, not fear and distortions.

3. Guide you to specific practices you need in this season of your life. There is a sequence to our development and leap-frogging one stage to get to another stage usually doesn’t work. Emma is being trained to know where you’re starting and where you want to end up. It can fill in the developmental steps to scaffold you in that growth. 

4. Remind you to do the damn work. You have to practice. Knowing what to do isn’t the same as actually doing it. My years of burnout taught me this.   

There’s so much more to say, but I’ll leave it here.

My healing and recovery will take a lifetime. Every day I feel lured back into the grind. And every day I practice silence and solitude, honor constraints, find my flow, take action on what matters most, confront my inner “Pusher,” dismantle my people-pleasing tendencies, and reconnect my mind with my body. 

These are my practices.

What are yours? 

What does your soul already know that Emma can help you discover? 

I hope you’ll stick around, be a part of this journey, and find out. 

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