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Rachael Xerri: Hello, I'm Audible Editor Rachael Xerri, and today I'm thrilled to introduce Dr. Emily Anhalt, psychologist and author of Flex Your Feelings. Dr. Anhalt, known for her work with Silicon Valley tech leaders, is the founder of Coa, a revolutionary gym for mental fitness. Her audiobook offers a unique seven-step plan to develop emotional strength and flexibility, making emotional intelligence an achievable goal for everyone. Welcome, Dr. Anhalt.

Dr. Emily Anhalt: Thank you. It's so great to be here.

RX: It's so wonderful to have you here. So, the main hook for Flex Your Feelings is that it presents emotional fitness as a learnable skill, which is something that really drew me to your audiobook. What inspired you to develop this framework of seven key areas: mindfulness, curiosity, self-awareness, resilience, empathy, communication, and playfulness?

EA: I did my training for clinical psychology in the Bay Area, and as a result of that I was naturally doing a lot of my training with people in tech, entrepreneurs, high-performers. This is a group of people who probably don't identify as necessarily having mental health struggles, but they still want to level up the relationship they have to themselves and other people. I realized that there was this very dichotomous attitude about mental health in our culture where people are either seen as mentally ill or mentally healthy, whereas the truth is most of us exist somewhere between those two things a lot of the time, and so I wanted to figure out what a more proactive approach to mental health actually looked like.

So, I did a big research study, years ago. I did something called an interpretive phenomenological analysis, which is a fancy way of saying I interviewed 100 psychologists and 100 entrepreneurs and I asked them the question, “How would you know if you were sitting across the table from an emotionally healthy person? What does that look like? What does that feel like?” And out of this research came these seven traits of emotional fitness, the seven things that people are working on all the time if they want to stay in good emotional shape. So, just like with physical health, we wouldn't wait until we're sick to go to the gym. With mental health, I wanted to help people understand how they could work on their mental and emotional health now, instead of waiting until there are big problems and then confronting them later.

RX: You touched on this a little bit already, but in your experience, what are some of the common misconceptions about emotional fitness that you would like to dispel?

EA: There are many. Firstly, emotional fitness is proactive, not reactive. I compare it more like going to the gym and less like going to the doctor. Emotional fitness is not self-care, it's not just about relaxing. It's actually a workout. You're going to be a little uncomfortable while you do it, and that's how you get stronger. Emotional fitness is not toxic positivity. I think there's a lot of messaging out there that you should just push through hard times and you should think everything's for the best. And this is not that, this is about confronting the full range of human emotions that we all experience, and working with all of them. Emotional fitness is not about striving for constant happiness. I think our culture kind of fetishizes happiness, everyone is supposed to be happy all the time with their life. And that's just not actually how life works. Emotional fitness is rather about trying to strive for authenticity and balance in your life.

RX: In one of the exercises at the beginning of Flex Your Feelings, you have listeners actually rate their emotional fitness. And something I couldn't help but think about was, how do you address the potential disconnect between how people perceive their emotional fitness and then their actual abilities? And what advice do you have for those who maybe are struggling with an accurate self-assessment?

EA: Yeah, it's such a good question. Any self-assessment is only going to be so accurate because we can only see ourselves so clearly. The assessment’s definitely not meant to take the place of being in therapy or asking for feedback or listening to what other people might share with you about the way you show up. But it is a starting point. I think by adulthood most of us have some idea of how we're doing in most of these things, and the goal was at least to be able to measure how you feel like you're doing before doing the work and after.

RX: You brought up therapy and how therapy can really help us start the conversation of how to address different areas of our emotional fitness. And so I'm curious, what role does it play? And how can we really encourage others to work on their emotional health also without maybe seeming pushy?

EA: For sure. A lot of people come to me and say, "Oh, how do I get my partner into therapy? How do I get my boss into therapy?" And the truth is you really can't get anyone else into therapy. If they're not motivated to do it, it's not going to work anyway. I have probably matched almost 1,000 people into therapy at this point, and I have never convinced people to go to therapy by talking about myself as a therapist. It is always from talking about myself as a patient. I am really transparent about my own therapy. I'll tell people about the epiphanies I've had and the work that I've done, and how my life has changed as a result of therapy. I think people see me and think, "All right. Well, she's doing relatively well, and she's still benefiting from therapy, so maybe I would, too."

"Just like with physical health, we wouldn't wait until we're sick to go to the gym. With mental health, I wanted to help people understand how they could work on their mental and emotional health now, instead of waiting until there are big problems and then confronting them later."

When you want to support other people with their emotional fitness, truly the best thing you can do is to start with your own, and then just be really transparent and proud of the work that you're doing so that other people can see that it's a pursuit worth thinking about. Therapy, specifically, I call out in the book because it is just really hard to know the things we don't know, and therapy is a place where someone kind of reflects you back to yourself. It's different than friends and family who have a particular investment in you being or doing certain things. It's this objective place to kind of practice your relationships and to sort through your feelings and your thoughts, and to have someone help you recognize patterns that would be really hard to recognize on your own.

I'm really trying to dispel the idea that therapy is only for people who are really struggling. I think therapy is sometimes best used by people who are doing mostly fine because they have the resources to do this deeper kind of work that actually makes them really strong and helps them improve their life, versus just going when there's a crisis and trying to fix it.

RX: That's wonderful. And I'm going to “yes, and” your response and say that I think the way you approach encouraging others to seek out therapy by sharing your own experience just really speaks to your high level also of empathy. Empathy is something that you really emphasize as one of the keys to mental fitness, and I'm curious if you've noticed a shift in collective empathy. Obviously, you work one-on-one with people, but I found myself really reflecting on this moment in your book because I've noticed maybe people are less likely to give up their seats in public or to hold the door open, and perhaps it's just one of the holdovers from the pandemic as a result of social distancing. But I'm curious, from your perspective, if you've noticed this shift, and then more generally how we can cultivate more empathy in our daily interactions.

EA: That's such an interesting question. What pops to mind is that I feel that people are both more and less empathetic in particular ways. I think you're right, though, we're all a little less empathetic because we are coming out of this crazy pandemic, and we're not really used to peopling in the same way. A lot of us have been in survival mode for a while. I also think it's less easy to be empathetic through a computer screen. It's a lot harder to feel what other people are feeling when you can't see their face, when you can't feel the energy of what they're going through. I think we've lost a little bit of our empathy in that sense.

But then I also feel that there is a way in which empathy has increased because with social media and people kind of living out loud, we're realizing that we're really not alone in things, and we're being exposed to all of these different ways of being, all of these different personalities and neurodiversity and all kinds of things that we might not have been exposed to in the same way. I feel that people have perhaps a more expansive idea about what humanity is like as a result. So, it kind of goes in both directions.

My number one tip for becoming a more empathetic person—I define empathy as really feeling what other people are feeling. If you intellectually understand what someone else is feeling, but you're not feeling it at all, that's not actually empathy, that's sympathy. And the reason a lot of people don't empathize and don't let themselves feel other people's feelings is they're not even comfortable with their own feelings. If you're not comfortable feeling your own sadness and anger, you're not really going to want to empathize with someone else's sadness and anger. So, the best thing you can do to be empathetic to others is to get more comfortable with your own self, with your own emotions, so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming to let yourself step into the experience of another person.

RX: Thank you. That's such an insightful take, and your book is just full of them, so it's so wonderful to hear you in real time. Another chapter that really stood out to me was the one on playfulness and just having fun, even as an adult. You talk about the importance of it in early childhood development as well, but it's so often overlooked for grown-ups. Can you elaborate on its importance, and maybe suggest a couple ways for us to incorporate play more into our daily lives?

EA: For sure. That one's my favorite, too. It was the one that maybe surprised me a little, but actually feels very obvious now, how important play is. Play's just really undervalued in adulthood, and I think it's also kind of scary to be playful. We really only play when we feel safe because play is vulnerable. And when we play, our guards kind of come down, which can be scary for people who work hard to keep their guards up.

But to me, being playful means just saying “yes, and” to life and to other people. When I ask people, “When is the last time you played?” they'll normally tell me about a video game or a sports game or a board game. And those are great types of play, but I really love this idea that anytime you meet someone in a space and go somewhere together that you couldn't go alone, anytime you're creative together, anytime you're less worried about the destination and more present in the journey, you're being playful. To create anything new in the world, you have to be willing to play, you have to try on this kind of as-if quality about things. People don't realize brainstorming is a type of play, or when you take a joke too far with a friend, you're being playful.

"To create anything new in the world, you have to be willing to play."

There's so much research that shows that play is hugely beneficial in all kinds of ways. It increases creativity and productivity. But also, I read a study that showed that people who play regularly live longer by a significant number of years than people who don't play regularly. That's how important it is to us. So, to infuse more play in your life, try starting meetings with an icebreaker game or question, try saying “yes, and” to someone a few times today and seeing where it takes you. Try worrying a little bit less about where you're going, and a little bit more about how it feels to be exactly where you are right now.

RX: You brought up even bringing play into the workplace, to have brainstorming sessions during meetings. How else can leaders in the workplace foster an environment that promotes emotional fitness?

EA: So, in the play department, leaders need to be willing to be playful if they want anyone else to be playful, because we're all going to look to the leaders to see what's acceptable behavior and energy at work. So that's one thing. But my experience is, that applies across the board, that leadership needs to prioritize their own emotional fitness if anyone else is going to feel permission to do that.

One important thing to do is to look at the policies of your company and see if they promote emotional fitness. So, if you're telling everyone that they should take care of their mental health, but people are penalized if they take a day off to take care of their mental health, then you're sending really mixed signals. You need to make sure that the structure is in place to make people feel like they can lean into this practice.

There are little ways they can do this, too. Like, leaders, put your therapy and exercise on your calendar in a transparent way if you feel comfortable. Show people, "Hey, this is something I prioritize, it's okay if it's something you prioritize." That kind of thing. Trust that you are drastically improving the bottom line by investing in this. Healthy employees equal healthy returns, and the more you empower people to prioritize this, I promise you, the better it will be for your company in the long run.

RX: I love that. And honestly, some of my favorite parts of working at Audible are some of the health and wellness perks that they give us. We do a weekly meditation that employees are encouraged to join. So, I can definitely attest to the benefits of what you're saying.

EA: That's so cool. I love that.

RX: Yeah, it's so great. It's one of my favorite things about Thursdays, it's getting to start the day with a little meditation. One of the tools you mentioned in your audiobook is being able to complain without blame. How would this look in a work environment?

EA: The idea is that when someone complains it is our natural inclination to get defensive and feel like they're blaming us. But sometimes we just want to complain as a way of shedding light on a problem and recruiting help solving that problem. So, imagine you are at work and you're on a team, you're all working together, and someone looks at you and says, "We're going to be so late for this deadline." You might feel like they're saying, "And that's because of you," and you might say, "Well, I've been doing my best, and you didn't get things here on time." You get into this defensive stance. But if the person said instead, "Hey, can I complain without blame for a second?" And you were to say, "Yeah, sure, go ahead." And then they said, "I don't think we're going to make this deadline. How can we work together to shift things?" Now, all of a sudden, you've gone from a me-versus-you mentality to an us-versus-the-problem mentality, and everyone's going to be in a better mindset to try to fix that problem with you instead of being defensive against the idea that you're upset with them.

RX: Yeah. That's perfect. One of the points you make in your book that also really stood out to me was that even if we do everything we possibly can to work on our emotional fitness, and let's say everyone is doing all of the steps to work on these seven key areas, we're still going to have bad days. In those cases, what's your go-to advice for those sorts of emotional emergencies when someone's facing a challenge?

EA: I guess the first thing I would say is have some compassion. One of the biggest lessons I learned from being a therapist is that people are the way they are for reasons. You might not always know what those reasons are, but anything that makes someone frustrating or annoying or rude or overwhelming in any way, that served them at some point in their life, that protected them or was a way of surviving or coping at some point in their life. And it doesn't mean you have to tolerate behavior that's not okay, but by having compassion for it, by giving people the benefit of the doubt that they're doing the best they can, you're going to show up for them really differently. So, empathy and compassion I think is so huge.

And then I'm kind of a broken record here, but prioritize your own wellness, make sure that you are in a really sturdy place. A lot of people out there feel like they're too empathetic, that they're supporting other people too much. And empathy is not possible without boundaries. It's so important to have strong boundaries to prioritize your own emotional fitness so that you're in a position to help anyone else.

RX: Absolutely. Do you have an example of where someone should start putting up boundaries? Like where the compassion and empathy maybe need to take a pause, to reflect on if someone is really pushing your boundaries?

EA: Yeah, I imagine if you are a person who's really naturally nurturing, and people come to you all the time for support, people at work are always asking for help with their projects, the people in your life are always telling you all of their problems. If you're naturally that way, then you probably get some satisfaction from being that person. But it can also get really overwhelming. Empathy is not an endless well. And so my experience is it's a very powerful thing to practice saying, "Hey, I can tell you need support, and I want you to get the support you deserve, and I'm not resourced enough in this moment to give you that support, so let's think about where else that you might go."

"Everything you want in life is on the other side of discomfort. And so if all you're ever doing is avoiding it, then you're not going to have the satisfaction you deserve."

So that might be at work saying, "Oh, I'd really love to help you with this project, but I just have too much on my plate. Let's help you figure out who else might be able to support." Or in your personal life saying, "I love you, I care about you, I want to be there for you, and I am sort of at capacity at this moment. I want to make sure you get the help that you need somewhere else." So, there's just something very powerful about making sure people know what you actually have to offer. You are protecting your relationships by not letting people take more than you have to give. In the long run, your relationships will be a lot healthier as a result.

RX: How do you see the role of emotional fitness evolving in the coming years, especially with advancements in technology? And you touched on this earlier when you talked about how our empathy is evolving and we're connecting with each other over the internet, but where do you see us going in the future?

EA: My hope is that five or 10 years from now, a person saying that they're working on their emotional fitness is as unremarkable as a person saying that they're going for a run. Physical fitness in the form that it is now is actually kind of new. People didn't go for runs 100 years ago in the same way just for exercise, and now it's just a common practice. That is my hope with emotional fitness, that it just becomes a regular, common practice in our life that we're all doing all the time.

I think technology is going to make it both easier and harder. It'll make it easier because hopefully AI and all of that is going to take over a lot of the tasks that are using up all of our time, and we'll have more time to prioritize emotional fitness. But it'll also be harder because it's going to offer opportunities to avoid your discomfort in life instead of confronting it, and everything you want in life is on the other side of discomfort. And so if all you're ever doing is avoiding it, then you're not going to have the satisfaction you deserve. Like, an example of that is, it is less vulnerable and scary to speak to an AI chatbot about your life than it is to go meet a human, go on a date, or make a friend. But the relationship you have with another human is going to be much more satisfying than the one that you have with a chatbot. And so we have to keep pushing ourselves, to lean toward those areas of discomfort and allow ourselves to really embrace our humanity.

RX: If listeners could take away just one practice from your audiobook to start improving their emotional fitness today, where would you recommend they start?

EA: The book starts, of the seven traits, it starts with mindfulness, which I define as becoming more comfortable being uncomfortable. I started there because all of emotional fitness is going to be a little uncomfortable. If you went to the gym and you said, "I'm only going to run on the treadmill until I feel any discomfort and then I'm going to stop," then you're never going to get faster or stronger. And the same is true with emotional fitness, you have to be willing to be a little uncomfortable.

So, I would say the first thing I would recommend is make a list of the things that make you a little more uncomfortable than they seem to make other people. That might be things like holding boundaries, it might be things like prioritizing physical health, it might be things like apologizing for a mistake, or sitting still with yourself. Whatever makes you a little uncomfortable, write that down, and then practice putting yourself in those situations just a little bit at a time every day until they feel a bit less uncomfortable. Your life will expand in ways that you can't even imagine as you get more comfortable with your discomfort.

RX: Speaking of discomfort and pushing past your discomfort, you narrated your audiobook. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was like, and if there was anything that jumped out at you about your own writing while you were in the booth?

EA: Oh, for sure. It was such a cool experience. Of course, I was nervous before, I had never recorded an audiobook before. I had an incredible team who just so put me at ease. And it was so much fun. I would say the hardest thing is that by the time you're recording the audiobook, no changes can be made to the book. So, there were definitely times that I would read something out loud and say, "Oh, I wish I'd used a little bit of a different word," or something like that, and you just can't, you gotta move on. So, it's a real lesson in embracing imperfection, and it being okay that your work is never really finished, and at some point, you just have to put it out there.

RX: Well, if there were any mistakes that you felt you had spotted, I can promise that they did not come across in the finished audio to the trained listener.

EA: Thank you. You're too kind.

RX: Thank you so much, Dr. Anhalt, for being here today. And if you're listening in, you can listen to Flex Your Feelings on Audible now. Please go out and download it.

EA: Thank you so much for having me and for checking out the book.