Entrepreneurs are on the cusp of a mental health crisis. 

Anxiety. Depression. Loneliness. 

These are just as familiar as innovation, grit, and leadership. We feel the stress that comes from building something new. We carry the burden of our teams, knowing they and their families have trusted us and the vision we’ve been given.

Entrepreneurship can be heavy, but there are ways we can lighten the load.

That’s why today we’re going to highlight three expert voices that help us see how we can manage our mental health as entrepreneurs. 

We’ll start our journey with Maxwell Anderson, an entrepreneur and the publisher of the popular weekly newsletter “The Weekend Reader.” He’ll take us through some of the jarring statistics about entrepreneurs and mental health before we hear from pastor Steve Cuss and psychiatrist, Dr. Curt Thompson on the practical tools we need to care for ourselves so we can care for others and our businesses.

Episode Transcript

Joseph Honescko: All right, here's the bad news. Entrepreneurs are on the cusp of a mental health crisis. Anxiety. Depression, loneliness. These words are just as familiar to us as innovation, grit, and leadership. And even if you haven't read the articles or heard the statistics, my guess is that you experience this reality on a daily basis. You feel the stress that comes from building something new. You carry the burden of your team, knowing they and their families have trusted you in the vision you've been given by God. Entrepreneurship can be heavy, but there are ways we can lighten the load. That's why today we're going to highlight three expert voices that help us see how we can manage our mental health as entrepreneurs. We'll start our journey with Maxwell Anderson, an entrepreneur and publisher of The Weekend Reader. He'll take us through some of the jarring research about entrepreneurs and mental health. Before we hear from Pastor Steve Cuss and psychiatrist Doctor Curt Thompson on the practical tools we need to care for ourselves, our teams, and our businesses. I'm Joey Honescko, and I'll be guiding you through this episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. As we pull from conversations Rusty, William, and Henry have had on entrepreneurship and mental health. Let's get into it.

Rusty Rueff: So Max, you've hit on an important topic that is way more prevalent than maybe we talk about. Maybe it's one of those things that sort of get hidden in the corners, but you found it. Walk us through.

Maxwell Anderson: You know, in my own life as an entrepreneur, I've found this kind of funny dichotomy where on the one hand, when I'm working to start something new or build our business like I am incredibly energized and I feel like I'm doing what God has made me to do. And it is thrilling to have the autonomy and the creativity and all of that. And then, on the other hand, sometimes in the same day, sometimes, you know, the same hour of having that first feeling, I experience anxiety or I experience loneliness or experience at times what I would call depression. And so I felt this going on inside myself. And then, as I would with close friends talk, who are also kind of this similar journey, who would reveal that they are going through these same feelings. And I'm like, you know, I keep having these conversations over and over again. So I feel like it's going on. It's far more relevant, prevalent in experience than you would know otherwise. And so I started doing some digging and some reading and research on this. And to say that 50% of entrepreneurs report having a mental health condition. 50%. Every other person you meet who's doing a startup has self-reporting. They have a mental health condition that's not including the ones who aren't saying it right. Entrepreneurs are twice as likely to be depressed. So one third of all entrepreneurs, one out of every three entrepreneurs you meet is depressed or struggling or has struggled with depression. Those are enormous numbers. So it's not like, yeah, you know, some people go through this, it's a hard time. No, a lot of people go through it. And my guess and we don't need to get into the details of the study. I'm not going to critique it. My guess is it's even higher than those self-reported numbers there. But to me, it's not just a little thing. It is a very, very big thing. It's a very common thing. And when you think about it, it makes sense that it's happening.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah. You know, the entrepreneur, we've all been there. We feel like we carry the world on our shoulders in the work that you've done. Is there anything that you can, you know, put out there that helps us understand how to take some of that off of our shoulders?

Maxwell Anderson: Well, I think that how do you address it first requires saying, well, what's causing it? So the diagnosis and again, I'm not a mental health professional, but combination of the studies I've read and then just my own thinking about it, you know, I think it comes down to there's a few main drivers that need to be addressed if you want to take the world off your shoulders. So one issue is the issue of just severe anxiety. So, you know, the number of people who are searching with Google, with anxiety over the last five years, that anxiety search term has doubled over the last five years. And as an entrepreneur, like by definition, my favorite definition of entrepreneurship is going out and achieving a goal by harnessing resources that you don't control. That's money. That's people. That is production capabilities, right? You figure out how to do those things even though you don't control them starting out. But as a result of that, you're kind of always on the edge. Very rarely, the entrepreneurs who get overfunded right, you're just scraping and scrambling to make a buy. And so there's a lot of scarcity that you experience as an entrepreneur. And, you know, I read one study that when you have a scarcity mindset, like it really affects your thinking, the quality of your cognition decreases. So one study found that when subjects simply thought about a big bill that would strain their finances, their cognitive abilities plummeted by an average of 14 IQ points. Similar deficit to pulling an all nighter. Right. And by definition, that is what all entrepreneurs, they're quite literally probably pulling all nighters and they're facing this scarcity. They really are running out of cash constantly. So you have this financial risk that's creating a lot of anxiety for people, entrepreneur they are going without a paycheck. You know, they have maybe their own personal capital poured into the venture, or they're taking out credit cards. And if they have skin in the game to a degree that is severely anxiety producing. Second thing I think that is anxiety producing practitioners. Is this imposter syndrome, right? You know, you're doing something that has not been done before. Most people are telling you that you are crazy for trying to do it. Most people are telling, you no, when you ask them for money, but there you are, you're the CEO, and then someone decides to find you and you have to make all these decisions for the first time, and you feel like you don't know what you're doing, and there's no one really to tell you otherwise. And so this is a common thing. I would spend a lot of time on it. The imposter syndrome, I think a third thing that we're dealing with more now than ever as entrepreneurs, but as a culture, is an epidemic of loneliness. So we talk about this and we see this, I think, across the United States. With huge levels of loneliness, increasing drug use, of increasing isolation. Skyrocketing rates of suicide. And it is felt acutely when you're running an enterprise too. So half of CEOs say that they are lonely in their roles. And when you're lonely, you know, the new research is that if you're experiencing extreme loneliness, it has the same health impact as smoking 15 cigarets a day. It's greater than obesity as a driver of health issues. And so, you know, when you're talking about financial risk and feeling kind of imposter and in loneliness, you're doing this hard thing by yourself. You know, those are the things you need to realize is kind of root causes driving a lot of these mental health problems. You ask me to actually say, well, what do we do about it? I just told you, like, what's going on? It's problems. But I guess we could go to what to do about it.

Henry Kaestner: Well, one of the things that you come up with in the reader that I think that points towards a potential solution, uh, in each one of these, weekend readers, you take these 4 or 5 long form articles, you do an extract there along a common theme. But then the thing that I tend to like the most is the postscript. You kind of assimilate it all at the end. And I'm reading from your postscript now, we don't like talking about depression. It is by definition not fun. And though in the past few decades we've learned a lot about brain chemistry role in mental health, and we still haven't yet overcome the nagging misconception that people who are depressed are somehow weaker than others. Now this is me adding in, and no entrepreneur wants to be thought of as being weaker, right? So you don't want to admit defeat. You're supposed to lead. Everybody's looking at you. And so the concept of admitting to this depression is against what you think will help you to succeed. Okay, so it would seem that a big step towards addressing this issue is admitting that it's an issue in real time. But, you know, so many of us are taught to never talk about it. Does that compound the problem?

Maxwell Anderson: Yeah, there's a group of friends here in Denver. We get together once a month for breakfast, and we talk about our lives and pray for each other. And I told them I was recording with you guys today and about this topic, and they said, does that does that make you feel nervous? And I said, yeah, a little bit, because there is a strong strain of my history that has kind of thrived on, you know, liking people to feel like I'm successful. And I don't like to think that I've traded on that. But I think in some ways I have in my life sort of admit that I have this weakness or I struggled in this way. It's hard, I think a little bit it must feel a little bit like what it's like for an alcoholic, where a big part of the recovery process I've had, friends were going through the 12 steps, is just admitting the struggle that God's allowed you to deal with, and by admitting it and being upfront about it, instead of hiding in the shadows, you take away some of the power has over you, because there's not only there's depression itself in it, I think there's another layer on it, at least for me. But I think probably for many Christians of shame in this kind of voice, talking in your head, saying, well, if I'm really believing, if I'm really trust in Jesus, if I'm asking the spirit to really fill me, shouldn't I be experiencing a joyful spiritual life? Shouldn't that fruit be evident? And if I'm not feeling that, is it because my faith is weak? And you know, I think there's some of that I still wrestle with and think that shouldn't that be true? But I think there's another part of it that is kind of chemical. Uh, another part of it that is circumstantial, and it's in God, in his good wisdom, has allowed me and others to experience and wrestle through it as a way. Ultimately, I think, of showing us our need for him and our inability to run our own lives. But for me, it's been a journey.

Joseph Honescko: Max brings some incredible insights from his own experience as an entrepreneur, battling anxiety and depression, and also from his research. I mean, those numbers are staggering. 50% of entrepreneurs struggle with mental health. So in this next section, we're going to build on what Max shared by hearing from pastor and trauma chaplain Steve Cuss, whose book Managing Leadership Anxiety provides some great frameworks around how entrepreneurs can identify the sources of their anxiety and find ways to become free of it. Here's what Steve has to say.

Steve Cuss: Most entrepreneurs and most parents deal with a type of anxiety called chronic anxiety. That's the field that I'm trained in. And what's fascinating about chronic anxiety is it's generated by false belief. False need is generated by assumptions. So when Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, he's not anxious because he has false assumptions. He's anxious because he's facing a painful death. People in the slums of Kenya, their anxiety. They do have chronic anxiety, but that underlying trauma. It has its own rulebook. But entrepreneurs, parents, any staff environment? Thanksgiving dinner. Any. Anytime you watch a TV show. Like I get chronically anxious watching Gilmore Girls with my daughter because it just drives me crazy. But chronic anxiety is based on assumptions. So if you think about, for example, my need to be impressive, my need to always get it right. Uh, my need to never make a mistake to win over everybody I meet. These would be assumptions. These would be false beliefs. And what's fascinating about chronic anxiety is the only kind of anxiety that's contagious. That's why I wrote yours and theirs. Because in any, any group Thanksgiving dinner, staff meeting, you know, startup venture capital conversation, whatever. Because I have assumptions and you have assumptions because I have expectations and you have expectations. Anytime you break my expectations, I get what's clinically called chronically anxious. But really, chronic anxiety isn't so much worry and fear. That's a misunderstanding. It's it's reactivity. So the question is what makes you reactive? That's how you know you're chronically anxious. And so entrepreneurs workplace home place raising kids. This is the garden variety anxiety that everyone faces. I first learned about it when I was a trauma chaplain. It's changed my life. And as a pastor, that's my vocation. I'm primarily a pastor. It was phenomenal to me when I discovered that chronic anxiety is based on false belief. Then, in every real and visceral way, the gospel helps us lower our anxiety. So yeah, that's kind of it in a nutshell, and I'm happy to chase it wherever you'd like to go from there.

Henry Kaestner: Well, I mean, there's so many different places. Um, how do you process as an entrepreneur these feelings that you're having and what's a framework to be able to kind of deconstruct them in the moment? Because you just said, it's not that you're afraid of something, you're reacting to something. Give us a framework. As an entrepreneur, when we feel these waves come on to help us process real time.

Steve Cuss: A great question. You know, let's say you're an entrepreneur. You need to raise some money. You're having a meeting with a bunch of venture capitalists. That kind of anxiety is generally healthy. That would be more of a public speaking anxiety, kind of an adrenaline that you really need to do a good job. But then there's this chronic anxiety and it has five markers to it, five indicators, uh, control when you have to be in control. So the difference between that good energy of presenting well versus the need to control every outcome in that venture capital meeting. So one's control, one's perfection, the need to always do it perfectly. One is always knowing the answer when someone has a question. The fourth one is always being there for others when they're hurting. And the fifth one is people's approval. So it's control. Perfection. Having the answer, being there for others and people's approval. Every human being is triggered when we don't get up to any of these five. So if an entrepreneur is in that venture capital meeting, or maybe they're doing a job interview and trying to recruit someone or whatever the situation is, you know, a lot of anxiety is actually healthy. But when it crosses into needing to do it perfectly, you never get that false need. That's what makes you anxious is instead of saying, you know what, I did that well, or instead of saying, for example, in entrepreneur world, you know, you take a perfectionist, they believe the lie that they're supposed to get it perfectly right every time, the first time, even though they've never done it before. So they don't get that A+. And then what happens next is they end up replaying in their mind. They beat themselves up, their inner critic moves into condemnation, and they can't rest. They can't mentally rest, and then they can't be present to their loved ones because they're busy trying to attain that perfection. They'll never get another one just to flesh out, because this is one of mind being there for others. If somebody, somewhere is hurting, I have this compulsion to rush in and I think it's about that person. I even honestly, guys even blame Jesus for it. I even claim that Jesus says, you know, love your neighbor, carry one another's burdens. But what I'm not aware of is it's actually my incessant need to be needed that's being like driven rather than God actually leading me by God's Spirit to help someone. So just to get theological for you guys. The reason we get anxious is we actually reach into God's job and we start doing God's job for God so that control, perfection, having. The answer. These five are actually the five core attributes of God. So anytime we try to cross from human to God, we get anxious.

William Norvell: Hmm. I'm curious if you're leading an organization right now, what's the first couple of questions or maybe first couple of actions that you would say, hey, you need to understand this, or you need to ask yourself these questions. Where would you start if someone had, you know, hey, I'm taking this seriously, but, you know, I've only got half an hour. Really think through that.

Steve Cuss: Great question.

William Norvell: Where do I start?

Steve Cuss: Yep. And one of the challenges of entrepreneurial ism is the pressure to do do do and be efficient. And unfortunately this is not an efficient path. So if you only have half an hour I would actually say don't open the door to this. But if you have half an hour a week, then I'd say, yeah, absolutely, open the door. This kind of thinking and approach takes several months. But step one is learn to notice when you are spreading anxiety. That's it. What are the signs that you are anxious when maybe you don't even know you're anxious? The simplest way to know you're anxious is to ask somebody who cares about you, how they know you're anxious before you do. And this is especially true for entrepreneurial, mission driven, others focused leaders. We are usually the last in the room to know when we're not well. But anxiety is like poker. We all have tells and so others can see it before us. By the time a child is nine, they can tell you your anxiety tells. So that's number one. Number two is deeper is can you commit to not spreading anxiety any more? And not catching it when others are spreading it. If chronic anxiety is contagious, then if the leader can be the one to say, you know what? As much as it's upon me, I'm going to try to not spread it, and I'm going to try to not catch it. So what that looks like is usually I can tell I'm anxious because I'm blaming someone else. I'm irritated. But in systems theory, systems theory has zero interest in blame. That's another thing I love about it, because I think that lines up with the gospel. Paul says one of the fruits of the spirit is self-control. System theory says your job is to control yourself. Don't worry about other people. And so typically when I'm doing this stuff, people are always saying, oh, which gym was zero? Which Sally was listening? But really what happens is if your anxiety gets into a pattern, then what are you doing that's contributing to the pattern? So, you know, I'm always on time. I really value promptness and it'll be a simple pattern. Maybe John is always late and I tend to blame John, but I'm contributing to the problem because I'm not confronting him. So the problem is John is late. My attempted solution is act like he's not late. And then five times being late in a row, I'm now having an anger fantasy about John. I'm thinking about firing John. But I've never had the courage to just sit down and say, John, here's the deal. And so if I take responsibility for myself, rather than blaming John and say, well, what am I doing that might be contributing to John always being late? Well, here's what I'm doing. Avoiding conflict like I always do. I love to avoid conflict. Okay. I can do difficult things because of Christ. I'm going to sit down with John. And I've done this a number of times with him where I'll say, hey, there's two problems here. Problem number one is you're chronically late. Problem number two is I'm letting you get away with it. And I'm really sorry. I'm really sorry I've been letting you get away. That does not serve you unreasonably angry at you. And I don't like that because I actually like you. I'm getting really petty. Like last time you were late, John, I counted up every minute that you wasted in the room. That's how petty I'm getting. So here's the deal. I'm not going to let you get away with it anymore. If you're late again, big, terrible things are going to happen. Armageddon is going to happen. What's that like for you, John? Like, because I've not been leading you. Well, that's different than me saying, John. John, you're the problem. So systems theory tells you to really focus on how you're the problem. Those would be the two steps I would start with is how do I know when I'm anxious, and then how can I commit to not spreading it and catching it. And I guess that was step three. How do I break the pattern where I'm contributing and feeding into the anxiety?

Joseph Honescko: It's so helpful to get those kinds of practical steps. Identify when you're anxious. Commit to not spreading it and figured out how to break the pattern. It kind of reminds me of what Jon Acuff said in last week's episode, about the broken soundtracks that play in our head. If you haven't listened to that episode, it could be a good follow up after this one. But before you do that, we have one more segment here with psychiatrist and author Doctor Curt Thompson. He's going to dive a little deeper into how our brains actually work, because he specializes in this really unique overlap of neuroscience and spiritual formation. Here, he'll talk about how a deep relationship with Christ and a deep relationship with our community helps retrain our brains so that we can break the cycles of anxiety, shame, and isolation and better live out our callings with joy and peace. And if that kind of community where you're able to do that with other people is something you're looking for. Consider joining a faith driven entrepreneur group. There's absolutely no cost, no catch. But these groups allow you to lock arms with other like minded brothers and sisters who are facing the same challenges you face as a faith driven entrepreneur. You can find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org/groups. But in the meantime, let's hear what Doctor Thompson has to say.

Curt Thompson: I don't know how many entrepreneurs who are listening to this think much about emotion, but I will tell you, there's nothing that you do that is not fueled by your emotion. There's nothing that you set out to create that is not a function of you're trying to regulate emotion. And if you don't know that, then I will tell you that your emotion is going to regulate you in ways that you don't even know that it's doing often in ways that you don't actually want it to, but don't know that. But it turns out that the more you learning about the mind, the more we learn that as we talk about the mechanics, the way the mind works, it renews the very story that we've been living in in the gospel. That has been true from the beginning. And when I hear the word entrepreneur, I think about someone who is creating something. I think about someone who's building something. It's somebody who's making stuff. And to be made in God's image is to be first and foremost. God is a maker. And then he says, we're going to make humans to do what we do, which is we're going to make things and we're going to steward them. And we want to create and curate things of great beauty and great endurance, and they give life to other people. But the Bible also tells a story in which we do not live in a neutral universe. And I think it's fair to say that evil has no intention of allowing beauty to survive, and it will come to devour us. And it's what it did in Genesis chapter three, and it's what it will do with our anxiety and our depression, all these kinds of things. But we want to say that evil does not get to have the last word because of Easter and because of that. When we talk about neuroscience and spiritual formation, we're really talking about the world that entrepreneurs occupy because of anything like what they are doing in creating things. You are creating the goodness and beauty in the world that God has predestined for you to create from before the foundation of the world.

Henry Kaestner: So I'm really intrigued there. And you touched on something. I'm wondering if you might be able to go a little deeper on when. Maybe it's in the concept of neuroplasticity, but when you talk about us being just dead to sin, I just need a little more on that.

Curt Thompson: Well, I think it's important to remember that the brain isn't just some abstract thing, or just some disembodied thing, or some depersonalized organ on a stick. It's, uh, Curt does certain things. It's. Henry does certain things, it's William does certain things. And we know that our minds are designed to operate in certain ways. But, you know, we would say that, you know, it doesn't take much for us to be aware that children come out of the uterus wanting things, and then they want to make things. And by the time they're in third grade, they worry that they're going to make things in the wrong way. And so already their creativity and their longing starts to get like spliced together, if you will, with shame and with anxiety. And that part of us then, is afraid to create because of the mistakes that we will make. Now some kids will overcome this and they will continue to create, others will have more difficulty with this and their creativity will be buried. But you know one way, I'm not a theologian or biblical scholar, but, well, one way that I would say that the Bible characterizes sin is that sin is my proclivity to continually turn away from relationship. I will turn away from relationship and turn inward only to myself. And I do that in response to shame. And because I do that, I turn away from collaborative relationships. I turn away from being able to fully create, and I do it as a coping strategy to protect myself against the wounds that I've experienced. And then that very activity continues to turn me further and further and further away from people, and the further away from relationship I go, the more isolated I become, the more isolated become, the more asphyxiating it becomes to my soul. And so we become literally quite dead to God's presence. And then God comes in Jesus, and it is in our willing to take the risk to believe that Jesus really does love me enough, that I'm going to take the risk to take at least the first step out of the boat, just like Peter. And then the second step and the third step. And there can be plenty of times I'm going to look around and be reminded of the parts of me that still don't believe that, still or afraid. Only to find that Jesus hasn't left the room, that Jesus is not leaving me alone.

William Norvell: It's fascinating. And what I want to dive into off of that is we spend a decent amount of time on the podcast talking about the potential lonely journey of entrepreneurship. Right? And I use the word potential because I think that's something we've been crafting lately, is that it's a lonely journey only if you allow it to be at some level. Of course, Jesus can walk with us, community can walk with us. That's why our ministry exists, is to help people find people for that journey. So I wonder how you would speak to an entrepreneur who's either on the journey or setting out on the journey to say, here's some realities, but here's a gift of longing for beauty. And try to hold those.

Curt Thompson: Mhm. It's a great question. You know in our practice we run what we call confessional communities. And I talk about this in the book. And one of the pillars that we described in these groups is that we say repeatedly over and over that we are a people of great longing, longing for beauty and goodness in all kinds of explicit domains of our life. And we are a people of great grief. That's what it means to be human. We are both of those things. And we will be both of those things until we're dead. But life and the creative act, or being an entrepreneur takes place in the presence of both of these. Because right in between and we hear Jesus words, it says, I tell you these things, so that in me you will have peace. Because in this world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, for I've overcome the world. This sense that we were made with a longing. He's put eternity in our hearts, this longing for beauty and goodness, that we can name the things about the work that we do, that are bring us joy, that are good and are beautiful. And at the same time, we have to be able to simultaneously name the parts of our lives where we experience grief, where it's difficult. But what's most important about both of these things is that I am in a community in which we are naming all of these things together. The felt sense of overwhelm, sadness, rage, all the things that I feel. It is transformed by presence. It is transformed by my being more deeply known, by my brain, knowing that it is not alone in this. And I can move toward a posture of gratitude. I can move toward a posture of thanks. I move toward posture of of hope and imagined creativity, even in the face of things that are hard. We may say, well, Curt, like, that's not the way these things work. Like, I've got a board that I've got to answer to and I got this, I got that. And so all the things and I would say, if we don't have someone whose job it is to look after us, to be present for us in embodied ways, not in the abstract, we will not be able to continue to do the work that we are made to do, because we're made to do it in the presence of others.

Joseph Honescko: We were made to live life in the presence of others. What a way to close out this awesome episode! If you found any of this helpful, pass it along to others who might need to hear it. You can also help us out by rating, reviewing, and following the show. We publish episodes every Tuesday, and we hope that you continue to lean in with us. And if you want to learn more about organization, check out our website at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Instagram. You'll find tons of video content, group resources, and ways to be a part of a growing global movement of faith driven entrepreneurs. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you next week.

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