Emotionally Fit

Many of us have trouble asking for exactly what we want. But in today’s Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by author Melanie Ho to talk about taking the risk anyway and making the ask, because people aren’t mind readers and they can’t help you get what you want if they don’t know what that is. Tune in now for a helpful discussion on how to determine what you want and how to go about asking for it.

Growing up in a Catholic and Filipino family, Jo Portia Mayari didn’t talk about sex. Today Jo joins Dr. Emily in this Taboo Tuesday discussion to share how she went from feeling clueless and closeted to being named one of Arianna Huffington's top 20 health and wellness role models on a mission to help women build their sexual wealth. From struggling with her own sexual trauma at a young age to wanting to be a more body-positive role model for her kids, Jo doesn’t hold back in this episode. Tune in now to hear this deep dive into sexuality, self-pleasure, and how to talk about sex with your kids.

Sometimes we forget to make space for new parts of ourselves to develop. And while this certainly applies to our sex lives, it’s also true for our professional lives, our friendships, our hobbies, etc. Jo Portia Mayari joins Dr. Emily in today's Emotional Push-Up to talk about how we can consider the things we’ve put on autopilot in our lives, and work to discover new needs and desires.

Anything that can be used to enhance life—think video games, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc.—can also be used to escape life. In today’s Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by Alaine Newland to talk about how to recognize the line between celebrating and coping and why it’s best not to conflate the two.

Conflict is uncomfortable, especially when it's with someone we work with or care about or otherwise depend on. So unsurprisingly, many people go to great lengths to avoid conflict. But in this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily and her guest and fellow podcast host Lindsey Metselaar, (We Met At Acme) agree that conflict is as important to a relationship as exercise is to a muscle and what actually matters is focusing on how you repair after a conflict arises. Tune in now to hear how to move past conflicts in a healthy way.

Love and sex addiction aren’t issues people talk about regularly. But this week’s guest Mason Spector, co-founder of the clothing brand Madhappy, doesn’t shy away from sharing his struggles with Dr. Emily in this Taboo Tuesday episode. From infidelity and seeking self-worth through the attention of others to rehab and starting a clothing brand rooted in mental health positivity, Mason shares it all. Tune in now to hear why he says all men need to get honest with themselves and their loved ones about their own struggles with mental health.

Have you ever heard the idea that the things we dislike about others are the things we dislike about ourselves? Well, Dr. Emily says that while that’s true, it’s more complicated than it sounds. In this Emotional Push-up, she is joined by Mason Spector, co-founder of the mental health clothing company Madhappy, to work through an exercise that can help us better understand what is happening when we are feeling annoyed, frustrated or judgmental with others. Tune in now to learn what the three J’s are and how you can use these tools to work through an issue.

We’ve all had bad days. Bad years. Bad fights. Bad jobs. Hard losses. And in this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily isn’t going to tell you that it’s all going to be ok. Nope. Instead, she’s going to tell you to feel it. Because sometimes it’s better to let yourself feel shitty than it is to push your feelings aside and move on too quickly. Co-Founder and CEO of Nira, Hiten Shah, joins this episode to talk about how a more realistic outlook helped him deal with a particularly tough time in his own life.

Have you ever tried to make an important decision with a colleague, romantic partner, friend, or family member, but gotten completely stuck? In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by her co-founder and Coa’s CEO, Alexa Meyer, to share an effective, proactive tool they’ve used to get through decision impasses.

Doctors go to the doctor, yoga teachers take yoga classes, and yes, therapists go to therapy. In this Taboo Tuesday, best-selling author of the book “Maybe you Should Talk To Someone” and psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb joins Dr. Emily to discuss all things therapy, from why people often wait too long to start, why the stigma around therapy is tough to break, even for therapists, and why our friends don’t necessarily make the best substitutes for help and support from a professional. Listen now to find out how to avoid having your own emotional heart attack.

Why is it that we often forget what someone said but not how that person made us feel? In this Emotional Push-Up, Siri Srinivas, investor at Draper Associates, joins Dr. Emily to explore how we can tap into our emotional memories and control our moods and mindsets for the better. Tune in to learn how to better flex this emotional muscle!

Dr. Emily is back solo in this Emotional Push-Up to share some of the best advice she’s ever received: in order to handle life’s uncertainties you have to trust that your future self can handle future problems. Listen now to hear just how powerful this advice can be and how you can use it to alleviate some present anxiety.

Have you ever finished a book you didn’t like because you had already put time into it? Or stayed at a job that wasn’t right for you because it was hard to imagine starting over? In today’s Emotional Push-Up, Neil Devani, founder and managing partner of Necessary Ventures, joins Dr. Emily to talk about the decisions and situations we hold onto, even if they’re not right for us, because of the time, money, or resources we’ve invested into them. Listen in to practice approaching these situations a little differently.

Death is the most guaranteed part of life, yet it’s a topic most people avoid thinking and talking about. In this Taboo Tuesday discussion, Shoshana Berger, co-author of the book “A Beginner's Guide to the End,” joins Dr. Emily to talk about how her father’s prolonged death changed her perspective on death and dying. After seeing firsthand how difficult and overwhelming the process was, Shoshana set out to explore various aspects of end-of-life care, from navigating the healthcare system and hospice to green burials and the various and strange ways grief works. Listen now to hear why you should be thinking and talking to your own loved ones about death.

For Dr. Emily, a difficult realization of adulthood was that every decision we make means having to grieve the loss of every decision we can no longer make as a result. In this Emotional Push-Up, Shoshana Berger, global editorial director at the design firm IDEO, joins Dr. Emily to talk about how growth and grief are intertwined and how learning to grieve is an important skill for ongoing emotional health.

Have you ever made an assumption about what someone else is feeling or thinking and then found out you were way off? All too often, our assumptions about others reveal more about us than they do about them. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by brand marketing lead at Heard and founder of Fulwiler Media Michael Fulwiler to explore the meaning we assign to other people's words, intentions, and actions in order to better understand ourselves.

Nothing lasts forever—the good or the bad—so learning to be present in the moment is a core skill of emotional fitness. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by Karan Singh, COO at Headspace and Co-Founder of Ginger, to highlight the importance of mindfulness to weather all that life brings our way: fully soaking in the joy while we have it and trusting that the tough moments won’t last forever.

It can be hard owning up to mistakes, but President and COO of Athletic Greens Kat Cole says that the more comfortable we can get with things not going perfectly, the better we’ll be at taking risks and trying new things. In this Taboo Tuesday episode, Kat and Dr. Emily discuss mistakes, loss, and grief and how to balance all of the above while also carving out a successful career. From asking for help to enduring a miscarriage, Kat doesn’t shy away from talking about her own experiences, including what she says was the worst mistake she ever made in her career and how she worked to turn the situation around. Tune in now for this thoughtful discussion on how to be honest, open and resilient in work and life.

Any relationship or experience that has taught us something about ourself is a relationship or experience that was worth having or doing. In this Emotional Push-Up, President and COO of Athletic Greens, Kat Cole, joins Dr. Emily to talk about the beauty in impermanence and how to make peace with things coming to an end.

It can be really hard to reach out and ask for help and support. Some people have trouble with this because they want to see themselves as competent and having it all together. Some people worry that asking for help will reduce the amount of control they have in a situation, and some people weren't given a lot of support or help with things early in life and find it hard to ask for help now. Angel investor Maia Bittner joins Dr. Emily in this episode to work through some steps that we can all take to get more comfortable asking others for help and support.

Envy and jealousy are natural feelings that we all experience - sometimes we worry deep down that there isn't enough happiness and success to go around. Comedian Alexis Gay joins Dr. Emily in this Emotional Push-up to talk about the concept of compersion, i.e. taking joy in others’ happiness and success. So take a deep breath and come flex this important emotional muscle with us!

Chris Messina has over a hundred thousand followers on Twitter, but he wasn’t thinking about that when he accepted a challenge from his partner to be more vocal about his sexual desires, and updated his profile to include a personal goal of giving her more orgasms. Cut to the following day when people were shocked to see that this tech leader credited with inventing the hashtag had posted something so personal in such a public way. But for Chris, this event was a turning point for him in speaking more freely about sex without fear or shame. In this Taboo Tuesday, Chris talks to Dr. Emily about his journey to accepting himself as a sexual being and navigating a world where many people are not comfortable talking about sex openly.

So much of what we do in life is in service of avoiding discomfort. We avoid tough conversations. We avoid challenging the status quo when we know we could do better. We turn to drugs and alcohol to avoid facing other uncomfortable realities. But unfortunately the things we do to avoid discomfort often end up leading to more discomfort than the original thing we were trying to avoid in the first place. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to Chris Messina, credited with creating the hashtag, about why the most effective path to emotional growth is to become more comfortable being uncomfortable

Let’s talk self-talk for a minute. Executive coach and investor, Micah Baldwin, joins Dr. Emily in this Emotional Push-Up to discuss how to summon some self-compassion to have a conversation with our tough inner critic. Grab a pen, some paper, and a tissue - this one will be a heavy lift.

In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is going solo and walks us through a five-step process for taking in critical feedback thoughtfully and productively.

In this Taboo Tuesday discussion, author, illustrator, and mental health advocate, Jordan Sondler, joins Dr. Emily to talk about what it was like going public about therapy and working on her mental health in her book, "Feel It Out: The Guide to Getting in Touch with Your Goals, Your Relationships, and Yourself." Sondler says that what started as an illustrated book for single people on how to survive a break-up turned into a book for every single person that covers many of life’s challenges from strengthening self-awareness to how to adopt a dog.

One important hallmark of mental health and emotional development is the ability to exist in the gray. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by author and illustrator, Jordan Sondler, to discuss why we tend to label things as right or wrong, good or bad, black or white, when the truths of life almost always fall somewhere in between.

What traits and behaviors make you feel connected to your family, friends, and loved ones? In this emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks about a concept she calls our Currencies of Closeness with guest Tommy Kuntze, VP of Product & Design at Rhumbix. Our Currencies of Closeness are the things we felt we had to pay to receive the love and attention and recognition we needed in our families, and we’ve all had both positive and negative versions. Tune in to explore what currencies you may still be paying and what currencies you may just want to leave behind.

How have you been juggling work, life, and everything in between during this 7-layer dip of insanity that the world’s been serving us for the past few years? In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by the Community Manager of Morning Brew, Kyle Hagge, to talk about institutional transference, a concept that explains how we sometimes act out feelings about one part of our life in other parts of our life. Tune in to explore where this might be happening in your life!

James Beshara, an angel investor and the founder of Tilt, a crowdfunding company acquired by Airbnb in 2017, used to drink seven. cups. of. coffee. a. day—a habit that landed him in the ER with a racing heartbeat of over 170 beats per minute for three weeks straight. That turning point in James’s life led him down a rabbit hole of research on coffee, caffeine and alternative ways to boost productivity and heal, a search that included plant medicine. In this Taboo Tuesday, James talks to Dr. Emily about his first experience with psychedelics, and the effect it still has on him today.

Going from never meditating to becoming a “good” mediator is a bit like going from never lifting weights to becoming a bodybuilder. It takes time and consistency (and lots of reps!) to build the habit. In this Emotional Push-Up with Coa's Lead Product Engineer, Scotty Eckenthal, Dr. Emily explores the process of creating a safe and calm space within oneself through meditation. Tune in and let’s meditate together!

Asking for feedback (both positive and constructive) is not an easy thing to do. VP of Marketing at SparkToro, Amanda Natividad, rejoins Dr. Emily on the show to discuss self-awareness, self reflection, and the scary but powerful act of asking for feedback.

How much sharing is too much (or too little)? Today, Dr. Emily is joined by Coa CEO, Alexa Meyer, and StudioPod Cofounder, Julian A. Lewis II, to talk about how to avoid an emotional hangover with the help of boundaried vulnerability.

In October 2020, Business Insider bought a majority stake in Morning Brew—a popular business newsletter with over 2.5 million subscribers—for a reported $75 million. At the time, Morning Brew cofounder Alex Lieberman was just a few years out of college. In this Taboo Tuesday, Alex talks to Dr. Emily about his complicated relationship with money and the growing anxiety it caused him following the successful deal with Business Insider.

Hey there, Fit Fans! We’re changing the cadence of episode releases over here at the Emotionally Fit podcast. Episodes will now drop twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday. We’ll continue to run Emotional Push-Ups every Thursday, and rotate between Push-Ups and Taboo Tuesdays on Tuesdays. See you all tomorrow to flex those feels!

If we don’t love ourselves, then how is anyone else ever going to love us, right? Well, Dr. Emily says that’s bullshit. In this Emotional Push-Up, she is joined by Morning Brew cofounder Alex Lieberman to talk about this well known but questionable trope about self-love and a healthier way to approach the journey that is learning to love ourselves.

It can be hard to accept a compliment. Perhaps we’ll come across as conceited if we do. Or maybe we’re so tough on ourselves that compliments don’t resonate or feel genuine. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by Emotional Fitness Instructor at Coa, Karin Gold and shares a step-by-step method to help us all get a little more comfortable accepting compliments.

Raise your hand if you’re extremely burned out. Oh, everyone? Us too. Today we’ll practice Dr. Emily’s three-step push-up to prioritize rest and prevent burnout, along with NessLabs founder Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a PhD researcher investigating how different brains learn differently.

Hollywood actress and podcast host, Alessandra Torresani joins the show to talk about living with Bipolar I Disorder in Hollywood, discussing everything from being misdiagnosed and discouraged from revealing her condition publicly to finally opening up on set about her struggles and starting her own podcast.

In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to longtime friend and Hollywood actress, Alessandra Torresani, about taking the time to notice, honor, and enjoy the small things that go right in life, i.e. celebrating the small wins!

Have you ever lost a houseplant because you forgot to care for it? How about a friendship? Taking care of our friendships can be a lot like taking care of our plants. Join us in this Emotional Push-Up with Kyle Hagge from Morning Brew to talk about how to maintain the friendships in our lives.

Supporting the success of others might be tough at times, but not because we don't care. In this Emotional Push-Up, Coa’s own Pallavi Yetur sits down to talk with Dr. Emily about scarcity mentality and how to replace it with solidarity, elevating others, and paying it forward - because it's more fun and fulfilling when everyone is at the top together!

When was the last time you really played? In this Emotional Push-Up with Coa Class Operations Lead, Kaily Thompson, Dr. Emily explores the benefits of play and of taking a ‘yes, and’ approach to your work and relationships. Tune in to learn how you can incorporate more play in your life, and hear Dr. Emily and Kailey play one of their very favorite games.

In 2016, Sunil Rajaraman wrote a satirical essay titled ‘This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley’ for the tech-heavy, San Francisco-based online magazine The Bold Italic. Within days the article chronicling what it’s like to live and work in Silicon Valley was trending on social media with hundreds of comments and nearly a million page views. In this Taboo Tuesday, Sunil tells Dr. Emily how the story came about in the first place and about how he suffered paralyzing anxiety attacks as a result of the overwhelming public reaction to it.

Sunil Rajaraman, VP of marketing at GoodRx, joins Dr. Emily to discuss the importance of rest and the mixed emotions that often come with trying to unplug in this Emotional Push-Up. Listen now as Dr. Emily and Sunil walk through the steps of how to maximize and protect our downtime without feeling guilty about it!

In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily is joined by the Head of Emotional Fitness at Coa Dr. Vaneeta Sandhu, to explore the idea that our relationship with food may offer some insights into how we were loved and how we love now. Listen in to hear about how we can be more intentional about the food we eat and the ways we show and share love.

StudioPod co-founder Julian A. Lewis II joins Dr. Emily in this Emotional Push-Up to talk about our gut instincts. While it’s considered standard sage advice to ‘trust our gut,’ Dr. Emily says there’s more to it than that. Listen now to hear why she says we should all be a little more discerning about what our guts are telling us.

We all have complicated relationships with social media. In this Emotional Push-Up, Dr. Emily talks to Emmy-Award winning TV Producer and therapist-in-training Jesse Zook Mann about his own intentional approach to social apps and the steps we can all take to bring some emotional fitness to our digital lives.

Bestselling author and Director of Relationship Science for dating app, Hinge, Logan Ury joins the show to explore talking about mental health and therapy on a first date. Logan also discusses vulnerability, pandemic dating trends, and her book How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love. Listen now to find out why opening up about your mental health might just be what gets you a second date!

Logan Ury, Director of Relationship Science at the dating app Hinge and bestselling author of How to Not Die Alone: The Surprising Science That Will Help You Find Love, joins Dr. Emily for an emotional push-up on asking directly for what you want and need. We can’t read each other’s minds and we don’t all want the same things, so the best way to receive the attention, affection, and recognition that you want in your relationships is to speak up and let others know exactly what you need.

I invited Amanda Natividad of Spark Toro to a Champagne Problem Pity Party, and you’re invited too! Join us as we talk about our tendency to downplay our struggles and why there is room to empathize with others while still acknowledging our own pain.

Many of our fears as adults are holdovers from childhood. As a child, you likely had limited choices around what your life looked like (for example, it might not have been possible to remove yourself from an unsafe environment or to find friends who felt like a good fit). The good news is that as adults we have new tools and choices to design our life and to confront our fears. In this Emotional Push-Up featuring PR expert Courtney Hamilton, we explore how we can put ourselves in healthier situations and face what we’re afraid of head on.

What do we do when our greatest strengths turn on us and become our greatest weaknesses? Basketball All-Star Kevin Love knows a bit about that and talks with Dr. Emily Anhalt about how to turn it around in this emotional push-up!

Basketball All-Star Kevin Love joins the show to talk about starting therapy after dealing with a very public mental health crisis during the NBA playoffs in 2017. Kevin shares what motivated him to take care of his emotional fitness and sends a shoutout to other athletes who have inspired him. We also explore the stigmas in professional sports and why Kevin believes vulnerability actually creates stronger teams.

Welcome to your gym for mental health with psychologist Dr. Emily Anhalt. Staying emotionally fit takes work and repetition. That's why this podcast delivers short, actionable Emotional Push-Ups every Monday and Thursday to help you build a better practice of mental health. We'll also share surprising, sometimes funny, sometimes shocking conversations on Taboo Tuesdays, because the things we are most hesitant to talk about are also the most normal. So join us to kickstart your emotional fitness. Let's flex those feels and do some reps together! Emotionally Fit is brought to you by Coa, your gym for mental health. Head to joincoa.com to learn more.