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Goop’s Chief Content Officer on Balancing Self-Care at Work
Elise Loehnen discusses what working at a company that practices self-care really means for mental health.
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What’s it like to lead a team when optimizing self-care and emotional wellness is the point of their work? Goop, a company founded by actress Gwyneth Paltrow, explores all aspects of mental and physical health and advocates for a rarefied and often controversial brand of self-care. But does working at a place like Goop create anxiety in and of itself – anxiety to be balanced and perfect and constantly share your emotions?
Host Morra Aarons Mele speaks with Elise Loehnen, Chief Content Officer at Goop, about her own experiences with anxiety at work, how she manages employees and their mental health, and what self-care really means.
HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.
ELISE LOEHNEN: You know, in the context of trauma, sometimes we’re so protected by our amygdala, the fear response, that we don’t even know what happened, right? And so, I think you also have to assume that there are a lot of unconscious things that are driving people. But yeah, I think that remembering the inner child of each person and remembering that there’s something that’s deeply triggering in everyone are really important as you manage.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: I’m more Morra Aarons-Mele, and this is The Anxious Achiever. We look at stories from business leaders who’ve dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they picked themselves back up, and how they hope workplaces will change in the future.
You can’t really go anywhere today without hearing the phrase “self-care”. And it’s easy to make light of the concept, but when you have mental illness, self-care is key to your functioning. I always like to say, “Self-care is leadership.” As a society, we’ve come a long way in understanding the value of taking care of yourself and also in integrating many different methodologies and traditions. My children meditate every morning in their public school, which is so awesome. But in many careers, in many workplaces, success and self-care are still at odds. “Don’t complain, get the work done, ignore the pain.”
Taking care of ourselves can be seen as an indulgence, at best. I completely disagree with this, as do almost all medical professionals. Well, extreme self-care from the important to the ridiculous is the point of Goop. You almost can’t go anywhere today without knowing about Goop, the Gwyneth Paltrow-founded modern lifestyle brand that includes a blog, products, even a Netflix show. And Paltrow herself often puts her foot in it. She’s a privileged, sometimes tone-deaf, easy target in our polarized and unequal world. There’s a candle from the shop at goop.com, and it says in big letters on a rosy background, “This smells like your vagina.” It actually smells like tuberose, and it was a viral hit. Even though it was $80, it sold out twice.
Why am I often drawn to Goop, even if sometimes I think I should know better? Well, part of it is yes, the pretty, Instagram-ready feminism. But the legit part is that the editorial content and adjacent products on the site offer conventional and alternative ways to approach common problems, including anxiety. Today’s guest makes frequent appearances on The Goop Lab, a Netflix show serving as a guinea pig in everything from acupuncture to vampire facials and psychedelics.
Many listeners write to me to express how difficult it can be to work in an environment where you can’t bring emotion to work, where, in effect, you’ve got to build an armor around your feelings. And so I was really curious to talk with a leader who manages an environment where how you feel and what steps you take to feel better are key to the product. What does it feel like to show up each day in a culture where everyone actually feels pressure to be well, to share emotions, and bring their whole selves to work?
So today, we’ll be speaking to Elise Loehnen, Chief Content Officer at Goop, about how she leads and how she models good mental health for her team. Before we jump in, I want to quickly tell you two things. One, I’ll sound a little different in this interview, thanks to the technology shifts we’ve all had to deal with in the COVID crisis. And two, some good news. The Anxious Achiever is a Webby Awards honoree in business podcasts for 2019. Thank you so much to all of you out there for listening and supporting us. And without further ado, here’s my conversation with Elyse.
Well, the reason I wanted to have you on the show was I wanted to know, I mean … this is a show about anxiety and leadership, ultimately. When I watched the show The Goop Lab on Netflix, I was so struck by how open everyone was about their feelings, their anxiety, their trauma. And you had the IT team on the show, the accounting team. It wasn’t just the content team. And it was awesome to see, but I also found myself wondering if that ever gets to be a lot? You came from New York City, you came from Condé Nast and the world of publishing, which is the opposite of, sort of, “Woo-woo, let’s all feel our feelings.”
And I’m curious if it was a shift for you to be in a workplace where bringing your whole self to work is no joke. And also, how do you keep boundaries in place? Because you want people to be professional. You need people to be “boundaried” in feeling their feelings and oversharing. So, can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you keep the workplace professional while also open?
ELISE LOEHNEN: That’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, it’s very unusual. And within the executive team, we talk about it because our teams … if they didn’t bring a lot of feelings to the company, then they start to have a lot of feelings. And so, it’s interesting to manage through that. Like Kate, who was on the show in the Wim Hof episode, who’s our executive editor … and I’ve worked with her for many years … She’s very open about her anxiety disorder. “I have an anxiety disorder. I hyperventilate.” Weirdly, it’s essential to know those things if you’re going to function well as a team, because you just start to pick up on when someone is reaching a point of being overwhelmed. And then it allows you, I think, to be ultimately more productive and to help get people back from the edge of the cliff before they fall off the cliff.
I started getting panic attacks when I was in New York. And it was when I was at Condé Nast, and I was at a point in my career where I felt like it wasn’t actually a career yet. It was just a job. And I felt bullied by a coworker and that I had no choices and no options. And it was terrifying for me. And I was really struggling, and my tendency to hyperventilate was born. And that’s when I found out that my mom and my aunt also over-breathe and hyperventilate. When you do it chronically, it is quite debilitating because it’s a pattern that you can get stuck on for weeks and sometimes even months. And when it started happening, I went to the ER. I was given… I thought I was going to die, and I was given Xanax, and they sent me to a cardiologist.
I did the whole thing. I am not productive when I am in a cycle of hyperventilation. And so, it’s been the thing that has… One of the things that has really compelled me just from my own personal experience of, “How do I get this?” is that I have to be able to manage myself if I’m going to be able to manage my family, manage my team, manage at this company. And I think everyone has that thing.
And so, for companies to not acknowledge that is really a productive option because clearly, people can’t do their best work when they feel like they can’t take a deep breath or whatever it is that might be interfering. Yeah. But at the same time, it requires you to… You still have to go to work, like you still have to function.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: For managers who don’t work in an environment like Goop, would you recommend that there be a check-in time that you set aside? If an employee is struggling, is this an intuitive thing because you know them and what their thing is? Do you make check-in times? What’s the best way to set aside time so that you, as their manager, can check in with them, and then, how do you sort of keep it bounded but also give them what they need?
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah. So one thing that we do, particularly on the executive level, and I’ve done this with my team as well … although, as we’ve worked together for so long, it is quite intuitive. But we do one really good and easy intervention. And again, I would say the leader of the team should model sort of the… You don’t have to share everything, but we do red, yellow, and green signals. And you go around the room, and you just say your color. And you can say… You can choose not to elaborate. You can be like, “I’m just really red today.” You could say, “I’m really red today because my mother got a really scary diagnosis, and I am completely preoccupied and probably will be irritable. But I’m green on this other thing that’s happening at work.”
People can elaborate or not elaborate, but I think it’s just sometimes also important to remind leaders and team members that we all have lives that are complex that exist beyond the office. And that sometimes, there’s invariably going to be seepage, and we have to hold space for that. And I think, again, having ways of communicating like that is very helpful because then it also prevents people from making up stories, right? So, if I’m really stressed, or you’re really stressed, and then you bring that into the office, and it has nothing to do with work, and you’re abrupt and short with people, and then the person you manage leaves your office. And they’re like, “Oh my God, I’m going to get fired.” And people start to spiral. And so I also, at team meetings in particular, I’m like, “Is anyone making up any stories? Does anyone need clarification on anything?”
MORRA AARONS-MELE: You’ll say that? You’ll say, “Is anyone making up-”
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Do people know what that means? Is that something that you sort of teach your staff as they get to know you and the team? Making up stories-
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah. And that’s a Brené Brown intervention and invention. She talks about how in the absence of information, people make up stories. And that’s where things go viral in offices, and people start… They’re scared. And so, they’re testing these ideas on their coworkers to find out like, “Do you think that Elise’s pissy because we’re not hitting our KPIs?”
And so, I think the way to sort of get that out is if anyone’s making up any stories or feeling fearful, let’s talk about it and get it out. And then, being transparent and honest. And sometimes that requires saying, “Yeah, I am worried,” or, “It’s been a weird year, and there’s still uncertainty, but we’re here right now, and things are good.” And getting people back into their bodies and calming them down.
And it’s okay, I think, for leaders to say you don’t have the answers or that you are also concerned, but working on it. So, you can sort of be open and reassuring simultaneously.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Sometimes though, as a leader, and I think I’ve read about you that you’re the breadwinner in your family as well. And that brings so much stress. And sometimes as a leader, especially during these times, it’s really scary. And you have to sort of keep that fear separate from your team. It’s like parenting. You want to be real with your children, but at the same time, they need to know that you’re still the parent. And what do you do with your big and scary feelings as a leader?
ELISE LOEHNEN: So I try to… I really believe in therapy. I think even if people aren’t necessarily dealing with a crisis in their life or feel like their relationships are really strong, I still think it’s good to have a therapist if you can afford it. And so, I like to think of my therapist as the person who holds my hair and pats me on the back while I have an energetic anxiety barf. I just unload. It’s like, trying on all of those things, I do it with him. And then he holds the space for me and challenges me, and we talk through things.
And I can do what… Another really important person in my life, she’s a psychologist and an astrologer named Jennifer Free. And she’s just the best and so reassuring and also wise and realistic. And she, with me and my anxiety, was like, “You can also, when these things happen and they’re scary, take them all the way to the end.” She’s like, “And if that happens and then what? And if that happens and then what? And then if that happens and then what?” Until you get to the point where you’re like, “Okay, I can accept whatever the ‘and then what’ is.”
Sometimes, it helps to catastrophize and just, you can do it either with a therapist, with a friend, with your partner, even if it means like, “Okay, you have to just let me sound a little crazy and express all my fears. And I don’t want you to respond. I don’t want you to problem-solve. I don’t want you to reassure me. I just need to get this out.”
MORRA AARONS-MELE: I’m curious if in an environment where people are much more open about what triggers them, especially in terms of their anxiety, if there’s a different way you handle criticism and confrontation or feedback. Something that I’ve experienced myself is, as a very anxious person and I’m working on this, I run away from feedback and criticism because I’m so scared of it. And I globalize it.
So talk about how you use, as a manager, knowledge of your team’s triggers. Because … I’ll give you an example. I have a friend who ‘s very open. She’s open about her… She went through severe childhood trauma, and certain things trigger her. She feels very much like she will be left. She will be abandoned. She will be cut off. And so, she has found it helpful to share that with her team, not as a way of asking them to protect her, but just as a way of saying, “You know what? If I act this way, it’s not about you. You should know this about me.”
ELISE LOEHNEN: I love that. I think that’s so powerful. And I think it often requires work. Not everyone is equipped for that. Not everyone really understands their inner child. My inner child is about safety and security and never feeling safe and secure. Gwyneth’s is never feeling lovable. It’s hard to… People need to do a lot of work to figure out exactly what that is, because I think a lot of people are very unconscious about their triggers.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Do you know the triggers of the executive team and your team? Like you just rattled off Gwyneth’s. I’m just curious. Is that something that you have?
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah. I love Myers Brigg. I know Gwyneth’s, and I can intuit the other people on the leadership teams, just from having spent a lot of time at offsites. And when we do off-sites, we do a lot of that work. We talk a lot about inner child stuff in order to be able to relate better and to know where people are coming from. So, it’s not consistent across every… We have a pretty big leadership team, but I pretty much know people’s stories or the stories that have really shaped and informed them.
I think sometimes too, in the context of trauma, sometimes we’re so protected by our amygdala, the fear response, that we don’t even know what happened. Right? And so I think you also have to assume that there are a lot of unconscious things that are driving people. But yeah, I think that remembering the inner child in each person and remembering that there’s something deeply triggering in everyone are really important as you manage.
And you know what I will offer, if you don’t know that, for building relationships, is that in terms of feedback and having those harder conversations, one thing that we do is practice. It’s a practice called “speaking straight and listening generously.” And the idea of speaking straight is what it seems, never with the intent to harm or be cruel, but rather to be clear and transparent, because that’s what’s kind. And then listening generously is listening with the goal of your mind being changed. So, the way that it works is if you’re having a feedback conversation, you say to the person, “Oh, I need to speak straight to you about something,” which obviously is scary, right? And then that’s an immediate cue that you need to listen generously. And so, you sort of have to relax into it and not respond or defend, and just listen, and try to understand that person’s point of view first, before you move to shut down the conversation.
So, it takes practice, and it’s scary. And we practice and model it with each other, but it’s really helpful because otherwise your immediate response when someone comes at you with feedback is to defend and to get scared. And I think you can also give feedback by acknowledging the way that you know that the person operates and acknowledging if someone’s resistant to new ideas, for example. And if it’s getting hard for the team, you can say like, “I know how much you feel like you need to control situations. It’s one of the things that makes you so incredibly valuable. You never drop balls, and you always get things done. And you’re one of the most reliable people at the company. I just want to point out that sometimes it can make you resistant to other ways of doing things and other people’s ideas. And that’s just… I just want to flag that for you so you can be conscious of it moving forward.”
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Oh, I love that. I think that learning resiliency through tough feedback is something that no one ever teaches us. And I wish we learned it in college. It would have helped.
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah. And I think it starts with how we’re parented, right? And it’s a certain amount of resiliency that’s required. And that also tends to… Things don’t have to get so bad that people leave or feel compelled to quit. I think even conversations around maybe this job not being the right job for someone can be positive, not to sound Pollyannaish. But I think that there’s so much negativity and fear wrapped up in those conversations. And there’s always this idea from employers that by letting someone go or whatever, that you’re depriving this person of the best opportunity of their life, where in reality, I think what often happens, particularly if it’s done well and the person truly is not a good fit or living their purpose or… It can be the best thing. It’s scary, of course, but it can be the best thing. It’s a gift.
And employers, I think are too sanctimonious really, about being like, “This is terrible for this person.” When, in reality, if you do it well and with kindness, and you’re like, “This is clearly not the right thing for you. And I don’t want you to waste years of your life doing something that’s not right for you.” That can be a very mutual… It can be kind of a mutually loving experience. And typically, people then go on. It just changes the relationship in a way that I think is so much more productive.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Elise, I want to ask you about something else. I was listening to another fabulous podcast by Jessi Hempel, and you were on her show, Hello Monday. And you talked about your mom’s “bag lady” anxiety. My ears perked up. I also grew up, my mother, God bless her still, horrible, horrible anxiety about ending up with nothing as a woman. And I think you said your mom was so, sort of, legendary. She actually went on The Phil Donahue Show to talk about this.
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yes.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: But can you talk about that and then how that has affected you and your relationship with money at work?
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah, I mean, it’s a big deal for my mom, and to this day … this is every time I talk to her … she asks me if I’m going to lose my job. That’s the level of her anxiety for my future and my kids. And it’s very hard for her. And she, again, is someone who doesn’t have a therapist. It would be profound for her to have someone to get all of that anxiety out. But yes, she grew up… Both of my parents grew up with scarcity, and my mom grew up the oldest of seven kids in Iowa and did have food scarcity, and they got through it, of course. But she just grew up very uncertain, and it stuck with her. I think just that fear, that foundational fear around safety and security … As I said, that’s my thing, right?
That’s what she… That was one of my inheritances. And in some ways, it’s been a gift because it drives me, and it’s driven me very hard throughout my early life. My dad doesn’t operate like that, but my mom is constantly on it, with both me and my brother. My brother is not as infected by it as I am now. I’d say in the last five years, like 10 years maybe, really after a point in my life where I was like, “Okay, I have a career, and I can do this. I’m good at what I do. And there is a need for this in the world. And it aligns with what I think my purpose is.” It was really only then … Even though I don’t have, sort of, endless financial security, we have a perfectly nice life, et cetera.
We’re not rolling in it, but it’s good. It’s only then that I could really start the work of putting that down and understanding that it was not serving me. This do, do, do, do, do, do is not sustainable. And I have got to learn how to be and trust the universe. And honestly, this might sound delusional to some people, but I was talking to an intuitive, who’s a friend. And she was like, “Money is not your issue in this lifetime. That is not what you’re here to learn.” And just that alone was so helpful because it helped me transition again, maybe delusionary, into this place of having more faith in the universe and really having foundational faith in myself that it’s not… That is not my thing. And I can feel that. It’s easy to poke that bear with a stick, but yet I’ve gotten very good at reminding myself, “That is not your thing.”
I’ve always been able to make it rain somehow, and I know that I can continue to do that. And then now, it’s become more about controlling that and not operating from a place of fear because when I operate from a place of fear… I’ve co-written books my whole career, in addition to having a full-time job. And it was amazing. It helped me buy a house, et cetera. It’s been an amazing mechanism for me to feel safe and secure. And I’ve met some extraordinary people doing it. But when I operate from fear, it’s when my agent will be like, “Hey, there’s this random project.” And I’m like, “I’ll do it.” And she was like, “Really? Why?”
MORRA AARONS-MELE: Because you’d be staying up all hours and trying to squeeze in ghostwriting a book in addition to your very busy full-time job and kids and da, da, da.
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yes. Et cetera. It’s not necessary. But I will. I’ve done that in the past where I’m like, “I operate from that fear place.” And now it’s like, I’m just constantly wrestling it down and constantly reassuring myself that, yes, if it comes to that, I can always do that, but I don’t need to do it just because I can. That distinction, like, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
And I think for people who suffer from that anxiety, it’s very powerful to figure out what that could look like for you, what those safety nets are, so that you can reassure yourself, but not necessarily feeling, as I’ve done. I’m not a good example of this, of pulling on the safety net all the time when I don’t actually need the safety net, but it’s hard. It’s a process.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: So, my last question for you is I know you tried on the… When I was watching The Goop Lab, you had a lot of experiments in dealing with your mental health and dealing with your feelings, your trauma, everything. You tried psychedelics; you tried all kinds of modalities. What modalities are you interested in right now? What’s on your radar for anxiety or even, specifically, panic and breathing?
ELISE LOEHNEN: Yeah, I mean, we did, as you saw, an episode on psychedelics, and not to be Pollyannaish, but I do think that plant medicine and the experiences we’ve had this year are going to be profound healing tools to remind us of what’s essential and what really truly matters. And again, to unearth those little kids in all of us that drive our behavior when we’re really in fear. And I think that what we’re going to experience as a country, and as a world, is that we are all being traumatized. We are being traumatized by what’s happening currently, how it will continue to unfold for a long time. And also, I think it compounds previous trauma that we’ve all had. I don’t know anyone who isn’t traumatized, even if they don’t even recognize it as trauma.
So, I think that what we’re going to find is that people are going to be reaching for tools, simple tools, that will start to, sort of, get past the layers of this year and then into the deeper work so that we can also be kinder and better neighbors and more compassionate. And, again, just operate a little bit more consciously. And the things that I think are most… I think psychedelics are one incredible tool for that, and for trauma and PTSD. And they’ve been very instrumental for me in the last year since making the Netflix show. But I think that they’re just one tool in the kit.
I think that James Gordon, for example, who is the founder of The Center for Mind Body Medicine … Numerous presidents have consulted him, and he travels all over the world, working with traumatized communities, whether it’s post-fire or earthquake or whatever it might be. I was talking to him yesterday, and there are really simple tools. His book, The Transformation, is a must read for everyone. It’s about soft belly breathing, which is just relaxing your stomach. And as you breathe in, you think soft, and as you exhale, you say belly, internally or not. And you just… It’s very relaxing. And then I think it’s going to be a question of moving our bodies and really getting it out. He does shaking and dancing, which is literally shaking like an animal and dancing for five to 10 minutes, or the hypnotic breathing, which is moving your arms like a bird really frantically. It’s sort of, it’s similar to Stan Grof’s holographic breathwork, which you do on your back.
But I think that we’re going to start, as a community, doing these things together and alone. And I think that people are just going to get it out of their bodies. I think it’s going to be a forcing mechanism for a lot of us. We can’t operate like this on any level, and we have to learn how to get it out, understand it, know what it is, know what we’re working with, acknowledge what’s inside of us, and then heal it. It’s going to make all of us better and kinder and wiser.
MORRA AARONS-MELE: That’s it for this week’s show. If you like what you’ve heard, tell a friend or rate us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a question or a topic that you’d like to see featured on the show, you can email anxiousachiever@gmail.com or tweet me @morraam, that’s M-O-R-R-A-A-M. Many thanks to Mary Dooe, my amazing producer, and the team at Harvard Business Review. And of course, to our advertisers who keep us going and to my guests. And if you like The Anxious Achiever music, it’s by Brian Campbell at Signal Sounds NYC. From HBR Presents, this is The Anxious Achiever. I’m Morra Aarons-Mele.