There was an interview where you mentioned dealing with anxiety and depression in your younger years. Would you mind sharing what that looked like?

Sure – when I was around 6, I was first diagnosed with generalized anxiety, but never was really entirely sure what caused it. Maybe I was just predisposed to anxiety, as my mother and grandparents have anxiety and it's known to be hereditary in some cases. I had really bad panic attacks, I'd say practically weekly from when I was 6 to when I was about 22. And when I was around 22 I started seeing a psychologist, which was really helpful. Over time, I grew out of the panic attacks.

When I was 14, I had depression. It was a pretty tricky time in my life. Some aspects of my life felt very unstable. And then I had various bouts of depression over the time since then, I think roughly when I was about 19 and at 22 again — I had a particularly bad bout around 22, and then again around 24; it tends to come back in cycles for some reason.

So when you talk about anxiety, what does that actually look like? Because I guess it looks different for everyone.

What it's looked like has actually changed over the years for me. I was too young to understand that anxiety was psychological when I was diagnosed with it. I thought that I had some kind of physical issue preventing me from breathing. I remember having a really bad panic attack, and I couldn't understand my mom saying that it was in my head and that I needed to calm down. In my head I was like, ‘How am I supposed to calm down when I feel like I'm going to die?’ [Laughs.] 

So in the earliest days, it manifested in panic attacks and a lot of overactive "ANTS" [Automatic Negative Thoughts]. Something that can make it harder to distinguish between anxiety and your real self is that anxiety can seem like problem solving. And so it feels productive, but when that "problem solving" becomes incessant it starts to interrupt your sense of peace and ability to go about your day. I remember I used to be very panicked about tsunamis and stuff that was never going to happen because I lived 6 hours from the nearest ocean, but I was constantly fearful of those kinds of things as a child. As I got older, it would still be those spiralling thoughts; still those panic attacks, but I'd say a lot of tightness in the chest, difficulty breathing, withdrawing from people because social situations made my anxiety worse. I grew up very shy, which might be surprising to people who know me now.

As for depression, for me it looks like a lot of apathy; disinterest in things that would have otherwise really excited me in the past, persistent negativity, pessimism and irritability; I tend to become snappier and assume the worst of people. It can vary from a feeling of persistent sadness to a feeling of numbness in some instances. When it's sadness, obviously people have felt the experience of being sad before, but it's just like a deep unhappiness with whatever it might be. It might be in general, it might be specific things, and you're kind of tethered to that feeling of unhappiness. It becomes  difficult to walk outside on a sunny day and feel like, ‘Oh wow, the sunshine, it’s so lovely’; every day just feels gray and unpleasant.

I also struggle with poor eating habits when I'm depressed and my insomnia becomes awful. Actually, that's been a really big consequence of my anxiety: I find it hard to sleep as well as a normal person does. And sometimes in my worst depressive episodes, I’ll sleep like one or two hours a night and I would just be completely delirious from lack of sleep.

I’ve also been thinking about what the patterns are when I’m feeling down. I think for me, it's when I don't have anyone to talk to, or just not feeling that I could talk about how I feel.

Yeah, that's true. It's very hard. Australians are raised with a ‘tough it out’ culture where it's not as common to talk about your feelings. And I agree, I think particularly when I was a teenager, I felt like doctors weren't listening to me because at the time it was less common or less thought about that young people would experience depression, and so they kind of brushed it off as like, ‘Oh, she's just a teenager stressed about school.’ But actually I was in a really bad place. And that made it hard, as you said, to talk to people without feeling like I was being unreasonable or crazy which is really unfortunate.

So how did you try to see it [anxiety] as part of yourself, and be like ‘oh, this is actually real’.

Oh, I think I always saw it as part of myself, but I saw it as too much part of myself. I think what people struggle with anxiety is, because it's part of their mind, they think that it's an inseparable part of who they are. They think their anxiety and their "self" are a complete circle instead of a Venn diagram where there's a bit of overlap.

Once I separated it from who I am, I was like, ‘Oh, actually that's anxiety or depression talking and I'm not going to listen to that right now. I'm going to just keep going about my life.’

Secondly, I’d say the thing that helped the most: I had a really good GP who listened to me and recognized that I was in a really bad place in my early 20’s. I spoke with a lot of other GPs, who didn’t take my experiences seriously. That’s unfortunately especially common for women.

She spoke to me about medication, spoke to me about seeing a psychologist, and so I definitely credit her with helping me see the right person. And it's taken a long time you know; that was when I was 22 and now I'm 28. So it's been six years of seeing a psychologist to get to a much better place. It's a long journey. Even though there are rebates for seeing a psychologist, it can still be really expensive, so I'm lucky that I've had the income to support myself and see someone for so long, but that's not the case for everyone. 

You’ve also talked about having to spend a lot of time managing your mental health. And I think for me, there’s certain things that I need to do, like getting out of the house and being around people. But what does that look like for you? 

Yeah, similar. Getting out, seeing friends, exercise - as annoying as it is - does help. I tend to put a lot of emphasis on how I eat and sleep. I think that's really important. I eat pretty well. I basically don't drink anymore. Drinking for me dramatically affects my mental health and so I'll maybe have like one glass of wine every month or two and that's it. I have a full-on sleep hygiene routine and I do a guided meditation before I go to sleep.

I think one of the biggest things that's helped me is exploring things that I really love. When I think about when I've come out of depressive periods, it's been when I've found something that I've really loved. So for example, I'm really into aviation. When I was a teenager, one of the things that really buoyed me when I was really mentally unwell was my love of planes and learning about planes. And then more recently - like I love sailing and I love surfing, and those two things ground me heaps and I always get so much more perspective when I'm doing them. Nothing grounds me like being in the ocean and watching the waves roll is an active meditation for me.

Active meditation in general is an awesome tool. Meditation doesn’t need to look like sitting down with your eyes closed. As weird as it sounds I find riding dirt bikes to be really grounding - it’s hard to focus on your negative thoughts when you’re so focussed on the bike. 

That might look like a lot of different things to different people. But even if you don't know what those things are that you love, just trying to experiment little by little with different things is really helpful. 

‍Because you work as a VC, I also wanted to touch on the mental health of founders. What are some changes you’ve seen them face?

I think the main challenge probably - and I haven't spoken to many founders about this - has to do with the fact that as a founder, you're supposed to be seen as the pillar of strength for your company, right? You're the person that has to have it together, but has to have the plan, the strategy. And you're the person that investors depend on, employees depend on, your external customers, and stakeholders depend on. So I think it can be a lot harder for a founder to be honest about where their mental health is.

It's kind of like the problem with pilots. I think in some cases you're not legally allowed to be a pilot if you're diagnosed with depression, and so pilots in some cases hide the fact they're depressed so that they don't get out of that job. And I think it's a little similar for founders in that you are probably more worried about losing the respect or faith of customers, investors, etc. when you talk about the state of your mental health.

I would suspect there are a lot of founders who really struggle with the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, but don't talk about it much because of that risk. And they probably don't have the kind of people or mentors really close to them that are also founders, who they can talk to in many cases.