Episode #79: Jen Gotch
Jen Gotch is a creative powerhouse and an advocate for mental health. She is the chief creative officer of ban.do, a multimillion-dollar brand that’s all about encouraging joy & helping its community be their best. She is the author of The Upside of Being Down: How My Mental Health Struggles Led To My Greatest Successes in Work and Life. She’s passionate about sharing her experience in order to help others build their self-awareness and emotional intelligence, and most of all to help them feel less alone.
Right now, Jen Gotch was supposed to be on tour for her first book, The Upside of Being Down. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, the tour was cancelled. While she did feel some sadness about that, as Jen puts it, her knee-jerk reaction when most things happen is, “this is going to be okay.” She’s someone who has a lot of optimism, and that optimism resonates in a meaningful way with so many people. On today’s episode, Jen and I talk about why, rather than feeling the stigma of mental illness, she was happy to have her diagnosis of bipolar disorder. We talk a lot about her book, and she tells me why there’s still no crying room at the ban.do office--but regardless of that, what she’s doing to create space for emotions to be present and accepted at work. We also talk about how she’s consuming the news during this time (as opposed to how her dad’s getting his news), and how, book tour or not, she’s so excited to call herself an author. Writing a book is something she always wanted to do, and now she thinks she’s cool. (Of course, we thought that all along.)
“Emotions are so scary for people, and I get that. But in every space—digital, in an office, wherever—making these things acceptable is so important because they’re a huge part of the human experience.”
Here are some of the things Jen and I chatted about:
Going undiagnosed for the first 23 years of her life, and what led to her getting some answers
How, when she was diagnosed with depression, awareness of mental health was much lower
Her anxiety, ADD, and bipolar disorder diagnoses, and why she was happy for this information
What made her place her trust in the doctor who diagnosed her with bipolar disorder
How, as someone whose instinct is to share her feelings, it felt natural to talk about her story
Posting something vulnerable and saying she’s going to take it down--and why she doesn’t
Her relationship with work, and how it had to get detrimental before she reprioritized her life
How she grew to feel empowered to express emotions at work, and encourage others to also
How she’s feeling now, after having to cancel the book tour for The Upside of Being Down
As someone with an anxiety disorder, how she handles consuming the news during this time
Why, as part of managing her overall mental health, she set out to try to eradicate her anxiety
Working to change her relationship to her thoughts, and learning how to react to each thought
The role of building awareness and emotional intelligence--and how those things can help now
How reiki has had a profound impact on her health, and why she’s open to this form of healing
How she treats her relationship to medication as matter of fact, and how that impacts others
Making the conscious decision to shift to optimism, and how it has served her through her life
“In being optimistic, you’re not closing your mind off to the horribleness of any situation. You’re just saying, I believe that everything will be okay, and I’m not defining what okay is.”
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