The Surprising Toll of Entrepreneurship on Founders’ Mental Health
An unspoken story of loss and a misguided attempt at healing
Founders are rockstars of the modern era, and everyone wants a piece of the action. From musicians to professional athletes and high school students, the pursuit of entrepreneurial success and large payouts allures a vast segment of the population. But one aspect of hustle culture remains under-discussed yet influences the majority of small business owners and venture-backed companies: Mental health.
Do we have YouTube channels focused on cryptocurrency investing strategies?
Yes.
Do we have TikTok advice on scaling passive revenue through Airbnb rentals?
Yes.
What about Twitter threads on disrupting aging markets by centering software for greater automation?
Yep, we have that too.
But what about the mental health of founders?
Our popular narratives around emotional wellbeing are shaped by insurance companies and mental health startups promising rapid growth, quality providers, and constant availability to consumers.
Not only are these narratives false — quality mental health support is costly and time-intensive — they are created from the very unspoken wounds most entrepreneurs experience.
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Asa startup psychologist who has worked with founders, cofounders, and executives over the last five years, I’ve heard various stories across different sectors of the unique group of people we call entrepreneurs. After reflecting on the similarities across most of the successful individuals I’ve worked with, I realize each entrepreneur has at least one thing in common. And that one thing is trauma.
I define trauma as a disruptive experience that is not easily integrated into your awareness.
Trauma, viewed from this lens, encompasses painful relational experiences and moments in which you may have feared for your life or the wellbeing of a loved one.
These encounters are ubiquitous. You will not meet a person who has not experienced discomfort that has shaped them for years to come. But entrepreneurs, as a group, tend to have wounds following similar patterns.
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Brian was a 30-year-old serial entrepreneur
He built a bootstrapped agency to a $3 million annual recurring revenue business, then stepped away to focus on creating a new company with more scalability. After recurring friction with his cofounder, depression and isolation contributed to him ending his first company.
Through our depth-oriented conversations, Brian shared several relational wounds that he identified as traumatic.
These included moments in which his achievement-oriented and materialistic parents shamed his pursuit of online gaming. Feeling misunderstood and devalued by his loved ones created pain Brian wanted to escape. He found an acceptable outlet to do so in entrepreneurship — one profession that met many of his emotional needs.
As an entrepreneur, people praised Brian’s work ethic.
He felt the ego-boost he needed through his title of “Founder & CEO,” frequent invitations to appear on podcasts, and thousands of likes on his social media. Focusing on building an online business — the one thing his parents despised — allowed him to feel a sense of vengeance. He had a semi-conscious goal to prove his parents wrong, and each substantial paycheck further validated their ignorance. He was driven. Working constantly and receiving non-stop validation from the public kept his emotional pain at bay and led to a lucrative career. But it did not make him happy.
Brian’s decision to leave his emotional wound unaddressed led to compensation. This compensatory pursuit of achievement made it difficult for him to maintain connection to parts of himself he once valued, like his joy of cooking, which he gave up the minute he discovered outsourcing meal prep allowed him more time for uninterrupted work. He also lost connection with friends, often too busy to return their calls. His partner frequently complained about his lack of emotional availability and intense anger in moments of conflict. He felt like everyone was a roadblock preventing him from success and slowing his rate of iteration.
Over time, Brian’s inflated self-worth grew. And despite his successful appearance by most societal measurements — income, car, house, title — he was alone.
Elizabeth had a similar story
She came to see me after a never-ending sense of imposter syndrome gnawed her into perpetual self-doubt. She had done well to this point, raising a $7 million Series A and scaling to 12+ employees. But now, her company was at a transition point. Her old, transparent leadership style no longer fit what the organization needed to continue growing, and she believed her skillset was less helpful than in the past.
Thinking back on her life, Elizabeth identified painful experiences in which she was shipped house-to-house with different relatives due to a complex family structure steeped in divorce. She remembered feeling like a burden and inconvenience for her wealthy step-father and recalled moments of being excluded from family gatherings due to her acting out behavior. Elizabeth never felt good enough. Her stories centered around self-blame for bad behavior and featured an utter disregard for the difficult emotional context that prompted her attention-seeking actions.
Elizabeth spent 20+ years of her life running from her shame. She built a life (and company) based on being helpful to other people. She presented an image of perfection and felt confident when others looked at her with admiration but fell apart without positive reinforcement. Lacking reassurance from others, Elizabeth’s inner shame was activated, corrupting her confidence and amplifying negative self-talk. These dynamics restricted her ability to continue growing into the leader she wanted to become.
Both of these examples demonstrate themes of relational trauma and compensatory actions to avoid an underlying emotional wound.
Each individual suffered from narcissistic injuries, which contributed to the pursuit of achievement to evoke the recognition they did not receive in childhood.
These stories are not unique
Many founders struggle with similar wounds and compensatory actions. You might even say that entrepreneurs are those who cope with their emotional pain through work, trying to prove their perspective matters and create a place for themselves in a cold, rejecting world.
The limitations of each entrepreneur’s coping strategies became amplified during prolonged periods of stress. For most entrepreneurs, the added pressures of building a company contribute to mood-related issues with depression, anxiety, disrupted sleep, increased agitation, and difficulty concentrating. While these experiences are known, they are under-discussed.
Similarly, the two most common personality types for successful founders are narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive. These are the dreamers and the doers. These types of personalities are disproportionately rewarded by a culture hyper-focused on work, productivity, and achievement. But these prevalent patterns are also under-acknowledged, perhaps due to the lack of a critical psychological examination of entrepreneurship.
While the positive contributions of these personalities are notable, the emotional losses giving rise to them remain unspoken.
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The draw of entrepreneurship is illustrious. Recognition through achievement and huge financial payouts creates an environment ripe for hiding emotional pain. Many individuals from all parts of society see the possibility for a major payday and the opportunity to have their contrarian perspectives affirmed. But allowing all of the positive potentials of entrepreneurship to overshadow the negative polarity of this modern warrior archetype does a disservice to the community.
One-sided narratives embracing workaholism and thereby worshipping avoidance will lead many down a path of achievement before leaving them successful and alone.
Allowing large companies to tell us mental fitness is easy, cheap, and constantly accessible downplays the significance and complexity of mental health issues. These profit-motivated statements have positive outcomes for businesses but poor long-term outcomes for their consumers. Such models of constant availability and low-effort growth are a symbolic longing for childhood omnipotence — a feeling that your always-available parents will meet your every need before you speak even it.
These solutions do little to address the underlying emotional pain of our society and offer much less to the rockstars focused on changing the status quo.
The antidote is twofold:
Founders, entrepreneurs, and executives of startups need to share more of their personal stories of difficulty. The broader cultural narrative regarding entrepreneurship needs to be expanded to include its disavowed shadow. Integrating these painful experiences into the broader conversation will help entrepreneurs feel whole and seen in ways that are not currently possible due to the one-sided idealization of entrepreneurship.
“Fight the good fight.” Strive to maintain connection with the parts of yourself you find valuable. Make time for old hobbies and interests that feed a younger part of yourself you once enjoyed. Prioritize spending time with friends and family members without discussing work. And do your best to maintain these practices no matter how demanding your schedule becomes. It’s a fight for your soul, one I hope you win.
As always, find a good therapist and coach. Feeding into your neurosis only makes it worse for you and others, despite the glamorous appearance of your compensation.