I'm Maura Aaron's Mealy, 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 pick themselves up, and how they hope workplaces can change for the better.

Today, we're going to talk about depression, not anxiety.

But as my guest, John Moe, says, depression and anxiety, well, they're like haul and oats.

You rarely see one without the other, and neither manage to have a successful solo career.

Sorry for the 80s pop music reference.

The 80s are very in now, though, at least according to my kids.

Depression can have really distinct characteristics from anxiety and can have a much different effect on our work lives. For me, depression is very demotivating and my work tends to suffer,

whereas when I'm anxious, I'm a wreck, but I'm also often sort of hyperfunctional.

But depression and anxiety definitely share at least two characteristics that we'll talk about today,

both of which can really mess with your head and your career, magical thinking and unreliable

narrators. You know them. John Moe calls magical thinking the if only's. If only I could achieve

X, have Y, do this, then I'd be happy.

And then there are the tapes of negative self-talk that can run on repeat in your head.

I'm a failure and I don't deserve anything.

And we'll talk about managing disruptive and uncomfortable change when you struggle with these kinds of mental health issues.

Because John Moe hosted one of the most popular and well-loved public radio podcasts,

The Hilarious World of Depression.

He wrote a book called that, too.

Mo has had a long and storied career in public radio, and yet, even with his reach and his

fame and his celebrity guests and a growing community of people worldwide who care about mental health and talk about it, his show was canceled and he was laid off.

...