You know, I couldn't even feel anymore. It felt selfish to have feelings. And just think about that concept, you know, that you are that human being that doesn't believe you're entitled to feel anything.

Because that's how much devastation you feel you have wrought on your world.

I'm Maura Arons-Mili, and this 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 work can change in the future.

Yeah. can change in the future. You know, there's a saying in the mental health world,

in the past year you've probably heard some version of it. Be kind to people because you never know what someone's going through, what someone is silently suffering.

Today's guest is someone who silently suffered a lot, but her face and her family's most private

business were very much in the public eye. Huma Abedine is a political staffer, but you might

know her as the ex-wife of former U.S.

representative Anthony Wiener, who resigned from office in the wake of a sex scandal.

And in many ways, that was just the beginning of the struggle Aberdeen faced.

She faced the public breakdown of her marriage and family, while also balancing an incredibly

powerful and stressful career in politics, having worked for Hillary Clinton for two decades

and working closely on her 2016 campaign in which she lost to Donald Trump.

I had to know how Huma did it and what her experience can teach us all about functioning,

about keeping on, keeping on through extreme shame, extreme stress, extreme everything.

Huma has a new book out, a memoir called Both and A Life in Many Worlds,

and I spoke with her about anxiety, grief, pressure, the public eye, and our private worlds, and so much more.

Just to frame it up, I mean, this is a show about work.

This is a show about leadership and anxiety and managing mental health.

And I was a political consultant for years.

I'm not sure we've ever met.

I met Hillary a bunch of times.

...