Friendships among female founders within the VC-funded, unicorn-aspiring startup sphere can amplify self-compassion.
ℹ️ Join weekly support groups here
A tortorous flywheel
One of the most profound experiences I’ve had as a mental health pro was in grad school at an IOCDF conference. I’ve had a similar feeling, being deeply moved, by a similar situation recently. I’ll explain.
In 2015, my mentor at the time, a global leader in OCD research and treatment, Dr. Monnica Williams, was co-leading a support group for two subtypes of OCD, violent and sexual obsessions.
By definition, OCD is made up of intrusive, unwanted thoughts. They are the flywheel for obsessions and compulsions in all presentations of OCD. People with violent…
Founders need mentors, sponsors, and champions, which all function differently and on different frequencies.
Nice to meet you, please be my mentor
One common mistake founders make — including me — early in their startup journey is rushing into mentor relationships with people they’ve just met. It’s understandable, really.
Founders are often sponges, looking to learn from people who can shorten the painful learning curves of starting a business. And, it’s not necessarily intuitive that the best mentor relationships often evolve organically. I believe that is doubly true for founders where the entire idea of mentorship is novel.
While it makes sense that human relationships do evolve as a function of time and interaction frequency, words like “advisor” and “mentor” suggest a…
Enriched Couples aims to increase civic engagement by providing our employees and customers with resources to take action.
Civic engagement
Today (January 19, 2021), Enriched Couples is proud to join Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 1,000 businesses working together to encourage every American to participate in shaping our country’s future.
Civic Alliance strengthens our democracy by encouraging civic participation, supporting safe, accessible, and trusted elections, and building an engaged civic culture through tools, resources, events, and partnerships. Founded by the CAA Foundation and Democracy Works, Civic Alliance cultivates a community of companies united by a shared belief that an active democracy is good for business, and an engaged business community is good for democracy.
Ways, widgets, and services that can make daily life a little bit easier.
The brain of a person with ADHD is a fascinating thing.
One minute, we might be folding laundry and half-watching The Bridgertons. The next we could easily be hyper-focusing on English royal titles, how they came to be, where they — wait a second, this is apparently relevant to my family heritage due to our geographic origins of passage to America on the Mayflower — and how did I end up on ancestry.com?
The twists and turns that keep us constantly curious and on the move, intellectually…
This is a list of groups that serve and support fellow female and non-binary startup founders and women in tech.
This was made and is maintained by Annette Miller, Cofounder and CEO of Enriched Couples. These organizations boast a range of helpful resources (even with free membership) including:
- Live and recorded events
- Job boards
- Member directories
- Networking
- Scholarship alerts
- Training
- Fundraising resources
- Apprenticeship or internship matching
Affinity groups — female founders
- Female Founders Alliance
- Female Founder Collective
- Hello Alice
- StartOut 🏳️🌈
- SoGal
- Women Who Startup
- Flik
- Women Founders Community
- Bunch of Founders 🏳️🌈
- Girlboss
- iFundWomen
- Vinetta Project
- F-Bomb Breakfast Club
Affinity groups — women in tech
Relationships, mental health, and financial stress all intersect due to social psychology.
Connecting the psychological dots
Money can be stressful. Throughout 2020, money has proven a widespread source of stress for Americans. Perhaps due to the visibility of this nationwide issue, there’s an emerging appreciation for the reality that economic stressors are emotionally activating.
Various national financial wellness reports from 2020 show financial health concerns also influence our sense of well-being:
- 65% of student loan borrowers feel more anxious, depressed, and stressed about money due to COVID-19
- 56% cite peace of mind as their primary reason for setting financial goals (versus improving financial outcomes)
- 54% indicate financial challenges are their greatest source of stress
- 52% of…
Suicide prevention hotlines aren’t the only medium for suicide prevention and crisis support.
Editor’s note: Most services on this list are available 24/7. They are also confidential, free of charge, and appropriate for any adult (unless otherwise indicated with an emoji).
After the year we have all endured, American men and womxn are at soaring susceptibility for mental health crises this December.
Every year, the holidays present unique challenges for our mental health. But, this is no ordinary, guilt-trip-from-your-parents or invasive-romantic-life-questions holiday season. The social cushioning where we ordinarily turn — the people who support us in coping with the old wounds visiting family can open — isn’t the same.
You or they…
Use these sources to pack a personalized holiday mental health coping toolkit.
I know I’m not alone.
As I settle into binging on better-than-usual Netflix holiday specials, I’m wondering (isn’t everyone?) if Christmas 2021 will look the same. It’s been a hell of a year. Stranded somewhere emotionally between “I have my health” and “I really wish I could see my friends,” it’s impossible to deny my own ambivalence this month.
The internet is full of bizarre misinformation about health and coping strategies during the pandemic. But, thankfully, these 11 scientific sources offer the gift we all need — trustworthy help for our sanity and survival.
Resource highlights:
😷 COVID-19 related coping strategies, its…
Systemic financial challenges are not easily solved with technology alone.
A Forbes article on the limitations of fintech caught my attention this week. In it, Nik Milanović delivered a needed reminder that systemic financial problems — wage gaps, lending discrimination, predatory banking, wealth inequality, the pink tax — are not easily solved with pure technology.
Why? These financial problems are symptomatic of bigger issues. As Nik says, “Poverty and inequality present themselves as financial problems, [but] the financial aspect is often symptom, not cause.”
Indeed, the behavioral elements of financial wellness especially require a different point of intervention to improve users’ lives. …
ADHD is an engine for endless excess of ideas that never leave the draft folder.
I just counted.
As of this writing, I have — and wow, this shocked even me! — 52 articles in various states of writing development. Some of those are admittedly no more than a topic idea, but the majority have a paragraph, several paragraphs, or a solid start to a fleshed-out form. But, some are half-written — and about 2 years old. They’re incomplete works of perfection! And works of split attention.
Narrowing focus vs opening to ideas
I’ve written previously about my distractability — and workarounds, like using dictation to write, that I use to combat that. Creativity is a familiar trait among those with…
