174. How to Build Your Emotional Fitness: The 7 Traits You NEED To Succeed feat. Dr. Emily Anhalt

Jan 7

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Today's guest is Dr. Emily Anhalt— a psychologist, emotional fitness consultant, and the CoFounder and Chief Clinical Officer of Coa, the gym for mental health. For the past thirteen years, Dr. Anhalt has been working clinically with executives, founders, and tech employees, and has conducted extensive research with prominent psychologists and entrepreneurs about how leaders can improve their emotional fitness. We discuss how she started specializing in emotional fitness, the seven traits of emotional fitness that can help you succeed, key ways you can start to build your emotional fitness including becoming more mindful and self-aware, what emotional push-ups are and examples you can try yourself, why people often prioritize their physical health over mental health, the dangerous effects of having low emotional fitness, how to differentiate emotional fitness from other similar psychology terms, the benefits of incorporating building your emotional fitness into your routine, predictions on future trends that will embrace emotional fitness, and important emotional skills all teens (and parents!) should know.

Dr. Anhalt's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dremilyanhalt/

Mentioned In The Episode…

+ Dr. Anhalt's Website

+ Coa

+ Toastmasters

SHOP GUEST RECOMMENDATIONS: https://amzn.to/3A69GOC

About She Persisted (formerly Nevertheless, She Persisted)

After a year and a half of intensive treatment for severe depression and anxiety, 18-year-old Sadie recounts her journey by interviewing family members, professionals, and fellow teens to offer self-improvement tips, DBT education, and personal experiences. She Persisted is the reminder that someone else has been there too and your inspiration to live your life worth living.

a note: this is an automated transcription so please ignore any accidental misspellings!

Welcome to She Persisted. I'm your host, Sadie Sutton, a 19 year old from the Bay Area studying psychology at the University of Penn. She Persisted is the Teen Mental Health Podcast made for teenagers by a teen. In each episode, I'll bring you authentic, accessible, and relatable conversations about every aspect of mental wellness.

You can expect evidence-based, teen approved resources, coping skills, including lots of D B T insights and education in. Each piece of content you consume, she persisted, Offers you a safe space to feel validated and understood in your struggle, while encouraging you to take ownership of your journey and build your life worth living.

So let's dive in this week on She persisted.

And what we'll see is discomfort with your emotional health is similar to discomfort with physical health Which is like the first time you try to go for a run It's going to be really hard but if you run every day, then after a few weeks, all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I just ran for 10 minutes without even feeling that tired. The same is true with our emotional discomfort. And we just don't realize that if you keep practicing, if you keep leaning toward it, you will get stronger.

It will get easier. You will be able to tolerate that feeling. And what I have found is that everything. that you want in life is on the other side of discomfort

Hello, hello, and welcome to She Persisted. If you are returning, welcome back. If you are new, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here today. We have an incredible episode, but I wanted to start by saying happy 2024. This is our first episode of the year, and I am so excited for what we have in store for this year.

We have. So many incredible interviews coming up, this episode included. We have a lot of fun solos planned for this year, a lot of big goals for the podcast, hoping to do some merch this year and just continue to share as much value and mental health advice and tips and. insight as possible and again really create a resource that I hope, hope, hope is helpful for you guys because I love these conversations.

I know this would have been helpful for me to hear when I was a teen and even still these conversations are life changing so. So, I really do hope you guys enjoy them as well and anytime you guys have something you want to hear on the podcast or a topic you want covered or a question you want answered, DM me, send me an email, 100 percent let me know, and I love incorporating your guys ideas and feedback because you guys are the ones listening, so.

With that being said, I want to start with a little cheesy thank you for everyone who listened during 2023. It was such an incredible year for the podcast. Lots to come in 2024 and to start out this year with literally one of my favorite conversations that I have had in a while we have Dr. Emily Annal on the podcast.

She is a psychologist and emotional fitness consultant, and she is also the co founder and chief clinical officer at COA. And COA, if you've never heard of it, is a gym for mental health. This is a really fascinating, innovative, amazing concept. And so in this episode, we talk all about emotional fitness and how you can build your emotional fitness.

I think a lot of us. Don't have much stigma when it comes to physical health, but for some reason, when it comes to mental health, we have all these things that get in the way of caring for ourselves and doing the work to prevent mental illness and just keeping ourselves in a mentally fit state. And so this conversation not only facilitates that conversation in a really beautiful way, but also gives you the tips that you can use to improve your own emotional fitness.

So. a little context, Dr. Analt has been working clinically for over 13 years. She's worked with such a wide range of people, including executive founders, tech employees, all of these different areas that we see people that are emotionally fit and, and successful in the way that they're regulating their emotions and their mental health.

And so she's conducted a ton of research about how leaders specifically can improve their emotional fitness and how she's sort of specializing in this area. And then we get into what emotional fitness is and what you can do. So we talk about the seven traits of emotional fitness that help you succeed.

We talk about Where to start if you are beginning this journey of emotional fitness and you're like, I don't even know what to do. We talk about emotional push ups, which is such a fun and cool concept. and like I mentioned, we talk about stigma related to mental health versus physical health.

We also talk about what happens when we have low emotional fitness. What are the potential consequences? And then of course, we also talk about how you can build this into your routine, make it a sustainable practice, and continue to improve your emotional health. So, I am so, so, so excited for you guys to listen. I'm not going to keep you in this intro much longer, so if you enjoy this episode, Bye. Share with a friend or family member, post about it on social media, all the things.

It really does help the podcast and I love seeing when you guys are listening. So with that, I hope you enjoy and let's dive in.

Well, I'm so excited to have you here today, Emily. I have been so incredibly excited for this interview and to talk all things emotional fitness, so thank you for coming on She Persisted. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Of course! So, to start for listeners who don't already follow you, what is your background, how did you get into the mental health space, and then specifically specializing in emotional fitness?

Because this is not an area that you see a ton of clinical psychologists talking about, so I'd love to get your context there. Sure. So, like you said, I'm a clinical psychologist. I've been studying and practicing psychology about 18 years now, which is wild. But I grew up in Silicon Valley and so I've always had an interest in the psychology of the entrepreneur and that kind of introduced me to a whole group of people who wouldn't necessarily self identify as people who need immediate mental health support.

They're not people who identify as having a diagnosable psychological disorder, that kind of thing, but it doesn't mean that they don't want. Emotional support, and it doesn't mean that they don't want to improve the relationship they have with themselves and with other people. And so it got me thinking about what a more proactive approach to mental and emotional health would look like.

Like when it comes to our physical health, there's being physically ill, and there's being physically healthy. But then there's this other thing, which is being physically fit. It's not just that you're not sick, it means that you're actually in better than regular health, right? That you're actually going to prevent illness, you're going to be stronger, you're going to be fitter.

And I wanted to figure out what's the emotional equivalent? What does it look like not just to be without mental health disorders but actually mentally fit? And so a number of years ago I did a big research study to understand what does this look like? What is an especially Emotionally healthy person look like and what came out of the research is what I call the seven traits of emotional fitness These are the seven things that emotionally healthy people are working on all the time I'd almost compare it to a physically fit person is probably eating well exercising sleeping enough meditating all of that So a mentally fit person the traits that came out of this research are self awareness empathy curiosity Mindfulness, playfulness, resilience, and communication.

And so I started to look into, what does it look like to work on ourselves in these seven areas? Like, what is an emotional push up, and how do you do one? How can you work on your mental health a little bit every day, before you're in crisis, before things are really problematic, so that you're stronger and more able to handle whatever life throws at you.

Can you give some, operative definitions for those different areas that you mentioned? Obviously, most of us are familiar with them, but especially when you're conducting research, there's really specific ways that you define these and different ways that they show up and how people are interacting and behaving and doing all of these different things you mentioned.

So, for those seven traits of emotional fitness, What were the operational definitions you were working with? Sure, so that's a great question because I do define them a little bit different than you might expect. So, for example, for self awareness, we define it, and, oh, I should say a little bit about my background, too. I'm also the co founder and chief clinical officer of a mental health startup called COAH, which is a gym for mental health. So at COAH, you can actually work on these seven traits.

So the way we define these at COAH, self awareness is Your ability to understand your own emotions, to understand what are your triggers, what are your biases, what might you be hiding from yourself that's getting in the way of you seeing the world as it actually is. Because we are pretty good at hiding things from ourselves, so self awareness means getting to know yourself more.

Empathy, if self awareness is understanding your own emotions. Empathy is understanding other people's emotions and being able to really feel what other people are feeling in order to understand them. Playfulness is really just being a yes and person, creating a space that's safe for people to connect with you where you can build on ideas and things don't have to reach a conclusion immediately.

You can be playful with them. Curiosity is not just about asking questions. It's about wanting to grow instead of being defensive. So if someone comes to you and says, Hey, I have some constructive feedback for you. A curious person instead of being like, Oh, I don't know if I want to know that. A curious person says, Oh, I'd like to hear about that.

Tell me more. How did this affect you? What could I learn about myself? Resilience, I define as bouncing forward through setbacks and failures. And I say forward instead of back because I don't think we ever go back to being the person that we were before we go through a hard thing. So resilience is about learning and growing through our difficult moments.

Communication is Just the ability to identify what your needs and boundaries are and put words to them, and to be able to give feedback, to be able to tell people what's on your mind, what you need from them. And then mindfulness, you know, mindfulness is a term that's used all over the place and we don't mean it just like, Sitting quietly and taking deep breaths.

I think mindfulness is anything that helps you become more comfortable being uncomfortable. So anytime you are leaning toward your discomfort in order to grow, instead of away from your discomfort in order to avoid something, that's mindfulness. I love that. I've never heard that definition before for mindfulness specifically, but I, I really, really like that.

Have you found either within research or what you're doing at COA that there is like a hierarchy of these different traits or is it more like personality traits where all of these different things bring different things to the table, they all have benefits, or is it where you need to have all of these different traits?

to be able to succeed. Like, how do you kind of organize and theorize those? I almost would compare it more to having different muscle groups. Like, they're all important, but they also all affect each other. If I had to give anyone advice about where to start, I would say the two most foundational ones are mindfulness and self awareness.

Sort of like how if your back muscles aren't strong, it's going to be hard to work out your arms, it's going to be hard to work out your legs, that kind of thing. And that's because Mindfulness, which is tolerating discomfort, is so important because everything else is going to require you to be a little uncomfortable.

If you don't like communicating your needs, then getting better at communication is going to require that you're a little uncomfortable. So first just being able to tolerate that discomfort is really important. And then self awareness is the other foundational one because it's pretty hard to change something that you're not aware of.

So being able to see the things that you want to shift in your life is the first step toward actually shifting them. So those two, I'd say, are really foundational for the rest, but then as you become better at communicating, you are going to be able to be more empathetic, and as you become more empathetic, it becomes easier to play, and kind of on and on.

So, I say start anywhere and the others will naturally improve. For self awareness and mindfulness, when people are coming to you and saying, I want to start on those foundational levels, I've never gone to a mental health gym before, I've never worked on my emotional fitness, Are there certain exercises or ways that you recommend people start to build that practice and work on their emotional fitness when they are like straight new into this process?

I would say even just deciding that you want to work on it is the first step. You've already started it because there are a lot of people who go through their whole life having no idea that this is even something worth thinking about. So that's amazing to even decide that you want to prioritize it.

From there, If it's possible, I highly recommend thinking about getting into therapy. To me, there is just no better way of building self awareness than therapy because it's hard to see the things that we hide from ourself. We need someone else to reflect those things to us. So I think that can be a great place to start.

And nothing has to be wrong with you. You don't have to be in crisis. You don't have to be broken to benefit from therapy. It's like going to the gym. It's a great. Just place to build the strength that you need to get through life other ways to build self awareness are things like journaling because you will see patterns emerge over time as you're writing things down and asking for feedback is an emotional push up that I kind of prescribe a lot because a lot of people aren't gonna tell you what they Really think about you until you ask and once you do ask and you give that permission people will Tell you things that you might not even know are true about yourself.

Like something I recommend people do about once a week with a different person in their life is pull up your phone and send a text to someone in your life whose opinion you respect that says Hey, I'm working on my emotional fitness and I would love it if you would share one thing that I'm doing well As a friend or a boss or a parent or a sibling or whatever.

And one thing that I could do 10 percent better. And you will get feedback that you did not expect. Both in the constructive sense and in the positive sense. So those are my suggestions for building self awareness. For mindfulness, growing your ability to tolerate discomfort, the first step is to figure out what makes you uncomfortable.

Does saying no make you uncomfortable? Does, physical exercise make you uncomfortable? Does, you know, let's say like, I'd be curious for you, what's one thing that makes you a little uncomfortable, maybe a little more than it makes other people? I mean, so many things, but when you mention, , text someone and be like, what can I do 10 percent better?

I was like, ooh, that's a hard one. Like, I, I totally understand where you're like, the mindfulness part of it. is key to be able to sit with that discomfort and go through that process, be open to the feedback, and even if it takes a little bit to , be like, okay, I'm in a good headspace to read this and internalize it and do the self reflection and then implement that shift.

I think that totally makes sense why you mentioned that as a foundational thing, but going in and being like, I am not perfect and there are a lot of things I can improve on. I don't just have that awareness for myself, but I would love for you to tell me what those things are. I think that's definitely something that brings up discomfort.

That makes so much sense and you're not alone there because not, we're not really taught that it's okay to ask for that feedback and that it's okay not to be perfect and to need to improve. So that's a fantastic example. So to build your mindfulness essentially. The whole idea would be, how can I lean toward this discomfort instead of away from it?

And it doesn't mean you have to throw yourself into it. You don't have to send a hundred text messages out tomorrow. But maybe You're like, Instagram story, everyone tell me what I can do better. That's actually kind of a good idea. But maybe you start with one text message to someone who you already feel kind of safe with.

Like a partner or a best friend or a parent or something like that. And maybe you even say. Hey, this makes me kind of uncomfortable to ask, but I'm challenging myself to lean toward my discomfort. So would you be willing to give me this little bit of feedback? And what we'll see is discomfort with your emotional health is similar to discomfort with physical health Which is like the first time you try to go for a run It's going to be really hard and two minutes in, you're going to be like, what the hell am I doing out here?

Yeah, but if you run every day, then after a few weeks, all of a sudden you're like, oh my gosh, I just ran for 10 minutes without even feeling that tired. The same is true with our emotional discomfort. And we just don't realize that if you keep practicing, if you keep leaning toward it, you will get stronger.

It will get easier. You will be able to tolerate that feeling. And what I have found is that everything. that you want in life is on the other side of discomfort. Like, there is just no way that anyone is going to live the life of their dreams without dealing with some discomfort along the way. So the more we flex that muscle, the better equipped we are to move toward all of the things that we want.

I love that so much. Do you have any more of these emotional push ups, like sending those texts that people can implement that you recommend, that are helpful to increase that discomfort, go towards what's challenging, and then improve your skills when it comes to those, traits. Sure. I mean, so an emotional push up is really anything that puts you a little outside of your emotional comfort zone so that you can grow.

And what's out of one person's comfort zone might not be out of another person. So the first step is figuring out what would an emotional push up look like for me. So I'll give you some examples. Like, if you're a person who tends to say yes to everything people ask you, and then you end up feeling overwhelmed and resentful, for you an emotional push up might be just saying a kind but firm no to one small thing today.

Whereas, if you're a person who tends to focus more on yourself, then maybe an emotional push up for you might be to offer to help someone else with one task. Other examples of emotional push ups are like Apologizing for a mistake or celebrating a win or pausing before you have a drink or smoke to ask what you might be trying to avoid or one of the push ups that I think we all could probably benefit from is putting our phone down and just sitting with ourselves and being a little bored or a little bit lonely at a red light or after 10 p.

m. or whatever it might be this I'd say this is one of the big problems that we're all dealing with is we have these Dopamine devices that are available to us. Anytime we feel uncomfortable, there's this way out of it, and that's not good for us. It's not actually a good way to build up the ability to tolerate that feeling.

So, just putting your phone away for five minutes when you would normally be on it, that would be an emotional push up. I love that. And it's, it's huge. It's like you mentioned. They're going to be unique for everyone, but everyone has many emotional push ups that they can be implementing and doing on a daily basis.

And I, I love this metaphor, because it's so similar to going to the gym and working out, like you mentioned, and it's so mentally easy to understand and be like, okay. Initially, it's going to be really hard, but then it's going to get easier, but the road never really ends of continuing to do that self improvement and work those muscles.

I would love to get, yeah, I would love to get your thoughts on why we have this societal gap, and I'm sure you've come across this when you are growing COA, and whether it's like fundraising or increasing awareness or sharing the brand, where everyone understands physical health, and then you talk about mental health, and there's like this huge disconnect.

And even when you present it where it's like, They are the same thing. You have emotional mental muscles, you have physical muscles, you have emotional resilience, you have physical resilience, like you, it could not be more similar. And yet we still have all of this emotional resistance to having this conversation or investing in our mental health.

What has that experience been like for you? Or do you have any thoughts there of why we're still in this position of having that huge gap? I mean, the idea that physical health is that understandable, that's kind of new. You know, like if you threw back 20 years and someone said, Hey, I'm going to go for a run.

Everyone would be like, what? What do you mean you're going for a run? Who are you running from? You know, and now it's just common practice. Oh, of course you're going for a run. Of course you're going to a physical fitness class. It took it being part of the culture. It took people talking about it and it becoming normalized for other people to feel like, oh yeah, I should just think about this in my normal life.

And I think when it comes to our mental and emotional health, that's just starting to happen. People haven't spoken out loud and in public about what they do for their mental and emotional health until recently. And so it's just starting to become part of the public discourse. The other thing is there's just so much stigma.

We think that we're supposed to just be able to be okay all the time with no support and with no effort. And we're starting to fight that stigma. So it's been really cool for me to see, especially through the lens of emotional fitness, which I think is less pathologizing and less stigmatizing. More and more people are thinking, Oh yeah, okay.

I mean, I want to have strong mental muscles. That sounds good. I think maybe I'll try that work. And I've seen that more and more people, especially younger generations, are, are starting to be like, Yeah, why aren't I working on this stuff? Everything in my life depends on me having good mental health. I should probably invest in it.

Yeah, it's so interesting that you mentioned that because especially with things, I go back and forth and sometimes it's like you're talking about where it's if you think of it as a proactive step or preventative measure, people are like, sure, I'll try that. I'll see. sit in silence for a minute or I guess I could journal and then there's other times where it's like you have to be so pathologized to ask for help and access resources where you're in that mental headspace like it's not bad enough or that person has it worse like I'm not there yet and there's this huge spectrum and when you're in the in between there is all that emotional resistance to being like let me utilize these resources and yeah I'm not in the best spot but what can I do to not make it worse or I definitely am not struggling as much as the next person, but I'm not doing great either.

And it's that position where you, there's all of those excuses and, and mental thoughts about why you don't access the resources or ask for help or take the steps and all of those things. It's just really interesting. You're so right. There's such a messy middle and that I think is where emotional fitness comes in is it's for everyone.

You don't have to be in crisis. You also don't have to already be doing great wherever you're at. you can start, you can do a couple emotional push ups and it will help, help you move toward where you want to go. I love that so much. I would love to get your thoughts on the opposite end of the spectrum.

I'm sure when you were conducting research and doing interviews and, even now working with clients at COA and all of that, You probably have a lot of people that are not at all exhibiting the seven traits of emotional fitness. Have you found that that can be correlated with certain behaviors, or even diagnoses, or dynamics, or is it like everyone has some of these and they could, , look for improvement, or you guys haven't even studied, like, what happens when all of these seven traits are really struggling?

What has your experience been there? That's so interesting. I don't know if I've thought about it that way. I mean, I would say that everyone has some. Version of these seven things, you know, I mean nobody has zero self awareness some people might need to have a lot more that kind of thing I don't know if there's such a thing as someone without anything on these Spectrums, but I definitely think when we're low in these things we are going to have lower satisfaction in our lives, for sure.

And I know, for example, when I have less mindfulness, I'm more anxious. And when I have lower communication, I'm less happy with my relationships. And when I'm less playful, I feel more lonely. So I think there are definitely correlations between when we're really investing in these things and how just satisfied we feel in life.

But that would be an interesting study to do to see how do actual diagnosable disorders Correlate with each of these seven things. Yeah, I mean, there's so many that come to mind, whether it's like you take it from the personality disorder side of things or mood disorders and things like the ability to sit with the discomfort and like extreme avoidance, I'm sure, would be super closely tied together, or certain relationship dynamics and attachment styles and then the ability to be curious about other people's experiences and accept feedback.

Like, I'm sure there's so many interesting ties there. Oh yeah, definitely. I can, I can hear the traits and everything that you've just said for sure. , I wanted to ask you about the, , almost like synonym terms that we hear when it comes to emotional fitness, whether it's emotional agility, emotional resilience, emotional intelligence.

I feel like these are terms that have been somewhat common, but aren't as fleshed out as this idea of emotional fitness. How do you kind of explain the difference between these different concepts to people who have heard these other terms before, , but are now interested in working more on their emotional fitness and taking like that approach?

I think I would say that emotional fitness is the practice. The practice, an ongoing proactive practice that improves all the other things you just said. So sort of like physical fitness is a practice that improves physical agility, physical resilience, physical health. Emotional fitness is the ongoing practice that will help you be more emotionally agile, emotionally resilient, emotionally healthy.

So it's really like how do I build this into my routine in an ongoing way and then there are all of these benefits on the other side. I would love to dive into that there with building that into your routine. I'm sure this is super closely tied to everything that you're doing at Co op. But if someone makes the commitment to invest in their emotional fitness, they're like, I want to do this.

I've started trying to lean into these things that are uncomfortable, and I've done a few pushups here and there, but I want to be really consistent. How do you go about that process? How do you structure it into your routine, make it a habit? And then on the other side of things, like what are the results that you see?

I love that question and it's also such a big one, like if someone said, how do I become physically fit? It's like there's so many places you can start. You can go every direction. Yeah. Oh yeah, you could join a gym, you could join a running club, you could just start eating a little healthier, you could just be a little more thoughtful about your sleep, like there's so many points of entry.

But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you talk to someone who's really physically fit, they'll often say, the more you do it, the more you want to do it. Like, the better choices I make eating, suddenly I want to exercise more. And if I worked out that morning, then I don't want to make unhealthy food choices. And it all kind of affects itself.

I feel the same way with emotional fitness. There isn't only one way to get started. Like look at the list of seven traits and think where am I already strong and where could I use some improvement? And then what practices and what support networks can you put into place to work on those things? So let's say you're like, you know what?

I'm not that great of a communicator. Well there's so many ways to work on your communication. You could join Toastmasters and become better at public speaking. Or you could join an online community where you practice having tough conversations. Or you could just be journaling and practicing writing your thoughts down and then saying them out loud.

Like there's no wrong way. It's really about figuring out where do I need to invest and what are some ways that I can do that. Definitely head to joincoa. com if you want a place to start. I think community is an important part of it. And then in terms of what the benefits are, I would say the benefits are endless, like anything that's going to be better if your mental health is better, that's what's going to be improved.

So I would say if I boiled it down to one thing, it's that you're going to improve the relationship that you have with yourself and with everyone else. The relationship we have with ourself is the foundation that our entire life is built on. And many of us don't even Realize some of the unhealthy dynamics that we have with our own selves, like the way we talk to ourselves sometimes is so unkind and harsh and you know the the way that we feel about ourselves and present ourselves what we believe we deserve all of these things are sometimes just not as healthy as they can be and as you start to working on that then what will happen from there is relationships you have with other people.

We'll start to improve and then your choices about what you want your life to look like will start unfolding and opening up to you. So even though I know it'd be nice for there to just be this really clear path, I think it's more about just deciding this is important to me and I'm just going to start and then following.

the path wherever it might lead you. When you mentioned the idea of physical health becoming part of our culture and increased awareness and having these really structured ways that now everyone invests in their physical health whether it's people are more okay with prioritizing sleep and setting boundaries around their physical health.

There's all these different ways you can do community workout classes or run clubs or all of these things that you mentioned. When you look at the roadmap of emotional fitness from like a 30, 000 foot level. What do you hope to see in the next like 10, 20, 30 years when it comes to us shifting in this direction of really, as a culture, embracing emotional fitness, promoting it, teaching kids in elementary, middle school, and high school about these principles?

What do you hope happens and how do you hope that we shift our approach? I mean, you really nailed it just with the question. So there's a few things. One, this should absolutely be taught to kids. Why is it that we're taught all kinds of things like math and spelling, but not how to handle a hard feeling or how to go through conflict with another person?

There's this assumption that you're going to learn all of that at home, but not all of our parents know how to teach us these things, because if it wasn't taught to them, how are they going to teach it to us, you know? And so I would love it. for there to be an emotional fitness curriculum in every school, so that would be amazing.

The next thing is I would love for it to be unremarkable and not even that interesting for someone to say that they're going to an emotional fitness class because it's just like, of course, you know, like someone said, Oh, I'm going to the gym. No one's going to be like, wait, what? Tell me more. What do you mean you're going to the gym?

You know, but I want, I want that for emotional health. I want people to be like, Oh yeah, cool. Going to emotional fitness class. Me too. I'll see you after, you know. So that's my, my big hope is that this just becomes part of our culture and that people can invest in it without it needing to say anything negative about who they are.

Yeah, I love that. And I definitely see us moving in that direction. Like, we are starting to do more, mindfulness based classes and practices. People are like, oh yeah, I'll do a breathwork class for an hour or a guided meditation. And I even think about, it's so silly, but like, Instagram stories are pretty cool.

But like, gym time, but they're also saying , Oh, I journaled, or I did my meditation this morning, or I did my thought pages. We definitely are starting to promote these things. And you said something earlier where it's like, we're starting to talk about what we do on a daily basis for our mental health.

And I think that is something that needs to improve and increase that people can get these ideas and these inspirations. Like, oh, I've never thought about doing that on a daily basis for my mental health. Or, oh, I'm not very consistent with what time I go to bed. Maybe that would be a helpful shift to make.

Like, I really do. Love what you mentioned there about having that consistent conversation without the stigma and without the judgments But just putting those things out there so that we can learn and grow and really have that integrated into a part of our culture Oh, I appreciate that and I appreciate what you're doing to make that more possible like having podcasts like this having these conversations Just making it part of the But public discourse makes such a big difference, you know, like I was saying earlier, so thanks for helping spread the word of that.

Of course, of course. With regard to teaching kids and teens these skills, for all the teens that are listening or parents who are listening that have teenagers, is there one or two skills emotional push ups or philosophies that you wish teens were aware of and that everyone just like, snap of a finger, it was ingrained with, or it was in their health class, that they could be aware of as they start to go through this period of working on their emotional fitness, even if it's not intentional.

Hmm. What a good question. I mean, the things that jumped to my mind were things like, I wish that we were taught starting really early and into our teen years that it's okay to have more than one feeling at once, that you can have conflicting. Emotions at the same time, you know, you can be really angry that something happened and also grateful You can love someone and feel like they're doing their best and also be really frustrated with them and not feel like they're doing good enough.

I think sometimes we feel like we have to name one feeling and actually we, you know, have all these different parts of us that feel all these things. So just being able to make space for different parts of ourselves, that's one thing that comes to mind. Another thing that, you know, I think teenage years are complicated because you're starting to prepare your mind for the idea that you're going to separate.

From your parents from your home and that's so complicated. You know, I mean, we go out and we do all these crazy things. We're not, we don't have our fully functional brain yet. So we're making mistakes, but we're also trying to prepare ourselves like we're about to go off and be a human on our own. And that process is so complicated that I wish that there were more space between parents and teens just to talk about what it's like to be in that phase of life.

I think parents. should be as curious as they can. Like, listen as much as possible, ask questions as much as possible, and teens, for those of you who have parents who are trying to show up for you, lean into that, get as much as you can of that wisdom before you go off and have to apply it. So, I mean, it's a forever journey and, you know, I still feel like a teenager sometimes, so I definitely empathize with how complicated it is.

Totally. It's so funny because whenever you ask literally any adult ever and you're like, how is being a teen? You're like, how is so hard. It was a rough couple of years. Like, I don't want to go back there. And then yet, as you're experiencing this transition as a teen, you feel like you couldn't be more alone.

You're like, my peers don't get it. My parents don't get it. No one understands what's going on. And so it's again, another disconnect that we have where it's. Like, there's a universal experience of this is uncomfortable and hard, and there's not a road map, and yet we're not having enough of these conversations to create these resources and these feelings of it's okay, and other people have been there too, for teenagers that are actively going through it.

I love that and maybe it speaks to another important piece of advice, which is the importance of finding community. Because I do think it can be really lonely and we have all the social media that I almost compare social media to fast food. Like if loneliness is hunger then social media is fast food where it's like If I'm hungry, fast food's better than nothing, it's better than starving, but it doesn't actually nourish me.

It doesn't actually feed my body with the nutrients that it needs. And I feel the same way about social. Like, yes, it connects us to other people. It's better than having no contact with anyone. But it's not the same as being with other human beings and feeling their presence and knowing that they're there for you.

So going out there and finding your communities and knowing that you're not alone in things and being vulnerable, and sharing yourself, and showing up for others, I think, is such an important way to survive it. I love that so much. I've never heard that metaphor before, and it's so good. You're on it with the emotional fitness, and social media is faster.

It's so good, and it makes it so easy to understand, and also understand, the thought patterns that are tied to it. .

Oh, good. I'm so glad. Well, this has been absolutely incredible for I'm sure everyone who wants to continue to follow along and go check out Koa and follow you on Instagram and all the things. Where can people find you? Yeah. My handle on all the things is At DR Emily Ann Halt, D-R-E-M-I-L-Y-A-N-H-A-L-T.

And join Koa is the handle for all the koa things, J-O-Y-N-C-O-A. So I'd love to see everyone there. Don't forget to flex your feels, break an emotion. We'll sweat hit the emotional Jim. We're all in it together. Uh, I love that. All of that will be in the show notes. Thank you so much. This was absolutely incredible.

Thank you for having me and for all the work that you're doing.

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