Ocd

I’m currently at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress 2025 in Indianapolis. Yesterday, at the end of the day, I spent several hours at High Alpha hanging out with my friends and then doing a Give First: The Power of Mentorship book event with them and about 150 people. One of the questions during the book talk was around mental health and entrepreneurship. I talked about my own experiences with anxiety and depression and explained that my core diagnosis, which I was diagnosed with in my 20s, was obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). I said that one of my goals for being open was to destigmatize mental health issues, especially in the context of entrepreneurship and mentioned that I periodically hear something like “I’m OCD and it’s my superpower” and dismissed that idea as nonsense, since OCD is an insidious thing that gets in the way of so many things in life. ...

On Tuesday, Jerry Colonna and I had a fireside chat hosted by the Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network titled Making Mental Health a Priority. We did it at DU in partnership with Project X-ITE and had a powerful afternoon. Last night I had dinner with a CEO I like a lot where we talked about some of the things he was struggling with. I used a concept with him that I’d been mulling about and tried out publicly at the event with Jerry. ...

Amy and I talk a lot about big issues, such as depression and divorce, in Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur. I’ve been speaking from experience on each of these topics, as I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression my entire adult life (the official DSM-IV code I have for my diagnosis from 1991 is 300.3 – Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder ) and, in 1990, I was divorced from my first wife. ...

Amy and I wrote a meaningful amount about entrepreneurs and depression in Startup Life. Since we finished the final draft a few weeks ago, I’ve given several talks where depression came up as I’ve woven my own experience with depression into the short (less than 15 minute) version of my story. I’ve received a surprising (to me) number of emails from people thanking me talking about it publicly, along with my discussion of the anxiety disorder (obsessive compulsive disorder) that I’ve struggled with my entire adult life and that was severe during the serious depressive episode I had in my early to mid 20s. ...