The Perils of Overachieving with Madison Utendahl
While my life might look great on Instagram this summer, much like most of you, I've still felt pretty affected by all the gruesome news that has unfolded over the last month in the United States. It's been mentally exhausting, from the reversal of Roe v. Wade to mass shooting after mass shooting—not to mention the changes to the concealed carry law in New York. I rarely write about current events in this newsletter, but as a Black woman existing in the world, politics is intricately woven into my life experience.
I've thought a lot about the people who like to make statements such as, “I'm not political,” “I don't like talking politics,” or “we shouldn't talk politics.''
I think for those of us who grew up in the US, we all received a special kind of cultural brainwashing where we were taught we shouldn't talk about politics, race, money, or religion with friends, strangers, or otherwise.
But who exactly does that benefit?
These are all things that actually affect our everyday lives.
So when it comes to having conversations or wanting to stand up for what we believe in, people feel scared, unsure of themselves, or just ill-equipped to talk about such topics.
I genuinely believe that this is a muscle everyone must exercise.
Yes the news cycle is exhausting, but we can't be scared to stand up for what's right, whether it's for our personal freedom or for someone who doesn't look like us. Values and integrity matter more ever. We shouldn't have to preface our support for reproductive rights (as I've seen a lot of people do on social media the last few weeks) with “it's not even political, it's human rights.” And I get where they're coming from, because I used to say that too.
But everything is political. Human rights are political.
We are only doing ourselves and our communities a huge disservice when we shy away from these conversations. Because what? They feel uncomfortable, or we might get into a disagreement with someone? Well, that is all part of the human experience. We can't avoid conflict as hard as we may try. But also, don't discount how good it can feel to stand firm in your truth and beliefs.
I'm sure there's going to be a few people reading this thinking—
I don't subscribe to this newsletter for politics.
However, politics also impact our mental health, especially for those of us who have marginalized identities. It feels inescapable. That's why taking care of ourselves is so vital, so that we can show up for others and show up for our community.
Today's guest is my dear friend Madison Utendahl. We met for breakfast the first day I arrived in London this summer, and while we were catching up she was telling me about her journey to healing her chronic high-functioning anxiety. I knew her story would resonate with so many of you. Below, Madison gets real about being unhappy at work, her addiction to praise and validation, and how the drug ketamine changed her life. Read the edited interview below or click the link to listen to our full conversation.
I remember the first time we hung out one on one, you were working at Refinery29 as a producer, I was working at Bazaar as an editor, and we spent most of our dinner lamenting about our jobs. What was our next move? We wanted to leave our jobs and just do something different. I don't even know how much time passed but I feel like several months or so later, you actually left your job. I was like, 'damn, this girl's about that action.' I think I spent another two years complaining about my job and not doing a damn thing about it. You actually got up and left. So much respect—because I feel like so many of us just complain and complain. You're almost addicted to the complaining. But when we're not happy, we have two options. You do something about it, or you find acceptance for the situation that you're in.
Madison: The thing about not leaving your job is that it's very comfortable to be miserable. I don't know why as human beings, we really take comfort in that suffering. So I think a lot of times people hesitate because it's like, well, what does it actually mean for me to be happy?
Also, I think when you're unhappy at a job, there's a lot of external factors there. So it's easy to feel like you're not creating your own suffering. You can put the blame on everything that's happening and just be like, well, it's not really my problem. It's my boss's problem, or it's the company's problem because they're treating me like this.
Madison: Right. But the wildest thing is when I was complaining nonstop about the Museum of Ice Cream, my mom was like, "Madison, maybe not everyone else is unhappy." She was like, "It might not be that terrible of a place for everyone else, so you are the only thing that can change. It's not your job to change the internal infrastructure of a company. If you're unhappy, then you have to leave." I was like, oh, shit. Wow, you're right. This is my autonomy, my choice, my life. I think we hope that the company's going to change, but ultimately the company doesn't owe you shit, as hard as that is to accept.
I know, and I think there's also something very hard to grapple with, when you're unhappy at work, but other people around you aren't? I feel like I've had this conversation with other people as well, stepping into a new role where maybe the previous person was really unhappy and was like, "Oh, you need to watch out. You're going to be miserable," or giving them warnings, but then the new person has a completely different experience.
Madison: No, I completely agree with you. It's so wild when that happens, where you're just like, wait a minute, you love this job? I think there's a fine line of recognizing that it's not because you aren't adequate, because I think what happens after is people go into this journey of self-loathing. What's wrong with me? Why did I hate this job? Maybe it wasn't that bad. Should I have stayed, right? You start to really question because this other individual is thriving, presumably thriving. We actually don't really know the majority of the time. So it's really about, can you stay dedicated and true to yourself in that decision? Can you know that somebody else could fill that slot and love that job, but it was still the right decision for you to leave? That is the hardest thing to reconcile in your mind, but it is the most important thing to hold onto when you make tough decisions.
So take us through your career journey for those who may be unfamiliar.
Madison: I identify as a storyteller over anything else, because my career has had so many different mediums. I started in film and TV, I was at HBO for Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which was my first job and truly life-changing. You read stories and hear things of people having an opportunity of a lifetime that sets them on the path of their career, and I feel really fortunate that I was one of those people. After a couple of years there, I went to Refinery29. I loved my time at Refinery. I started as an associate working for PR directly, eventually became a producer. And honestly, when I think about the trajectory of my career, that was the happiest time. When I left Refinery, it was a financial decision. It was not about quality of life. I got the opportunity to be a founding partner and head of content in social at the Museum of Ice Cream, that's really where my career pivoted from being video first, on-camera hosting, to marketing. I've spent the past couple of years in marketing. I left the Museum of Ice Cream to start my own business, which is now officially a design studio. We have closed down the marketing side for the best reasons, because we've decided social media does not make us happy. So now I'm a storyteller in design, and going back into the video space, which is really fun, producing a bunch of my own content, getting back in front of the camera. 30 has been a very powerful awakening year for me of getting back to my roots. Not to say that marketing was not something I enjoyed, I identified it as almost my creative cowardice. It's adjacent to the things I most enjoyed as a creative, like on-camera hosting. But it's way less vulnerable because I get to hide behind other brands. But now I'm going back in front of making my own content and being a producer again and being a talent. That's way more raw and open. I hid from that for so many years, but now I'm like, bring it to me. Give it to me.
Talk to me a little bit about your mental health journey, and the anxiety you've experienced around work.
Madison: I've always suffered from anxiety as far back as being a child. I was overly anxious as a kid. I'm very poised, so I've been told. I actually think that's been detrimental to my anxiety recovery because I don't have a lot of what is considered the identifiable traits of anxiety. I don't have panic attacks. I don't have shaky hands. I don't sleep for 25 hours. All these things that we say is anxiety first. But then I learned as I got older that I have high-functioning anxiety, which is also a diagnosable term. It's people who can completely exist in the world totally “fine,” with severe anxiety. And my anxiety professionally has completely differed according to what job I've had. When I was in work cultures that weren't conducive to my overall wellbeing, my anxiety was palpable. It was, I mean, truly detrimental. I had severe pancreatitis when I was at Museum of Ice Cream. I suffered immensely, emotionally, physically, total insomniac. Again, no one knew. I was very private about it, but it was killing me truly.
You've told me you had an addiction to praise. Where have you felt that the most in your career?
Madison: Yeah, it really stems from a childhood of getting a lot of praise and accolades for being an overachiever. School came very naturally and easy to me. I've always been an athlete. As a teenager and young child, I excelled at everything I did. As a result, I became really addicted to that affirmation from other people that I was good. But what I didn't have at the time was the emotional maturity to understand that that validation was not attached to my self-worth. We did not teach that to teenagers when we were growing up. And my parents, God bless them, they did not have that knowledge either and that's also not how they were raised. So my identity was formed around believing that my overachieving nature was attached to who I was as an individual. But I had boundaries because school ended at three and maybe sports ended at like six. If it became too much, my parents were advocates who would jump in and be like, "Hey, that's enough." But then I graduated from college and became an adult. I had no boundaries. Parents couldn't get involved. But I still had that tendency of, I need to win. I need to succeed. It became rooted in deep anxiety because I didn't get to have the same end result. So once grades weren't attached and I couldn't have an A, it was just like a self-fulfilling prophecy of, I am not good enough. Because there were no more A's. There were no more report cards to prove that I was great. So work became this endless cycle of me desperately seeking how to win and become the best, when you can't really do that in work environments. It's not like you do a great pitch and all of a sudden you get promoted instantly. These things take time. So I was constantly unsatisfied, constantly incapable of being able to fulfill that void of being great and getting the A. It just manifested itself in the most crippling, overwhelming anxiety that I really have lived with for the past 10 years professionally.
Exhausting, right?
Madison: Beyond, and I tried everything. I tried Lexapro, Prozac, Klonopin, Trazodone. I mean, any sort of SSRI and sedative I could find. None of them worked. I did three different types of therapy, acupuncture, I changed my diet, everything. It wasn't until I left the Museum of Ice Cream, which for me was the greatest catalyst in my recovery for my anxiety, because I left at the height. I had to basically convince myself that my worth was not attached to the success of that business. I identified, I was severely unhappy. I identified, every doctor had told me my pancreatitis and my insomnia was attached to my stress. I literally had to leave for my health. But once I unlocked professionally, that my worth was not attached to the place I worked, it began the actual recovery journey for my anxiety.
And while you were working at the Museum of Ice Cream, you were winning awards. I want to bring that piece in. You were striving for greatness, and you were achieving it. You have won a lot of awards, but I guess it's like, what comes after that?
Madison: Oh, for sure, I was thriving. I was doing great. Then it's like, imposter syndrome to me is not like, can I do this? But for me, it became, can I do this again? I became obsessed with, okay, now I got the Webby, what can I get next? I don't want to become a one-hit-wonder. Because people would also say to me, which is something I never say to people now as a result, they'd be like, "You're killing it." On the inside, I'd be like, I hate my life. I haven't slept in a week but everyone externally facing it was like, 'wow, Madison, you're thriving. You're doing so well.' I did just say I was thriving, but I meant thriving externally.
So when I finally came to this coming-to-Jesus moment of, okay, Madison, you have to leave, even though you guys just raised all this capital, you just launched at Sephora. This is when the company was literally at the top of the mountain. I had to be like, what comes first? Recovery for my anxiety and letting go of something that is truly not serving me, or this praise from external sources that I have so much evidence, a lifetime of evidence to remind me that it doesn't actually make me feel good? So that was the crossroads that changed everything.
So when did you start looking into alternative healing methods for your anxiety? Because obviously, you were trying everything.
Madison: When you live with chronic anxiety the way I had, which was a lifetime, your brain has created neural pathways. There is a pattern that has been established in your brain of trigger, reaction, experience. So even though when I left in 2018, I began that journey to heal my anxiety, I had created a pattern mentally of how to respond to life. So I have not been in an environment like MOIC since 2018, but for the next two and a half, three years, I still responded to life in a very similar way. Because I genuinely did not know how to do it otherwise. And what ended up happening was, I started to actually be like, yo, Madison, something is off. You are having crazy responses to the most trivial of things. Because the neuroplasticity in my brain was so wired at that point to only have high-level stress responses, that I lost the ability to differentiate between a perceived threat and a real threat.
It's like that saying, wherever you go, there you are.
Madison: Yes, right? So everything was still a perceived threat. I had lived for the past 12, 13 years of my life with this emotional reaction of completely being prepared to fight at all moments. The flight, fight, or freeze. So here I was in this environment and I have not had that level of stress since then. But anything from being on a highway to being stuck in a line at an airport, to having a plan disrupted, still created this anxiety response, just the same reactions I would have had in my work environment. So I started meditating twice a day. I go to a vedic meditation retreat and I start to teach myself. My ex-boyfriend really introduced me to a lot of these natural alternative ways of healing. He was a huge meditator, really big into psychedelics.
How did having that level of anxiety affect your relationships?
Madison: Oh my god, we were on different earths. I think we were great for each other at that time in our lives, because he needed more of the kick ass, like, let's go, let's start this. He was in the first year of his business and that was my energy of, come on, come on, come on. I needed the yo, chill the fuck out energy. So at that time, we were very conducive to each other, which is why it worked for as many years as it did. I started meditating and it unlocked in me that I actually did have the capacity to calm myself down. I did have the capacity to really think about myself and go within. And that became the unlock of all the other practices that I add into my life today, which is journaling, running, yoga, things that I just genuinely wasn't doing in my life, that are considered alternative forms of anxiety healing. I have a healer now, acupuncture. I do all sorts of shit now, but I didn't do any of that back then. I was like, wake up, Barry's Bootcamp, triple espresso, work all day, come home, go to bed. That was my life for years. How the fuck is anyone supposed to get their anxiety under control if you live like that?
The problem was that after I left my job, I was still living like that because that's all I knew. So it took me years to actually put meditation to practice, put all these other elements into practice and start to see a difference. Then because of Covid, for most of us, I think, shook up that journey of healing, because it was just emotionally exhausting to navigate. Here I was in the most stable, comfortable time of my life really, in terms of financially, romantically, friendships. I was still really suffering. I was still meditating twice a day, my job, loved my company. I still could not get my body to not have the zero to 100 response. People would be like, when you feel yourself getting stressed, calm yourself down. I'm like, you don't understand. That was a 0.1 second difference. There was no time for me from I feel anxious to anxiety attack. You know what I mean?
So I had this complete breakdown to a very dear friend of mine in December. I just expressed to him that I was really starting to be hopeless. I was like, "I don't understand. I'm doing everything. I can't move to Brazil and do ayahuasca," which seems to be the only thing left on my list that I haven't tried. He was like, "You should look into doing ketamine therapy." At first I was like, what are you talking about? Then I started to do a lot of research. I learned that for people with severe anxiety like myself who have clinically diagnosed high-functioning, long-term anxiety, that ketamine therapy is one of the only ways that people have shown success in recovery and quieting. So I took the leap of faith and I went for it.
I'm so fascinated by ketamine and mushrooms for healing purposes. There's more and more research coming out about it, and how much it can do for mental health. Tell me exactly about your ketamine therapy experience in Texas?
Madison: What's interesting about ketamine is it actually expands the neuroplasticity in your brain and creates new neural pathways. So ketamine is identified as a pattern interrupter, which is why it works for people with severe anxiety, is that it literally creates new pathways in your brain. That when you start to experience anxiety, it stops it. The experience is medical. I think we have this belief that ayahuasca is going into the jungle or upstate into the forest and taking plant-based medicine with a shaman. This is performed by licensed medical doctors who work in licensed medical practices. Yale Medical School has a whole department that focuses on this, Harvard as well. This has been proven to help sexual assault survivors, people with severe PTSD. It's like one of the only things that people who've had severe trauma have said has actually helped them and improved their livelihood. There's a great stigma attached to this because we assume that it is a psychedelic or something that is done in more recreational manners. But it was a very medical experience for me. And before you even can get the treatment, you have to go through a series of tests to see if your body and your brain are capable of handling this type of medicine. So you have to prove that you've had anxiety for X amount of time. You have to get a letter of recommendation from a therapist who's treated you for more than two years.
They have you do all these neurological exams to test to see, if you have family schizophrenia or other certain mental illnesses, you're not eligible for, if you have in your bloodline. If you have seizures or epilepsy. There are certain things that they actually have to make sure that it can't be reactive to. But I went down to Austin for about two weeks.
I'm actually surprised that it's not an in-patient treatment.
Madison: Yeah, you're there the whole day when you do it. I went to this center called Kuya in Austin. I was a patient of Dr. Dan Engle, who I swear by. After your ketamine, you have six therapy sessions with him to basically make sure that it's working and that you're doing okay.
So Dr. Dan was headquartered at Kuya, which is both a medical and alternative medicine center in Austin, Texas. I did four sessions over 10 days. You arrive at the clinic. You do all this preliminary work, therapy session, the whole thing that you would expect. And then the day of the session you get to the clinic. You sit with Dr. Dan. You talk about the experience, what you can anticipate. The biggest thing is about surrendering and letting go, so for someone with anxiety that isso fucking hard. I almost left a 100 times before it started. Because I was like, this is insane. What am I doing? This is absolutely crazy. And then he sits with you and the environment is beautiful. I mean, it's just a gorgeous space and everyone is so kind and so willing to talk to you, and understands why you're there. You meet other people who are there. You go in and you talk to the doctor, and you have your session with him ahead of the treatment. Then they give you anti-nausea medication. They give you oxytocin, which actually people don't know. But it comes in a medical tablet form so that you won't have a downer experience, to guarantee an upper experience. They measure the ketamine dose according to your body weight and your vitals. So when people say they want to do this I'm like, go do this the right professional way. There was no way I could be harmed by this experience done in the way I did it. And then they inject you and you are given an eye mask. You're in this completely serene and beautiful room. I remember getting the injection and Dr. Dan is sitting across from me in the room. He's like, "Put your headphones on." They have a curated soundtrack to help you. Right before it hit I was like, this building is going to burn down ... a complete panic. Any terrible scenario that I could possibly have, I started thinking about.
I was like, what am I doing? I can't believe this. Oh my god, I've been injected. And then he was like, "Do your best to just let go. You are in an incredibly safe and protected environment. You are exactly where you need to be, that this is here to help you and serve you. You are here not against your will. You have chosen to be here, so honor that decision and accept the decision you made.” I think for your readers, it's important to note, as someone who suffers from severe anxiety, I had never done anything like this before. I am not someone who has done psychedelics and all the other drugs, pretty much a baby to this world. And then the rest is history. I mean, it's a very intense experience. You are not on this earth. There is no real meaning. I mean, there's tons of meaning attached to the trip, but there's nothing I could share on this—it wouldn't make any sense to you.
After the experience, they take care of you for the rest of the day essentially. You can't drive. You can't really walk around for at least a couple of hours. It takes about an hour to go through the trip. Afterwards they give you tea and a journal for you to write what you saw, to not attach meaning. Just write what you saw. They talk to you a little bit but again really don't want you to feel any pressure. Then you get put into this massage chair to get you back into your body, and then they have you float for about an hour in these de-sensory tanks. So at that point, I'd get there at 10:30 and I would leave at 4:35. I did that four times.
Damn. So how many days between the sessions? And were you scared to go back to the second time around?
Madison: No. I mean, I would say the third time I started to feel like, whoa, this is intense. It completely wipes you out the days that you do it. But I remember when I was in between my sessions, my second and third session, I borrowed my godfather's car. I got on the highway, and I'm notoriously an extremely paranoid driver, and I felt no anxiety to the point where I got nervous, because I was like, what's happening? And when I got to my destination, I started sobbing of joy because I could not believe that people get to live like this. I was like, oh my God, people live like this? People live anxiety free? They drive without stress and paranoia? It was that liberating. I get emotional even talking to you about it now because it's still to this day, that is a life-changing moment for me. I did not believe it was possible for me to exist that way.
That's crazy to think that after two sessions you could feel the difference.
Madison: Oh my god. They say it takes four ... they actually recommend six sessions in total, so I will go back to do the final two. I did not have the bandwidth and time with my job to take more than that off at once. And it's not cheap. It's obviously not covered by insurance, so you have to financially really prepare. way that people describe it is imagine taking three years of Prozac in one dose. It's like a million SSRIs in one moment. I have a friend who, when they feel suicidal, when they're having one of their moments of depression, they will go get ketamine treatment in that moment because it instantly pulls them out of their suicidal thinking. It's unbelievably powerful what it does for mental health.
I think for Black people in particular, we have so many beliefs and layers around what is for us and what is not for us. I think this world is considered very white. But the freedom of what it would mean for Black people to be able to, one, if we could financially provide Black people opportunities to do this. But we carry so much, so much even unrelated to our lived experience.
Oh, 1000%.
Madison: I mean, our existence, especially as a Black woman, in this world is so heavy removed ... outside of even family trauma and work and everything else, just waking up as a Black person, a Black woman in this country, is a layer of shit attached to that. And then we're expected to do everything else.
With a smile on our face. Now, how has this now transformed the anxiety you have with work and stress?
Madison: That's a great question. I mean, what Dr. Dan always says is, "The work starts the day you leave." So it's about, how can you integrate this now into your daily life? I panicked when I was leaving. I was like, "I don't know. I love it here. I don't want to go back to New York. Oh, my god." He's like, "You can't live at this clinic. You got to go into the real world and put this to test, see if it's working." How it's applied now is ... or how I experience it now is, it's not that I don't ever have anxiety. The description I always use is, before if anxiety was 100 and my baseline was zero, I would go from zero to 100 within two seconds. Now, my anxiety is capped at 25%. I can't even go up to 100 if I tried.
Now it takes me probably five minutes to go from zero to 25. So all those tools that people used to tell me, like start breathing, look around, I actually can apply them now. Because I have a five-minute window before I get to 25%, which is nothing compared to what I'm used to. I'm able to be like, okay, relax. This is not real. These are your thoughts. These are not your feelings. Calm yourself down, and then I can actually let go of it. And that's freedom. That's the work. I can now let go of the anxiety. I'm no longer completely a victim. Not a victim but completely …
Well, you were a bit of a victim of your own anxious thoughts. What advice do you have for others who are considering an alternative healing method like this?
Madison: Everyone has their own path and journey to heal themselves. If doing ayahuasca or taking Prozac or Lexapro works for you, or just meditating 100 times a day works for you, great. But for people like myself, I truly had exhausted every option. I really did not want to get back on the medication train because I did not see the results. I'm somebody who is super medication sensitive. Lexapro gave me horrific night sweats. This is an amazing alternative. It's medically proven, and if you don't trust it, there's Harvard Medical School and Yale papers, TED Talks, podcasts, and all sorts of evidence that prove the science behind this.
Madison’s Most Recommended Reads
I redid the entire infrastructure of my business after reading this book. This has fundamentally been the driving force of Utendahl Creative's policies and why we believe that the power of rest drives brilliant, thoughtful and innovative work
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Through reading this book, I learned how harmful my phone and social media was to my anxiety. For anyone trying to reduce their phone usage or calm their mind - this book will force you to confront the reality that our phones are tools for addictions and instigators of anxious thoughts and behaviors
Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life
by Francesc Miralles & Hector Garcia
Ikigai is the key to a long, healthy life. While, I can't honestly say I entirely live by the Ikigai balance, I am deeply inspired by the symbolism of Ikigai and actively strive to apply facets of it into my daily life. Living by the Ikigai force is an aspirational goal that I seek to achieve.
The Big Leap taught me how to quit decisively and to understand the power of my own creative soul. I read this at least 1-2x a year during moments of self doubt.
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
This book changed my life by allowing me to see the connection of fear and vulnerability and suppressed creativity. I spent many years not understanding how/why I had writer's block after writing copiously for many years. Gilbert's book unlocked the link between courage, curiosity and creativity. It was through her writing that I began to realize how my writer's block was actually a deep rooted fear of acceptance in disguise.