IAM1669 – Psychotherapist, Writer and Entrepreneur Specializes in Anxiety and Stress Management

Angela Ficken Teaser 00:00

Sure. So I specialize in anxiety disorders and also stress management. So a lot of times people will come to me really having anxiety problems or stress management, whether it's at work or home and together we work on skills and strategies to try to make them feel better, faster, and more efficient.

Intro 00:21

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, and generate sales? And grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I am CEO podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:47

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast and I appreciate you listening to this episode. And if you've been listening this year, we're doing something a little bit different where we're repurposing our favorite episodes under certain categories or topics that we think are gonna be extremely impactful for CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business owners.

This month is going to be about not forgetting about the human part of business. Often we forget about the human part of life. We often forget about the human part of business. So look forward to self-care tips, fitness, burnout, purpose, biz and personal personal branding, motivation, drive, success, understanding your why, and of course, how important customer service is. But at the heart of it, it's all about, remembering the human part of business. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I am CEO podcast.

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Angela Ficken of progresswellness.com. Angela, awesome to have you on the show.

Angela Ficken 01:46

Thank you so much for having me.

Gresham Harkless 01:48

No problem. Super excited to have you on, and what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Angela so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. And Angela is a psychotherapist and entrepreneur in Boston, Massachusetts. Her psychotherapy practice and brand is progresswellness.com. She had worked previously at McLean Hospital and Harvard University before starting her full-time private practice. As a therapist she specializes in OCD, eating disorders, and anxiety-related concerns. Angela also has a blog and has written for the Huffington Post, ThriveGlobal.com, Yourtango.com, marriage.com, and Today.com parenting.

Her expertise has been featured in Bustle.com, buzzfeed.com, Popsugar.com, Yahoo! News, Nylon, among many other outlets. Angela, are you ready to speak to the I am CEO community?

Angela Ficken 02:35

I sure am. That was an awesome introduction. Thank you so much.

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Gresham Harkless 02:38

I know you're rocking and rolling, so I'm glad we get to take some time with you to learn a little bit more about all the awesome things that you're doing. So I wanted to kick everything off by just hearing about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Angela Ficken 02:50

Yeah, so you mentioned it when I was working full-time at McLean and Harvard. I had a small-time private practice on the side, and the private practice was something that I always wanted to do and wasn't quite sure how to get there. So working full-time and having that on the side was helpful. And as I got to Harvard, my career was building, my private practice was building, and all of a sudden I realized I was kind of burning the candle on both ends. I was working full-time and pretty much having a full-time practice on the side, so to speak.

I was working evenings and it kind of overflowed to the weekend, which left little time for self-care and family and friends. So that was when I made the decision with the help of my husband who said, you need to pull over here. We never see you. You need to pick one. So I thought, okay, now is the time to really make the leap into something that I've always wanted.

And that was six years ago and I never looked back.

Gresham Harkless 03:46

Awesome. Congratulations. Well, I always love how something starts out like a side business or a side hustle or however people phrase it, but then you're providing a good need because for you it sounds like, it started to grow and grow and grow and became like your sided business, which was also your full-time business on top of the full-time job you had as well.

Angela Ficken 04:03

Yeah. And I think just knowing that I couldn't do both and I really had to pick one. And I think just taking that leap of faith, which I think your community can really, we all can relate to. It's like you have an idea, is it worth the risk? And then you eventually just have to go for it and sink or swim, we find a way to swim.

Gresham Harkless 04:21

Yeah, absolutely. Yes. Sink or swim. Exactly. That's the perfect way to say it. And I wanted to hear a little bit more about your practice and the brand that you're building. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Angela Ficken 04:31

Sure. So I specialize in anxiety disorders and also stress management. So a lot of times people will come to me really having anxiety problems or stress management, whether it's at work or home. And together we work on skills and strategies to try to make them feel better, faster, and more efficient. So we might not be able to change what is on someone's plate. Sometimes we can but usually, it's like, what's on our plate is on our plate. We can't move that. But what we can do together is really work on strategies to look at your plate and feel like, okay, I can manage it differently to the point where what once stressed me out or made me anxious no longer does.

So I focus on a lot of stress and anxiety management skills to try to help people feel better faster. And then on top of that, as you've mentioned in the introduction, I do a lot of writing and through my private practice and my writing, I was hearing back from people that what I was teaching and sharing in my writing, was very helpful. So I thought, okay, if this is all good stuff, if what I'm sharing and teaching people is working, why don't I write a course on stress management, which is essentially my mini dissertation of if people are interested in learning how to manage things differently and more effectively.

You sign onto my course and I titled it Breaking Every Day into Slivers Not Chunks, Practical Skills to Manage Everyday Stressors. And through that, you can learn A to Z, how to manage stress and anxiety. So that's in a nutshell, all that I do.

Gresham Harkless 06:00

Nice. I love the name of the course for one, and definitely just breaking it down step by step by step on how you can not necessarily take things off your plate. Because that's not always the option, but be able to manage it and be able to affect or understand how you can look at things in a different way.

Angela Ficken 06:13

Yeah, absolutely. It's just, I often say breaking things down into slivers not chunks, which is part of the reason why I wanted to name the course that, is that when we feel overwhelmed, we see the big picture. And sometimes it's not just about the big picture, it's about the small steps to get to that. And if we can break it down, everything becomes more manageable, everything becomes more clear. And I also try to practice that. I'm not perfect either. Sometimes I get stuck in the big picture, but breaking it down can be incredibly helpful.

Gresham Harkless 06:43

Yeah, absolutely. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And you might have already touched on this, but this is what you feel distinguishes you or your organization.

Angela Ficken 06:50

I think for me it is having really good people. Like who are your troops? I have people in my life both professionally and personally who are incredibly supportive of my back. But not to the point where they're gonna just, they yes me to death but challenge me in a way of, if I have a creative idea, they help me think outside the box, which is what I love. They challenge me and again, are supportive.

So through my endeavor and this adventure, I don't know what the next step will be. I guess part of my secret sauce has many ingredients and one of that is having good people that are there to help me brainstorm and also be supportive. And on top of that kind of being interested in the skills and strategies that help people feel like they can be empowered and challenged and have control over challenging emotions. I think that also sets me apart, is it's not so much doing all about the exploratory work. When people think about therapy, it's, oh, tell me more about that, and how does that make you feel?

That is incredibly important. And I do some of that work, but it's also okay. what can we do to get you doing action skills to feel better now? So I think those two things are kind of part of my secret sauce. It's the behind-the-scenes troops and then the upfront, like, how can I help you get some armor on? So you can really feel empowered when you go into the hard stuff.

Gresham Harkless 08:20

Nice. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And you might have already touched on this, or you might have given us a little bit of a teaser towards it. But this is something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Angela Ficken 08:33

Yeah. So I think for me, the one thing that I use constantly that helps me be more efficient for myself is a schedule. And I have an online schedule. I write everything down on that schedule so I can see it. And that means whether I'm seeing friends, who I'm calling, when I'm gonna write my blog, Who am I seeing that day, when I'm gonna go to the gym. Like everything is on my calendar, and that just helps me stay mindful of what my day's gonna be like and then also allows me to move things around as I need to. So if tomorrow I'm gonna write my blog, but then I realize something came up, I realize like, oh, I could just move it to Thursday and I have a chunk to do it there.

So it's easy to move those pieces around and also see the things that are set in stone, like seeing people or doing some family time. For me, being a one-person show, and I schedule everything, my calendar is my lifeline and having it online has been incredibly helpful. So that's the one hack that's been super great for me in my business.

Gresham Harkless 09:41

Yeah, I love that hack. I swear by my schedule as well because mainly I have such a bad memory, and you try to hold onto too many things, then things seem to just fall off. So I just say, put it on my calendar. But I love, you know how you touched on too, that the way you're looking at it from a day-to-day standpoint. If something pops up you have to push it someplace else, you can take like a grander or a step back view of the calendar and understand you can put that into whatever pocket it needs to go to.

Angela Ficken 10:07

Yeah. Yeah, and again, it piggybacks on the sliver not chunks. It's like, okay, you can look at the whole week as a whole, and you can also break it down into just like hour by hour or week or day to day. And that just helps it feel much more contained. So that's been my lifeline.

Gresham Harkless 10:23

Absolutely. I love that lifeline and that CEO hack. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Angela Ficken 10:34

Oh boy. My youngest business self. So I think I would say with every problem there's an opportunity for growth. And my dad used to say that to me as when I was a teenager and I just would get so angry, I'd be like, no, you don't understand. There's a problem, it needs to be the problem. But as I move through my life and have experiences, but then also now Be my own way. It's true like with every problem there is an opportunity for growth. So with every issue or every like fail or whatever, it's like, okay, how do I wanna look at this so I can have some idea and create a sense of changing the outcome? How do I wanna grow through this rather than feeling stuck?

And I think that's been incredibly helpful for me and the many adventures and creative times I've had in my practice have been because of problems. So when I face one, I try my best to remember that kind of phrase that my dad said years ago, with every problem there's an opportunity for growth. So that's one thing I would definitely pass on. If I only knew that then but then I wouldn't be here now. Who knows where I would be? So, that's my bit of wisdom.

Gresham Harkless 11:47

Yeah, I love that bit of wisdom. And it's funny, a lot of times you can only get those things when you go through life and things happen and then you understand it wasn't as bad as it could have been. Or if it hadn't happened, then you may not have, taken the steps that you've taken. So you get a better perspective of it. But I love that reminder because a lot of times just like you said, related to stress it's all in how you look at it, how you approach it. So if you look at it in a different light, then all of a sudden it becomes an opportunity, as you said, not just a challenge.

Angela Ficken 12:14

Yeah, exactly.

Gresham Harkless 12:16

Nice. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote and quote, CEOs on this show. So Angela, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Angela Ficken 12:27

I think for me it is a sense of empowerment where I have control over what my next move is. It allows me to be creative and in a field where I can. I never know what's coming next and that certainly is stressful and anxiety and anxiety-inducing, and the anxiety expert will certainly throw herself under that bus. But it's all that you do with it.

I think being a CEO and having my own business allows me a real sense of freedom that I can do whatever I want and that's limitless. So that's what it means for me.

Gresham Harkless 13:10

Awesome. I love that perspective and that definition because a lot of times you can chart the path however you want it to be charted. And a lot of times, it does, as you said, we talked about the different perspective. It can be stressful, but at the same time, there's a lot of opportunity because you can pretty much, I always say, paint a picture of whatever you want as related to your business in life.

Angela Ficken 13:28

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 13:30

Nice. So Angela, I truly appreciate your time. What I wanted to do was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and our listeners know, and then of course how best they can get ahold of you, find out about the course and all the awesome things you're doing.

Angela Ficken 13:43

Sure. Thanks so much. So I think the last bit that I would share that I have found incredibly helpful with my practice and my business is, to piggyback on that statement, my dad taught me years ago. Is that this mantra I've had for several years now is if it makes me anxious, I'm going to do it anyway.

And I've had a lot of opportunities in my life leaning into that anxiety. Anxiety might say, are you sure you wanna do that? Maybe you're not the one, and I think, no, I'm just gonna do it anyway. And each time it has, I'm not necessarily saying everything's been perfect, but it has led me to different avenues I never thought I even wanted or could ever get to, or were even on my radar.

So I think I throw that out there too, is just like, if it makes you anxious, to think about the risk and how worth it is, and you know the time is now. So I will, I guess we'll end with that. And for people who are interested in contacting me or reaching out to me or learning a little bit more about me in my practice, you can check out my website at progresswellness.com.

Gresham Harkless 14:55

Awesome. We'll make sure to have that link in the show notes as well. But again, I appreciate you Angela, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Angela Ficken 15:01

Thank you so much, Gresham. I appreciate your time.

Outro 15:04

Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and everywhere you listen to podcasts, subscribe and leave us a five-star rating.

Grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I am CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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