Although the US Gulf Coast hurricane season technically runs from May 1 to November 1, Houston tends to see the worst storms in August and September. Most recently, Ike and Harvey were both major weather events in this time period. Houston managed to escape a direct hit from Laura a few weeks ago, but other parts of the region were not so lucky.
Tropical Storm Beta dumped rain on us all day yesterday and overnight. The storm is dissipating, but a few bands have hung around. It’s hard to express the anxiety that accompanies rain for me. During Harvey, we spent five days helplessly watching the water rise toward our front door. We were among the lucky ones who did not flood, but it was a nerve wracking week.
I know many others in the Greater Houston area who share these feelings of dread and uncertainty that accompany sustained periods of precipitation. For me, it reinforces a profound sense of helplessness. It’s scary to be at the mercy of something over which you have no control, no power.
Truthfully, there is so little over which we have control in our lives. Most of our time is spent convincing ourselves that we have power over things which we do not. There is this thin veneer of control under which we operate that allows us to get out of bed in the morning.
Therapy is one way that I’ve built resilience to manage this anxiety. I am better able to recognize my feelings of powerlessness and, instead of being held hostage by them, allow them to sit where they are. It’s intellectually dishonest to pretend that I am not experiencing these feelings and that they are not real to me. However, I can acknowledge them as valid while at the same time recognizing that focusing on them does not serve me. My attention and energy are better direct elsewhere.
As I am learning, this tool for managing my anxiety is critical for my recovery. Depression lies. Being able to recognize the lies that stem from anxiety and set them aside, without minimizing them or trying to act as if they aren’t real, is one of the most important things I can do to support my mental wellbeing.
From history major, with side quests in Medieval Studies and chemical engineering, to nonprofit finance leader, Big 4 tax partner, technologist, researcher, and now co-founder of Divine, nothing about my career has been linear. The throughline has always been systems: financial systems, organizational systems, technological systems, and human systems. I have an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management and a PhD in Organizational Leadership Psychology, and I’ve spent my career trying to understand how complex systems shape people’s choices, opportunities, wellbeing, and sense of belonging. Today, my work sits at the intersection of psychology, technology, human-centered design, and digital trust. I am co-founder of Divine, an open-source, decentralized social video app built to put creativity back in human hands and replace doomscrolling with joyscrolling. Divine is part of a bigger question I care deeply about: how do we create online spaces that support safety, creativity, identity, and belonging without defaulting to surveillance, extraction, or control? At Divine, I wear a lot of hats across engineering, finance, operations, and strategy, while helping shape the app’s trust, safety, and values work. I focus especially on teen online safety, human-generated content, participatory design, and healthier relationships with technology. I am a postdoctoral alum of Vanderbilt University’s Department of Computer Science, where I worked with Dr. Pam Wisniewski’s Socio-Technical Interaction Research Lab. I continue to write, speak, and research at the intersection of online safety, digital trust, decentralized technology, and youth wellbeing. I was named a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Data Integrity in 2023. In 2025, I had the honor of serving as President of Division 13 of the American Psychological Association, the Society of Consulting Psychology. I also live with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2020, I took a leave from PwC to focus on my mental wellness, and I now speak and write openly about mental health, especially in the workplace and in relation to digital wellbeing. This blog, Seriously Jerk Brain, chronicles much of that journey.
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1 Comment
How true. We project our anxieties about all the matters over which we have no control, in my case our health, our families’ safety, what’s left of my practice, and politics, onto the first event that shows up. Our refrigerator broke down, and it seemed to me like a great catastrophe. It isn’t; we can replace spoiled food (fortunately) and even buy a new refrigerator if necessary. Houses can be rebuilt, or other houses purchased. But none of the facts dispel anxiety; only self-awareness can.
Seriously, Jerk Brain?! 
How true. We project our anxieties about all the matters over which we have no control, in my case our health, our families’ safety, what’s left of my practice, and politics, onto the first event that shows up. Our refrigerator broke down, and it seemed to me like a great catastrophe. It isn’t; we can replace spoiled food (fortunately) and even buy a new refrigerator if necessary. Houses can be rebuilt, or other houses purchased. But none of the facts dispel anxiety; only self-awareness can.
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