Ben Huh on Therapy

Huh began therapy four or five years earlier during a stressful period at work, after board member Brad Feld suggested he see CEO coach Jerry Colonna in New York. He argues that people often wait until they are in crisis, even though seeking help earlier can prevent problems from growing. He sees therapy as a way to maintain a strong mental state, not only to recover from hardship.

Huh says CEO coaching helped him understand what was blocking difficult decisions and how his relationships with employees, executives, and work stress affected him. Through Kip, he is also seeing a personal therapist for the first time. That work focuses on emotions, reactions, avoidance, and the habits that help him move toward constructive activities like reading and writing.

Huh describes advice from Jerry Colonna and former coach Khed Halim: assess the reality of a situation, then decide what to do. He says this helps him reduce the pull of stress or euphoria and consider available options more calmly. The goal is to understand emotions without letting them dictate an immediate reaction.

Huh says people seeking help for depression need to be honest with their therapist about their state; hiding what is happening makes it harder for the therapist to help. He compares this to giving a coding team a false description of the feature or performance problem they need to address. He encourages people to distinguish plainly between depression and sadness and to discuss either openly.

Huh recommends understanding personal motivations, including whether money or other goals are driving a startup founder. He argues that therapy or coaching costs of a few hundred dollars weekly, every two weeks, or monthly can be small compared with the effort saved and potential return from improved mental and emotional wellbeing. As an investor and board member, he recommends founders spend time and money on it.