Victor Cheng’s Struggles with Suicide & Depression, Case Interview Secrets, ex-McKinsey

Christopher Lee: Thank you so much Victor for joining us. Victor Cheng is a former McKinsey & Company management consultant, strategic planning consultant, public speaker and author of several business Christopher Lee: Thank you so much, Victor, for joining us. Victor Cheng is a former McKinsey & Company management consultant, strategic planning consultant, public speaker and author of several business books. He’s a graduate of Stanford University with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in sociology. Victor started his career as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and later held senior management positions with LivePerson, and Art Technology Group, which has since been acquired by Oracle Software. As a business consultant, Victor advises owners and CEOs of small businesses and Inc 500 caliber companies. He’s a contributor to Entrepreneur.com and writes on topics of leadership and human capital in fast growing small businesses. Victor also serves as an expert source for media outlets, including MSNBC, Fox Business Network, Time, Forbes, Fortune Small Business, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur, and The Wall Street Journal. He’s most famously known as the author for Case Interview Secrets: A Former McKinsey Interviewer Reveals How to Get Multiple Job Offers In Consulting. So thanks, Victor, again for joining the program to share more about your story. I was wondering, for those who are not too familiar with your story, can you provide a synopsis regarding what your journey has been or was with suicidal ideation, depression, and mental health?

Victor Cheng: Yes. So just for some context, I started off my career in a high prestige and career environment with McKinsey, which is sort of the elite of the consulting firms, where there are a lot of super achievers. Only two percent of Harvard grads who apply get in, so it’s very elite and prestigious. And it’s a culture with a lot of perfectionism and one of “show no weakness.” One of the things I’ve struggled with over the years — which I recently revealed publicly — is depression and thoughts of suicide throughout my career at different points in time. I’ve since come to realize I wasn’t the only one. I always thought I was sort of alone. And a lot of people have come out of the woodwork and said, “Hey, I’ve struggled with that too.” So, I just really wanted to start this conversation around sharing what some of those difficulties are like. It’s quite a taboo topic. For most people, particularly in these image-conscious, prestigious types of environments, it’s awkward and difficult to talk about. So I’ve just started a conversation, being open about that in hopes that it’s something that comes out of the shadows. I hope it can just be discussed more openly, and that people can realize that if they’re struggling, others are too. And for those who aren’t, to recognize that people around them might be, and to just have good awareness around that. So that’s what I’ve been up to more recently; I’ve been sharing my journey around that path.

Christopher Lee: That’s great. And I know you from time to time reference Brene Brown in some of the calls and the work that you do. I really admire you for your courage and your vulnerability and leading with that. So you touched upon my next question a little bit, which is: what is the reason why you have chosen this particular period of time to openly share your story regarding suicidal ideation, depression, and mental health?

Victor Cheng: My most prominent memory of my own mental health challenges was in the last recession, the Great Recession of 2008, which was such a brutal time. My business was completely decimated, as were many. I had a lot of financial difficulties. The emotions were overwhelming to the point that I really considered taking my own life. And the reason I decided to share it now was that I was seeing a lot of the same pressures; in 2020, we’re having our conversation with COVID and the recession that was triggered by COVID. It has a lot of the same pressures that were present in 2008 — major changes in the economy, major layoffs, major changes in income, lots of pressure. Most of it was out of everyone’s control. That’s an extremely adverse environment from a mental health standpoint. So I just felt called to share that story. It’s something I’ve been working on for two years. It was very difficult for me to express; it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to talk about or write about. But I finally got to a point where I just felt ready to share it. I think the current external situation was very reminiscent of the times I struggled the most, and I thought maybe it would be helpful for others. So that’s why I did that.

Christopher Lee: Sounds good. What did your care team or your therapist teach you regarding empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence? What did you learn from the team?

Victor Cheng: Those emotional intelligence skills (for lack of a better term) are really things that are learned through experience. It’s very difficult to read a book about empathy and suddenly be empathetic. What is far more likely is that you’re on the receiving end of someone else’s empathy, you recognize what that feels like, you see it role-modeled, you experience it, and then you start to emulate it. In an ideal situation, we would get this kind of role modeling and implicit teaching from our caregivers as kids, in our family environment. But, some of us don’t have that experience. Some just don’t have that family environment or culture. We have to learn it externally. For me, it was in seeing my various therapists over the years be able to “hold space” to hear my feelings. I was able to receive their empathy around my feelings and start to get used to that. I started recognizing what that feels like, started doing it a little bit on my own, started to pick friendships and relationships where that’s more the norm and people are quite comfortable with that. So it’s just been really good role modeling. There’s this term therapists often use called “re-parenting.” There’s parenting, and then there’s something called re-parenting. Re-parenting is a role that a lot of therapists play where they will sort of re-teach a client some of the emotional intelligence lessons that they didn’t necessarily receive as children. So that’s really the biggest role. Being on the receiving end of re-parenting is really quite profoundly helpful.

Christopher Lee: Are there certain segments of the population that have a greater propensity towards depression or other mental health challenges? For example, first-time startup founders, management or technology consultants, Asian-American or Asian demographics, etc.?

Victor Cheng: I don’t have data on depression by demographics. I did look at suicide rates by population, per 100,000 people. I looked at it across multiple countries and multiple age brackets. My data is a little bit dated — maybe three years old — but I was really surprised that it’s just pretty high everywhere, across cultures, across languages, across age groups. I didn’t have economic sector-level data, like certain jobs. I haven’t seen that data. But across general demographics, it’s not great across the board. The only data around professions I see are around those professions where there’s a lot of either facing high risk of death or facing other people’s emotional challenges. Psychiatrists, first responders, those kinds of professions (from what I recall) have a higher rate of suicide, in many cases.

Christopher Lee: How might you suggest the Asian-Chinese and or Chinese-American community address the social or cultural stigma around mental health? And this could even be targeted in general, but specific to these populations.

Victor Cheng: Oh, that’s a tough one! That’s right up there with, “How do you create world peace?” It’s a very worthy cause, but it is such a difficult challenge because of the cultural roots — as you talked about, the taboos and stigma. I simply think about the things that one can do to contribute to changing that. I don’t know if it’s enough to change the whole thing, but I think it can help. And I think a big part of it is openness. Talking about the topic makes it easier to address. When something is perceived to be so “horrible” or “terrible” or “shameful” that you can’t even talk about it, you think, “Wow, that must be really, really bad.” And to borrow from Brene Brown, feelings like shame, they disappear in the light and they thrive in darkness and secrecy. So I think the big thing is really just having more open conversations about it. My sense is that probably won’t be well received in certain parts of that demographic. But I think it’s a start. I can’t see any path forward that works without the openness of that conversation as a step early in that process.

Christopher Lee: How does the culture, and it could be like a more traditional culture, address the issue of emotional and psychological abuse from a certain type of parenting style, for example, Tiger mom, etc.?

Victor Cheng: That’s right up there with world peace again, a hard question. It’s such a rich conversation. There’s a friend of mine, who is not from an Eastern culture — and when I think of Eastern, I think of Chinese, because that’s my ethnic background — and he really grasped Chinese culture as an outsider. He described it really, really well, and it was the first time I’d heard it described this way. He said, “Chinese culture values one thing above all else — survival.” And I’m like, “Huh. You know, I think that’s right.” Why do traditional Chinese parents or Eastern parents really want their kids to go to school and do well? Because they’re worried about their survival. And it’s probably true that if you have a better degree, a higher paying job, a more prestigious profession, there’s a greater likelihood of survival, particularly economic survival. I think the culture is premised around that. And it does address that problem quite well, I think. What it doesn’t do and what is not valued is emotional survival, or better yet, emotional thriving. It’s not really baked into the culture. I think a lot of the parenting reflects that. So it’s really based around economic survival, incentivizing survival, and not really having a concern with emotional well being. It becomes a pretty slippery slope. It’s hard for me to draw the exact line between what is a challenging parenting style versus emotional and psychological abuse. There’s probably a zone in the middle where it’s kind of gray, where it’s really hard to pinpoint it. But I think anything that denies someone’s emotional experience, of a child or even an adult child, is getting into unhealthy territory. I’m not comfortable defining what is abuse and what’s not. But I can definitely say that when someone’s emotional experience is not recognized, acknowledged, or allowed to be expressed, it’s definitely getting into an unhealthy zone. I think that’s a really big concern. I see quite a few people who have expressed an underlying difficulty with being raised with that kind of parenting style and how it sometimes manifests in terms of depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and suicide. It’s a huge, huge concern. I think that line is really: Are a child’s feelings and their emotional experiences allowed to be expressed? That’s a pretty good acid test of whether that parenting environment is an emotionally healthy one or is problematic.

Christopher Lee: And what do you think the healing process from this trauma or PTSD could look like?

Victor Cheng: There’s this term I learned in therapy called the “emotionally reparative experience.” I’ve had quite a few, both in therapy and also in very close friendships that I’ve cultivated since going down this path because I wanted to be around people who connect in a more emotionally healthy way. These emotional reparative experiences are really a form of re-parenting — it’s not intended to be that way, but that’s what it ends up being — where one gets these very positive emotional experiences that, ideally, we all would have received as a child from our caregivers. We just get it later in life. It’s having a difficult moment and having someone in your sphere reach out and say, “Hey, are you okay? You seem upset.” For me, that never happened as a child. I can’t remember, maybe one time that has happened to me. But it has happened quite often as an adult with people I’m in close relationships with. And so, that healing process has a lot of emotionally reparative experiences. I’ve been in therapy, multiple support groups, countless classes on developing better interpersonal relationship skills, and I see that happening a lot. They get this similar experience, and it’s something really profound. “Wow, that it was so nice to feel that,” whether it’s empathy, or one’s feelings being acknowledged or validated, or one’s needs being heard and understood. Any of those can be very reparative and have a great positive outcome. I wouldn’t say that these positive outcomes can erase the past or negative experiences, but they can become part of a healing process that becomes bigger than the negative wounds from the past.

Christopher Lee: Sounds good. What has your experience been in working with or becoming friends with neurodiverse individuals/professionals and/or those who have mental health issues?

Victor Cheng: How do you define neurodiverse?

Christopher Lee: Neurodiverse being something like ADHD, autism, people on the spectrum, Asperger’s, and the like.

Victor Cheng: I’ll tackle that question in two parts. I don’t have a lot of experience (that I’m aware of) around interacting and building relationships with people who are neurodiverse. I’m sure I have, but oftentimes that information is not known to me. And so, I don’t have explicit knowledge around that. And then you had a second part of your question. Could you repeat that for me?

Christopher Lee: Sure, so I was just wondering what has your experience been working with or becoming friends with those with mental health issues?

Victor Cheng: That I have a lot of experience with. I think it’s in part because a very high number of people struggle with mental wellness or mental health challenges. It’s not always clinical, sometimes it’s subclinical. Because I have sought to be with people who want similar experiences, I meet a lot of them. I’m not sure how to answer the question. It’s fairly common for me. When I think of my close friends, probably half have struggled with suicide. The other half have dealt with anxiety. I’ve had a couple of clients with ADHD, so those weren’t close, emotional relationships but more professional ones. I guess it doesn’t stick out to me as unusual, in my world. How I relate to them really isn’t any different than anybody else. What I find is different is that — particularly with the people that I meet — they have these challenges, they are aware of these challenges, and they are very open about working on these challenges. They have that kind of mindset. They have a fairly rich and wide set of emotional experiences, so there’s often quite a lot to talk about. I find that, while you might admire someone for their achievements, you bond with someone through your shared adversities. When someone has a difficult time that I can relate to, I feel closer to them. I think that people with those challenges have a fair number of adversities. Of the subset that’s open about them, I find I can connect quite deeply with them because I can relate to, not all, but at least some of the experiences they’ve had.

Christopher Lee: Are there any other questions that you wish I would have asked that I didn’t ask?

Victor Cheng: No questions come to mind. There is a topic that I am not sure how to phrase into a question, but I’d like to address it, if that’s alright with you.

Christopher Lee: Sounds good.

Victor Cheng: It’s the topic of what emotional wellness looks like. What is a healthy relationship with oneself? What does a healthy relationship with another person really look like? The reason I bring it up is that it’s something I think a lot of people, myself included, have not really witnessed up close. What I found, and I have seen this to be very true in a lot of support groups, is it’s really hard to emulate something you’ve never actually seen before. If you grow up and your parents have a phenomenally healthy marriage, that’s your default. You copy what you know. The likelihood that you’ll have a predominantly healthy marriage is quite good, because you’ve seen it. The opposite is true too. If your parents have a very emotionally challenging, dysfunctional, or even abusive relationship, there’s a lot of copying that happens. And so, a healthy relationship with oneself involves having a lot of empathy and compassion for one’s own feelings. The opposite might be that you make a mistake and beat yourself up — “Oh, I can’t believe I’m such an idiot” — that sort of negative self-talk, that criticism, that harshness. If someone else does that to you, it’s borderline emotional abuse. If you say it to yourself, that’s just being yourself. But, that has a very harmful effect. The healthier option is saying something like, “Whoops, I messed up on that one. Okay, what can I learn from that? What should I do differently? It’s kind of a bummer. I wish I didn’t make that mistake, but making mistakes is how you learn, so I’m going to learn. It’s part of the process. It’s just me being human.” That’s what that sounds like. You can see that contrast. All healthy relationships between two people occur at two levels. It’s very useful to recognize. One is the functional level. “Hey, where do you want to go for dinner?” “When is that report due?” “When do we want to go shopping for a house?” or “…plan our vacation?” It’s sort of like project and task management of the day-to-day, living life together as friends, family, or as a romantic partner. That’s one level. I call it the functional level. The second level is the emotional level. I would love for everyone’s awareness around this to increase — that there are always, always two levels and in a good relationship, particularly one that’s more emotionally intimate (which can be friendships, parental relationships, or partner relationships), both of those levels need to work. If you can’t work together as a team on the practical stuff, that’s not a great relationship. If you cannot connect well emotionally, underneath all of the practical stuff, that also isn’t always a healthy relationship. I think recognizing that those two levels of every relationship exist, and that both channels need to work really well for relationships to function well, is really important. For those who aren’t familiar with what that emotional channel looks like, a big part of it is really around (to oversimplify) two things. One is, do both people have the ability to share and feel comfortable sharing their feelings with the other? “How did that feel for you?” “Oh, to be honest, it kind of hurt my feelings a bit,” or “I’m feeling sad,” or “I was really disappointed,” You’re using the actual emotion words and having that be allowed within the space between two people. The other is to be curious about the other person’s emotions, and say, “Hey, in that last phone call we had, something seemed off. Are you okay?” “How did that land for you?” “How did you experience that?” “When we had our last fight, what was going through your mind, and how are you feeling about it? How are you feeling now?” Those emotional check-ins are good indicators of whether those two things are there, where: 1) You can each share your feelings, and those feelings are received well by the other; and 2) Each person is curious about not only their own feelings, but the other person’s feelings as well. Those are really good indicators of an emotionally healthy relationship.

Christopher Lee: Sounds good. Part of what you just shared, the first part about self-compassion, reminded me of Kristin Neff’s work, which I’m sure you’re familiar with.

Victor Cheng: No, I’m not. Remind me. I might be familiar with her work.

Christopher Lee: What you describe exactly is Kristin Neff, she did doctoral research at UC Berkeley on self-compassion, and my executive coach actually told me about it. She says that having compassion for oneself is really no different than having compassion for others. Think about what an experience of compassion feels like. First to have compassion for others, you must notice that they are suffering. I’ll send you the link offline. But her work, she has a bunch of exercises on self-compassion, which is a way to silence your inner critic. What you described is actually pretty close to, if not what, she teaches. So I’m really amazed that you were able to come to that conclusion because she did an entire PhD research paper on it.

Victor Cheng: It’s interesting. A lot of people have come to that conclusion experientially. It’s very true. I teach this in my own emotional intelligence class. The way that you develop an emotional compassion for others is to have it for yourself. If you have self-compassion, you can be compassionate to others. If others are compassionate to you, like a parent, a close friend, or spouse, then you can start to heal and develop compassion for yourself, which then also allows you to have compassion for others. So we’re all very interrelated. This dynamic between self and others can be a very virtuous cycle or it can be a very destructive cycle. It works both ways. The opposite is self-criticism. Where does self-criticism come from? It comes from external criticism. Someone criticizes you a lot, then you learn to criticize yourself. If you criticize yourself a lot, there’s a pretty high chance you’re going to criticize somebody else. It all flows between people. So, it works both ways, both positively and negatively.

Christopher Lee: Makes sense. Anything else you wanted to add to this conversation?

Victor Cheng: Just that I’d like to thank you for reaching out and wanting to talk about this topic, and sharing this conversation more broadly. I think it’s just a really important series of conversations to be had. So I just wanted to acknowledge you and what you’re doing to contribute to making positive positive change in this area. So, thank you for your work.