”I Realized Life Didn’t Suck.” A Mental Health Diagnosis Changed This CFO's Life
Some leaders transform because they read the right book or meet the right mentor. Adam Nemer’s turning point was more intimate, and more honest. He got diagnosed with anxiety and depression and he got in touch with past trauma.
At the Anxious Achiever we often talk about how people’s insides don’t match their outsides. Nemer was a classic case; he told me “I just thought that life sucked. But then what I found out once I got diagnosed was that I had been struggling for 20 years with a clinical yet curable illness. It wasn't that my life sucked and I couldn't breathe and I was always in pain and I couldn't catch my breath and I was always yelling.” Before that moment, Adam had already climbed high. He was CFO for Kaiser Permanente’s Northwest region. But he describes those years bluntly: presenteeism in a suit. Kinda not there inside. He showed up, smiled and nodded, asked polished, “coach-y” questions—“Say that again so I can really consider it”—and powered through meetings while listening as little as possible. He held it together all day and then detonated at home. “At work I looked aloof,” he told me. “At home, I could be a son of a bi**h.” When one of his kids asked, “Dad, why do you yell at us so much?” it split him open.
Listen to my interview with Adam Nemer here.
Eight years ago, Adam received a diagnosis of depression and anxiety. He took six weeks off, started antidepressants and cognitive behavioral therapy, and returned with a new motivation: if mental illness touches one in five of us each year—and most wait more than a decade to get help—then a leader’s job isn’t to power through; it’s to build a system where people can get honest, get support, and still do excellent work. And he put his diagnosis to work, building a ground-breaking mental health first aid program within his employer, Kaiser Permanente and now at his company Simple Mental Health.
What changed after the diagnosis
First, self-management became leadership work. Adam wrote two lists: the “every day” list (call a friend or sister, do yoga, move his body—sometimes just a phantom golf swing in an airport, do the meaningful work in front of him) and the “bad day” list (start by checking whether he’s done the basics from list one, then keep going). He learned to ground himself in meetings: hands flat on the table, breathe, slow the moment down. He’ll still take a sip of water in tense conversations, not because he’s thirsty but because that pause helps his nervous system catch up with the room.
Second, he got transparent in real time. As a senior leader, Adam started narrating the truth in proportionate ways: “I’m having an anxiety spike; I’m going to take a walk and come back.” That single sentence did two things leaders often struggle to do at once—it modeled vulnerability with boundaries and it kept responsibility where it belonged. He wasn’t asking his team to fix him. He was normalizing reality and managing himself.
Third, Adam piloted Mental Health First Aid across his 400-person team—pulling people out of work in four-hour blocks, executives and staff together, to learn the basics: how to recognize when someone might be struggling and how to approach them kindly and constructively. In other words, he didn’t just “share his story”; he built a shared language.
The results? Engagement rose to the top of Kaiser’s national benchmarks. So did operational performance.
What he learned from the managers who shaped him
Adam is generous in his gratitude. He rattles off a list of senior leaders at Kaiser who quietly modeled good leadership. Their style wasn’t performative. They were calm. They asked real questions. They set firm expectations without humiliation. Adam “mimicked” them at first (his word), then internalized their approach. When your nervous system is on fire, borrowing someone else’s steadiness isn’t faking it; it’s practicing it until your body learns the route.
One mentor in particular, HR leader Tricia Peters, gave him a deceptively simple tool after he’d blown up at a medical director in a high-stakes meeting. She invited him to her office—steady voice, no shaming—and said, essentially: You’re right on the substance. But you can’t explode at our medical director. When you’re about to pop, put your palms on the table. Breathe. Listen. Adam used that technique for the next dozen years, even when he was roiling inside.
Another lesson came from loss. Adam’s father died by suicide. Adam’s father, Nemer notes, was well known around town as a great guy… you’d never know anything was wrong. For years, grief chased Adam like a shadow, so he ran—career, achievement, momentum. How many of us have to keep outrunning trauma, anxiety, depression? Therapy taught him a different relationship: the memory is a book on the shelf. He can take it down, feel it fully, and put it back when he needs to move through his day. That metaphor changed how he led hard conversations. He could be present with someone else’s pain without absorbing it as his own. He could close a meeting and go home to his kids—still feeling, still human, not flooded.
From “smile and nod” to presence and performance
If I had to name Adam’s leadership inflection point, it’s this: he stopped performing composure and started practicing presence. Pre-diagnosis, presence was a mask. Post-diagnosis, presence became a method:
Name the moment. “I’m not at my best; here’s what I need to stay on track.”
Manage your physiology in public. Hands on the table. Slow breath. Water sip. Brief step-out when needed.
Ask cleaner questions. Not to hide disengagement, but to draw out judgment and next steps: What do you recommend? Why? What support do you need?
Create shared accountability. Teach the team what to look for and what to do—so mental health isn’t an individual’s secret battle or a leader’s private burden.
It’s tempting to frame stories like Adam’s as “redemption arcs”—the executive tamed, the inner jerk redeemed. But that flattens what actually happened. He didn’t become a different person; he learned to lead the person he already was, a person with mental illness. And he did it with help from medication, from CBT, from mentors who modeled steadiness, from tiny rituals that brought his nervous system back online when the room heated up.
I asked Adam what he tells people who don’t love their jobs the way he loves his now. He says: start with holistic wellness, and use the resources you already have—your Employee Assistance Program isn’t only for crises; it can help you sort your work, your values, your relationships. You may not quit and found a company like Adam did (Simple Mental Health now trains boards and leadership teams in mental health literacy), but you can absolutely claim more agency over your day. You can make work kinder to your brain—and your brain kinder to your work.
Here’s the leadership takeaway I can’t stop repeating: when leaders normalize mental health and build basic literacy, performance doesn’t erode, it unlocks. Adam’s team got happier and hit the operational marks. That’s not an accident. It’s what happens when people don’t have to spend all their energy hiding. And most important, when we stop to truly understand who we are and the diagnoses that will help us get what we need.
With feeling, Morra
Try this at your desk: In your next tense meeting, place both palms on the table. Take one quiet, longer-than-usual breath before speaking. Then start with, “Here’s what I’m hearing, and here’s what I recommend.” It’s amazing how much clarity arrives when your body feels a little safer.
PS: If this resonated, consider a quick audit: Do your managers know the signs of struggle and how to respond? If not, start with one building block—mental health literacy for your leadership team—and watch what shifts. Check out Adam’s company, Simple Mental Health for more.