Katy Cook
About My Guest
Dr. Katy Cook is a social psychologist, coach, and consultant. Her specialty is the role emotional intelligence plays in business.
Katy is the author of The Psychology of Silicon Valley: Ethical Threats and Emotional Unintelligence in the Tech Industry and the founder of the Centre for Technology Awareness.
She holds a PhD in Psychology from UCL and Masters degrees in Psychology and Cultural Studies. She is a member of the American Psychological Association, Society of Consulting Psychology, and the Society of Psychologists in Management.
After an eventful, epic decade studying, traveling, and expat-ing in London, Katy now lives back in Southern California.
Shervin Talieh:
Welcome again to another session of On Misogyny, and I'm excited about our conversation today. Why don't we start, to begin with, can you introduce yourself.
Katy Cook:
Sure. My name is Katy Cook. I live in San Diego, California, which is southern California, about as southern as you can get. And I'm a social psychologist, so I ... what that means is I study and I write about and I work with groups of people and my specialty is on emotions and emotional intelligence within groups.
Katy Cook:
And so I've done a bit of work on the psychology of the tech industry. I am now working on a new project, which is potentially a little ambitious, on the psychology of America. And I have a background in mental health literature and different areas of psych.
Shervin Talieh:
Have you lived in San Diego all your life or is this a new location for you?
Katy Cook:
It is both old and new, actually. I was born here and I lived here until I was about 21 and I moved across the pond. I went and did a semester in Oxford and absolutely loved it. And came back, ended up going to grad school up in Santa Barbara to get my counseling psychology degree and became a therapist in California.
Katy Cook:
I then realized I quite liked social psychology, I really prefer the psychology of groups and psychology at scale, is what I call it. And also I wasn't super great at individual psychotherapy. I cried a lot and didn't have probably the boundaries I needed to to do that super well. And so I went back to school and I started cultural studies.
Katy Cook:
So I went back to the UK, I moved to London. Oh, gosh, that would've been about 10 years ago, and stayed there and did another masters in issues in modern culture, and then a PhD in psychoanalysis in modernism. And then while I was there, started writing a book on the psychology of tech, worked a little bit, and then moved home about, oh gosh, two-and-a-half years ago now. So I am a recent re-patriot of America, which has both pros and cons, I think.
Shervin Talieh:
Okay, that's great. You've given me a lot in terms of areas I want to explore. But before I do that, can you share with me what your earliest memories or understanding of sexism are like?
Katy Cook:
Sure. I've listened to a few of the podcasts that you've done already with some of the other women you've interviewed, and so I knew this question was coming. And so I've been thinking about it and it's really hard with hindsight, you see things that at the time you didn't probably realize were sexist or weren't fair or were based on gender.
Katy Cook:
But the first time I think I realized something was wrong in the moment that had to do with my gender was when I was 16. I was working at an Italian restaurant and my boss owned two different restaurants, kind of a pizza place, which is where I started, and a nice, fancy Italian restaurant.
Katy Cook:
And at the nice, fancy Italian restaurant, I was hostessing, I was there late, I went in the back and the manager was there. He was probably in his 40s, had a bit of a crush on me, I believe kind of in hindsight, and dropped his pants in front of me.
Katy Cook:
I was just shocked. I didn't really know what to do. I had recently had a car accident, so I had some PTSD anyway, and I just kind of went back into the main area of the restaurant, grabbed my stuff and went home. And I didn't want to go back ever again.
Katy Cook:
And I went to my boss, he was a very, very nice man at the other restaurant and said, "Hey, this thing happened. I don't want to go back there. Please don't make me work there again. I just want to work at this restaurant instead." And he didn't believe me. He told me I was mistaken in some way and I hadn't seen what I saw.
Katy Cook:
And I think in some ways because I trusted him so much and I respected him so much and he had always been so kind to me, I think that in a way was almost more upsetting than the actual physical boundary crossing that the other manager had done. So that was the first time I realized there was this code or some kind of ... this wasn't happening because I was young, this wasn't happening because I had demonstrated that I was a liar, this was happening because he was sticking up for another man and I was a woman.
Katy Cook:
And this made a lot more sense as I grew up and started hearing phrases and catchphrases and hashtags and belief, we believe women or me too and all these things that have now caught on and become quite mainstream, back then I think were sheltered-lived experiences. And that's why I think women have so many of these stories, is because we've just slowly gathered them over the years, not really knowing that we weren't alone in this.
Shervin Talieh:
What does it feel like when someone tries to erase your memory?
Katy Cook:
So this is really interesting, I've been on this idea in my dissertation, actually, on men who rename women or men who write out other people's experiences or write over them, as the case may be.
Katy Cook:
How does it feel? You feel, I guess, invisible, to a degree. You feel like your experiences are invalidated, don't matter, you can't be trusted. It makes you feel crazy too. It's a form of gas lighting. Maybe not purposeful or conscious on their part, but you start to question your own sanity. And especially in retrospect, you think, "Oh my god, did that really happen? Can I trust myself if other people don't trust me? I think I'm sane, but am I?"
Katy Cook:
And so you start to, I think, lose faith in yourself because someone else erases something that you know to be true.
Shervin Talieh:
Given your background in social psychology, I'm interested in getting you to dig into this area specifically around the notion that misogyny as I'm coming to understand it, is sort of this ... for a lack of a better word, the hatred of women by men. And one of the manifestations of that, obviously it shows up in many different ways, but for women as I'm understanding it, a lot of it is systemic and it's just part of the conventions of work, as an example.
Shervin Talieh:
So in this particular case, you're talking about a man doing ... essentially, it's an assault, what he did to you. And then the assault kind of continues by another party, and this is where the systemic piece comes into it, where they are questioning your recollection of this.
Shervin Talieh:
In now approaching this from a ... as a social psychologist, do women have their guard up 24/7 to just combat this persistent environment?
Katy Cook:
I would say in most spaces, in the majority of spaces, yes. I would echo what at least a few different women have said so far in your podcast, which is that this requires a lot of energy. It's exhausting. There's a lot of hyper vigilance around not just your safety, but how you come across, how you portray yourself, whether it's acceptable, whether it will produce something that you don't want it to, whether that's attention, good, bad, positive, negative.
Katy Cook:
You end up doing a lot of mental gymnastics, I guess, to think forward through all the potential downfalls, consequences that could happen based on an action or based on what you wear, what you say or how you come across, or your tone, your words. There's so many different things to consider.
Katy Cook:
So I, for an example, have had to really, really work to change the tone of my voice and how I come across, because ... and I've done a few podcasts, and so this has come up quite a bit. My natural way that I would talk would be more like this, I'm super excitable, I'm super friendly. I talk kind of fast, it's a bit higher pitched, and I've had to really work to tone that down in a way and talk a little bit slower, talk a little bit deeper, because men will take you more seriously when you do, when you sound more like them.
Katy Cook:
And that's such a deeply ingrained, weird bias that we all have. And we have that when we are listening to digital assistance or to directions on a GPS, we have these biases about whether it's a male voice, a female voice, a high-pitched voice, a low-pitched voice. And that's just one small, small iteration of what we ... the information that we take in, not necessarily what we look at, but what we hear and consume about someone's identity and who they are and how trustworthy they are and how intelligent they are and all these things.
Katy Cook:
So, tone is one thing, the way you look, your age, all these things add up. And so I think for women especially, dress, words, these things become extra important, especially in a work environment. There's a constant social error in thinking that the way women dress should appease men or should make them not too turned on, but also you have to look a certain way. You can't be too covered up. It's very, very confusing and it's very exhausting as a woman to navigate what you perceive to be cultural expectations, particularly when you jump from one culture to another.
Shervin Talieh:
You almost read my mind. I was going to ask if that experience for you was any different in your time overseas versus in the states?
Katy Cook:
Yeah, a bit. I would say the UK in general I find a bit more respectful. They love standing in orderly lines and they're really quiet and try not to touch each other and make eye contact on train or bother each other. So in a way, they're kind of a bit more, just across the board, men and women, a bit more respectful of space and of things like that in general.
Katy Cook:
But you still have the same things in the back of your head, and I'm not sure if I had been born there if that would still be the case, but even in a city as safe as London, which by all accounts, very few guns. If you stay in the right neighborhoods, very little even knife crimes. So safe city on the whole, but still you don't wear your headphones at night, you don't walk alone at night. You don't dress a certain way without a big coat over you.
Katy Cook:
You don't, ideally, go out without a man to certain areas. It's different but very similar. I would say more similar than different.
Shervin Talieh:
Can you tell me about your work with ... and specifically your book, The Psychology of Silicon Valley, and you address ethical threats and emotional unintelligence of the tech industry. I'd love to learn more about ... is there a connection between emotional unintelligence and sexism? And if not, what connections do you see? And if so, if you could elaborate.
Katy Cook:
That's a really important question. I would reframe that a little bit to answer in this way, that emotional intelligence leads to ethical decision making. And this is across lots of industries, not just tech. So across any corporate, seen across nursing. This can be replicated in all sorts of environments.
Katy Cook:
But if you have high emotional intelligence or the higher your emotional intelligence, the more likely individuals and groups of people are to exhibit ethical decisions and ethical decision making.
Katy Cook:
So, sexism, obviously not super ethical, so yes, in a roundabout way, I'm answering your question. Yes, emotional unintelligence is responsible, at least in part for sexism. If you understand ... and it might be helpful to breakdown emotional intelligence too.
Katy Cook:
It has four components. The one I work on most in empathy, but there's also self-awareness, self-regulation, and social skills. And if you have those, and they kind of work in conjunction. If you have one, you're more likely to build out the others. It's hard to be super empathetic but have very low self-awareness. So generally, they kind of ... as your emotional intelligence grows, all these four things grow together.
Katy Cook:
And the higher they get, because the more aware you are of other people and what your behavior or maybe the products or the services that you make, say you work in tech, the more aware you are of how those could affect other people, the higher empathy you have, the more likely you are to give a crap and to make products or services or to behave in a way yourself or to import your company in a way that is ethical.
Katy Cook:
And so this tie between emotional intelligence and ethics is what I do for a day job. This is my job. I consult, I build empathy in companies, and my purpose for doing that is to make companies, specifically tech companies, hopefully over time, a little bit more ethical. And this is what I want to next explore at a national level within the US, whether our emotional intelligence as a country could be grown in order to ... specifically our empathy again, in order to make more ethical decisions as a group.
Shervin Talieh:
What would ethical decisions look like when trying to address systemic sexism and misogyny? And you're working, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have been working with a lot of private, or maybe even public, companies, but what about at the government level, at the policy level, how would we connect, equate our emotional intelligence to making the changes that would bring about a safer environment for women?
Katy Cook:
That's a really good question. I hadn't thought about it in terms of the specific policies, but let's just brainstorm for a second. So legally, punishments, education-wise, consent and education, thinking about emotional intelligence education throughout primary and secondary school for kids and maybe even within college could break down some of the unconscious bias that those individuals would go on to potentially not have when they are out in the world, either working at or running organizations.
Katy Cook:
A lot of the bias that women face particularly in tech, when you have such a homogenous group, these values get reinforced. And that's true at not just within tech, but within any corporate environment, there are way more men within government. There are way more men even in universities. I studied English and psychology and even though most English majors and most therapists are women, most of my professors were men. Most of my bosses throughout my life were men.
Katy Cook:
And kind of understanding how women think differently, what they have to offer, not seeing them as particularly different in terms of their abilities or what they bring to the table. There's a really interesting study about ... oh gosh, who is it by? I'm not going to remember right now. It's in my book. That 80% of the things that men and women experience, think about are actually really aligned.
Katy Cook:
Like our assertiveness, our emotions. We have the exact same number of emotions, for instance, and it's this myth that women emote more than men, but we actually have way more in common than you think. And so if you start to break that down, I think at an early age, whether that's policy, whether that's education, whatever it is, that can be an interesting way to go about it.
Katy Cook:
But to answer your question, I have not flushed that out. I am in the very early stages of research for the next book.
Shervin Talieh:
You're talking about the digital assistants, and this was something that another guest, at least a couple of the other guests had brought up, either directly or indirectly. In tech, we see a lot of physical manifestations of sexism. And as one of the guests said in the actual choices that they're making in terms of the gender of the digital assistant or their tone, or sometimes even their physical shape, if you will. Are there other examples of sexism in tech that you have come across?
Katy Cook:
Yeah, quite a bit. When I was interviewing for my book, and I did about 250, 260 interviews, about 20% of those were women, and the majority of them ... there were a handful, five maybe, who didn't report any issues around harassment, bias, bullying, anything like that, but the majority really did.
Katy Cook:
And even in the process of doing those interviews, I encountered some myself as a researcher. And these women have to deal with this every day, to deal with being passed over at Google despite their qualifications and the number of years they've been there for someone who's been there half as long as doesn't have a master's degree.
Katy Cook:
Or who else am I thinking of? Women who excel in a certain language that they've worked really hard to master over the years, again being passed over for opportunities. Women being mistaken for being assistants rather than engineers or board members even, in some cases.
Katy Cook:
So the examples and the number of stories I've heard just were horrifying. It was horrifying. And I say at some point in my book, I have a whole chapter on ... and it wasn't supposed to be this way. I say that in a lot of ways, it wasn't supposed to be this way. But it ended up that I had enough material to make an entire chapter about harassment and bias and discrimination in tech. And that doesn't just have to do with sexism, that's also racism, that's ageism. I didn't have enough data to report on things like ableism, but there was a lot of discrimination across a lot of different metrics in the industry.
Katy Cook:
And the stories I heard from women were horrifying, some of them. And you can see in the lawsuits too. If you go in and look at the lawsuits of sexism or harassment that have been brought up, there's tons, and it's disheartening and it doesn't seem to ... from what I can tell, I haven't looked actually at this year's numbers, but just even the numbers of women in tech and artificial intelligence, they just aren't going up.
Katy Cook:
And so while you have this insular culture, this bubble, it is really hard to ... you don't have diversity, and so it makes it really hard to have inclusion for the women who are there. And so the experience of being a woman in tech, from what I can tell, is not ideal for a lot of people. There's a lot of turnover.
Shervin Talieh:
One of the things that strikes me as very strange is how people within tech and within Silicon Valley specifically, view themselves as being sort of progressive and woke. And yet, the stories that you're sharing and the stories that I've heard from others, it's almost this, again, a lack of self-awareness, to use your words.
Shervin Talieh:
When you compare the experiences in tech and the sexism at some of these institutions that you're referring to versus middle America, let's say for example, what are the differences and what are the similarities?
Katy Cook:
When you say middle America, can you tell me what you mean?
Shervin Talieh:
I mean decidedly not ... anywhere that's not New York or Silicon Valley.
Katy Cook:
Okay, got it. When I was doing these interviews, everyone is really woke. It was really fun to go and have these conversations about values and social problems. There is a lot of awareness, I think, in tech, in liberal places, New York, Seattle, other tech hubs as well about different things that are going on in the world.
Katy Cook:
But social awareness is different than self-awareness. And self-awareness is really, really, really hard. It's taking a lot of my energy right now, not to swear. I'm sorry, Shervin. It's really difficult to-
Shervin Talieh:
Feel free to swear, by the way.
Katy Cook:
Oh, amazing. Okay. It's fucking-
Shervin Talieh:
I encourage it.
Katy Cook:
... difficult to be self-aware. When I test my own emotional intelligence, it's the one that's always furthest down for me. It's so, so hard, because neurologically, we are programmed to be the hero in our story and to be the good guy, or girl, and it's hard to let go of that and it's hard to think about, "Oh, wow. Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture. Maybe I have made a mistake or maybe I have hurt someone or I might have blinders on. What does that look like?"
Katy Cook:
We don't ask ourselves those questions as a matter of course. Very, very few people do. And I think the fact that you started this podcast and this project because you noticed a blind spot of your own, that is a stunning display of self-awareness, to just acknowledge that you don't know something.
Katy Cook:
But not that many people do that. And so the lack of self-awareness in tech is something I talk about in my book a lot. And it's a touchy subject. No one wants to be told that they're not super self-aware. But it's difficult, the more you gain power as an industry, the more you gain power as an individual, there's something called the power paradox that Dacher Keltner writes about.
Katy Cook:
I think he's a professor at Berkeley, and the basics of this theory is that the more power you accumulate, the less likely you are to be able to act on the qualities that you need to be a good leader. So say like empathy or openness to other opinions or being able to look at yourself and your decisions critically.
Katy Cook:
And we see this really, really a lot at certain organizations in tech and we can point those out and talk about them, but I think more importantly is to say, "Hey, as an industry," and this isn't just tech, this is lot of corporate environment, "are we being self-aware? What are we not thinking about? The fact that we don't have any black people on our board, what does that mean? Are we missing stuff? Does the fact that the majority, 80-something percent of our engineering team is male, is that going to make a difference to the kind of products that we produce? Or the majority of people are white and Asian-American, does that make a difference?"
Katy Cook:
And it's really a complicated task, I don't know what you want to call it, project to go about. Developing self-awareness is hugely difficult for an individual, let alone an entire industry or organization.
Shervin Talieh:
You referenced that periodically you test your own level of self-awareness. How does one do that?
Katy Cook:
There's lots of different websites you can do it on. I have one, a short version of emotional intelligence assessment on my website.
Shervin Talieh:
What is your website?
Katy Cook:
It is KatyCook.net. I keep trying to get dot com, but the guy won't sell it to me. So KatyCook.net. They change from time to time. Usually empathy is my highest, usually self-awareness is my lowest, but they kind of fluctuate. But everyone will have something that they tend to be best at.
Katy Cook:
Playing on your strengths and developing those strengths and leaning into it is just as important as working on the ones that ... and being aware of the ones that maybe you're not as good at and thinking about why. So just recognizing it and what you need to work on as a first point of call is a good first step, in my opinion. There's lots of resources. I can send some for you.
Shervin Talieh:
Thank you. It's brand new to me, so I'm eager to learn more about that. I do want to ask about ... some of the open topics I'd really love for you to weigh in on. What should the role of men be in changing things? If I'm understanding this correctly, it is men, in fact, that are creating this environment, because it ... back to the power paradox, they are the ones who by and large are benefiting from this system and why would they ever change or give anything up?
Shervin Talieh:
So, how do we bring about change? What role do men, average people like myself, play in this? And I'd like you to also to address this question of safe spaces. I've heard from women that they ... some women are pretty adamant that ... like in Telepath, as an example, there is a network called women and after much discussion, I think it was determined that the best use of that was for women or anyone who identified as a woman to only for them to be able to participate in that particular network.
Shervin Talieh:
Whereas, I've heard from other women that they, in fact, believe it's important that men being able to listen and even participate in some of those rooms, if you will, if meaningful change is to come about. So if you can elaborate or share with me how you view these things.
Katy Cook:
Yeah, definitely. I love both of those questions. To the first point that you made about what role men need to play or might play, I guess my answer would be in the way I think of this is in a very ... so I'm a super abstract thinker.
Katy Cook:
And I think of all of these things, of display rules and gendered emotions and gendered roles and gendered behaviors as a narrative. This is a socially constructed narrative. There's no evidence that women feel more than men or that we feel certain emotions less than men, and yet men are portrayed as having a monopoly on anger and women more towards things like joy or sadness or fear.
Katy Cook:
And you see this in things ... I don't want to pick on Inside Out, because it's a phenomenal freaking movie, but ... have you seen it?
Shervin Talieh:
Oh, yes.
Katy Cook:
Okay. You have kids, so I figured. So, I think Joy, Sadness and Disgust are portrayed as female in the little girl's head, and then Anger and Fear as more male characters. And this thing about anger, I recently read quite a bit on it, there's a wonderful book. I've talked about it on Telepath a few times, called Good and Mad by Rebecca Traister.
Katy Cook:
It's about the transformative power female anger. And anger is something we do not, as a group, get to feel very often in a safe way. And that's something that I think really needs to change. So when you say, "What can men do?" Men can help change this narrative that certain behaviors, certain roles, certain emotions are okay and others aren't.
Katy Cook:
And a good place for me to start with that would be something like anger. In the same way if you were looking at this from the flip side, what could women do to help change the narrative about what's cool or not for men, women could help change the narrative that it's cool to be sad and vulnerable and emotionally authentic, which men I think a lot of times don't get to feel, because they're living up to certain stereotypes that have been developed ... aimed at them.
Katy Cook:
And anger is one that I think women could really benefit from. So being able to express anger in a healthy way, to not be judged for it, to not be called crazy or emotional and to let women have a space to be angry, not just in a closed corner of a chat group or wherever we're amongst our women friends. I've seen on Telepath a couple times and I'm sure this is done in super good faith, but a man making a comment like, "Hey, I'm going to say this thing, can you please just in advanced not go ..." he doesn't say crazy, but "not get angry. Let's not rile this up. I don't want to add fuel to the fire," something like that.
Katy Cook:
It makes it seem like we always have to be calm and men can get argumentative and annoyed and for some reason we can't. And so I think whatever men can do to help change this perspective, that we can be certain things and they can be certain things, but we can't be these other things, that would be really helpful for me.
Katy Cook:
And again, I'm coming at this from a very specific psychological background and upbringing and my own issues and qualities and all that kind of stuff. But to somehow work together to change the display rules, I think would be really useful. And display rules is just a ... I think it's a social psych term about just the norms that are acceptable in any given culture group. And kind of ungender those as much as we can and work to dismantle our assumptions about what we're supposed to be, what men are supposed to be, what women are supposed to be and try to let each other out of these boxes that we've decided are appropriate.
Katy Cook:
Whether it's the way we look, the way we talk, the way we talk, our measurements, whatever it is, to just let people be authentically themselves, whatever that means. And if that's angry, that's fine. If it's not, that's fine too.
Katy Cook:
As far as safe spaces ... actually, I'll tell you a story about this, which you might find interesting. And one of the women friends of mine on Telepath might've already told you this. But one of the first things that happened for me ... I don't know the numbers, but I would say it's predominately male. I wish I knew, in terms of users.
Katy Cook:
But one of the first things that happened, probably a month or two after I started using it was a group of women on the platform invited one another to a meetup, to a Zoom holiday thing. And it was aimed particularly at women. And since then, we have a group chat, we talk on the phone largely every day. Or not on the phone, but text every day, almost.
Katy Cook:
And it's become this really safe space. And I think part of the reason we need it, partly I think we connected and we have things in common, we're of a similar age. Well, I'm the old one, but similar age. But it is a safe space and it made me think that maybe some of the conversations we were having on Telepath felt sometimes a little bit frustrating and we might need a space to dissect those and to break them down and just have a sense check.
Katy Cook:
Like, "Hey, did that seem like mansplaining," or whatever, "to you?" And it's largely not that. I think that might've been why it was put into practice in the first place, but now it's more of a friendship thing. But it is a super safe space.
Katy Cook:
The other anecdote I would just mention is that I got contacted two weeks ago by a new social network which is exclusively aimed at women. It's called DM and it's a collection of social products for women. And their tagline is that these are the spaces that women naturally seek out and naturally crave, and I think the lack of safety specifically in places, the vial corners of Twitter and Facebook and maybe Instagram, I don't know, but this is, I think, a reaction to that.
Katy Cook:
And Telepath is as well. It's not specifically a place for women, but it is supposed to be a kind place where people use their own name, don't share false information, but it's not specifically for women. It's really curious to me that this new one that I'll probably be a part of is and what that might look like and how that would be different to somewhere like Telepath and the kinds of conversations that we would have there.
Katy Cook:
And I think that's really positive. I think that might've been another part of your question. I think it's great to have spaces where you collaborate across different genders, think about what each other can do better, think about new ways of thinking things.
Katy Cook:
And then I think it's also nice to have a place where you can just retreat to for a minute and feel like you don't have to do all those mental gymnastics to think about how you're portraying yourself or what you're saying or how you're saying it. And I think those are attractive for that reason.
Katy Cook:
And to be fair, I think those are really important for men as well. I have men friends who belong to men's groups and those spaces for them have been really transformative and really powerful places to be vulnerable, to form male friendships to talk about things they might not talk about in a group of different genders.
Katy Cook:
So I am all for safe spaces for everyone. I think everyone should have, whether it's at home or a group of friends or online or wherever it is, we should all feel safe, and we're not always going to, because as I think someone else has already mentioned, the world isn't always a safe place. And when we come together to try to change that, that's a wonderful thing, but it's also really important to mentally rest and to emotionally feel like you have somewhere to go back to where you really are truly safe.
Shervin Talieh:
I had a topic that I wanted to bring up that it may ... if it's too sensitive or something you don't want to discuss, I would understand, and that's about trauma. And I understand you've experienced trauma in your life. I think you were starting to share that a little bit earlier.
Shervin Talieh:
Whether you want to get into the details or not is up to you, but how does trauma inform your experiences in an unsafe world and in a world where men, both in subtle ways and in not very subtle ways, are exerting power and dominance, or attempting to at least, on you?
Katy Cook:
That's a really interesting question. So I am perfectly comfortable going into ... I've done a lot of work on this over the years. I'm perfectly comfortable talking about the main instances in my life that I would deem traumatic.
Katy Cook:
The first is that I was raised by an abusive dad who was very, very scary, very rageful. And an alcoholic and an addict and I no longer talk to him. But I did live with him off and on after my parent's divorced, and it was a lot about surviving.
Katy Cook:
And so I think part of the system element that you brought up earlier and the systemic abuse over hatred of women can also feel very personal, can also be experienced as an individual relationships.
Katy Cook:
So what I experienced as a young person was kind of surviving in this environment where I was being traumatized. When I was 16, I had a car accident where I was driving and someone in the backseat of my car died. And that was another really highly traumatic event and something that, again, I kind of hunkered down and just kept surviving.
Katy Cook:
And at some point, and I'm not sure when this would've been, I started thinking about how to go from surviving and working in the system and letting trauma and my experience inform this idea that the world wasn't safe into the possibility that maybe I could help change that or maybe there was a different narrative out there that I could tell myself and I could reprogram.
Katy Cook:
And so a lot of this started when I went to grad school and started studying psychology and therapy and becoming a therapist myself and just thinking about, "How do we reframe things?" Something can definitely be traumatic but can we reframe that in a way that ... to say this was awful and I learned this from it. Or this person is abusive, I also recognize they did the best they could with what they inherited and that doesn't have to be my experience moving forward. I can cut that person out of my life, I can make choices about being around other people who are emotionally healthy and a little bit more emotionally evolved and create a world that feels safer.
Katy Cook:
And the world's never going to be 100% safe, and I get that, but it does feel a lot safer now to me than it did when I was still being defined by and in the throes of traumatic experiences. And I think part of the way that happens, and anyone who's been through ... and this is most people, everyone goes through something really difficult in their life. None of us make it out of this unscathed.
Katy Cook:
But particularly as a kid, I think when you survive something like that, it makes you pretty strong and a lot of the people I went to school with who also became therapists had had some freaking, just horrible experiences and were using it to change their own narrative and also help change other people's narratives, to help them get through something similar that was hard.
Katy Cook:
So I think the choices that you make, like with anything, you have ... my boyfriend with his kids calls it the voice of choice. You have a choice no matter what it's about, whether you want to brush your teeth or not or bathe or not or take a walk or not, you always have a choice, and that's true of everything from trauma to taking a walk.
Katy Cook:
I'm pretty proud of the choices that I have made and who I've become despite some of the things that were hard. And I just think if I can overcome that stuff and have the world be nicer for my kids and not be an abusive parent the way my dad was, then that's plenty. That's totally enough.
Shervin Talieh:
That's a beautiful ending to a very vulnerable bit of your history and background that you shared with us, Katy, and with me, and thank you for teaching me today. Thank you for your time, the candor, and I'm looking forward to reading your book, The Psychology of Silicon Valley. And I'm really just grateful for you. Thank you so much, Katy.
Katy Cook:
Thank you for having me. It was a joy.