ReThinking with Adam Grant: “What We’re Getting Wrong About Mental Health”

Episode featuring Raquel Hopkins | October 7, 2025

Episode Overview

Adam Grant sits down with therapist and “capacity expert” Raquel Hopkins to challenge the dominant narratives around mental health in today’s culture. The conversation explores how language, societal shifts, and over-reliance on diagnosis and comfort-centric thinking might be holding us back from genuine growth and resilience. Hopkins offers a bold alternative: to view mental health as an evolving system—one that flourishes by embracing challenge, developing capacity, and exercising accountability rather than prioritizing mere self-protection or comfort.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Redefining Mental Health: From Comfort to Capacity

• Hopkins’ Systemic View:
  Hopkins likens mental health to a system—like a laptop—that needs continuous updating. She cautions against “protecting how I think, feel, and behave” to the point where it impedes personal evolution. (03:12)

  “If I'm protecting how I think, feel and behave, then I'm not creating enough space for me to evolve.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (03:19)

• Capacity vs. Coping:
  Hopkins distinguishes between simply coping with stress and developing the capacity to grow through adversity. Modern approaches focus too much on comfort, which risks fragility, rather than on building sustainable inner resources. (06:59)

  "Mental health is not about comfort, it's about capacity… It's not about helping people feel better. It's like, how do I help you become a better person as you navigate difficult conversations, relationships, new roles, new titles, new positions?"
  — Raquel Hopkins (07:05)

2. The Problem with Language and Labels

• Over-Identification with Diagnostic Labels:
  The cultural shift towards openness has led people to adopt diagnostic language as identity markers—and sometimes as shields against growth or accountability. (04:51, 05:05)

  “People can name everything and not carry anything.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (06:24)

• Labels as Context, Not Excuse:
  Both Grant and Hopkins emphasize that diagnoses are just information to help with context, not excuses for stagnation or non-engagement. (16:39)

  “A diagnosis is information, is understanding… It says that if you live with ADHD, maybe you're going to have to have better systems in place for yourself... But when it becomes the thing that robs you of your potential, your destiny, this label now has a ceiling. I am anti that.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (16:39)

  “Validation shouldn't be a goal. It should be a byproduct of pursuing more meaningful goals.”
  — Adam Grant (17:53)

3. Avoidance: The True Barrier to Growth

• Avoidance Over Adversity:
  Hopkins posits that it’s not stress or trauma that limit us, but avoidance—our refusal to confront life head-on. Avoidance often lurks in “coping language” and over-cautious boundaries. (02:08, 08:25)

  “Life doesn't shrink us. Our refusal to face life is what shrinks us.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (02:08, 09:31)

• The Trap of Trigger Warnings:
  Trigger warnings, though well-intentioned, can inadvertently promote avoidance and anxiety. Grant references research showing trigger warnings don’t reduce distress or increase learning. Hopkins argues, “life doesn’t come with trigger warnings.” (12:50, 13:16)

  “When I see people introducing these trigger warnings… it also has become a part of people's personality... life doesn't come with trigger warnings. That's the uncertainty that comes with building and expanding your capacity.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (13:16)

4. Accountability, Community, and Capacity-Building

• Moving Past Victimhood:
  Hopkins describes her personal journey out of victimhood as relying on honest feedback from her support network and a commitment to exercising her own freedom of choice. (27:45, 28:14)

  “If you build your identity around your wounds, your worldviews are filtered through your wounds and never really through the growth that can happen.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (27:03)

• Responsibility and Empathy in Organizations:
  As an HR professional, Hopkins urges organizations to recognize that thriving is a partnership—empathy has to be coupled with accountability. Leaders shouldn’t carry everything for employees, but rather focus on empowering them. (13:16)

5. Navigating Social Media, Validation, and Integrity

• Internal vs. External Validation:
  Hopkins celebrates personal consistency and contribution, not follower count or likes. She notes the pitfalls of “audience capture,” where creators let external feedback shape what they say, risking authenticity. (18:20, 20:38)

  “You have to learn to internally validate yourself. And that's what capacity is, too. It's learning how to develop a person's inner world as well.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (19:14)

• Adam’s Experience with “Rage Bait” Content:
  Grant shares that, although he dislikes controversy, he's committed to sharing evidence even when it’s unpopular (e.g., astrology skepticism), to model critical thinking and integrity for his audience. (23:07, 24:46)

  “My job is not to manage your emotions. My job is to share quality information.”
  — Adam Grant (24:46)

6. Dismantling the Myth of Unique Pain & Post-Traumatic Growth

• Pain is Universal:
  Hopkins’ viral post, “Your pain is not unique,” encourages people not to build their identity around wounds—which only limits their healing and growth. (25:48, 26:21)

  “Be careful not to build your identity around your wounds. Because the moment that you start believing your pain makes you different, you'll start protecting that pain instead of healing from it.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (27:03)

• Post-Traumatic Growth is Often Imagined:
  Grant summarizes new research suggesting that much of post-traumatic growth reported by people is not objectively observable—people may simply be rationalizing adversity, rather than genuinely transforming through it. Hopkins agrees, underscoring the difference between surviving/achieving stability and true capacity-building. (33:11, 34:47)

  “The producing is in the wisdom, the consistency, the sustainability... A lot of people are still struggling today, despite the help, the information, the language that they have.”
  — Raquel Hopkins (34:52)

7. Integration and Reflection: Wisdom from Experience

• Experience Alone Doesn’t Lead to Wisdom:
  Grant and Hopkins agree it’s not experience that breeds wisdom, but reflection and integration of that experience. (37:00)

  “Wisdom does not come from experience. It comes from reflecting on experience and then changing your actions in response to that reflection.”
  — Adam Grant (37:00)

• Personal Story of Loss & Integration:
  Hopkins vulnerably shares about losing her mother and how, only after two decades, did she fully process and integrate the experience, leading to a more authentic connection—with her own humanity and her mother’s. (35:39, 36:53)

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Mental Health as Capacity
  (02:08) “The biggest barrier to capacity isn’t stress. It isn’t adversity or even trauma. It’s avoidance.” – Raquel Hopkins

• On Labels as Excuses
  (06:24) “People can name everything and not carry anything.” – Raquel Hopkins

• On Social Media and Validation
  (18:55) “So many people are trying to measure their success by how many likes they collect as opposed to how many lives they enrich.” – Adam Grant

• On Wisdom and Pain
  (27:03) “Be careful not to build your identity around your wounds. Because the moment that you start believing your pain makes you different, you’ll start protecting that pain instead of healing from it.” – Raquel Hopkins

• On Internal Growth
  (19:14) “You have to learn to internally validate yourself. And that’s what capacity is, too.” – Raquel Hopkins

Key Timestamps

• 02:08: Avoidance is the true barrier to mental capacity
• 03:12: Hopkins’ systemic view of mental health, updating like a laptop
• 06:24: Diagnostic language as a shield
• 09:31: Refusal to face life vs. adversity itself as the source of shrinking
• 13:16: Critique of trigger warnings and their effects
• 16:39: Labels and diagnosis as tools vs. ceilings
• 18:55: Measuring success: Enriching lives vs. collecting likes
• 25:48: Hopkins’ viral post: “Your pain is not unique”
• 27:03: Dangers of building identity around wounds
• 33:11: Post-traumatic growth: Imagined or real?
• 35:39: Hopkins’ personal integration of loss and grief
• 37:00: Experience vs. wisdom: The importance of reflection
• 38:24: Hopkins’ top advice: Have grace with yourself to keep evolving

Lightning Round Highlights

• Worst Mental Health Advice:
  “You need to protect your mental health. I think that that is bad advice.” (31:04)
  Alternative: “Exercise your mental health.” (31:13)

• Unpopular Opinion:
  “There’s no such thing as black mental health. There’s no such thing as a woman’s mental health. There’s no such thing as men’s mental health. It’s mental health. The labels just give us context.” (32:08)

Host & Guest’s Final Reflections

• Hopkins: “To have grace with yourself, recognizing that we’re going to go through these seasons of transition and change and you have to be open to developing. The goal is not to arrive at this final destination, but to keep yourself open to evolving and evolution. But it requires grace.” (38:24)
• Grant: “Well, you are my favorite voice on mental health. I’ve learned so much from your work and I really can’t wait to read the book and watch the TED Talk and all of the other great things that I hope are right around the corner.” (38:48)

For Listeners: Takeaways

• Mental health is not about casting yourself in glass or sheltering from pain, but about exercising and building your capacity to navigate life’s uncertainties and challenges.
• Beware of using mental health language and labels as shields or permanent fixtures of identity; they are context, not cages.
• True growth comes not from avoiding discomfort or seeking external validation, but from facing life directly, reflecting, integrating, and acting with integrity—even when the world isn’t clapping for you.
• Practice grace through life’s inevitable seasons of change; develop capacity as an ongoing journey, not a final destination.

This episode challenges “feel-good” approaches to mental health and is a must-listen for anyone interested in transcending self-protection in favor of authentic, accountable, and sustainable growth.