Turning Trauma Into Wisdom
I’d known for decades there were deep wounds in my psyche. When I was nine years old and growing up during the Lebanon War, my father went out to buy groceries and didn’t return for three days. He was hiding. But I assumed he was dead. Those three days in which I became the man of my household left indelible marks on me. But for a long time, there was no opportunity to process it.
When I was seventeen, my dad sold his only car to buy me a one-way ticket to France. It was a move packed with love and sacrifice, and it meant everything to me. But it was also my one chance, and meant that I had to grow up fast. In France, I had no safety net, no fallback, no community around me. I had to make it work — and I poured everything into succeeding, not just for me, but for my family back home. It turns out growing up in a warzone and becoming more sensitive to fear, preps you well for building a business. By 2010, I’d launched my first company. We grew fast: in 2016, we went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
But inside, I was unraveling. I was always in professional mode, ignoring my crumbling relationship with my partner. I worked constantly, but I wasn’t yet a good leader. My fear of failure became an obsession and the more I achieved, the lonelier I felt. I couldn’t show weakness: what would my team or investors think? Addiction to work kept me hiding from these challenging emotions. My isolation and workaholism became my shield, a way to keep the world at bay, but it only made things worse.
I knew something had to change. Yet when you’re in the midst of that pain, reaching out and finding the cure feels impossible. Therapy alone was not enough, but experimenting with various mood stabilizers and antidepressants didn’t help either. Then I found psychedelic-assisted treatment, and that changed everything. The day after my first retreat I founded Oyster, after all, aligning what I do with my belief systems was part of the healing process.
Since then I depended on my therapy work by adding Integrated Family Systems (IFS) therapy. IFS doesn’t try to ‘fix’ you: instead, it explores all the different parts of yourself. I was a CEO, sure, but there were lots of different parts within me. I was a driven entrepreneur, but also a scared kid waiting for my dad to come back from the grocery store. I was an ambitious 17-year-old who had just landed in a new country, determined to make his name. I was someone trying to be a good partner, friend, employer. I didn’t need to fix or ignore these parts: they all made me who I am.
The most important elements in my journey to healing and growing were therapy, plant medicine, and time. There’s no such thing as an overnight fix. But slowly, I started to see the power in my wounds. I realized that my fears and trauma weren’t things I needed to shed or hide; they were keys to understanding myself better. They were parts of me. To be whole, I needed to accept them first and then tap into their powers and wisdom.
When I first started IFS, I just wanted to stop the suffering. But frightening as it seemed, embracing the pain in my past and my psyche actually made me less afraid. That pain became a tool to unlock potential I didn’t know I had. And it allowed me to found Oyster with a different intention. This time I didn’t just want to build a successful company. I wanted to build something that mattered. I wanted something that reflected my values, my purpose, my journey. Oyster fulfilled that need, bridging the gap between my mind and my heart.
Oyster became a unicorn in 2021 but that wasn’t the real victory. The real success was my newfound balance. We can’t avoid pain in life, but suffering and burnout are optional. I’m still deeply engaged in my past, my emotions, my selfhood; I have learned to become my own inner healer. The healing is never complete, there’s never a point where I can tick off my mental health on a list and say, well, that’s done! But this is the most successful version of myself — the one who is still working, still learning, still growing, still experiencing my pain, acknowledging it, taking a breath, and stepping forward.
Sincerely,
Tony
Untold is a collection of raw, personal stories from Endeavor founders, shedding light on the emotional challenges behind scaling a company, so other founders can better name the battles they’re facing, and find strength in the stories of those who’ve been there too.
The next Untold story will be released on Thursday, July 10th.