Anxious tech workers are going to therapy • Hacker News Board

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#221

Post by scarecrowbob » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

vincent-toups wrote: post #4

Everyone should go to therapy. I don't think I've ever met a person who doesn't need to talk things out, from time to time, with a semi-objective, third party. Most of us were raised by imperfect people trying their best who still made a lot of mistakes. Even people who had really prepared parents probably experienced things which might have left us with some unresolved issues. Go see a therapist. Its not a big deal.

While I agree that most folks would benefit from counseling, I question that it's super useful to seek it out unless you have a specific goal in mind for the experience.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#222

Post by pcbro141 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:07 PM UTC

skizm wrote: post #32

erokar wrote: post #26

If your job is making you unhappy, therapy will just be a band-aid. The solution is to quit and find something better to do.

Where can I find someone that will pay me a living wage to read fantasy novels, go to the gym, play video games, and occasionally travel?

Try posting some vlog type of videos on YouTube. You don't need to have a super huge following to make good money on YouTube.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#223

Post by tobib » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

ipython wrote: post #116

vincent-toups wrote: post #4

Everyone should go to therapy. I don't think I've ever met a person who doesn't need to talk things out, from time to time, with a semi-objective, third party. Most of us were raised by imperfect people trying their best who still made a lot of mistakes. Even people who had really prepared parents probably experienced things which might have left us with some unresolved issues. Go see a therapist. Its not a big deal.

The only problem with this point of view is that, effectively, you have painted a sort of target on your back. As you say, not everyone goes to therapy (even though they should). Therefore, there is still a stigma associated with those who do choose to go to therapy. That wouldn't be so bad, except there are consequences to going to therapy. Paperwork and records are generated. There are certain positions where you h…

> That wouldn't be so bad, except there are consequences to going to therapy. Paperwork and records are generated. There are certain positions where you have to disclose any therapy that you've received (see for example Section 21 on the SF-86: https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf)

Seeking counseling for depression/anxiety does not fall under any of the questions being asked in this form.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#224

Post by codesushi42 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

Stop working 24/7 on useless apps/websites/digital shit that don't help anyone in any meaningful way. They won't amount to anything, except maybe make your boss rich (your manager, VC, or whoever else).

Stop making it your life goal to get featured on trashy sites like TC/BI/PH/whatever other masturbatory tech outlet that no one outside of SV gives two shits about.

Your goals and aspirations are probably meaningless. Get a grip and change it! Even if it means getting the fuck out of Dodge, be it SV, NYC or whichever tech bubble you happen to dwell in.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#225

Post by dfraser992 » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:20 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #139

Does anyone here have any experience with the Psych On Demand-type services that promise professional therapy like LARKR or Talkspace and the like? $85 for 50 minutes seems quite reasonable and I have been wanting to try it but wanted to hear from other tech professionals before paying the money I barely have. I know I could use use therapy, although the fabulous graduate-level textbook I once read that I believe nai…

You should find this interesting/useful as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bowlby

I have Bowlby's books as well, so can recommend them.

Based on my experience, any therapist ought to be able to offer a reduced rate - the first session or at least inquiry can be used to establish such things. And I'd recommend trying to see someone in person vs. over the Net, if possible, but that has its own drawbacks (transportation etc)

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#226

Post by burntoutfire » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

ok_coo wrote: post #46

whalesalad wrote: post #39

I deleted all my tweets. Killed the app. Killed the Reddit app. Killed Instagram. Killed Facebook. I need to reactivate FB and do a dump of my data, but I’m dreading that. I just want the photos. I’m finding solace in boredom and using that as a catalyst for change. I’ve been reading more, already finished three books in the last few weeks. I’m on a mission to pour rocket fuel on my personal consulting business. I’m…

Welcome to freedom my friend. The only social apps I’ve kept are Snapchat for family and Reddit for gaming stuff. It’s been really eye opening to me how much better I feel after deleting my Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I follow mostly tech, artists and gamedev people and I get very little of the negativity. Don't follow any of the big public figures etc.

Unfortunately, a few of the programmers that I'd like to follow retweet a lot of the cultural warfare crap (left vs right, white vs nonwhite etc.), and there is no feature to filter that out specifically. In the end, I decided to just unfollow them, as the agitation created by vitriol and stupidity was just not worth it.

The other kind of negativity I see is people tweeting dumb/argumentative things at the people I follow. The solution for that is to only read replies that the people I follow replied to and ignore the rest of the randos. This makes my daily Tweeter routine very quick BTW.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#227

Post by edmundsauto » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

cubano wrote: post #139

Does anyone here have any experience with the Psych On Demand-type services that promise professional therapy like LARKR or Talkspace and the like? $85 for 50 minutes seems quite reasonable and I have been wanting to try it but wanted to hear from other tech professionals before paying the money I barely have. I know I could use use therapy, although the fabulous graduate-level textbook I once read that I believe nai…

You might try a different approach, like cognitive behavioral therapy. It's less seductively appealing because it doesn't promise to dig into the root cause of mental health issues, but it's much more scientifically validated.

The idea is that you have stimulus->response, and while it's impossible to know root causes, you can identify stimuluses and change the response.

Analogous to ML engineering, versus Chomsky for AI. Not as pretty, but (currently) more effective.

edit to add - there are good books for CBT and other Positive Psychology approaches. Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis is accessible and interesting; I got good value from that.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#228

Post by antoinevg » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:28 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #39

I deleted all my tweets. Killed the app. Killed the Reddit app. Killed Instagram. Killed Facebook. I need to reactivate FB and do a dump of my data, but I’m dreading that. I just want the photos. I’m finding solace in boredom and using that as a catalyst for change. I’ve been reading more, already finished three books in the last few weeks. I’m on a mission to pour rocket fuel on my personal consulting business. I’m…

Please fix your outstanding bugs before igniting that fire.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#229

Post by mmanfrin » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:29 PM UTC

83457 wrote: post #16

vincent-toups wrote: post #4

Everyone should go to therapy. I don't think I've ever met a person who doesn't need to talk things out, from time to time, with a semi-objective, third party. Most of us were raised by imperfect people trying their best who still made a lot of mistakes. Even people who had really prepared parents probably experienced things which might have left us with some unresolved issues. Go see a therapist. Its not a big deal.

Wouldn't that potentially present problems similar to everyone getting unnecessary medical tests done and following up on false positives causing more problems than they are worth? If your life is going well then a certain percentage of people going to a therapist could actually make things worse, not to mention that if everyone went then quality of therapists would probably go down. Just a thought.

I think you are conflating therapists with psychiatrists.

Re: Anxious tech workers are going to therapy

#230

Post by throwawaymlc » Fri, Sep 20, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

I am finding the day to day experience of being a developer in a team / corporate environment quite taxing on mental health these days.

Some issues are:

JIRA / agile / whatever methodologies, so many metadata fields in the ticketing system that are all just matters of opinion. So much time spent hoarding and prioritizing "wishlist" items, and discussing which order to do things if, hypothetically, they were to be done... instead of actually doing them.

Pull requests / code reviews - now that these are done in a web browser, there is no bar to having an opinion and having your two cents. As a developer, the pull request is something I produce after executing and debugging some code for a few days, but then I cant merge it until people are happy with how it looks, not how it works.

Testing & documentation - everyone wants this, nobody can agree how it should work. It's in a constant state of "aspiration", a few broken / flakey test cases from the last attempt that slow down development, but provide no confidence in the safety of changes. You can improve the situation by writing new testcases and fixing old ones, but sooner or later someone will have an urgent change that they "know" is safe that breaks the test cases that they will merge anyway, and then it's back to square one.

General poor quality work environment - open plan, long hours, noisy, some "interesting" characters. Very little scope to ever control your work environment.

I find all these to be instances of cognitive dissonance, where there is a huge gulf between how people think things should work, and the actual, day-to-day reality of making a change. Somehow people are only interested in talking about some hypothetical future state, but nobody cares about how things are now and how to get there, and if you do, you are perceived as being "difficult".