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Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

ramones.dev

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Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#11

Post by jvanderbot »

m1aw wrote: post #6

I know this pattern from myself. I'm doing alright as far as my career goes, not great, but okay. Which is disappointing because me and everyone around thought I'd do great, because I/they thought I was a great software developer, since I'm smart and I know my tech and my programming. Unfortunately working as a software developer is a different story entirely, I found many times that my chase for good simple code tak…

If you recognize yourself in that post, then what you recognize is called negative self talk. The only advice I have for you is to learn to recognize how this pattern makes things worse and to learn (or be taught) how to stop that pattern. The blog post is a textbook self-flagellation and I have no doubt author returns to it to feel worse about themselves in some twisted attempt to motivate positive change.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#14

Post by quantummagic »

jvanderbot wrote: post #9
travelalberta wrote: post #7

Most of y’all need to buck up. If day to day engineering tasks are so challenging for you maybe the anxiety and depression you’re feeling is your system telling you that you are in misalignment. Why are you an engineer if you are struggling to complete the basic tasks? Are you meant to be doing what you are doing?

This is one side of the elephant. It's true a steel inner strength is required in day to day engineering. It's hard , and it lacks positive reinformcement almost always . When you hear something it is bad. But let's define "buck up" and see the other side of the elephant. That blog post is a textbook example of negative self talk. You can have a world that looks down on you and spit back at it and do your best work,…

I think the point was that there are people who don't need all this extra work, it just comes naturally. And they are more suited to engineering than people who need to spend a lot of energy on emotional and mental regulation as well.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#15

Post by jvanderbot »

Viacol wrote: post #3

My mother is a therapist, and I'd like to share a few things I've learned from her over the years. One piece of advice is to start with the biological side. Getting enough sleep, exercising regularly, and taking care of your physical health can have a surprisingly positive effect on your mental state. At the same time, don't hesitate to seek help from a therapist. They can help guide the way you think about your expe…

You're right, but framed generally like this, it's easy to skip this advice.

OP/reader, more specifically, examine that post. It is an avalanche of negative self-talk. It's a person telling themeselves and the world that they cannot do something. You can take a perfectly healthy person, turn on this cycle, and watch it destroy their lives.

Depression has many causes, but its roots that make it stick are cycles like these. Antidepressants are a parachute, but you have to rebuild the engine and an important part of that is to learn to reframe events and identify and challenge your negative assumptions.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#16

Post by skydhash »

travelalberta wrote: post #7

Most of y’all need to buck up. If day to day engineering tasks are so challenging for you maybe the anxiety and depression you’re feeling is your system telling you that you are in misalignment. Why are you an engineer if you are struggling to complete the basic tasks? Are you meant to be doing what you are doing?

If there’s one thing I would like to add is that engineering is a much of a mindset than knowledge. I have friends in software development and they do not enjoy the practice at all. Everything is just chores to them.

I won’t say “follow your passion” (which is often a terrible advice). But if you can’t take some joy in what you’re doing (either the act or the goal), your body will rebel in various ways.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#17

Post by yondys »

travelalberta wrote: post #7

Most of y’all need to buck up. If day to day engineering tasks are so challenging for you maybe the anxiety and depression you’re feeling is your system telling you that you are in misalignment. Why are you an engineer if you are struggling to complete the basic tasks? Are you meant to be doing what you are doing?

I wish it was this easy. But mental health is as complex and multifaceted as our brain is. There can be more than one reason why a once happy engineer is now struggling to complete basic tasks, and they are often hard to find and explain or to relate to simple explanations like these (which is why more and more people are turning to therapy for answers).

You raise good questions, but thousands more could be asked: Are you taking care of your foundations? Sleeping enough? Eating nutritious food? Do you have any bad habits or trauma that you haven't even acknowledged to yourself? Is your work environment healthy? What things aren't healthy that you've normalised? Are you seeing enough friendly people in your day to day life? And so on.

My point is that there are rarely easy answers to easy questions such as these, so "bucking up" can be seen as either great advice or irresponsible and insensitive, and it doesn't necessarely apply to "most of y'all". So maybe you need to buck up, but also don't be frustrated if you don't. Maybe the solution is elsewhere.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#18

Post by jvanderbot »

quantummagic wrote: post #14
jvanderbot wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one side of the elephant. It's true a steel inner strength is required in day to day engineering. It's hard , and it lacks positive reinformcement almost always . When you hear something it is bad. But let's define "buck up" and see the other side of the elephant. That blog post is a textbook example of negative self talk. You can have a world that looks down on you and spit back at it and do your best work,…

I think the point was that there are people who don't need all this extra work, it just comes naturally. And they are more suited to engineering than people who need to spend a lot of energy on emotional and mental regulation as well.

Yes - you are identifying a non-depressed engineer. A depressed engineer can become one of those by removing the depression.

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#19

Post by [deleted] »

travelalberta wrote: post #7

Most of y’all need to buck up. If day to day engineering tasks are so challenging for you maybe the anxiety and depression you’re feeling is your system telling you that you are in misalignment. Why are you an engineer if you are struggling to complete the basic tasks? Are you meant to be doing what you are doing?

[deleted]

Re: Prioritize mental health, and why communication is so important

#20

Post by a_bonobo »

I used to co-supervise a PhD student who suffered from severe anxiety, she was good but her anxiety stood in her way almost all of the time. You could see that she used up 3/4 of her brain just on being anxious, there wasn't much power left to do the actual work to any standard. It's a horrible disease. (and yeah, she was on medication and diagnosed).
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