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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

#61

Post by skydhash »

voakbasda wrote: post #59
skydhash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take any long-running successful project, and you’ll find that they practice an engineering-like discipline to make it sustainable.

And the difference will be as stark as steak is from stew. To be clear, “engineering-like” is not “engineering”.

I’ve studied Electronic Engineering (and interacted with the Civil Engineering classes). And the main difference is that physical laws are inflexible and failure cases may result in deaths, maiming, and material damages. Software constraints are more forgiving in most cases. But that does not means a total lack of discipline has no negative impact. Au contraire, an engineering mindset greatly improves the chances of successfully delivering a project.

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

#62

Post by loa_in_ »

corytheboyd wrote: post #55
fwlr wrote: post #29

This could be due to ADD, I am still getting tested. Granted, that's a diagnosis, not a root cause. No, it’s a diagnosis of the root cause - in fact, it is plausibly the root cause of everything else described in the post. Inability to complete work, procrastination/distraction by focusing on nearby tasks, the pervasive sense that you struggle with things that other people do not, even the depression (untreated ADD c…

> untreated ADD causing repeated failures, repeated failures causing depression realized this one about myself earlier this year, it really helped to boil it down to something besides “I am just inherently bad at things.” that attitude worked as a dumb single kid, but it was harming my adult life and relationships. therapy helped me get there. I have been on bupropion for about a year, and recently started on methylp…

Fitness also contributes to most common physical tasks becoming trivial, you can literally jump out of bed in the morning if it strikes your fancy.

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

#63

Post by graysnow86 »

fwlr wrote: post #29

This could be due to ADD, I am still getting tested. Granted, that's a diagnosis, not a root cause. No, it’s a diagnosis of the root cause - in fact, it is plausibly the root cause of everything else described in the post. Inability to complete work, procrastination/distraction by focusing on nearby tasks, the pervasive sense that you struggle with things that other people do not, even the depression (untreated ADD c…

> The treatment for ADD is one of two medications, methylphenidate or dexamphetamine. You can try other things in addition to these, but not instead of these, and you should try both - there really is just no substitute.

No, not quite - there's a variety of different ADHD medications and I'd argue there's more popular ones like Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine). Non-stimulants like Strattera or Intuniv absolutely can and are prescribed on their own, which are really useful for people that respond poorly to stimulants.

Perhaps you meant to say there's two main classes of stimulants (amphetamines, methylphenidates) that are worth investigating and shouldn't be skipped over?

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

#64

Post by travelalberta »

yondys wrote: post #17
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: Ar…

I think mental health is way over blown in terms of complexity.

>My point is that there are rarely easy answers to easy questions such as these

I'd argue these are all binary questions and pretty easy to answer:

>Eating nutritious food? : Yes/No

>Sleeping enough?: Yes/No

>Are you taking care of your foundations? Yes/No based on above plus Yes/No to "Sufficient Exercise?"

>Do you have any bad habits or trauma that you haven't even acknowledged to yourself?: Yes/No (Stop playing videogames, reduce phone use, limit drugs and alcohol)

>Is your work environment healthy?: Yes/No (If 'No' how can you leave it)

> Are you seeing enough friendly people in your day to day life? : Yes/No

An easy happiness formula is:

1. Eat right: Maintain a healthy diet to keep your physical energy stable.

2. Exercise: Keep active every day to release mood-boosting chemicals.

3. Get enough sleep: Prioritize rest to reset your mental state.

4. Imagine an incredible future: Daydream about grand possibilities, even if you don't fully believe them at first.

5. Work toward a flexible schedule: Having control over your time is one of the highest drivers of happiness.

6. Do things you can steadily improve at: Progress and mastery trigger the chemicals in your body that make you happy.

7. Help others: Once you’ve helped yourself first, giving back provides profound psychological benefits.

8. Reduce daily decisions to routine: Remove mental clutter and decision fatigue by establishing steady habits

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

#65

Post by travelalberta »

malfist wrote: post #54
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?

Thanks! I'm cured! I'm glad you told me to man up, I'd never thought to do that myself. I know that this is a glib response, but really that's the only way to respond to these comments. They're farcical and we have long known them to be unreasonable. Mocking them is the only way to get some people to learn it seems.

https://www.youtube.com/@ElishaLong

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

#66

Post by corytheboyd »

loa_in_ wrote: post #62
corytheboyd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> untreated ADD causing repeated failures, repeated failures causing depression realized this one about myself earlier this year, it really helped to boil it down to something besides “I am just inherently bad at things.” that attitude worked as a dumb single kid, but it was harming my adult life and relationships. therapy helped me get there. I have been on bupropion for about a year, and recently started on methylp…

Fitness also contributes to most common physical tasks becoming trivial, you can literally jump out of bed in the morning if it strikes your fancy.

yeah! it's pretty cool when I start doing something that used to be difficult and now it's just... not. weird how long your old form sticks with you in your head like that.

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

#67

Post by travelalberta »

skydhash wrote: post #61
voakbasda wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the difference will be as stark as steak is from stew. To be clear, “engineering-like” is not “engineering”.

I’ve studied Electronic Engineering (and interacted with the Civil Engineering classes). And the main difference is that physical laws are inflexible and failure cases may result in deaths, maiming, and material damages. Software constraints are more forgiving in most cases. But that does not means a total lack of discipline has no negative impact. Au contraire, an engineering mindset greatly improves the chances of…

I think non-engineering mindsets in any sort of engineering/engineering adjacent role is the cause of a lot of friction.

>Very, very, very little of real-world software dev is anything close to "engineering".

I mean same principles apply in general.

> If there’s one thing I would like to add is that engineering is a much of a mindset than knowledge.

Amen.

> 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.

The official definition of engineering is: "Engineering is the application of mathematics and scientific principles to design, build, and optimize structures, machines, systems, and processes." Software development falls into this definition. If there isn't something in this definition you like then you're in the wrong job. I find joy in optimizing processes. No matter what scale, a well designed and optimized system brings me joy.

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

#69

Post by [deleted] »

fwlr wrote: post #29

This could be due to ADD, I am still getting tested. Granted, that's a diagnosis, not a root cause. No, it’s a diagnosis of the root cause - in fact, it is plausibly the root cause of everything else described in the post. Inability to complete work, procrastination/distraction by focusing on nearby tasks, the pervasive sense that you struggle with things that other people do not, even the depression (untreated ADD c…

[deleted]

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

#70

Post by nradov »

9dev wrote: post #26
jvanderbot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hah. I feel very much seen by both of these comments, much more than I’m confident to admit. Something I have been struggling with all my life is deciding whether I am flawed in some way, or the other party/the environment is - because my immediate reaction is always to feel responsible and inadequate, and it takes a lot of energy of confidently feeling superior or right about something. Like, is it a pattern, or am…

It's both. All humans and all environments are flawed. You can change yourself and control your reactions to your environment if you want to. You can probably also either improve your environment to some extent, or move to a better environment (not always possible for everyone but HN users usually have that option).

There's no need to feel superior: that's not particularly helpful and will tend to give you a distorted perception of reality. Most likely you're just average.

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