DISCLAIMER: I am not a medical professional. I'm just someone who suffers from depression. Always seek help from a mental health professional if yo...
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Andrew,
Thank you so much for sharing this. Incredibly difficult to do, but it's so valuable for the rest of the community to hear a story like yours, and to hear small things that you have done to help.
Super interesting too about the caffeine. That seems like the hardest item on the list. :) Any advice on how you went about doing that?
I'd encourage anybody who feels affected by the subject matter here to check out Greg's talks.
youtube.com/watch?v=Z6x9wmlFz_c
Or podcast appearances.
dev.to/codenewbie/ep-142--codeland...
dev.to/rubyrogues/142-rr-depressio...
Quitting the caffeine took a lot of pure willpower, especially when I was on four cans of Monster a day. Killer headaches for two weeks solid. :x
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I needed this today.
Thank you for sharing. I love mental-health posts and think it's very relevant to dev.to. Dev's with depression/anxiety/etc are more common than I ever could have imagined. It's important that we talk about it and help lift each other up. I'd love to hear more on how you navigated telling your team/manager and how they reacted, if you're up for it.
Again, thank you!
My current boss used to work with me at a previous job and offered me my current one when my previous employer wasn't handling my depression very well. He knew right from the start the situation I was in, as we worked together when I was first struck with depression.
We spend so much time in front of a screen, it's sometimes easy for us--no to mention coworkers, managers, etc.--to forget that we're humans, not machines!
Thanks for taking time to remind folks about mental health and the stigmas of "hidden illness". (In my case, 35 years a migraineur and I still have to educate people that it's not just a headache.)
Thanks for writing this. I think it helps a lot to have occasional reminders like your article.
Also, I'm glad you wrote some actionable steps. A lot of times I have similar thoughts and don't follow through with them, and for me it really validates + motivates me when someone else thinks the same thing.
Here's the main thing that gets me:
How do you know you're in trouble?
I mean, I try to stick to a routine in an effort to have stability, and inadvertently breaking that routine requires some time to get back on it (vacations are intentional, of course). But I've had times where I look back and ask myself "Am I just existing?"
I have to wonder.
Realising and admitting that something is wrong is possibly the hardest part of it at all, in all honesty.
I only realised I needed to seek help when I was getting home, going straight into my bedroom and not leaving until the morning. I was barely eating and having suicidal thoughts, feeling that my existence was a net negative on the world.
It took a lot of strength to book an appointment with my GP and admit this was how I was feeling. I was immediately prescribed SSRIs and referred for counselling, and that was the start of my recovery.
Talk to your doctor, get some advice. They can help you. π
Important things to talk about.
Thank you for sharing.
Yo man. It seems relevant to me, because we coders sometimes work all the time in a room alone and we forget that we exist.