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 takes time, and sometimes I overthink things and I don't test properly, and I'm also slow, and don't communicate the problem with my team because I don't work consistent hours, because my brain cannot do consistency.
Turns out I have ADHD. Possibly autism too. So I understand your feelings of I just need to be better, because it works for other right? Even tho you know that fundamentally you are right, but it works for others so why not you? I don't have a solution. But sometimes you can't just "be better" and "more consistent", I also wish I could, but maybe it's not possible.
Maybe the only way is to find where we are good and do more of that. If you have struggle finishing things hope on calls with people that are good at finishing things. Talk with them. Be proactive and be open. I also don't do this as often as I should, because I'm also ashamed.
I don't know exactly what the point was to this, but so you know others also fail, even tho they deemed smart and skilled by others.
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.
I would love to read an update about your experience with antidepressants, as it's a path I'm thinking about more and more with the (losing) battle I've been fighting against my own long term depression.
I really resonated with your eventual realization that while others have their own battles, they are very rarely similar to this. I guess I knew it was unusual, but I took way too long to realize just how weird it was to feel soul-crushingly miserable for no identifiable reason, even when things are going well, even when I'm around friends I like and they're having fun.
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.
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, but if you look down on yourself you _will not_ bootstrap your way out, because you learn to believe you cannot.
That is depression, and depression is reinforced if not caused by that self-talk. Addressing the self-talk and stopping the flagellation will allow that steel inner strength to build up. Medication is a parachute but the wings and engine need to be rebuilt using self confidence, and that's a long road of:
* reframing failures as lessons
* honesty with self about your own role in your depression
* careful build-up of support
* learning to find the important and good in each memory, vs the deprecating and painful
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.
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.
I agree mental health is important and have struggled with similar issues... but it is hard to read prose in fixed-width typefaces. Please consider a more readable serif variable-width typeface.
I have worked in environments where as the day wore on, my performance plummeted.
After a lot of investigation, I suspect that air quality, lighting, ergonomics can have adverse effects. Only recently I read an article that said that in a room with several persons and poor ventilation the CO2 levels reach levels which are known to impair brain and other neurological functions.
That is, I suspect that your depression is the symptom of a bad environment and not the root cause of your problems.
This is irresponsible on your part. OP has been diagnosed by professionals and is being treated and clearly sees the difference. While high CO2 levels make a measurable difference in some tasks and its effects can be felt in crowded spaces, it seems like you're taking your pet peeve and dismissing the struggle that the OP is going through. Please try to have more sympathy.
I understand it can be difficult or even frightening to think about problems that don't have a trivially described cause, effect and solution like your proposal, but it would be a good idea to ask questions, even as simply as asking if that OP has noticed an effect, before trivializing their struggles this way
I can sympathize with what you're going through OP. I have similar struggles myself (primarily with severe anxiety) and wouldn't wish most of what I have had to go through on my worst enemy.
I do have one comment though:
You mention stability in your goals, and how you want to find stability. What is stability to you? I've struggled for years with trying to find stability but it often just leads me back to thinking that there really is no such thing. You just never know what is going to happen in life. Finding a job and having stable employment are hard, and will likely only get harder as we age. Relationships have ups and downs, and their downs can be incredibly challenging to navigate. Most of us (at least in Europe) don't have the luxury of building wealth to escape the 9-5 grind. We simply need to work (and stay employable) until we have the ability to retire. I don't know how things work in your country, but here in Sweden I can't even start to collect my state pension until I turn 69. I need to find a way to remain employable until I am 69, or amass enough wealth to not need to worry about paying my bills if I don't have stable employment.
I could go on and on but honestly I think stability is a myth. Life is inherently unstable. But we human beings are also incredibly resiliant.
Take care of yourself. I wish you all the best OP.
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 experiences and how you interpret them. It's a gradual process, but it really can make a difference.
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.
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 takes time, and sometimes I overthink things and I don't test properly, and I'm also slow, and don't communicate the problem with my team because I don't work consistent hours, because my brain cannot do consistency.
Turns out I have ADHD. Possibly autism too. So I understand your feelings of I just need to be better, because it works for other right? Even tho you know that fundamentally you are right, but it works for others so why not you? I don't have a solution. But sometimes you can't just "be better" and "more consistent", I also wish I could, but maybe it's not possible.
Maybe the only way is to find where we are good and do more of that. If you have struggle finishing things hope on calls with people that are good at finishing things. Talk with them. Be proactive and be open. I also don't do this as often as I should, because I'm also ashamed.
I don't know exactly what the point was to this, but so you know others also fail, even tho they deemed smart and skilled by others.
I really resonated with your eventual realization that while others have their own battles, they are very rarely similar to this. I guess I knew it was unusual, but I took way too long to realize just how weird it was to feel soul-crushingly miserable for no identifiable reason, even when things are going well, even when I'm around friends I like and they're having fun.
Wishing you the best OP.
Why are you an engineer if you are struggling to complete the basic tasks? Are you meant to be doing what you are doing?
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.
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, but if you look down on yourself you _will not_ bootstrap your way out, because you learn to believe you cannot.
That is depression, and depression is reinforced if not caused by that self-talk. Addressing the self-talk and stopping the flagellation will allow that steel inner strength to build up. Medication is a parachute but the wings and engine need to be rebuilt using self confidence, and that's a long road of:
* reframing failures as lessons
* honesty with self about your own role in your depression
* careful build-up of support
* learning to find the important and good in each memory, vs the deprecating and painful
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.
After a lot of investigation, I suspect that air quality, lighting, ergonomics can have adverse effects. Only recently I read an article that said that in a room with several persons and poor ventilation the CO2 levels reach levels which are known to impair brain and other neurological functions.
That is, I suspect that your depression is the symptom of a bad environment and not the root cause of your problems.
I understand it can be difficult or even frightening to think about problems that don't have a trivially described cause, effect and solution like your proposal, but it would be a good idea to ask questions, even as simply as asking if that OP has noticed an effect, before trivializing their struggles this way
I do have one comment though:
You mention stability in your goals, and how you want to find stability. What is stability to you? I've struggled for years with trying to find stability but it often just leads me back to thinking that there really is no such thing. You just never know what is going to happen in life. Finding a job and having stable employment are hard, and will likely only get harder as we age. Relationships have ups and downs, and their downs can be incredibly challenging to navigate. Most of us (at least in Europe) don't have the luxury of building wealth to escape the 9-5 grind. We simply need to work (and stay employable) until we have the ability to retire. I don't know how things work in your country, but here in Sweden I can't even start to collect my state pension until I turn 69. I need to find a way to remain employable until I am 69, or amass enough wealth to not need to worry about paying my bills if I don't have stable employment.
I could go on and on but honestly I think stability is a myth. Life is inherently unstable. But we human beings are also incredibly resiliant.
Take care of yourself. I wish you all the best OP.
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 experiences and how you interpret them. It's a gradual process, but it really can make a difference.
I believe you can get through this. :)
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.