World Mental Health Day

[Adam]

Today is World Mental Health Day and I'd like to share a quick insightful video about an illness I personally suffer from which is OCD. Possibly one of the most misunderstood and often trivialised mental health disorders (hint: it's not about being neat or tidy).

I've been in therapy (both privately and then via our NHS) for OCD for a couple of years now and have had anxiety issues for many years before that.

If anybody has any questions about mental health or the process of getting help (perhaps you have some worries yourself?) then you can privately message me on here or publicly comment if you're happy to of course and I'll be happy to share my experiences.

Please feel free to share anything you would like to here including any wellness resources or a condition you'd like to spread the word on. 😊

 

[Adam]

One of my favourite online wellness resources is Office Yoga TV which is a side project from JavaScript teacher Zac Gordon. It is quick yoga sessions you can do from your office chair!

Office Yoga TV

with Zac SacBe

officeyoga.tv

 

[Gummibeer]

You have my respect to talk about this! On twitter I've already noticed that it's a good trend to talk about this in public to take away the wall and make it something normal instead of giving it power like a daemon.

I'm happy and lucky that I don't have any mental health problems. But sometimes I feel that something is wrong I should change something. What helped me a lot was going by bike to and from work. It's ~1h every day I do sports, have 100% no screen, can blow out my brain and breath fresh air.

 

[VickiLanger]

Thanks for talking about this. I think it really helps make people more comfortable talking about their mental health.

In 2016, after years of wondering how I would function outside of the military, I made an appointment looking for a way to fix my issue. I knew I’d have to address my anxiety.

Within the next 2 years, I had received diagnoses for social anxiety, depression, and adhd. I denied all of them, I don’t have issues. I couldn’t and still find it hard to believe that I could have these problems. I wish I could say I accept these now, but I still have a hard time accepting them. I feel like my issues are ones everyone deals with. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Once I left the military, I saw a doc who was quick to tell me I don’t have adhd. I assume he said this because there are restrictions on the medications. It’s frustrating but I function okay without. What sucks is that he was rude about it and it really made me feel like never going to see another doc about my issues.

 

[Gummibeer]

@Adam I would like to pickup this thread again.

Some ideas: rename it to "Mental health". I would also like to pin/stick it.

I believe that this is one of our most important topics in this business. Development, design, marketing have an insane pace. If you want to be good you have to stay up-to-date. Most times this means doing stuff in your free time. 8-12h workdays are very normal. And even if it's fun and seems to be required it's SO important to slow down, take a break and care for yourself. Otherwise you will break. I've no idea how many I know which have depressions, burnout and so on with 25-40years because of this.

So removing the wall, having a safe place to talk about it would be super great.
I have no idea if it's wanted/needed or even possible - but being able to post anonymous in this thread and hiding it for all public guests would be great.

 

[Adam]

@Adam I would like to pickup this thread again.

Some ideas: rename it to "Mental health". I would also like to pin/stick it.

I believe that this is one of our most important topics in this business. Development, design, marketing have an insane pace. If you want to be good you have to stay up-to-date. Most times this means doing stuff in your free time. 8-12h workdays are very normal. And even if it's fun and seems to be required it's SO important to slow down, take a break and care for yourself. Otherwise you will break. I've no idea how many I know which have depressions, burnout and so on with 25-40years because of this.

So removing the wall, having a safe place to talk about it would be super great.
I have no idea if it's wanted/needed or even possible - but being able to post anonymous in this thread and hiding it for all public guests would be great.

Absolutely! Our brains are the most valuable tool we've got. Would love for this to be a thing people could talk more openly about though completely understand why people may have reservations and totally their choice. 😊

 

[tom]

So, sharing the stuff that happened makes it easier to talk about, or something like that, so I'll start with my story.

I've had severe burnout at the age of 23. It took me 6 months of strength to fight out of that without any help except <5 good friends. My family didn't know how to handle it, didn't know what to do. The place/town where I lived at that time lacked knowledge and doctors/medication to assist with.
Getting out of bed took me hours afterwards. Going grocery shopping was impossible in the first few weeks. Going to the hairdresser for getting a haircut took me 2,5 months.
This was 7 years ago, I turned 30 in August this year and I'm still working on getting everything fixed and back to normal.
Earlier this year I decided that I wanted to work on myself more and reached out for assistance. I've had a few sessions already and it's putting my whole life upside down again, in a very positive way.
I'm learning to better interact with people, try to express my feelings with words and try to find my real self. Also I'm trying to remove the brain fog I've had for the past few years.

One big thing that's still open is anxiety and coping with rejection and stress. I've had one big and a few smaller issues with people in the open source community and that's pulling everything along this down the road, so I've got to see which pain points exist and where they belong to. The things that I'm mostly concerned with are not rejected PRs or things like that, it's the stuff that passes by mostly unnoticed. Like when you see a great idea and know that someone is already working on it, that you do not assist or collaborate with that person on that idea, instead people create stuff on their own and do not credit the originator of the idea.
That's driving me nuts and gets me really angry. And this also influences me on a pretty deep level regarding everything open source even though it's only a small amount of people who are acting like that.

So yeah...

Hi, I'm Tom and I'm working on myself to become a better human and a better version of myself who can cope handling stress, anxiety and rejection.

 

[Gummibeer]

Hey Tom,

congratulations and thanks for sharing your story! 💙 And I'm glad that you are better now. 😊

I have some questions related to your issues with open source because I'm very active and want to know if there's something we could improve for the community.
I haven't got/understand all of it, so I will ask some things.

few smaller issues with people in the open source community

Was this some kind of personal issues between you and the other(s)? Like disrespectful behavior, insults or things like this. Or was it more a professional/topic related issue? Like on of you haven't agreed with a solution/request created by the other one?

I'm mostly concerned with are not rejected PRs

Is this a typo or is it harder for you if one of your PRs is accepted than if it's rejected by the maintainer? 🤔

Except of this we (Astrotomic & Spatie) already try to thank everyone who creates a PR or finds a bug. Depending on the size and impact it's a simple "thanks", some more lines or even a tweet linking the person. It's very important for us to keep up the welcoming atmosphere in the community and engage with respect. But I know that there are other maintainers who doesn't behave like this. 😓

 

[tom]

Gummibeer I really appreciate your answers and comments to my posts. Thank you very much! 😊

Was this some kind of personal issues between you and the other(s)? Like disrespectful behavior, insults or things like this. Or was it more a professional/topic related issue? Like on of you haven't agreed with a solution/request created by the other one?

An example:

• Person A has idea X.
• Person A shares idea X to get feedback and more insights from target group.
• Person A has done some research already and started working on idea X, but due to limited time and resources is unable to make good/fast progress.
• Person B sees idea and its potential and starts building it right away and tells everyone that it was her/his idea. Instead of asking if she/he could help and collaborate on the idea and start working together.
• Person A is left frustrated with a great idea that she/he can't make use of anymore (as of missing resources, time, money, publicity, ...).

I was in this situation a few weeks ago and it still bothers me today. To some extent it also harmed me and my work as I'm currently trying to avoid using every package from the other person and don't have any energy left to work on my idea which negatively influences the project that I'm building (which needs to use the product resulting from the idea).
I'm trying to understand why this happened and how I could have prevented it, but I have not found a solution yet as everyone is always telling me "tell everyone about your ideas to get good input and see if it could work as a product".
Maybe it all was just a big misunderstanding, who knows. 🤷‍♂️ Or I'm overreacting.

Is this a typo or is it harder for you if one of your PRs is accepted than if it's rejected by the maintainer? 🤔

The whole PR stuff is easy for me to work with. I don't mind if a PR does not get merged. If I need it and it won't get merged, I'll create a fork and use my fork. I've read most of the blog posts written by maintainers that engage others to reject PRs that will not provide any benefit for the project and I'm totally fine with that. 😊👍

Except of this we (Astrotomic & Spatie) already try to thank everyone who creates a PR or finds a bug. Depending on the size and impact it's a simple "thanks", some more lines or even a tweet linking the person. It's very important for us to keep up the welcoming atmosphere in the community and engage with respect. But I know that there are other maintainers who doesn't behave like this. 😓

Thanks for this! I really appreciate maintainers and package owners who write a short "Will not be merged because of ..." message. This makes things understandable and easier to work with.