I Can’t Talk About Mental Health at Work and it Sucks!

The modern world is opening up about admitting to having mental health issues, sort of.

I am a Full Stack LAMP developer. I have occasional depression, occasional anxiety, occasional “I can’t fucking sit at a desk today”, occasional sensitive to everything everyone says… I’m a delicate flower that is also a little aggro. It’s very frustrating, but I’m fortunate at the same time. I work through it. I can work through it and that is a privilege.

I am on the much milder end of the mental health struggle spectrum.

Still, a bad day is a bad day and as you may have guessed, being a software developer on a bad day is a wee bit challenging.

Twice a day we have a video chat meeting. Twice a day I must interact with people whether I am doing well or not. The job has to get done. I get paid no matter the state of my pansy ass brain. I know this. My boss expects this. My boss expects that I know this.

I spend 40 hours a week engaged with people that will never know me well enough to know when I’m in a weird place.

See, I can’t let my down days bring the team down too. Even if I perform top notch while depressed, I could potentially take someone off their good energy. More importantly, my boss would be asking himself if I can perform my job. I don’t want that for him. I don’t want my boss having to pick up my slack. I don’t want anyone to have to do that

I have to keep quiet and do the best I can, so that is exactly what I do.

To make this issue even harder, in my free time I work on private or personal dev projects. I also have massage clients that I see weekly. I am busy busy and I like it that way. It just makes very little time for a much needed social life. My fault.

I am putting my sob story out here because I want others to know they aren’t alone.

We’ve all become accustomed to others not caring about our successes and failures unless it pertains to or affects those others.

Just because other people don’t have the energy to care doesn’t mean we should feel alone. We are all in this together.

If you have a terrible head space, my hand is out to you. Not because there is anything in my hand that will solve yours or my issues, but because hand in hand we can suffer a bit together and somehow there is comfort in that.

Also, it is because I’m not your boss.

Side note: I barely edit my content. I’m too busy writing good code to write good English.