Content warning: depression, suicide

Matthew Roche recently blogged about his struggles with mental illness. I applaud his courage, because it’s easy to worry what people will think about you. More recently, a member of the SQL Community took her life, and frankly the thought scares the shit out of me. It scares me, because some day that could be me. In fact, it’s been a recent point of discussion with me and my wife.

I write this post because I hope that if you are struggling with these feelings, you will get help. Please do something, because there are people that love you and would be devastated if you left this world. Here is what depression looks like and what I do to stave it off.

What is depression?

The English language does us a disservice in that the word for what is a crippling mental illness is the same word we use casually for being bummed out or sad. And while there is a spectrum, with there being things such as dysthymia or anhedonia (lack of pleasure), depression is often accompanied with what are called cognitive distortions.

If you think “I’m a failure”, that is a cognitive distortion, that is just factually wrong. You may have failed at a thing, but we are multifaceted, changing people. Depression is a matter of being disconnected with the reality at hand.

So what does the difference look like? We all get sad sometimes. Sadness is a good thing, grief is a good thing. These are healthy responses to difficulties in life. Victor Frankl, when writing about being in a concentration camp wrote, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior” . To never feel sadness or grief would be abnormal.

Here is a picture of what healthy grief looks like:

Depression is very different. It is an auto-immune disorder of the mind. It is very commonly accompanied with negative thoughts that are pervasive, persistent and pessimistic. Common themes are feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, and suicidal ideation.

Here is a picture of what depression feels like:

If you are uncertain if you are depressed, take this depression checklist. It’ll take 5 minutes and may reveal something you are uncomfortable admitting. I took it just took it now, and today I am a 14 out of 100, or mild depression. There have been days when it’s been in the mid 30’s, or moderate depression.

Open Source Mental Health performed a survey of 1570 people in technology.  Of those who answered the questions, 78% indicated they had a mental illness and around 70% of those indicated that they had a mood disorder such as depression or bipolar. We work in a field that often requires us to be on call or can make stressful demands on our lives. It’s more common than you might think.

It needs treated

I have a disease that requires daily treatment and medicine. My body doesn’t produce the chemicals I need. If I don’t treat it on a regular basis and monitor myself, someday I might die. That disease is called diabetes.

That’s right, I take insulin because my body stopped producing it years ago. I don’t think of myself of weak or less than because my body doesn’t work the way it should. Depression is often the same. Something has gone wrong in the brain. It could be a chemical imbalance, traumatic childhood events, or just a naturally lower set point for mood.

Whatever the cause, it still needs treated. It can be hard to admit and feel like a failing. I’m a guy, and I hate, hate, hate feeling like a burden to anyone. I hate asking for help. So much so, that when I was diagnosed with diabetes in the hospital, I told my now wife that I’d understand if she broke up with me. She just about slapped me. Boy was I dumb.

Get help. Please.

How I treat depression

Here are the ways I treat my depression:

Medication. Every single day, I take 10mg of Lexapro. I avoided it for a long time, I’ve heard horror stories about psych meds. I tried everything else, but eventually I decided I needed to take medicine.

The first month was hell and it takes 6 weeks to kick in. I had dry mouth and wanted to crawl out of my skin. After that my body acclimated, and the bleaker side of depression went away. I didn’t feels as dark and lethargic and hopeless. I still had negative thoughts and burnout, but I didn’t feel hopeless anymore. Many people have to try multiple medications to find one that works for them.

Exercise. The second most effective thing I’ve found to treat my depression is exercise, especially cardio exercise. I have to exercise every day, even if I’m sick. If I go a week without getting exercise, I start to get a resumption of symptoms. Exercise is as important as any of my other medications.

Sleep. Sleep is massively critical to good mental health. Sometimes I track my negative thoughts using a tally counter. A bad night’s sleep can double the number of negative thoughts I have in a given day. You wouldn’t give a SQL server 4 gigs of ram, why would you give your brain 4 hours of sleep and expect it to function properly.

Light. I hate the winters in Pittsburgh. It’s dark when you leave for work and it’s dark when you come home. I feel my symptoms most severely during the winter time. To deal with that I have lights everywhere. I have light alarm clocks, I have blue therapy lights to blast 1000 lux at my eyes and wake me up. I’ve even put hue lights in my room so my whole room lights up in the morning. The most effective thing is to just go outside, however.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. One of the most effective therapies is Cognitive Behavior Therapy. In short it identifies that it’s not just events that cause our emotional reactions, but also our beliefs about them. If you partner, come home late you could happy or sad depending on your beliefs.

CBT can be learned from books and I’ve found it to be effective. It feels a lot like having to catch your negative thoughts and then do a complex algebra problem, but I’ve gotten much better at labeling my automatic negative thoughts.

Meditation. Something new I’m trying is meditation. Those negative thoughts, or ruminations, can be hard to catch sometimes. They are like little mosquito bites. Independently, very small. But if you have 150 mosquito bites in a day, they add up. Meditation helps me catch myself and implement the CBT. I use the 10% Happier app and recommend the audio book. It’s fantastic and totally secular, if that’s your preference.

Biofeedback. Sometimes I count my negative thoughts with a physical tally counter. I think this week it was something like 30 -> 26 -> 22 -> 6 -> 7 -> 5 . I’ve had days where is was between 100 and 200. That’s a negative thought every few minutes.

I found that when I actually count them, I make more of an effort to catch myself and think healthier thoughts. Instead of thinking “I’m a failure” I think “I feel embarrassed.” Instead of thinking, “I hate myself”, I think “I feel scared and socially anxious.”

Social interaction. Depression is an isolating disease and IT can be an isolating job. Social interaction get’s us out of our heads and can be a source of support. Even just being at the library and near people can be helpful.

Talk therapy. While I’m not currently in therapy, I was for a while. I found it useful to be in a non-judgmental environment and have someone else I could bounce things off of.

Summary

While I have been in no way cured, there are a number of things I do to treat myself. There are a multitude of options you can take and a plethora of resources out there. Some of them may not work, but many of them are worth trying.

This month’s T-SQL Tuesday invitation is to write about a project that went horribly wrong. And hoo-boy, do I have a project that comes to mind.

My biggest project was my biggest failure

The biggest project I ever worked on, that I ever led, was also my biggest failure. In many ways it has defined the early trajectory of my career and shaped what I value in my new career.

About 8 months into my previous job, my boss wanted us to move to a different ERP system. This would allow us to consolidate 5-6 different pieces of software into a single piece of software. The theoretical business benefits would be quite significant. No longer would we need to have this awkward patchwork of integrations between different line-of-business applications. And while we eventually did it, I consider it the biggest personal failure of my career. So what went wrong?

The software was built in-house

So the first issue was that the software was built in-house by another company in the same industry. Imagine, for example, if a large bakery had created an ERP system and another large bakery wanted to move to that system. Sounds great, right? Well, you run into two issues in that scenario.

First, a bakery is not an independent software vendor. Programming, by definition, is not their core competency. Which means that you may run into fragility or issues that you wouldn’t run into with a commercial piece of software. It also means that there isn’t going to be any documentation on migrating to the software or implementing it. Why would there be. If you built software for one company, why would you create scaffolding to move other companies onto it?

Second, not every business is the same. A lot of the fundamentals are the same, but you will run into many edge cases. We do invoices this way. They do workorders this way. We handle purchase orders this way. They handle inventory that way.

The way that I think about it is like a sea shell. It’s this intricate curve that’s grown over time, organically, to fit that creature. If you just try to fit a different snail or mollusk in that shell, it may not work out.

I was not qualified

This was my second real job ever and I had been working less than 2 years in the industry. I always tell people the jobs said .net / SQL developer, and it turned out to be a lot more SQL and a lot more DBA.

When I started that job, I didn’t know what a stored procedure was. I didn’t know what a view was. 8 months later, when this project started, I had never done any large scale integrations or migrations. At that point I had done some small integrations between pairs of systems, but nothing nearly at this scale.

Add on top of that the need to staff up and add someone to the team. So, about  year in to my new job I was also now a manager.

The software stack was older and different

Because this software had started way back in the Apple II days and grown over time, much of the technology stack was quite old. The application was built on VB6, MySQL, Classic ASP, Crystal Reports 9 and Adobe Flex. This presented challenges in getting it up and running, as well migrating to it.

Migrating data from SQL server is a giant pain. MySQL workbench has an import wizard, which works decently well, but it can be a bit of tedious process. Later I was able to set up linked servers, but that involved looking up strange property settings and forcing char padding on MySQL.

The software made a lot of assumptions

Because it was homegrown, the software made a lot of assumptions about the data. Project numbers under 1000 were reserved for certain pay codes. Half of the columns would crash the software if they had null values. A lot of the tables had to be populated for the application to even run.

So, so, so much of the process was modify a view, migrate the data, see what blows up, repeat. This is a big part of what made the weekly data load so painful. So much of the migration work was sheer trial and error.

Migrating ERP systems requires understanding 2 businesses

Migrating from one ERP system to another in this case require understanding the business that created the software and the business intending to use the software. This is a lot of learning and a lot of weird edge cases. I think I deeply underestimated the sheer complexity of running a business and all the departments therein.

When we deployed, there was a whole chunk of functionality we hadn’t implemented because “certificate of work” meant one thing to use and something totally different to the other company. They whole system updated maintenance cycles based on these certificates, whereas we had assumed they we merely customer deliverables and thus optional.

What would I have done differently?

Ultimately the project took 13 months instead of the estimated 8, and even then that was only because I decided for us to have a hard cutoff at the calendar year. So, if I could travel back in time, what would I have told my younger self?

• Tighten the feedback loop. Migrating the data from one system to another was a largely manual process and quite painful, so we only did it maybe a week. Near the end I had started automating the process. In retrospect, I should have made it a nightly process.
• Learn SSIS and BIML. So much of the pain came from the slow turnaround cycle. I suspect that if I had learned SSIS, I could have made things into a daily or even hourly migration process and saved so much time.
• Read Rapid Development. I wish I had a better idea of what I needed to know from the outset. Rapid Development was a revolutionary book for me and had so much good advice in it.
• Identify a measurable list of use cases. When we made the cut-over, a number of basic things did not work because we hadn’t tested them. What would have been smart would be to have a checklist that we could run through before hand to test the use cases.
• Don’t take it personally. I was young and I treated things outside of my control as my responsibility. I was sore for a long time about how things went, and I thought too much on how that reflected on me and my abilities.

So now what?

Even to this day, I’ve got a certain amount of skittishness around the idea of large projects. There is a whole suite of soft-skills, of methodologies involved in making sure an IT project is successful, and I’ve learned the hard way what happens when you don’t have those skills.

For now, I’m excited to focus on course authoring and projects where I just need to create content.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a favorite quote of mine:

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

I recently saw on Twitter some abusive behavior, and I know that Twitter and trolls go together like peanut butter and jelly, but for whatever reason I’m angry. Maybe because I know the person who was abused, maybe because the abuser is a part of our community. I don’t know. But I’m feeling angry.

If you have to ask “Why are there so many tech events only for girls?” you are either:
1) Trolling
2) Severely lacking empathy and imagination
3) or both.

— Eugene M (@SQLGene) August 10, 2018

I want to do something, but there’s not much I can really do at this point. The abuser has deleted his account and I’ve already said my piece online. So, I thought I’d write a blog post about doing the bare minimum. For you, this post is likely to be utterly banal (“Well duh”), somehow offensive (“You are being too politically correct”), or both (“That’s your minimum? You can do better Eugene.”).

Well, damn it all and fire the cannons. I’m angryblogging.

Step 1. Be a safe person

The person you have the most control over is yourself. The person you have the least control over are abusive people, especially narcissists, psychopaths and anyone else who doesn’t feel a healthy sense of shame. So the most effective thing you can do is be a safer person.

Safe people apologize. Learn to apologize, practice apologizing, and understand that apologies are more than saying I’m sorry. In the book Apology Languages, the author breaks and apology down into 5 different parts.

1. 1. Expressing regret. “I’m sorry.”
   2. Accepting responsibility. “What I did was wrong.”
   3. Making restitution. “How can I make amends?”
   4. Genuinely repenting. “I won’t let this happen again.”
   5. Requesting forgiveness. “Will you forgive me?”

We all know how to say I’m sorry. It’s a cliché of mothers forcing small children to apologize, but often what’s more effective is putting your money where your mouth is. It’s taken a lot of practice for me to be able to say, “What I did was wrong, full stop.”, without needing to explain my motivation. Being safe takes practice.

Safe people listen, without always trying to solve the problem. Sometimes the other person just needs to be heard. Sometimes by trying to fix a problem you can accidently take away someone’s agency. I often ask my wife, “Do you want to vent or do you want advice?”. Her response is 50/50 each way.

Sometimes it’s not about the nail:

Safe people empathize and validate. I was in a really bad relationship once, and one of the things I understood later was the other person never said, “I can see why you’d feel that way.” They never said, “That’s understandable.” They never said, “I would feel the same way, in your shoes.” Validate the person’s feelings.

Toxic people are often unwilling or unable to empathize. For narcissists in particular, it presents a threat to their sense of self. Even worse, many do something called gaslighting, where you make the person question their own senses. Validation is a antidote to gaslighting. Let people know they aren’t crazy.

Step 2. Be aware of different experiences

I’ve written bad emails, angry emails. I’ve gotten in a feud with a co-worker. I’ve been stressed and blown up on people. And never once has someone told me I’m “too emotional”.

I’ve presented dozens of times and never once has some given the feedback that I should “smile more” or “present in lingerie”.

I’ve walked down many streets and I’ve never been catcalled or sexually harassed. I’ve never had to worry if someone was following me around. I’ve never had to run up to someone and say “help me, I’m being harassed.”

And all of this presents a challenge for me, because it makes it harder for me to empathize with women and their lived experiences. Because some experiences are so incongruous with my entire life that there is this cognitive dissonance. This dissonance can be quite uncomfortable.

It’s means that by default, certain experiences feel less credible because I’m never lived them. I don’t want to believe the crap people endure. Some of it seems too horrible to be true.

So that means I have work at it. I have to listen to the stories of other people and have a willingness to feel uncomfortable. The default is me minimizing and invalidating the experiences of others because they don’t match up with mine. So I have to do better than the default.

Step 3. Be alert

An embarrassing story: in the last year, I had the opportunity to stop some harassment in person and I didn’t. It wasn’t because I was scared or unwilling. No, it’s because I wasn’t paying attention.

I take martial arts and if someone was beating another person, I’d like to think I’d intervene. I haven’t been tested on that and hopefully never will, but I’m pretty confidant I’d jump in. But harassment can be subtle, almost invisible. And so I didn’t jump in.

In this case, nothing in the conversation was harassing. Nothing offensive was said. But something felt off. The non-verbals were screaming at me. And I didn’t hear them because I wasn’t listening.

You know when you cook some food and it’s 2 days expired and it smells off? Not moldy or anything, it looks perfectly fine, but you eat it and feel sick an hour later? Harassment and abuse can be like that. Nothing blatantly wrong but in your gut you know that something isn’t right.

Being able to stop harassment requires being alert and being aware. If you are someone like me who doesn’t worry about getting harassed personally, doesn’t get harassed regularly, this can take work. I never want to miss the signs ever again.

Step 4. Speak up. Step in. Intervene.

I hate conflict. I am a people pleaser. I have poor boundaries. So the idea of stepping in the middle of something gives me shivers.

I don’t like getting involved in Twitter fights, I don’t think they accomplish much. I don’t like the mob mentality on Twitter and online. When I think about the dog-pile culture on Twitter, I worry someday I’m going to say something tone deaf and lose my job over it. I say stupid things a lot.

But you know what? Say something. Do something. Step in.

I’m not encouraging people to put themselves in danger or incur abuse themselves. But for many of us that’s not a serious risk. I’m 6’ 2’’ and practice self-defense. I can afford to intervene in a conversation. My safety is not at risk.

Stepping in might mean just being physically present and making knowing eye contact. It might involve saying “Sir, that behavior is inappropriate.” It might involve entering the conversation and asking pointed questions that belies the true intentions of the abuser.

Online it might mean calling out bad behavior. Saying, “This is unacceptable.” or “This is harassment.” It doesn’t require being some internet crusader or dog-piling. You have a line personally, and you know in your gut if something crosses that line. You know in your gut something is wrong. If something is wrong, then say something.

I’ll say it again. I hate conflict. I’m a people pleaser. I have poor boundaries. But I’m working on speaking up more when I see something that I feel is harassment or abuse.

And remember, calling out bad behavior is not just about shaming the abuser. They aren’t likely to listen to you anyway. It’s about letting the victim know that they are seen, they are heard and they are not crazy. It’s about setting a standard for everyone else. There is a saying that “locks keep honest people honest”. Healthy accountability keeps everyone honest.

On doing more than the bare minimum

I’m not saying that we should all aim for just minimum. If your bare minimum is more than this, awesome. I’m not trying to encourage doing less. But for people like myself, the minimum is not the default. The minimum is a destination, not the starting point. Let’s change that.

What I’m trying to say is there are small, simple things we can all do without making a big leap out of our comfort zone. And that minimum bar is getting higher every year and we should all be aware of that. Times, they are a changin’.

Angryblogging, out.