Security Chipmunks

Episode 8 - Mental Health and Burnout

• Edna • Season 1 • Episode 8

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Welcome to the Security Chipmunks podcast where we talk about the development of cybersecurity skills. To stay up to date in today's world you need to be resilient, that’s why as Advanced Persistent Chipmunks we keep chipping away at it.

We had intended to publish this episode in May for Mental Health Awareness Month.
However this episode has been plagued by audio quality issues, so apologies in advance -NS


https://www.mentalhealthhackers.org/
 https://www.strugglecare.com/
https://www.window-swap.com/

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UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Security Chipmunks Podcast, where we talk about the development of cybersecurity skills. To stay up to date in today's world, you need to be resilient. That's why as advanced, persistent chipmunks, we keep chipping away at it. My name is Meg Sedna Johnson. My co-host is Neil Smalley.

SPEAKER_01:

Hi, Edna. How's it going?

SPEAKER_00:

Hi, Neil. I'm doing great. How are you?

SPEAKER_01:

Not too bad. Not too bad.

SPEAKER_00:

So we're doing kind of a different episode today, aren't we?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it is. It's the Mental Health Awareness Month.

SPEAKER_01:

Gotcha. So standard disclaimer applies here. We are not mental health professionals. If you need help, please seek a professional. With that said, let's jump into it.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. Yeah. So with this pandemic, it's been really hard for people. So I wanted to kind of talk about ways that you can work towards a better mental health and having people better balance in your life one thing one concept that really helps me is it's a concept of spoons so the spoons are the amount of mental energy that you have and this kind of just gives language to people who are dealing with depression or other mental health illnesses to be able to express like how much they have to be able to get through the day so this spoon theory and for people who have chronic illness they call themselves spoonies this is just how much they're able to contribute to their day and depending on their level of wellness they'll have more spoons for a day than others so if you're having a great day where you're feeling good this also works for chronic illness, if you're having pain and so on. So if somebody was dealing with pain, they have a low pain day, they have more spoons to be able to get stuff done. But if they're having a high pain day, that pain takes away their spoons. So their spoons are being taken up by dealing with the pain. So for somebody that's dealing with depression, if you're having a a really difficult, depressing day, you might not have a lot of spoons. So you might not be able to get through and it's more challenging to get through the daily activities like taking a shower, brushing your hair, eating, making sure you're drinking water and taking your medicine. So it just depends of your level of wellness.

SPEAKER_01:

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00:

Have you ever heard of it?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I have. I also think another way to think about it is for me it's like i like video games right and so a lot of them will have something like a stamina meter or something like that and so you can only run for so long before your stamina runs out or maybe you're going through like mud or something and your character's not gonna be able to run as fast because you're going through mud so like an example that would be like okay maybe i don't do so well in a crowd in social situations maybe i can sprint faster with a full stamina meter but i'm going through mud and my stamina meters tapped out, I'm going to be in a very slow pace. So it really depends on how much energy have I burned through already and what kind of terrain am I going through.

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Yeah, so that's a good comparison when you're dealing with mental health issues. Like you're stuck in the mud and you're trying to get your brain on track, but Sarah Serotonin and dopamine are low. So one way that I deal with bringing up my serotonin or dopamine throughout the day, I have a box of fidget toys at my desk. So I will pick something up and I'll start fidgeting with it as I'm trying to work through things. And that helps me fight off. It both helps me focus and also helps me with bringing up the dopamine and feeling better throughout the day.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you have a favorite one?

SPEAKER_00:

This flashlight thing, it has a magnet and so when I pull off the end and then it clicks back in. It does sound very

SPEAKER_01:

satisfying.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it's got a very satisfying little click when it finds its home. It's not really meant as a fidget toy but it has made its way into my fidget toy box. That's it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I have a number of different ones. There's things like beaded bracelets that are fun for me, and then there's... Silly Putty's good, but I really like what's... beaded rubber erasers. So, like, in the art aisle of, like, your office store, you can find beaded rubber, and it's a little less messy than Silly Putty, I've found. It's like, it doesn't stick it. stick as much and you can play with it like uh play-doh is not necessarily as messy as play-doh or silly potty or something like that that can be really fun

SPEAKER_00:

nice yeah excellent those are excellent ideas so the way i discovered the fidget toys was there's an organization called mental health hackers and at conferences they have a room where you can kind of go and just relax and So it's very nice. You go and play with fidget toys. They have fidget toys across all the tables. They have coloring books. Depending on which conference you go, they have kind of different things. But one of the things they have is like a pool filled with Orbeez. Oh,

SPEAKER_01:

wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So like a kid's pool. For people who don't

SPEAKER_01:

know, that's like the kind of bead thing that expands in water or

SPEAKER_00:

something. Yeah. They're great for watering your plants if you have orbeez they because they absorb all the water and then over time they dehydrate so if you are bad about remembering to water your plants put a bunch of wet orbeez on your plants and it will over time water your plants so yeah so mental health hackers they're bringing awareness of mental health issues in an industry where you deal with a lot of stress and burnouts So I think they make it more acceptable to talk about mental health issues by bringing it to the conferences and like, hey, we can talk about it. It's okay. So I think they're a great organization.

SPEAKER_01:

I definitely think it can be intimidating to ask for help. It's not always easy to get help, especially with our healthcare system. But I think just even taking that first step, if you have family or friends you can talk to, being able to ask for help when You need to not try to do everything on your own as I know a lot of people just, you know, like myself included, try to just go along and do everything on our own. And I feel completely swamped and overwhelmed, but you don't necessarily have to do that. And you can get help, you know, friends, family, mental health care professionals. I mean, it's not all, it's not going to be all instant fit. Nothing's like an instant fix or anything takes a lot of work.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

and you're not necessarily going to get the right help from the first person you come across. It's kind of like looking for a job or anything else. You have to evaluate if it's going to work for you because not everybody is the same.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So what are some of the tips that you have for dealing with if you have the blues or the sads

SPEAKER_01:

So it can definitely be easy to overdo it on things. Chocolate does help to some extent, but that's only part of the picture.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Seeing how professional health, some people just need medication because their bodies just don't make enough of the right chemicals or not. That's not something I really have experience with or want to go into because I just don't have that professional knowledge, right? But it's definitely... If you think you need that, something you can talk to your doctor about or something. As far as tips go, again, it really depends on the individual, but there's a number of different things you can do. Some things that have helped me is, one, I deleted Facebook for starters. That eliminated so much stress right there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Notification fatigue or alert fatigue. I know there's some rules that it just doesn't allow for it. It's like you have to always be on.

SPEAKER_01:

And then there's that bleed over into the rest of your life from work. And so I think from a cultural or systemic level needs to be looked at and said, okay, maybe people would do better jobs if they weren't always stressed out. Maybe we can do this better, have a better shift system or something. But yeah, it's definitely not always easy. Anyway, you can like cut down on the amount of interruptions because I know that we have like a limited amount of decisions or processing to deal with decisions every day and every little interruption does not help with that. At least that's my anecdotal experience with it. I reduced my notifications on my phone. My phone like used to be the source, like one of the greatest sources of stress. Nowadays, I pretty much only have a notification on if it's an alarm or if it's a phone call. So it doesn't mean I don't get other stuff. I just don't have it audible. So I set specific times throughout the day to check and get back. So usually it's like within a two-hour time frame, like every two hours or so that I am able to check and that way I don't miss something important if it's something super important like you know it's either going to be a phone call or it can wait really i do a lot of video calls getting into that zoom fatigue

SPEAKER_00:

yeah

SPEAKER_01:

so for that i typically do two hours of video and then an hour off just to keep my my sanity because if you're on video all day it's just it's really hard you can definitely get around that by doing audio only or or even text when possible. And then really just trying to eliminate meetings that could be an email. Slack and Discord and chat apps, that's still not technically asynchronous. It's more of real time. So there are other asynchronous parts that application department and whatnot, even just as simple as like a shared Google doc or a ticketing system or any number of other options that you can work collaboratively with people, but it doesn't have to be necessarily in real time, especially with a distributed team in different time zones or different things, it can get pretty tricky. But if done properly, it can really eliminate lots of unneeded meetings that conflict with people's schedules and just reduce stress all around. So there's trying to reduce meetings and interruptions in people's actual doing work is really helpful.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. Something that I discovered rather recently is there's a therapist on TikTok and she had a baby when the pandemic hit and then she got postpartum depression, but she was not able to have her family there because they're all isolating because of COVID. So she had to kind of come up with her own way of doing things. So she's got a website called strugglecare.com. And in it, she describes how, you know, okay, you're not able to cope to 100%. So you don't have to keep a perfectly maintained house. So she describes what the basic things to function are. So like, you need to make sure you have clean plates and clean clothes, but your house doesn't have to be spotless. You don't have to have everything. Everything dusted. So she's got some great ideas there. There are worksheets that she's created and she's got some resources on her website that really help with, you know, if you're having a really deep depression, what would work for you? Like if you're having a really tough day, you can't shower. Okay. Can you brush your hair? Can you, you know, get a wipe and, you know, Yeah. So if that helps some people.

SPEAKER_01:

I found that if I'm able to forgive myself for procrastinating something or not getting everything on my to-do list done, I'm much more likely to finish it up the next day than if I had spent all night guilt tripping about it and not being able to sleep. So definitely does help.

SPEAKER_00:

One thing with regards to the pandemic that if people are having depression, one thing that I recommend checking on, This is very true. So make sure you go and go to your doctor and get checked out as part of, you know,

SPEAKER_01:

your overall wellness. So when I was in the Pacific Northwest, I'm very familiar with this to the point where, uh, I don't get out much. So I actually have a happy light and a happy light is a super bright light. You can turn on for probably like half an hour, 45 minutes or something like that. And it helps trick your brain into thinking you're getting some light. And so it actually, uh, does help improve my mood. So if I'm having a really bad time of things, for example, like in the winter or something, when it's really dark a lot or overcast or whatnot, I can go with that. And then, of course, it'll also help with sleep. If your body doesn't know when your day-night cycle is, it can have issues with that as well. So that is also helpful there. So definitely use it when you need it. Also, being in a box. Even in the Pacific Northwest, if you don't never leave your house, you don't get that green. So having plants can be quite the mood booster. Even just one or two. Absolutely. Just like a cactus or a succulent that doesn't pretty much ever need water or something. They're just about my speed. Especially if you're struggling to do the basics, you don't want to be having to take care of plants. The low-maintenance plants are really quite handy. me. Absolutely. There's some pretty realistic fake plants out there that can definitely be a mood boost as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I have a little aloe plant. I love my little plant. I have managed to keep it alive. I think we've covered a lot of things. Is there anything that we're

SPEAKER_01:

missing? Yes. I live and work in a room that faces the neighbors. So I have film on my window and then I have a blackout curtain. So there's something called window-swap.com and it lets me bring up video clips of other people's windows from around the world. So if I need to pick me up, I can just pop that up in my second monitor

SPEAKER_00:

while I work. Very nice. All right. Oh, and also pets. Pets can help you feel better. I really want a golden retriever, but that's on hold. I have two dogs already.

SPEAKER_01:

There you go. We have two cats and a fish. Nice. We like hanging out together.

SPEAKER_00:

And the cats don't eat the

SPEAKER_01:

fish? No. It's just another form of entertainment. That's like the big stained glass doors. The birds like to come and hang out with the plants out in front of the windows. The cats will sit and watch. Every once in a while. I do actually get out of my room to go pet the cats. It's definitely a nice break to go brew some tea and sit and pet the cats for a bit. At the end of the day, I think that's one of the key things. Making sure to take enough breaks and let your brain rest. Your brain is still going to be working on the problem. Oftentimes, it'll be more helpful than just staring at your screen for another now are banging your head against a wall. Put your brain work on in the background and you'll be surprised at what I'll come up

SPEAKER_00:

with. Yeah. Thanks for listening to the Security Chipmunks. And remember, if it seems overwhelming, just keep chipping away at it.