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The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while

The single best thing I did for professional development was see a therapist. In tech, our jobs are knowledge-based. You can't hammer a nail into a board while you're sitting on the couch with your child, but you can certainly think about software architecture. I've found that my job bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa, and I believe it is far more common than most people realize. Stress piles up and it affects not only your home life, but your work life. Taking the time to talk to a professional and become introspective and conscious of my own mental health has provided me with more value than all the books and conferences and talks I've consumed put together.

ilyas121 6y ago
This for me as well! I used to think that if I was inward-looking enough I could handle all of this myself. But outsourcing this kind of work to a professional has saved me so much time and trial&error with how to take care of my mental health.
- mac01021 6y ago
  Is it possible for you, without sharing personal details that you would rather not share, to give a more concrete and detailed account of the value that your therapist has provided to you? I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. And, while I'm open minded to the idea that I am wrong about that, I just have trouble imagining or envisioning what I might be missing.
  - geewee 6y ago
    Not the OP but I have similar experiences and am also very introspective. For me, my introspection dealt a lot with what my thoughts were and how I behaved, but I had a lot of feelings that I had suppressed so deeply they never really came into consciousness. Therapy helped a lot with that.
  - trwhite 6y ago
    The kind of advice you'll most likely receive won't be like anything you'd hear from a friend or family member. A therapist thinks critically and draws your attention to the language you use, ideas you'd not previously considered etc. I'm a very reflective person and therapy's helped me make sense of it all.
  - wenc 6y ago
    > I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. Not the OP, but as an introspective person, I've found it was actually my introspection that predisposed me to benefiting from therapy. For me, my issues stemmed from negative self-talk, which is a misfiring of introspection. I would read the world and assign negative interpretations to how I was treated or how I messed up -- all the while subconsciously congratulating myself for being a self-aware person. Therapy was a way for me to correct this misfiring feedback loop. My perceptions of the world may or may not have been correct, but the central idea is that I was assigning inordinate weight to the negative perceptions rather than the positive, which caused my emotions to spiral. This led to a pattern of catastrophizing. Breaking out of that entailed a third-party grounding me and giving me more balanced interpretive options, and reminding me that my reading of the world was only one of many possibilities and not even necessarily a correct one (the limitations of introspection are sometimes astounding). The part that's the most helpful about therapy was moving past interpretation, and employing positive techniques and taking action to deal with the world positively (doesn't matter if the interpretation was true or not). These actions encompass things like setting boundaries, or writing stuff down and interrogating them from multiple interpretive lenses instead of accepting them at face value. The act of taking action also helps dispel a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies. [1] For me and likely for most introverts, negative self-talk is our weakness. Distorted introspection, while seemingly honest, is at the root of many negative emotions. It's very hard to fix feedback loops from within (since the thing you're using to fix them is the very thing that's broken) -- so engaging professional help is often very useful. [1] An abstract example of this would be (not true of me, but to illustrate the point): Say I was passed over for a promotion and I start building narratives as to why. Maybe it's because I've been wronged in this way or that, or there's discrimination, or I'm not part of the inner circle. All of these things might be true (or not)... but if you think they're true and you respond unproductively by sulking, you're not going to make progress. Instead, you can change the framing and tell yourself maybe it's true, but let's give room to other interpretive options. Maybe it's because I don't really sell my ideas enough, so let's work on that. Maybe I'm really not ready so let's try upskilling. And the end result is that you move the locus of control from things you can't control to things you can control, which improves your overall well-being. And though there's no guarantee, because you've improved yourself in all these ways, your negative self-fulling prophecy might even turn out to be a positive one (but again, there's no guarantee). At any rate, by electing to deal with the world differently, your mental state improves, which causes you to present differently to the world. This in turn has the potential to start positive feedback loops.
  - munificent 6y ago
    Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead. This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about how much room that couch is wasting or how much time you spend walking around the couch to get to the chair. Sometmies you stub your toe on the way around, but everyone trips every now and then. You've been doing this so long that it is completely unconscious. Hell, you can and do navigate the room in the dark. Friends ask you about your living room furniture and you—completely honestly as far as you know—say it's all fine. You describe your chair in detail. It's not perfect, but it's serviceable. Certainly lots of other people have furniture that's in worse shape. At least you don't have any of those problems. Then you sit down with a therapist for a few hours and they say, "Hey, what's up with that couch?"
    - kimjongtrill 6y ago
      this is such a good description of the process. i laughed and it also definitely stung a little bit :) therapy is 100% worth it
      - munificent 6y ago
        > also definitely stung a little bit :) The sting is how you know it's working. :)
    - dalmo3 6y ago
      Great analogy for physical therapy too!
    - geekraver 6y ago
      Leave it to munificent to explain things clearly. Every time :-)
jeeshan 6y ago
Fully agree. There are therapists who also do coaching.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Neil44 6y ago
Likewise. Just about general life stuff. Understanding yourself better helps you out in all aspects of life.
equality_1138 6y ago
Seconded. In particular, I've come to recognize the growing confluence of woke politics and tech management as major impediment on my ability to do my job well. Reading up on career coaching and psychology has certainly helped, but can also serve to overcomplicate the situation. My therapist provides highly personal and much more practical guidance in accepting the bs.
- throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  Even using the term "Woke Politics" is a giveaway.. I Hope your therapist helps you.
- azinman2 6y ago
  How do “woke politics” prevent you from doing your job well?
  - oneplane 6y ago
    Generally they undermine patterns, and without patterns in our lives, life itself becomes quite the burden. When it happens but you aren't aware of it, you start to degrade in various ways and if you pile the unknownness (what is happening? why do I feel this way? why am I not getting done what I want to get done?) on top of it, it's not a fun time. At least, that's a factor I've read about recently; plenty more factors and angles. That's not to say that changing patterns is inherently bad, but changing too much at once or a change that must be synchronous and immediate vs. gradually and asynchronous are very different processes for us humans. By the way, it might also be a misspelling (work politics vs woke politics); but coincidentally this applies there as well but to a lesser degree.
    - shredprez 6y ago
      This is a really interesting perspective I haven't run into before. It definitely captures a subtractive strain of political and social thought I find incredibly frustrating. The lefty "woke" variant is hotly criticized lately, but its libertarian and conservative siblings have had their moments in recent years. Something in it speaks to everyone. Of course, dismantling order is a poor substitute for refining order, and while the idea of starting over from scratch is seductive, I'm not convinced the "post-dismantling" environment is a good one for building better things (regardless of your definition of "better"). Unfortunately, the thirst for hard resets seems stronger now on all sides than I've ever seen before, which disappoints me to no end. Everything grows out of something else. And if you can't picture how what we have today could become what you want tomorrow without resorting to burning it down, you probably aren't ready to build something better from scratch. The least you can do is let the thing stand while we figure out how to make it work for everyone.
pc86 6y ago
OP said they have a professional development budget, so it's presumably from an employer. Cute non-answer notwithstanding, I don't think their employer is going to allocate professional development resources for therapy.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  What about their response makes you think it was a non answer? I specifically opened this thread to share the exact same experience, as therapy has helped my professional life much more than any book or tool I ever bought.
  - pc86 6y ago
    OP is asking what they can spend this budget on. Assuming it's from an employer, therapy isn't a valid answer to the question they're asking.
    - Kaze404 6y ago
      The problem is you're dismissing a valid suggestion based on an assumption you came up with yourself. I understand your point but I feel like it was misplaced here.
- joncrane 6y ago
  Actually, if your employer has a EAP (Employee Assistance Program), they do!
- rognjen 6y ago
  Exactly what I came to say. It's an entirely reasonable assumption given that the OP said that they've a _budget_.
antihero 6y ago
Absolutely, I've grown hugely as a person since starting therapy, it facilitates you cutting the shit about yourself, examining yourself and the world around you and how you it influences you and you influence it.
jimmytucson 6y ago
Ironically, the word "architecture" comes from designing and constructing buildings. Likewise, someone who frames houses can become preoccupied with beams and rafter angles while not operating a saw or driving in nails. I guess what I'm saying is, everyone - including construction workers - should take your advice.
dbancajas 6y ago
how does one find a therapist? Like what search terms and what kinds do we need advise as someone who works on the tech field.
- jw1224 6y ago
  Starting therapy earlier this year was possibly the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. It took about 3 months of weekly sessions to properly “notice” what a difference it was making, but now it’s blindingly obvious, and I’m so glad I did it. I found my therapist through https://www.bacp.co.uk/ https://www.bacp.co.uk/ — I’m not sure which country you’re in, but there’s bound to be similar directories out there. I set their filters to find therapists who deal with issues relevant to me, and within a practical distance. After that, I just systematically went through each of their profiles, read their bios, and narrowed it down to a shortlist of 10. I then picked two based on gut instinct. I had an introductory session with them both, and immediately “clicked” with one of them, who I’ve been seeing ever since.
  - bb123 6y ago
    Is therapy the same as counselling?
    - jw1224 6y ago
      There are many different types of therapy, of which counselling is one of them. My therapist works specifically in “Person-centered therapy”: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/person-centered-therapy https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/person-cent...
- evil-olive 6y ago
  If you're in the US, Psychology Today's "Find a Therapist" tool [0] is excellent and lets you filter by a number of things including whether they accept your insurance plan, location, gender, specialty, and so on. 0: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
- 6y ago
zestyping 6y ago
I've spent a lot of time with therapists but they've only had the effect of being a sort of guard rail to keep me from falling too deep when I fall; it doesn't seem like they have helped me make any lasting improvements. Based on what I've heard from friends and on this thread, it sounds like it's possible to get a lot more out of talk therapy? What's your range of experiences been like with better or worse therapists, and how do you know when you should look for a better one?
- rusk 6y ago
  Have you tried cognitive behavioural therapy? It’s a fairly powerful set of tools that work quite well for a lot of people, though not everybody admittedly ...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- oneplane 6y ago
  Two cents: real change is not a lot of fun while it's happening, because change is hard, and makes some simple things take a lot more time and energy for a while.
  - hnmullany 6y ago
    From Angels In America “Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. Harper: And then up you get. And walk around. Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending. Harper: That's how people change.”
- allerhellsten 6y ago
  I've seen three therapists. The first two were a complete waste of time, the third one completely changed my life for the better (incidentally, this started out as couple's therapy for my failed marriage). It's basically like in any profession: 80% are mediocre, 10% are so bad you never want to try again and the last 10% are the gold you're searching for. There's also a question of whether you go along with a certain type of person, but there's also clearly excellence at work. I knew I was onto something very early on. She went directly to work, stabbing into the wounds with massive empathy and brutal honesty. She described herself as her goal being "getting rid of me as soon as possible", which contributed to my trust in myself not just being a money cow for her. But the most starring fact was that I couldn't hide. She broke through all my layers and facades and went directly to the core issue of me not accepting myself as I am. I think these are signals to watch out for (plus: a waiting list so long you usually don't get a place with the good ones), so good luck and YMMV. In any case, it's a pain finding a good therapist, but it's still worth it. But before you get or continue a bad therapy experience, be sure to try out Leo Widrich and his blog. He's the only other therapist I didn't see who helped me grow to being a better version of myself.
schoolornot 6y ago
Disagree. I know not everyone is lucky to have close friends but as someone who has always dealt with things alone, I feel guilty and vulnerable the few times I've spoken to therapists. Even years later I regret going. I don't want someone who is impartial or non-judgmental. If I'm going to pay someone I want actionable advice from someone who has been in my shoes. Having friends who know me, who come from different backgrounds, cultures, countries does way more for me. Them saying "schoolornot, knock it off, you're acting immature" does way more for me than laying on a nobody's couch. I'm not knocking it but it's not for me.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  In my opinion, part of the value in a therapist is that they don't know you, so they can provide advice not clouded by a shared history or any loyalty to you.
- jasonv 6y ago
  Therapists don’t generally give advice. Coaches do that.
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
+1 for therapy. Best $10K I ever spent. Over 18 months I ever spent.
- systemvoltage 6y ago
  Can you please tell us what kind of things were discusssed? Not going into your personal details, just general idea would be great. A lot of people here who haven't talked to a therapist are wondering the same in unison.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    Sure. I can't remember exactly what led me to this point, but I remember going to workout with my personal trainer & feel really angry towards her for no particular reason. I realized in that moment that I was not OK, and I booked a session with a cognitive behavioral therapist. I basically started with "I'm super angry & don't know why", and went from there.
rusk 6y ago
In a similar vein I went and did a degree in psychology at night. Nobody in work got it; HR refused me extra leave because they didn’t think it was relevant to my competencies ... but definitely the single best thing I have done for my career in terms of having one and having a great personal life too. Even today people ask me “what do you use it for?” to which I ominously reply “I’m using it right now” - gets them every time :-)
- notrandom 6y ago
  Do you have a bunch of textbooks that you would recommend reading? :)
  - rusk 6y ago
    That's a good question - it's a while ago and the only one that really jumps out is The History of Psychology by Leahy because understanding psychology is as much about understanding how we understand the mind in the context of society, and to do that you need to know the history. Not what you were expecting ... I highly recommend reading up on Hans Selye's biological model of stress and the HPA axis. Also worth checking out Freudelberger for the seminal article on burnout and Maslach for the formal treatment. Organisational psychology is great but so contentious an area it's helpful to have a good teacher. I highly recommend looking into Biopsychology, which is essentially the interplay between our mind and body and even how our mind distributed through the body.
    - skoskie 6y ago
      Favorited ... ensuring I’ll never get back to it again.
Solvitieg 6y ago
In Canada, therapy is very expensive. About $150/h in the major cities. Meanwhile all my American friends get free therapy. Weird how that breaks the narrative about US healthcare.
- SZJX 6y ago
  I mean sure, all the tech elites in the US get the best medical care out there, far better than those in so-called "welfare states" such as the Scandinavian countries. However such conditions are bound to their job and thus not applicable to the general cases. Don't think this is what the "narrative about US healthcare" is about. If you work in big tech in the US you live in a paradise-like condition far removed from the masses, this is pretty much widely known isn't it.
- velcrovan 6y ago
  How does that work?? As an American, I must know.
- issa 6y ago
  I don't know who these American friends that get free therapy are, but as an American, I've never heard of that. I do know people who pay two thousand dollars a month for health insurance for their family and it INCLUDES therapy. But that seems pretty different.
- weakfish 6y ago
  Not sure how your friends are doing that. I had to stop therapy because I couldn't afford it.
- RankingMember 6y ago
  Please tell us more about these American friends. I'm an American and this "free therapy" is completely foreign to me. More and more therapists aren't in-network because dealing with insurance is a pain in the ass, so even if you've got insurance you end up paying out-of-network which might cover $50 of that $150 session.
- gricardo99 6y ago
  mental health is probably one of the worst aspects of a very dysfunctional US healthcare system. Somehow your friends ended up with an incredibly generous health plan (by the way, not "free", I'm guessing very expensive for their employers), but I assure you this is far from the norm.
taternuts 6y ago
I started seeing a therapist mostly about my trust issues with women, and it ended up being 90% work-related topics we discussed. Oftentimes I thought I was up against the world and I sucked, and my therapist would bring me down to earth and almost allow me to think that I'm doing a good job, and that I'm a good engineer no matter how many other, better engineers are out there.
killvung 6y ago
How did talking to therapist help dealing with mental health like that?
mabcat 6y ago
If you're in Australia, find a therapist using the thing I built: https://www.oktotalk.com.au https://www.oktotalk.com.au . If you fill out the questions, the site might be able to recommend you someone good straight off. Otherwise one of our staff will help you through the process. We try really hard to bypass that "I tried 4 therapists before I found the right one" thing, and get you in with someone right the first time. Here's the 80/20 of getting the most out of a therapist, drawn from watching thousands of people get great results over the last 5 years: * talk to several therapists on the phone for 5 or 10 minutes first. You're going to be hesitant and uncomfortable, it's their job to put you at ease, they're the professional. You'll learn a lot quickly about them, and about the mental health process. If you have an uncomfortable 5 minute chat, you're going to have an uncomfortable hour, so skip that therapist. Go with your intuition, either say "heck yes" or "no". * make a plan, work the plan. Write out your goals. The way to do this is "present situation" -> "desired situation". Everyone forgets the "desired situation" because they've got so much negative mental energy tied up in "present situation". Anyway, take your goals to your therapist. Put a circle around the one you need to address first. Insist that it gets addressed, or 6 sessions will go by and you'll realise the only change is to your wallet * ask for homework, do your homework. You're in therapy an hour a week and out of therapy 167 hours a week. Your therapist can't compete with that. What you do outside therapy matters greatly * if after 3 sessions you haven't established a good working relationship with your therapist and seen a bit of forward motion on your goals, get a new therapist. It could improve but statistically it's unlikely. This is an evidence-based cut-off. Mental health is health, stay healthy!
maybelsyrup 6y ago
Transparent plug but also sincere offer: I'm a psychotherapist. (I'm also a psychiatric researcher, which made me something of a data scientist, which is how I ended up on HN.) I work in private practice, dealing mainly with relationship and mood issues, and I've seen no small number of men and women in the kinds of fields that make up the HN readership over the course of my career - tech, STEM, etc. It'll surprise no one to hear me say that I agree with locochef about investing in oneself through therapy^, but I also want to say that one of the most fascinating and simultaneously scary aspects of my work is seeing day in, day out the degree to which human beings excel at having stress pile up while ignoring it, denying it, believing themselves to somehow deserve it, "tough it out" to nearly-lethal degrees, or being kind of unaware of it entirely. A corollary of this observation is that the people (or the couples, or the families) who decide to see a therapist "early", when the challenge / problem / dilemma isn't yet at crisis level, are often the ones who benefit most. Like someone said down thread, it's like any other part of health: it costs less to not eat those cheeseburgers now than to have the bypass surgery later. Small investments made somewhat early can forestall a lot of ugly shit down the road. Frankly, if half the shit I help people with every day was taught universally in the fifth to tenth grades, I'd be out of a job (but happily so). If anyone has general questions about therapy or related topics, I'm happy to answer if I'm able (or give you a nice "I have no idea" if I don't). Email in bio. ^ Sometimes! It's not for everyone, nor even for the same person at different times of their lives, and it can be harmful or end up being something you regret. But I agree in a general sense.
borja_froged 6y ago
I 100% Agree. Spending time for yourself and having someone to help you do that is key nowadays to avoid burnout. Thank you for sharing your story :)
ubac 6y ago
On a similar note, philosophical life coaching: https://www.pamelajhobart.com/ https://www.pamelajhobart.com/ Read her site, you'll either immediately say "that's for me" or "absolutely not," and either way you'll be right. Does both phone and email coaching ("Interlocutor as a Service"), which is strange but super interesting and (for me at least) surprisingly effective
raobit 6y ago
You really made a good point ,even i have observed how psychology really helps in looking,observing things and changes perspective about everything

ilyas121 6y ago

This for me as well! I used to think that if I was inward-looking enough I could handle all of this myself. But outsourcing this kind of work to a professional has saved me so much time and trial&error with how to take care of my mental health.

mac01021 6y ago
Is it possible for you, without sharing personal details that you would rather not share, to give a more concrete and detailed account of the value that your therapist has provided to you? I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. And, while I'm open minded to the idea that I am wrong about that, I just have trouble imagining or envisioning what I might be missing.
- geewee 6y ago
  Not the OP but I have similar experiences and am also very introspective. For me, my introspection dealt a lot with what my thoughts were and how I behaved, but I had a lot of feelings that I had suppressed so deeply they never really came into consciousness. Therapy helped a lot with that.
- trwhite 6y ago
  The kind of advice you'll most likely receive won't be like anything you'd hear from a friend or family member. A therapist thinks critically and draws your attention to the language you use, ideas you'd not previously considered etc. I'm a very reflective person and therapy's helped me make sense of it all.
- wenc 6y ago
  > I've also always regarded myself as introspective enough not to be able to benefit from therapy. Not the OP, but as an introspective person, I've found it was actually my introspection that predisposed me to benefiting from therapy. For me, my issues stemmed from negative self-talk, which is a misfiring of introspection. I would read the world and assign negative interpretations to how I was treated or how I messed up -- all the while subconsciously congratulating myself for being a self-aware person. Therapy was a way for me to correct this misfiring feedback loop. My perceptions of the world may or may not have been correct, but the central idea is that I was assigning inordinate weight to the negative perceptions rather than the positive, which caused my emotions to spiral. This led to a pattern of catastrophizing. Breaking out of that entailed a third-party grounding me and giving me more balanced interpretive options, and reminding me that my reading of the world was only one of many possibilities and not even necessarily a correct one (the limitations of introspection are sometimes astounding). The part that's the most helpful about therapy was moving past interpretation, and employing positive techniques and taking action to deal with the world positively (doesn't matter if the interpretation was true or not). These actions encompass things like setting boundaries, or writing stuff down and interrogating them from multiple interpretive lenses instead of accepting them at face value. The act of taking action also helps dispel a lot of self-fulfilling prophecies. [1] For me and likely for most introverts, negative self-talk is our weakness. Distorted introspection, while seemingly honest, is at the root of many negative emotions. It's very hard to fix feedback loops from within (since the thing you're using to fix them is the very thing that's broken) -- so engaging professional help is often very useful. [1] An abstract example of this would be (not true of me, but to illustrate the point): Say I was passed over for a promotion and I start building narratives as to why. Maybe it's because I've been wronged in this way or that, or there's discrimination, or I'm not part of the inner circle. All of these things might be true (or not)... but if you think they're true and you respond unproductively by sulking, you're not going to make progress. Instead, you can change the framing and tell yourself maybe it's true, but let's give room to other interpretive options. Maybe it's because I don't really sell my ideas enough, so let's work on that. Maybe I'm really not ready so let's try upskilling. And the end result is that you move the locus of control from things you can't control to things you can control, which improves your overall well-being. And though there's no guarantee, because you've improved yourself in all these ways, your negative self-fulling prophecy might even turn out to be a positive one (but again, there's no guarantee). At any rate, by electing to deal with the world differently, your mental state improves, which causes you to present differently to the world. This in turn has the potential to start positive feedback loops.
- munificent 6y ago
  Imagine you've lived in the same house your entire life. There's a big couch taking up half the living room, but one of the legs is broken. When you were really little, it tipped over when you sat in it, so you just learned to walk around the couch over to the not-very-comfortable armchair and sit there instead. This was so long ago that you don't even remember learning not to sit in the couch. You don't think about how much room that couch is wasting or how much time you spend walking around the couch to get to the chair. Sometmies you stub your toe on the way around, but everyone trips every now and then. You've been doing this so long that it is completely unconscious. Hell, you can and do navigate the room in the dark. Friends ask you about your living room furniture and you—completely honestly as far as you know—say it's all fine. You describe your chair in detail. It's not perfect, but it's serviceable. Certainly lots of other people have furniture that's in worse shape. At least you don't have any of those problems. Then you sit down with a therapist for a few hours and they say, "Hey, what's up with that couch?"
  - kimjongtrill 6y ago
    this is such a good description of the process. i laughed and it also definitely stung a little bit :) therapy is 100% worth it
    - munificent 6y ago
      > also definitely stung a little bit :) The sting is how you know it's working. :)
  - dalmo3 6y ago
    Great analogy for physical therapy too!
  - geekraver 6y ago
    Leave it to munificent to explain things clearly. Every time :-)

jeeshan 6y ago

Fully agree. There are therapists who also do coaching.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Neil44 6y ago

Likewise. Just about general life stuff. Understanding yourself better helps you out in all aspects of life.

equality_1138 6y ago

Seconded. In particular, I've come to recognize the growing confluence of woke politics and tech management as major impediment on my ability to do my job well. Reading up on career coaching and psychology has certainly helped, but can also serve to overcomplicate the situation. My therapist provides highly personal and much more practical guidance in accepting the bs.

throwawaymanbot 6y ago
Even using the term "Woke Politics" is a giveaway.. I Hope your therapist helps you.
azinman2 6y ago
How do “woke politics” prevent you from doing your job well?
- oneplane 6y ago
  Generally they undermine patterns, and without patterns in our lives, life itself becomes quite the burden. When it happens but you aren't aware of it, you start to degrade in various ways and if you pile the unknownness (what is happening? why do I feel this way? why am I not getting done what I want to get done?) on top of it, it's not a fun time. At least, that's a factor I've read about recently; plenty more factors and angles. That's not to say that changing patterns is inherently bad, but changing too much at once or a change that must be synchronous and immediate vs. gradually and asynchronous are very different processes for us humans. By the way, it might also be a misspelling (work politics vs woke politics); but coincidentally this applies there as well but to a lesser degree.
  - shredprez 6y ago
    This is a really interesting perspective I haven't run into before. It definitely captures a subtractive strain of political and social thought I find incredibly frustrating. The lefty "woke" variant is hotly criticized lately, but its libertarian and conservative siblings have had their moments in recent years. Something in it speaks to everyone. Of course, dismantling order is a poor substitute for refining order, and while the idea of starting over from scratch is seductive, I'm not convinced the "post-dismantling" environment is a good one for building better things (regardless of your definition of "better"). Unfortunately, the thirst for hard resets seems stronger now on all sides than I've ever seen before, which disappoints me to no end. Everything grows out of something else. And if you can't picture how what we have today could become what you want tomorrow without resorting to burning it down, you probably aren't ready to build something better from scratch. The least you can do is let the thing stand while we figure out how to make it work for everyone.

pc86 6y ago

OP said they have a professional development budget, so it's presumably from an employer. Cute non-answer notwithstanding, I don't think their employer is going to allocate professional development resources for therapy.

Kaze404 6y ago
What about their response makes you think it was a non answer? I specifically opened this thread to share the exact same experience, as therapy has helped my professional life much more than any book or tool I ever bought.
- pc86 6y ago
  OP is asking what they can spend this budget on. Assuming it's from an employer, therapy isn't a valid answer to the question they're asking.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    The problem is you're dismissing a valid suggestion based on an assumption you came up with yourself. I understand your point but I feel like it was misplaced here.
joncrane 6y ago
Actually, if your employer has a EAP (Employee Assistance Program), they do!
rognjen 6y ago
Exactly what I came to say. It's an entirely reasonable assumption given that the OP said that they've a _budget_.

antihero 6y ago

Absolutely, I've grown hugely as a person since starting therapy, it facilitates you cutting the shit about yourself, examining yourself and the world around you and how you it influences you and you influence it.

jimmytucson 6y ago

Ironically, the word "architecture" comes from designing and constructing buildings. Likewise, someone who frames houses can become preoccupied with beams and rafter angles while not operating a saw or driving in nails. I guess what I'm saying is, everyone - including construction workers - should take your advice.

dbancajas 6y ago

how does one find a therapist? Like what search terms and what kinds do we need advise as someone who works on the tech field.

jw1224 6y ago
Starting therapy earlier this year was possibly the best thing I’ve done for myself in years. It took about 3 months of weekly sessions to properly “notice” what a difference it was making, but now it’s blindingly obvious, and I’m so glad I did it. I found my therapist through https://www.bacp.co.uk/ https://www.bacp.co.uk/ — I’m not sure which country you’re in, but there’s bound to be similar directories out there. I set their filters to find therapists who deal with issues relevant to me, and within a practical distance. After that, I just systematically went through each of their profiles, read their bios, and narrowed it down to a shortlist of 10. I then picked two based on gut instinct. I had an introductory session with them both, and immediately “clicked” with one of them, who I’ve been seeing ever since.
- bb123 6y ago
  Is therapy the same as counselling?
  - jw1224 6y ago
    There are many different types of therapy, of which counselling is one of them. My therapist works specifically in “Person-centered therapy”: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/person-centered-therapy https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/therapy-types/person-cent...
evil-olive 6y ago
If you're in the US, Psychology Today's "Find a Therapist" tool [0] is excellent and lets you filter by a number of things including whether they accept your insurance plan, location, gender, specialty, and so on. 0: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
6y ago

zestyping 6y ago

I've spent a lot of time with therapists but they've only had the effect of being a sort of guard rail to keep me from falling too deep when I fall; it doesn't seem like they have helped me make any lasting improvements. Based on what I've heard from friends and on this thread, it sounds like it's possible to get a lot more out of talk therapy? What's your range of experiences been like with better or worse therapists, and how do you know when you should look for a better one?

rusk 6y ago
Have you tried cognitive behavioural therapy? It’s a fairly powerful set of tools that work quite well for a lot of people, though not everybody admittedly ...
deleted 6y ago
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oneplane 6y ago
Two cents: real change is not a lot of fun while it's happening, because change is hard, and makes some simple things take a lot more time and energy for a while.
- hnmullany 6y ago
  From Angels In America “Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. Harper: And then up you get. And walk around. Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending. Harper: That's how people change.”
allerhellsten 6y ago
I've seen three therapists. The first two were a complete waste of time, the third one completely changed my life for the better (incidentally, this started out as couple's therapy for my failed marriage). It's basically like in any profession: 80% are mediocre, 10% are so bad you never want to try again and the last 10% are the gold you're searching for. There's also a question of whether you go along with a certain type of person, but there's also clearly excellence at work. I knew I was onto something very early on. She went directly to work, stabbing into the wounds with massive empathy and brutal honesty. She described herself as her goal being "getting rid of me as soon as possible", which contributed to my trust in myself not just being a money cow for her. But the most starring fact was that I couldn't hide. She broke through all my layers and facades and went directly to the core issue of me not accepting myself as I am. I think these are signals to watch out for (plus: a waiting list so long you usually don't get a place with the good ones), so good luck and YMMV. In any case, it's a pain finding a good therapist, but it's still worth it. But before you get or continue a bad therapy experience, be sure to try out Leo Widrich and his blog. He's the only other therapist I didn't see who helped me grow to being a better version of myself.

schoolornot 6y ago

Disagree. I know not everyone is lucky to have close friends but as someone who has always dealt with things alone, I feel guilty and vulnerable the few times I've spoken to therapists. Even years later I regret going. I don't want someone who is impartial or non-judgmental. If I'm going to pay someone I want actionable advice from someone who has been in my shoes. Having friends who know me, who come from different backgrounds, cultures, countries does way more for me. Them saying "schoolornot, knock it off, you're acting immature" does way more for me than laying on a nobody's couch. I'm not knocking it but it's not for me.

RankingMember 6y ago
In my opinion, part of the value in a therapist is that they don't know you, so they can provide advice not clouded by a shared history or any loyalty to you.
jasonv 6y ago
Therapists don’t generally give advice. Coaches do that.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

+1 for therapy. Best $10K I ever spent. Over 18 months I ever spent.

systemvoltage 6y ago
Can you please tell us what kind of things were discusssed? Not going into your personal details, just general idea would be great. A lot of people here who haven't talked to a therapist are wondering the same in unison.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  Sure. I can't remember exactly what led me to this point, but I remember going to workout with my personal trainer & feel really angry towards her for no particular reason. I realized in that moment that I was not OK, and I booked a session with a cognitive behavioral therapist. I basically started with "I'm super angry & don't know why", and went from there.

rusk 6y ago

In a similar vein I went and did a degree in psychology at night. Nobody in work got it; HR refused me extra leave because they didn’t think it was relevant to my competencies ... but definitely the single best thing I have done for my career in terms of having one and having a great personal life too. Even today people ask me “what do you use it for?” to which I ominously reply “I’m using it right now” - gets them every time :-)

notrandom 6y ago
Do you have a bunch of textbooks that you would recommend reading? :)
- rusk 6y ago
  That's a good question - it's a while ago and the only one that really jumps out is The History of Psychology by Leahy because understanding psychology is as much about understanding how we understand the mind in the context of society, and to do that you need to know the history. Not what you were expecting ... I highly recommend reading up on Hans Selye's biological model of stress and the HPA axis. Also worth checking out Freudelberger for the seminal article on burnout and Maslach for the formal treatment. Organisational psychology is great but so contentious an area it's helpful to have a good teacher. I highly recommend looking into Biopsychology, which is essentially the interplay between our mind and body and even how our mind distributed through the body.
  - skoskie 6y ago
    Favorited ... ensuring I’ll never get back to it again.

Solvitieg 6y ago

In Canada, therapy is very expensive. About $150/h in the major cities. Meanwhile all my American friends get free therapy. Weird how that breaks the narrative about US healthcare.

SZJX 6y ago
I mean sure, all the tech elites in the US get the best medical care out there, far better than those in so-called "welfare states" such as the Scandinavian countries. However such conditions are bound to their job and thus not applicable to the general cases. Don't think this is what the "narrative about US healthcare" is about. If you work in big tech in the US you live in a paradise-like condition far removed from the masses, this is pretty much widely known isn't it.
velcrovan 6y ago
How does that work?? As an American, I must know.
issa 6y ago
I don't know who these American friends that get free therapy are, but as an American, I've never heard of that. I do know people who pay two thousand dollars a month for health insurance for their family and it INCLUDES therapy. But that seems pretty different.
weakfish 6y ago
Not sure how your friends are doing that. I had to stop therapy because I couldn't afford it.
RankingMember 6y ago
Please tell us more about these American friends. I'm an American and this "free therapy" is completely foreign to me. More and more therapists aren't in-network because dealing with insurance is a pain in the ass, so even if you've got insurance you end up paying out-of-network which might cover $50 of that $150 session.
gricardo99 6y ago
mental health is probably one of the worst aspects of a very dysfunctional US healthcare system. Somehow your friends ended up with an incredibly generous health plan (by the way, not "free", I'm guessing very expensive for their employers), but I assure you this is far from the norm.

taternuts 6y ago

I started seeing a therapist mostly about my trust issues with women, and it ended up being 90% work-related topics we discussed. Oftentimes I thought I was up against the world and I sucked, and my therapist would bring me down to earth and almost allow me to think that I'm doing a good job, and that I'm a good engineer no matter how many other, better engineers are out there.

killvung 6y ago

How did talking to therapist help dealing with mental health like that?

mabcat 6y ago

If you're in Australia, find a therapist using the thing I built: https://www.oktotalk.com.au https://www.oktotalk.com.au . If you fill out the questions, the site might be able to recommend you someone good straight off. Otherwise one of our staff will help you through the process. We try really hard to bypass that "I tried 4 therapists before I found the right one" thing, and get you in with someone right the first time. Here's the 80/20 of getting the most out of a therapist, drawn from watching thousands of people get great results over the last 5 years: * talk to several therapists on the phone for 5 or 10 minutes first. You're going to be hesitant and uncomfortable, it's their job to put you at ease, they're the professional. You'll learn a lot quickly about them, and about the mental health process. If you have an uncomfortable 5 minute chat, you're going to have an uncomfortable hour, so skip that therapist. Go with your intuition, either say "heck yes" or "no". * make a plan, work the plan. Write out your goals. The way to do this is "present situation" -> "desired situation". Everyone forgets the "desired situation" because they've got so much negative mental energy tied up in "present situation". Anyway, take your goals to your therapist. Put a circle around the one you need to address first. Insist that it gets addressed, or 6 sessions will go by and you'll realise the only change is to your wallet * ask for homework, do your homework. You're in therapy an hour a week and out of therapy 167 hours a week. Your therapist can't compete with that. What you do outside therapy matters greatly * if after 3 sessions you haven't established a good working relationship with your therapist and seen a bit of forward motion on your goals, get a new therapist. It could improve but statistically it's unlikely. This is an evidence-based cut-off. Mental health is health, stay healthy!

maybelsyrup 6y ago

Transparent plug but also sincere offer: I'm a psychotherapist. (I'm also a psychiatric researcher, which made me something of a data scientist, which is how I ended up on HN.) I work in private practice, dealing mainly with relationship and mood issues, and I've seen no small number of men and women in the kinds of fields that make up the HN readership over the course of my career - tech, STEM, etc. It'll surprise no one to hear me say that I agree with locochef about investing in oneself through therapy^, but I also want to say that one of the most fascinating and simultaneously scary aspects of my work is seeing day in, day out the degree to which human beings excel at having stress pile up while ignoring it, denying it, believing themselves to somehow deserve it, "tough it out" to nearly-lethal degrees, or being kind of unaware of it entirely. A corollary of this observation is that the people (or the couples, or the families) who decide to see a therapist "early", when the challenge / problem / dilemma isn't yet at crisis level, are often the ones who benefit most. Like someone said down thread, it's like any other part of health: it costs less to not eat those cheeseburgers now than to have the bypass surgery later. Small investments made somewhat early can forestall a lot of ugly shit down the road. Frankly, if half the shit I help people with every day was taught universally in the fifth to tenth grades, I'd be out of a job (but happily so). If anyone has general questions about therapy or related topics, I'm happy to answer if I'm able (or give you a nice "I have no idea" if I don't). Email in bio. ^ Sometimes! It's not for everyone, nor even for the same person at different times of their lives, and it can be harmful or end up being something you regret. But I agree in a general sense.

borja_froged 6y ago

I 100% Agree. Spending time for yourself and having someone to help you do that is key nowadays to avoid burnout. Thank you for sharing your story :)

ubac 6y ago

On a similar note, philosophical life coaching: https://www.pamelajhobart.com/ https://www.pamelajhobart.com/ Read her site, you'll either immediately say "that's for me" or "absolutely not," and either way you'll be right. Does both phone and email coaching ("Interlocutor as a Service"), which is strange but super interesting and (for me at least) surprisingly effective

raobit 6y ago

You really made a good point ,even i have observed how psychology really helps in looking,observing things and changes perspective about everything