Mental Health 110 - Taking care of yourself

Way back in 2013 I ran a whole series on mental health which included the tale of a guy named Richard whose depression kept him off work on two consecutive years for over 6 months.

Today I want to expand on that story with some cautionary tales within IT, including some of my own experiences, and some hopes of where we might be able to go from here - not only as an industry but also in making conferences more open, supportive places for those suffering from mental health issues.

This blog post will talk about some of my own experiences preventing burnout, and will touch upon people I've had contact with.  I've spoken to a lot of people within IT about this issue over the years.  In this post I'm going to talk a little of stories I've encountered, but aim to protect everyone's anonymity.  Any names I'm using here are not real names.



A few years ago I had a problem.  I was on a project, that was having difficulties.  In truth they needed double the number of BAs and testers to get the project 'over the line'.  We didn't get paid overtime, but we were so passionate about where we worked we were putting in the a lot of extra hours to try and keep up, and not be 'that person who says we can't do it'.

We kept forcing ourselves to work these hours because others were doing them, and we daren't be the weak link that let everything down.  Besides, this wasn't going to be forever.  So we'd sometimes leave at 11pm, or even midnight, knowing our manager had booked a 9am progress meeting with us.

I know I started to get tunnel vision, my testing became weaker.  I was lucky, I got really irritable, and both my wife and a friend at work challenged me on this, and I realised I had a problem.  Oh I didn't at first, and got really angry they were picking on me.  Which kind of helped their case - I was glad they challenged me.  These things aren't easy things to recognise or deal with.

I took it very seriously, I was feeling tired all the time, my head couldn't focus like I'd like, and being snappy didn't help.  So I went to see a counsellor, which helped (first line of mental health defence).  I'd not reached breaking point ... yet. I could ease up a bit and the sessions helped, but I couldn't go on like this forever.  But it was only for a couple of months right?

They suggested I try a monthly mental health group to 'mentally check in' and keep aware if it was becoming too much.  I wasn't really sure about the idea, but thought I'd give it a try.  I turned up quite early and from nerves very nearly bottled out.  I thought of every kind of Hollywood cliche about how this wouldn't be healthy.

But I managed to go in, and what I found was really helpful.  Very much like my experience with Violet, a group or circle are peers with various experiences just trying to support each other.  We'd go around the circle and 'mentally check in'.  We'd talk about how the last month was going, and how we felt.  We could ask questions and give support to the person speaking, and we had a facilitator to try and keep the conversation positive.

Hearing other people's stories really was enlightening, and having a monthly place to check myself was useful when the inevitable happened.  At work, we were trying to maintain ourselves just to get something over the line.  It seemed a relatively near goal, but our deadline was pushed further and further out, but the expectations on us remained.  We were now trying to maintain a sprinting pace over a marathon, and although I was better at setting limits for myself and living with the consequences if someone said I'd disappointed them and let the team down, I was seeing cracks in one of my colleagues, Samantha.  [For the record, I was still working extra hours, just not as many of them as before]

To be clear, Samantha didn't have mental health problems, but she'd a medical issue which had been an issue the year before.  Much like Richard in my previous story, there were a lot of warning signs, but she admitted in hindsight she was ignoring them, hoping to just get the project down, then she'd take care of herself.  One morning she didn't turn up to work - she'd pushed herself until her body couldn't take it any more, and she'd ended up hospitalised for three months.  People didn't commend her valiance at working herself into this state, but were more angry at her for inconveniencing the project than with me for cutting back on excessive overtime.  Although there were some lines of support for her, she was just replaced with someone else.

Back at the support group, we'd have some people come in for several months, some new people drop in.  I noticed we were getting a lot of people from IT into the group, they had different mental health problems, but a similar story to Samantha.  They'd been working in a high stress situation, in hindsight there had been warning signs, but they'd ignored them, then they'd needed to be hospitalised for a while.  A breakdown of one form or another, diagnosis too late of a problem, therapy, medication, trying to put their life together.  Occasionally you'd hear how back at their old company, they'd been replaced and left behind.



It's depressing isn't it?  In talking one-on-one at group, in my workplace and at conferences, I've heard a lot of stories of people struggling with mental health at work.  Not all stories end as dramatically as that, but it's important to remember this is a blight within our workplace.

Many places, including my current workplace, are extremely supportive of people with issues.  But really there is an expectation that if you're having issues, you need to be adult, speak up and seek appropriate help - a doctor or a counsellor is a good start.  Most employers are sympathetic, and have schemes in place to help, from counselling that can be booked without needing to tell management to phone help lines which are all confidential.

During this problem year, I honestly don't know if I had mental health issues per say, as much as I was as stressed as any human being would be.  Our whole team was becoming tetchy and starting to crack, what happened to Samantha was terrifying and sobering.  Because we all were out to impress and break new ground, we didn't say 'no' enough, and we didn't set boundaries.  And because of that we'd feel chastised when we tried to - not healthy.  But to be fair, we put ourselves under more pressure to impress than we were probably put under.

The key lesson of this post is about awareness of not just our mind but our body, and when we're having issues to seek help.  I'd really like to hear less stories like Samantha's in our industry.

During my time in the group I came across the WRAP, that I briefly talked about last time.  It stands for Wellness Recovery Action Plan.  It's a way of recording how we're doing, to look for patterns, and to see (much like with my monthly group visits) if we're getting worse.

As mentioned, I'd love to potentially cover this at workshop with someone at a conference in the future - but you can find a copy here.  You fill it out over time, it's a reminder of how you feel, of things that make you feel better, and things that make you feel vulnerable, and a reminder do more of the former, and less of the later.

You don't have to have depression or a serious physical injury to use a WRAP, you just have to be mindful.  Samantha used something similar to help her recovery after hospitalisation, as has my wife after a severe back injury.

As detailed here, it includes,

• Daily maintenance plan - reminders of what to do when you feel good.  [For me, it's remembering to get good levels of sleep, for my wife it's starting the day with stretches for her back]
• Triggers - things that can make you feel worse.  When these happen, you need to look after yourself.  [Using this with a counsellor over my post traumatic stress, I found that violent TV and cinema as a trigger, and one of the reasons I write more and watch less TV at the moment]
• Warning signs - behaviour which shows you're getting worse somehow.
• Crisis Plan - when things get really bad, what are you going to do?  [For me, it's slow down, book a counsellor appointment, and talk to my boss - I work for a company which has good support for staff]

The fundamental issue here though is that your wellness matters, and it matters NOW.  You can't keep deferring it, and even if you're an absolutely loyal company worker, the truth is you'll hurt your project more by not taking care of yourself than playing the hero.

I want you to have a positive and well 2017, and I hope I've provided you with food for thought.


Ideas for conferences

I promised my friend Gitte that I'd write this blog post for suggestions on how people with different degrees of mental health can be supported at conferences.

Generally at every conference I've been at there are enough conscientious people to support those having issues, particularly anxiety seems to be the big one.  But it would be great if people felt more supported to sign up to conferences.

Some very elementary suggestions we had brainstorming the idea were,

• Conference usually have lean coffee in a morning.  We could have a form of support circle for those needing them.
• Badge emoticons.  Some people with anxiety especially find conference overwhelming, most conferences have quiet spaces which is great.  But having a kind of sticky emoticon that people could wear saying "I'm overwhelmed, don't take it personally", just so people can still attend, have their own space, but not feel they're offending anyone because they don't want to join in a conversation.
• What seems like an age ago, I used to be a youth counsellor at Christian event Spring Harvest.  Likewise it'd be good to have people with a badge that just says "I'm approachable if you need to talk to me".  A lot of this happens informally anyway, but it's a little more ad hoc.  I tweeted at Let's Test Oz about having an awful nights sleep, and someone talked to me about why.

Have any other ideas, or your own story to tell?  Please feel free to contribute via the comments, and don't be afraid to do so as Anon if you need!

Now Playing - "Rock'n'Roll Suicide", David Bowie
Might sound inappropriate, but I love the line, 'give me your hand, cos you're wonderful'.

Mental Health 109 - The long grief. Five years on ...

Today was an emotional day.  It's Violet's 40th birthday - but those who've read for a while will know my good friend Violet died 5 years ago.  I've written a lot about my early grief when she died, but with a lot of people around me going through their own journey, I want to move the story forward into the present day a little.

Violet's death at 35 is probably the hardest bombshell I've ever had to deal with.  It was death of someone I loved so very much at an age which to be honest was unfair.

That first week, it was like there was this extreme emotion trapped within me - it felt too big to be kept inside, and like I'd burst at the seems from it.  And yet I remember being so much more angry than sad.  So very angry.

Although no-one was to blame, it just felt she died too soon, and it wasn't fair or right or just.

Not being able to attend the funeral made things that much harder.  I held a brief ceremony myself, but it was difficult.  I didn't have many mutual friends, but I was really lucky to have a lady named Jenny Day who I could talk about her so much with.  And I did talk a lot.  But in a lot of ways I felt like I was going through this myself.

But most of all the grief lingered.  Every night, just going to sleep was a struggle, because your mind always drifted to her.  It felt like all the joy had been sucked out from life.

It was the common bonds of our friendship which were harder to go on alone.  I deleted all my Regina Spektor from my MP3 players, and I stopped watching Doctor Who.  Because these were things I'd shared with her, and now they just brought me such inconsolable pain.

Over Christmas, my son and I listened to the autobiography of Donald Malarkey, one of the famous Easy Company Parachutists.  The thing I most identified with was his tale of grief over losing his best friend, Skip Monk, and how that grief followed him around, never really leaving.

Looking back 5 years on, I'm often surprised how the grief is still there.  It's still very powerful and emotional, and yet it's a gentler grief.  Like feelings of melancholy over anguish.  I'm not a great believer in the afterlife or ghosts, but often it feels like she's just next to me, only slightly out of sight and out of reach.

They say "as long as you remember them, they're not really dead" - but I hate that cliche, although at the same time seeing some truth in it.  If you live your life like Violet lived, you are someone who is nurturing of others, someone who is passionate and makes a difference.  Though Violet has been long gone now, those changes in me that her love and her friendship brought about remain.  That's probably why she always feels so very close, especially when I'm most alone, because I do carry the best bit of her within my heart.

In on odd way, the hardest part of dealing with it is moving on.  You love your departed friend, but you don't want to turn your life into a devotion to her memory that you forget that you're still alive.  When you've lost such a close friend, you're afraid of making new friends, in part because you're worried you're just looking to replace them.  But also, because having lost one friend, you sometimes want to just withdraw into isolation so you never feel that pain again.

Life has been good though, and in my own way I've managed to move on - somehow I've picked up new friends, including best friends which fill some of the hole she left behind.  I still have grief - maybe I'll always have it, but somehow it's a less scary grief - one which seems to be capable of having great beauty concurrently with a gentle sadness.  And I think there will always be a place in my heart for the girl who will always be 35, and where she left her mark ...

She loved the watercolours of John William Waterhouse, and somehow in the haunting story of The Lady Of Shallot, there is something which powerfully resonates with the tale of my Violet.

Mental Health 108 - Mentally checking in

It was a week ago now.  My uncle Charlie had died a few days before - it was sad, he'd had a brain tumour which had seemed treatable, but had been too aggressive.  The news was upsetting, but I phoned home and made sure my dad was doing okay with the news, as they were very close.

I thought I was okay.  Because I understand a measure of "human factors", I took a day of leave to be a little reflective, making sure I made buying a condolences card for his family.  I hate buying those cards.  Okay, no-one likes to buy them I know.  But the thing that upsets me the most is you always find them to the right of the "get well soon" cards.  I have before now purchased a condolences card knowing full well we had a "get well soon" card in the post to the family, and feeling dreadful about it.

Me and my wife went to a cafe just over the road from the Post Shop, and the logical part of Mike's mind went "well if you write the card now, you can get it in the post now".  I clicked a pen, opened the card, and everything went white ... I'd been thinking all week about what to write, but now, I actually realised what I was about to write.  And the enormity of it just hit like a brick, and I started to cry in a crowded cafe.  Crying for men is a tough enough subject, but in public!

In truth, it wasn't just Charlie.  The news was sad, he was only in his early 60s.  He was a great character through my childhood who I'd just seen less of in the last decade.  Much like his dad, my uncle Norman, he was a great teller of stories - the best being about how his kids had conned him into getting a dog using the name of his favourite actor, Charlton Heston.  With a name like that, you'd expect a majestic German Shepherd, but what he got was a pocket sized mongrel.  My dad was an only child, so Charlie and his brothers were like siblings to him (although by all accounts my dad was a bit of a terror).

The problem was it's been a tough year in our house - in all there was been five deaths of people quite close to me; two close friends, my mother-in-law, my grandmother and now Charlie.  On top of this, my wife has been diagnosed with acute anxiety which although was a slight relief (originally we thought she was having a heart attack), has been difficult to deal with.

I know I tend to put people first in such circumstances, I know it's a very "man" thing to do (although I don't think it's just men who are like that).  You know someone else will be more affected, and you want to be supportive to them, so you tend to put off your own grief.

And here's the crazy thing - I know about grief.  As a teacher in post-Hillborough Sheffield we had to be aware of grief, and post-traumatic stress - we had special workshops.  I know how we grieve, I know why we grieve.  And when I opened up that card, it was a trigger for everything I was holding back - and despite all my knowledge and logic, it still felt like a ton of bricks had fallen on me.

Knowing doesn't seem to soften the blow one jot.  But here's what it does lend you.  You know it's normal, and even when it happens in public, it's nothing to really be ashamed of.

Even so - it's been a weird week.  I know I've not quite been myself at all - things have happened this week that would normally cause me to roll my eyes and just get on with it.  But instead these events have made me either incredibly angry or really weepy.  Thankfully my wife having gone through her anxiety "gets this" and has shown huge support.

All the same - I know I'm not quite myself, and it's been going on for several days.  Although I'm not feeling depressed and certainly not contemplating suicide, I decided it was still worth going into the doctors today to talk about what was going on.  Never under estimate the power of just going to the doctor to just mentally check in with a professional.  Indeed it was he who diagnosed me with a case of mild anxiety because I've delayed my own grief over other people who were closer than Charlie, but it's Charlies death which has triggered what I'd just been keeping in, and hoping to avoid.

There is some medication if I feel it's very bad (which to be honest, I'm a bit scared of becoming addicted to), and counselling to deal with the grief (which I usually find useful and my preference).  But a lot of it is just understanding it's going to take time - I've been here before with Violet I know, trying to grieve to a timetable.  And yet not knowing how long you're going to feel like this is really scary.

I've decided to blog about this - I'm always terrified people will think less of me for this.  But I think it's also important to try and be open about it.  I'm really lucky to have people like Whirlwind to listen or my friend Lotz who is very open about his experiences with grief.

I talked in my mental health series about Richard's tale and how he knew something was up with him, but only went to the doctor when the depression had taken root.  I've found for myself, a key to keeping good mental health is about mindfulness of ourselves to know that something is wrong, and have the courage and relationship with our doctor that we can go in and say "this may seem silly but ...".  Very rarely is it silly.  If something it bothering you, then it is neither silly or trivial.

Don't be afraid to talk to someone.

Mental Health 107 - Finding support ...

Whether you suffer from depression, anxiety, bipolar, stress, or any of the many other conditions that impinge mental happiness, it’s not the end.  I can assure you, there will be good times again.

As I've said, an important trait to getting through is knowing when you've been through a similar phase, and that you can “get through it again”.  It’s a maturity which comes with experience and perspective of your condition.  I myself have always found A Beautiful Mind inspirational for the part where Russell Crow as John Nash notices something about his mental condition (his hallucinations don't age), and uses it to realise and battle his difficulties.

This week I was at a Whirlwind Men event and talking to other members of our Kapiti group who are at different stages on their road to mental wellness.  For myself, like John Nash I’d learned over the years to apply a scientific method to my mental state – trying to log down moods and feelings, and question why I felt them, cross checking it with what I'd done that day.

“Mentally checking in” or discussing how you feel about your current state of mind – is where events like Whirlwind Men can be useful, and I've used the Wellington Balance Group for people with bipolar, depression or anxiety to do much the same when I've felt myself under stress.

A system recommended by a lot of people at the groups I've been a part of is the WRAP Wellness Recovery Action Plan.  This is similar to the approach I take – recording how you feel, and also saying “on days when I feel down, I need to make sure I'm getting out and exercising and eating healthily, not junk comfort food” or “on weeks when I feel stressed, I need to be able to clear at least one whole day just for myself, with no to-do lists”.

In the end, a lot of coping comes down to marshalling your resources,

Close Support

Close support from friends and family is just such an incredibly important lifeline, I can’t understate it.  You don’t have to have the support from your entire family – some people who “get it” better than others, and can be mature about it.  But having just one person you can talk to and say “I’m just feeling a bit down today because of …” helps.  And it’s okay to say you’re down – it doesn't mean you need meds or to be carted to a care institute for feeling down, only if the frequency and intensity are too severe.

And let’s be frank – people can be upset or sad without having mental issues.  If you miss out on a promotion, your car has been vandalised, or you’re going through a break up – you’re going to “feel down”.  To an extent that’s natural.  But for some people, this can be triggers to much bigger issues, and they don’t bounce back from them.  Richard who ended up off for 3 months after attending a funeral is an example of this.

One thing I would suggest though is that if you do open to friends and family about your feelings when you’re depressed, it’s important that you also show them the “other side of the coin”.  Like the news we can overtalk about the “bad stuff” in our life, and forget to say when we've come out of the woods a bit.

It’s also so essential to keep the relationship intact.  I've a friend in Wellington who has been going through an intense and emotional breakup, and we've been talking and meeting up a lot.  But then about 3 weeks ago, they seemed to “vanish”, not appearing at events and not answering texts.  I was concerned they were in the pits of depression, and wondering to just turn up uninvited – then found out that simply they’d met another person, starting dating and “life was good again”.  But didn't think to mention.

Although usually a patient person, I was somewhat annoyed at this - this individual is very good at telling me when something goes wrong, but less so about the good stuff.  But the lesson is key, if you are “sharing the rough” of your life with someone, make sure you’re also “sharing the smooth”.

Professional Help

Close support is wonderful for getting through the day-to-day, but my friend Ryan Edwards reminded me this week that every so often it “always helps to keep yourself on track by making visits to trusted experts” such as the doctor.  They can talk to you about what might be up with you – for myself I found getting a diagnosis such as “post-traumatic stress” helped me because it allowed me to investigate about the condition, read up, understand it, find out ways other people used to limit it and cope.

However many people worry about being treated as labels, where in truth each mental health sufferer although having some common traits will have some areas which are unique to them.  For example, I might have had post-traumatic stress, but the events that caused it were very unique to me.

It’s really important you build a relationship with your doctor, you need to trust them.  Try and find one you like, and then always use them – don’t talk about these kind of things which “whatever doctor’s available”.

I know many people who feel dread going to the doctors, that they’re just going to be lectured to.  Most doctors aren't like that.  If you do find your doctor feels like that, it’s worth trying another, or even saying “I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about my mental health, is there someone else I can talk to?”.  You are often well within your rights to.

Your doctor might suggest things like medication or counselling.  My advice would be to neither say “yes” or “no” right away, but to discuss it, what they would mean, how would it help.  A good doctor is making a suggestion, putting an option on the table, and you really need to explore it together.  Many people call this a “partnership” between yourself and your doctor to review and try out options to help you.

Peer Groups

This is where I believe a “diagnosis” or “label” can help.  Because you can seek out like-minded support groups.

I'm a part of Whirlwind, which has regular meetings (about 4 a year) of men who are going through various challenges.  It’s a forum for men to just be open about their feelings, to share stories, experience, pains.  It’s a great support group, and I have to drive over an hour to attend from where I live, but it’s always worth it.

Likewise I've used the Wellington Balance group which is a monthly circle where you can “check in” with a group of peers about how your month has gone, the challenges you've had, and how it’s left you feeling.  It’s a powerful thing to be able to be open with people who “just get it” because they’re in a similar boat to you, and to know you’re not alone.

Here is another example where Google can be your friend, there might be a group in your area, just try “depression support group”, and see where it takes you.  By the way, I should point out it's quite normal to feel very nervous going to any one of these events - I was close to bottling out of my first Whirlwind day, and often people on their first visit tell a similar story, but also of how glad they are that they didn't give in to the nerves.

Online Support

There is a lot of online support out there for people with depression or anxiety – often explaining about the condition that affects you, and suggesting thing you can do to help yourself.

• The NZ Depression Helpline is particularly good (and yes, you can access this outside of New Zealand).
• More youth orientated is the Lowdown, which I've explored and also found a really good resource I refer people to.
• I obviously cannot recommend the Whirlwind site or Martin Sloman enough.

These are just a few sites I recommend, but once again here, Google is your friend.

Mental Health 106 - How do you talk to a friend who has depression?

How do you deal with a friend who has depression?  There are no easy answers, and it can feel like a minefield with no "safe" path at times.  I've known a few people who've had depression – and I'm lying if I say I always deal well with them.  Sometimes you click with someone who has depression, and sometimes it’s just impossible.  The later has happened to me a couple of times, and feels like I've failed that individual, but still ...

When I talked about Pip and her revelation about not only her dad’s terminal illness, but the unpleasant nature of her relationship with him, I talked about feeling over my head.  But the important thing to do is to really not bale out and abandon your friend, but do the best you can.  Your friend needs someone who is patient and understanding.  Even if they’re going to a counsellor, they need support outside of that.

A friend of mine from school lost her baby in the final phases of pregnancy in the last year, and that was dreadful.  But she told me what made a bad situation unbearable was that everyone didn't know what to say to her anymore, so people started avoiding her.  She felt a social leper at what was already the lowest time of her life.

For myself when dealing with someone like that, I tend to try and say something – and learned if you are going to give in to paralysis because you can’t find the “right words”, you’re going to be silent an awful amount of the time.  The important thing is you make an effort and try and say something, but most of all you listen.

As I've said, I've had depression – and people tried to be kind and nice and friendly to me.  But to be honest I was in such a bad place the time, I was just hurtful back to them.  And I feel mean about that now, but also understand it was out of my control a little at the time.  To be honest, sometimes when you’re depressed, as dumb as it sounds, you just want to push everyone away.  Even the people who want to help.

For myself depression was the reason I behaved that way, but it’s not an excuse or get out of jail card.  When I dealt with it, I did my best to rebuild those relationships that had been damaged.  But I was so thankful for those people in my life that I couldn't keep away.  And yes - I did apologise for my behaviour.

When you try to deal with someone with depression – you have to have patience.  You have to understand to an extent that some of what comes out of their mouth is their depression talking, not the person you know to be your friend.  And that’s hard.

Sometimes they’ll snap at you, and you need to back off a bit.  Sometimes they’ll ask you to just leave them alone, and sometimes you have to.  Give them time, give them space, but don’t be too proud to come back, because they’re hurting, and despite what they might say, they need you.

Being friends with someone who has depression is hard – I think to get through it you need to be really good friends.  Because the depression will test it to it’s limits believe me.  I think I'm learning I can’t just “be there” for a comrade who is a fellow sufferer who I only vaguely know in passing – there has to be the cement of genuine friendship prior to depression hitting, because it just won’t last otherwise.

The New Zealand depression website has some great advice for do’s and don’t for supporting a friend with depression, and I'm going to repeat them here,

do

• Spend time with them
• Listen rather than talk – let them tell you how it is for them
• Learn about depression - how it is treated and what you can do to help recovery
• See yourself as part of their support team
• Understand how depression is affecting their daily life
• Help the person to recognise and find ways of dealing with things that are worrying them
• Help and encourage them to lead a healthy life, to exercise and to do things they enjoy
• Support and encourage them to keep getting whatever support or treatment is offered
• Take any thoughts of suicide seriously – it’s okay to talk about it. Don’t leave someone alone if they feel unsafe. Contact a health care provider or a crisis phone line.

don't

• Tell them to 'snap out of it' or 'harden up'. People cannot 'will' themselves better from moderate or severe depression
• Encourage excess alcohol and drug use as a coping strategy - it can make things worse
• Avoid them – they already feel isolated and this can make their depression worse
• Assume the problem will just go away
• Judge or criticise them for what they’re going through
• Lose hope - they need you to believe they will get through this
• Give unhelpful advice – for example, 'just think of people who are worse off’.

And of course, support doesn't just end when they seem to be back to normality.  With Richard, who worked for me, I would do regular catch ups with him to find out how things were going with him.  The idea was to check in on his mental health so I could ask him “do you think you need to go the doctor again?” if he was having problems.

He did indeed have a couple of wobbles as you’d expect – but he told me he found it useful to have someone within work to “talk about this stuff” to, and to sound out his emotional state.

Mental Health 105 - "I regret to inform you". The suicide bombshell.

It’s the worst email you can get in the morning, “I regret to inform you that our colleague and friend Nicholas passed away in the night”.

I've received this kind of email twice, and at the time you have no idea what has happened.  But sadly a few months later the rumours go around that Nicholas did no “pass away” peacefully.  I myself was temping in IT support at the time of one of those emails, and had to reclaim the machine of the deceased, going through files in his account and hard disk, deciding any work related ones.  Unfortunately for a number of files that meant opening, quickly visually scanning the contents, and moving anything that could be important to a shared drive.

I found it unnerving to go through his things, and really didn't want to delve into his private life.  But all the same, it became apparent even from my quick visual scanning of documents that he'd written a lot of letters to lawyers, going through divorce and custody hell.  Nicholas (not his real name) had been going through a difficult time, and few of us at work would have guessed.

Even now, it feels unfair, even under the shield anonymity to reveal this about him.  However these details did eventually come out during the inquest into his death many months later.

This isn't my only brush with suicide.  I've written previously about my friend Violet, and the effect her life and her death had on me.  There I wanted to celebrate her life, and to talk about how I dealt with mourning her loss.

There were some details I omitted though – I’d mentioned that Violet had issues with mental health which had seen her committed for a period of time, as well as a previous failed suicide attempts.  Ironically she was the first peer mental health sufferer who I formed an open friendship with, and she was severely influential in my life.  I learned that fellow sufferers can get a great deal of support by sharing their troubles with someone else who “gets it”.  This picture, like no other reflect my friendship with her,

Those conversations over the years of our friendship really turned my life around – because I could talk through things with her that it was difficult to talk to anyone else about, without judgement.

Sadly though in 2010 her life started to spiral – she was on a new medication system which she was finding difficult to find balance on.  Unfortunately people have to occasionally change their meds, and as Violet was on a combination of pills for various difficulties she had, there could be complex side effects that could cause whole weeks wiped out in a “zombie” state as she adjusted.  She’d also spent years waiting for a free slot with a specialist therapist to try and deal with some of the issues and reduce her medication dependence.

In hindsight we’d talked about her stints in mental institutions, and she’d ominously said that she’d never go back there.  Her landlord started motions to (illegally) evict her, something which is a difficult trial for someone with her level of anxiety, for which your flat is your only “safe” area.

One day she went quiet.  People phoned, but there was no reply.  The next day, the Police battered down the door, and found her dead on her bed surrounded by empty packets of medication.  It took months to get information – I was told her blood toxicology results were inconclusive.  She had alcohol and elevated levels of medication.  Coroner eventually erred on the side of accidental over deliberate overdose, but given the circumstances, I've always been in doubt.

Whether Violet was or wasn't a statistic, suicide is unfortunately something that does go on.  In New Zealand, suicide kills more people than road traffic accidents (almost twice the number) – and almost 75% of those who die are male.  That is an alarming number – it’s the single preventable cause of death in men 16-40.  It’s a chilling statistic.

Last year I was lucky enough to attend the Whirlwind Workshop on men’s mental health on Kapiti.  Whirlwind is an initiative to promote men’s mental health, and provide a network to both support and discuss issues frankly.  I'm pleased to say that Qual IT, one of New Zealand's premier IT test consultancies are amongst their sponsors – it’s nice to see an IT company involved in this, as going around the support groups in Wellington, I've seen an alarming number of our industry as end users of these kinds of services, and their tale is often all too the same.  Project managers and programmers who pushed themselves, until something broke, with the some finally seeing a doctor for help, or eventually ending up in care for a limited time.

Yet they are still the lucky ones – for some, their problems, and the dark places they inhabit just feel too overwhelming.  Martin Sloman of Whirlwind sums it up when he says it’s a difficult thing for many men to admit they need help, “men are very bad at coming forward and embracing this kind of challenge … it’s unblokey”, and yet this attitude of shame is leading people to feel it’s easier to end their life than to live with the shame of a badge like “depression”.

Problems in life can feel daunting – but in life as in IT, we know that breaking complexity down, you can work on it a piece at a time.  Problems can be dealt with, support can be got, but death is so huge and permanent and "unfixable".

Nicholas’s suicide ended the custody battle with his wife – but it left a gaping hole in the life of his children.  Something could have been settled and negotiated.  But instead his children are left trying to understand why he did this, and why they’ll never see their father again.

As I said about Violet, before the inquest  I would spend alternate days so upset she was dead, or feeling so incredibly peeved she did this.

If you are feeling depressed or suicidal, I really encourage you to talk to someone – pick up the phone.  A good place to start is the Samaritans – most countries have a branch somewhere.  If that doesn’t help, just type the words “suicide hotline” into Google, and see what your local options are.

Don’t think you’re too weak, and don’t think it’s just you!

A powerful video - and worth watching ...

Mental Health 104 - Depression, the powerful dog who sneaks up on us ...

About 10 years ago, I worked with a bright young man we’ll call Richard, who was reported to me.  One day, he didn't show for work, and we were told he was unwell.

It was 3 months before he appeared in work again, and we were all a bit concerned for him.  But Richard asked that we didn't enquire about what happened.  So we left it at that.

But then, 9 months later, he fell unwell again, and vanished again for a similar amount of time.  I just happened to be in the lift with a cleaner who was good friends with both myself and Richard, when she said to me “it’s a shame about Richard depression isn't it?”.

She looked shocked when I mentioned that Richard hadn't told me, but I mentioned how glad I was she’d told me.  I tried to be very gentle about it with Richard, but stumbled into a conversation on mental health, and talked a little about my own experiences.  It’s so important with people fighting this battle you don’t try and give glib solutions, but show real empathy.

Bit by bit over weeks of chatting I got some of the picture – it’s a story I've heard now from too many others.  The first year it’d happened it came out of the blue.  But the second time, there had been signs.  It’d started when he was at his aunt’s funeral and realised how she was one of the last of her generation.  It wasn't a crushing feeling, but he felt really down about it.

He thought he was being silly and would be okay, but those dark thoughts just grew and grew.  He didn't want to go the doctors because he thought it’d pass.  But then one day he realised he just couldn't get out of bed it was just impossible.

That might be difficult for anyone who has never felt that depressed to get, but this is a video which explains a lot about how people with depression can feel,

Looking at my own experiences, and talking openly with peers about them, I've come to a realisation of sorts.  As we get older we learn the rhythm of lows.  It’s a mixed blessing – but talk to someone who has suffered from any mental illness for some time, and they will tell you that the raft they cling to during the lows is that they've got through this before, and so they know deep down they can get through it again.

They also get better at noticing the early signs, and seeking help at that point.  This is important - notice early, take action before your depression has become unmanageable and large, and you're a good way to keeping yourself mentally healthy.

Mental Health 103 - Counselling and roads to wellness

I cannot begin this piece without first thanking many people who have sent emails, Tweets and left comments of support for my previous piece.  It reaffirmed my belief that "this is something worth talking about", and I was moved how my tale had touched so many people in different ways.  For myself sharing it was an important water-shed, an affirmation that "these things happened to me - but I refuse to let them to continue to have power over me".

Oh, there's still a footprint remaining - but time and treatment have helped to reduce them.  For myself and many others, the road to wellness in this area was counselling, which is sometimes called therapy.  A lot of people have opinions about counselling – ironically, when challenged most people turn out never to have been in a session.  There is a lot of misinformation out there, not helped by clichés we've all see in films, TV and the media.

The phrase that I hear the most is “I'm not going to have someone sit there whilst I tell them all about my life, just so they can judge me”.  As someone who not only been through counselling myself, but has friends who have also used the service, I would like to talk you through my experiences.

Let’s start with what it isn't …

• Counsellors don’t sit there and judge you
• Counsellors don’t treat you like a child and tell you how to live your life
• Counsellors don’t go home and laugh about what you've told them with their friends
• Going to counselling is not a sign of weakness
• Going to counselling isn't even necessarily a sign you have a mental illness

Let’s try and clear some of that out of the way now – the media stereotype we're used to is one of some awful wet-behind-the-ears hippy who just tell us repeatedly “so how did that make you feel?”.  I have never met a counsellor like that.

Counselling is about exploring an aspect of your life that is uncomfortable and causes you distress.  Let's be blunt about this, to get benefit from the session, you need to feel you should be there because there is something in your life that's such a pain point that you want to address it.  The counsellor doesn't know anything about you but what you tell them – so in truth, you are firmly in the driving seat.

Most counsellors work by essentially guiding your through processes as you explore past events, your thought processes, how it affected you afterwards, and yes indeed – how it made you feel.

For myself – I can quite simply and clinically recite to others the bare bones versions of those events “I was sexually abused”, “I saw someone killed”, “we tried for a second child, but it didn't work out”.  But the fact is, it’s the whole “how did these things make me feel” that’s the clincher.  For each of those topics it’s complex and labyrinthine, and I got so used to avoiding thinking about them, I honestly never explored how they did make me feel.  Regarding the sexual abuse for instance we explored in counselling how it affected going through puberty and adolescence, my sexual discovery, my confidence, and my feeling in situations where I felt similarly dis-empowered.

An important part of the counselling relationship is it’s confidentiality.  Counselling is a professional career which takes it’s obligation to your welfare seriously.  In fact in my opinion, counselling cannot work unless you have a level of trust with the person you’re going to spend this time with.

There are limits though to even this confidentiality though that it's important to understand – counsellors will remind you at the start of your session that they are obliged to break this confidentiality only if they feel you are likely to harm yourself or others.  But even this makes some obvious sense, this is about your wellbeing after all.

For myself and the areas which have caused stress in my life, they are not subjects it’s easy to talk with others about.  Certainly not people I have a relationship with.  They are about discussing a certain level of insecurity and are certainly “heavy” subjects, which need to be dealt with sensitively, and perhaps not casually.

I have to be blunt – when I was at University in Liverpool, a friend in my drama group wanted to meet me early at a pub one night, before the rest of our group.  She then dropped a bombshell that her father had just been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour with months to live.  But she didn't know if she felt comfortable about that, or indeed even wanted to see him.  You see, he’d abused her for years, and she was terrified he was just manipulating her again like he’d done before.  I have to admit, I just felt completely out of my depth in this conversation.  Being the best friend I could do, literally all I could do was “try my best”.  But this wasn't an easy conversation at all, and it really worried me if I had given the best advice, or listened enough.  At the same time I admit I did really feel honoured that Pip felt comfortable enough to talk with me about this.  I just really didn't want to let her down.

This is why I think it’s a bit bullshit when people say “you don’t need counsellors, you just need friends who’ll listen”.  Counsellors are used to listening to such stories, and dealing with such conflicts on a daily basis – of course they’re going to be not only more comfortable, but be able to produce a better outcome for the person in need.

Typically a round of “primary care counselling” which deals/tackles a single aspect of life takes about 4-6 sessions.  I had to use counselling for typically 6 sessions for each of those life issues I've discussed.

As mentioned, trust in your counsellor is key.  I typically use my first session with a new counsellor to explain who I am, and a high level overview of what my problem is.  I use this session to really probe the counsellors behaviour.  At the end of it, I either say “see you next week”, or “I'm sorry, I'm really not feeling comfortable with you – is there any other counsellor I can use?”.  Twice before I've had really nice counsellors, but I've just not felt I could be open and truthful with them, and it that case, it’s better for both of you if you say so upfront.  Counselling will only work if you feel safe enough to be open.

Why not keep taking the pills?

A lot of people fear medication – there is sadly no “cure pill” out there, but medications of different types can really dull some of the effects of depression, moods swings or anxiety which can help people to function relatively normally.

For some people, the drugs work marvels, and they can stay on them the rest of their lives and live a full life.  For myself after our attempt of a second child and how moody the steroids treatment had made me, the medication allowed me to get my brain back on an even keel until I was ready to do without them again.  The counselling then helped me to just deal with all the frustrated emotions, and to not only come to terms with it, but remember I already had a child and rediscover my joy in life (that might sound dumb – but in all the frustration for a second child I swear we sometimes forgot).

But for many people like myself, some counselling can help to explore the emotional issues and really reduce their power, with a view to allowing us to cope without them.

I will leave the final words with a friend of mine, Martin Sloman who works as a counsellor in Kapiti Coast.  I asked him about his thoughts about when people talk about counsellors “sitting there in judgement of people”,

“Firstly all good Counsellors never judge. Secondly a good counsellor has empathy, usually at least in part because of their own awareness of life's difficulties. I see counselling more like personal development. You don't go to school or college because you are thick. You hope to come out better equipped to deal with your future.”

If you want to explore more about counselling, I really recommend having a look the the FAQs of both Martin's website, and that of the Massey University counselling service, which I think really help to answer some fundamental fears around counselling.

As mentioned in a previous posting, most companies do provide access to a counselling service, and in the UK, you can usually get a session for primary care counselling, although there can be a bit of a wait.

Mental Health 102 - My experiences

There have been for me, three real difficult and traumatic events I've had to deal with that have caused periods of depression in what (for the first two) I'm told was post-traumatic stress.

Childhood Abuse …

As a pre-adolescent 10 year old, I was subject to a series of events, which I found incredibly distressing.  At the time, I couldn't come forward and talk about them, because I was so ashamed of what had been done to me, and felt guilty by association.  Later off I thought of them as possibly a form of ritual humiliation to “put me into my place” and I was just being an overly sensitive cry baby.

But I never really “got over it”.  I hated what had happened to me, how powerless and frightened I felt, even when I was no longer that dis-empowered 10 year old boy, I still felt like that inside.  I felt silly, but at 30 I ended up getting worse and worse flashbacks to event, that I ended up going to see a counsellor about it.  That’s where they gave it a name – “sexual abuse” – something I was uncomfortable with.  Something that I felt until then couldn't describe what happened to me, because things like that only happened to women.

I like many were touched by Justine’s account of a recent event of sexual abuse that had happened to her at a technical conference.  I felt such a strong flood of empathy there, and respect for the courage she took just in voicing what had happened.  I’d spent 20 years finding the courage to talk about what had happened, and even here, I can’t bring myself to discuss it in detail.  This of course is unusual for me, but indicates just how completely out of my comfort zone I am discussing it.

Many people say “she should have done X or Y”, but I got it.  The whole paralysis that happened to me, the fear of people knowing what they did to you, the shame associated with it because you feel you've let it happen to you – a shame which of course is totally unfair and unfounded.  And yet as unfair as it is you feel it.  You don’t need other people telling you “oh why didn't you handle it differently”, because in my case I’d spend 20 years asking myself just that.

What happened to me almost feels out of the pages of the Abu Ghraib prison.  Only I was a junior Scout, and it was inflicted by older Scouts, and perpetrated by Girl Guides for added humiliation.  It was done to bully me and keep me in line, with the follow up threat of what would happened if I told anyone.

I still feel physically sick when I see Girl Guides/Scouts.  A man my age with a phobia about Girl Guides should be hilarious shouldn't it?

To be honest, being able to see some humour I'm told (through therapy) is an important factor in my mental health.  My sense of humour, although off the scale weird (and gets me into trouble), is part of how I cope with a lot of things.  Humour allows us to escape and laugh at times when really all we want to do is wail.  To be frank - the sexual abuse isn't comic though, but the phobia it’s set up, I can see the funny side to that.

The problem with sexual abuse is it’s a crime unlike any other.  When I had my car stolen in 2010, within hours everyone knew about it.  It took me 20 years to talk about this – and then only in private.  It’s a crime where the victim feels tarnished and responsible – and a lot of therapy around it goes to the heart of that.  And it doesn't just happen to women – as this very powerful piece showed me …

Witnessing someone getting killed

This was probably a much harder event for me to deal with – which ironically meant I got help that much quicker.  Although again, not soon enough.

This is the problem with many traumatic events – they smoulder away in your mind and cause long term harm to us emotionally.

The day after I finished exams for my first degree, I travelled over to my brothers to (so the plan went) have a massive bro’s weekend of drink and dumb stuff.  He met me at the train station, and in the evening, walked back to his place.

As we went by a pub there was a large fight going on.  A gang had punched a man to the floor.  We were stunned, and too far away to do anything but witness.  On orders from one of the gang, someone in a car revved the engine, driving the car over the prone man, snapping his head back in one of those horrific moments that plays in your mind repeatedly for the rest of your mind.

It felt for a moment that everything went silent – then all hell broke loose.  People were yelling, screaming, crying.  We just ran – we felt terrified, vulnerable, confused – and we just wanted to run to somewhere that felt safe.

I just remember trying to put the kettle on when we got in, but couldn't because I was shaking so much.  We tried to tell one of my brothers flat mates what had happened.  But though the guy was really very calm and sensitive, we just started to cry.  It was so senseless.

In the end – we just found ourselves calling up our parents because we just didn't know what to do.  They were 40 miles away, but came to fetch us.  We were just a gibbering mess.  We were no use to the Police – we’d only seen a fraction of what was going on, we could describe the victim but no-one else.

For myself it was a difficult thing to “get over”.  For years I wondered if I could have stopped it.  I hated the feeling of being complicit by just being a spectator.  I hated that my instinct was to run.  I hated that I just cried and cried.

It took me years, and indeed counselling to accept those things.  I had frequent flashbacks, which actually got stronger as the years got on.  Initially I wanted to just move away from cities and those kinds of problems.  Ironically I looked to moving to Germany to just get away, and that would lead me to meet Beate Zschaepe, who is currently undergoing trial for her involvement in a string of racially motivated murders.  The fact that I was so scarred by seeing someone killed, but later was attracted to someone who was involved in murder, is almost a trauma point in itself

In a really tragic footnote whilst writing this article, I heard that Ian Fisher, my brother's flatmate who had been such an eye of calm on that terrible night, had been killed in a suicide bombing this month whilst he served in the British Army in Afghanistan.

Trying for a baby

My wife and I have a son – he was a happy accident.  One day, we were carried away, and forgot our birth control.  It was no big issue though – we both wanted children, the timing wasn't superb, but we were happy to go with it.

Two years later we decided to put away the birth control again, because we were ready to have another child.  After all, if we’d conceived from forgetting contraception just once, how hard was it going to be?

A year later - twelve months of failure - we were wondering what was going wrong.  Every month was the same cycle of trying, hoping, and then disappointment.  Friends kept telling us to just keep trying and something would happen.

In the end we went to the doctor about it, and both had to be referred to specialists with long waiting lists.  This meant scans for my wife, and me making emergency dashes of sperm samples to far off pathology labs (between set hours they were open for business, as the samples died off quickly outside of the body).

It turned out of be a little bit of both of us.  I was suffering from immobile sperm, and my wife from irregular ovulation.  She was put on fertility drugs to increase the number of eggs she’d ovulate each month, and I was put on a strong course of steroids which I was told would reduce my immune system, as my antibodies were attacking my own sperm, killing them.

The steroids did do their magic making my sperm function much better from pathology tests.  But there were side effects – the drugs (and possibly situation, it’s impossible to tell one from another) made me incredibly irritable and emotional, as well as causing large weight gain.  It was equally emotional in its own way for my wife.  Then add to this that the act of intercourse went from being one of emotional engagement between us, to one of obligation.  Yes, trying for a baby was killing our sex life.

After just under a year, we had to come off our drugs regimes.  It had been soul destroying.  The only option open from here was costly IVF, which we had to be blunt and admit we didn't have the money for.

I would like to say that I’d found work supportive, but over that one year I'd had 10 changes in team lead.  Originally I laid my cards on the table about what was going on, but it became increasingly humiliating.

For the first time in my life, I consulted with my doctor and admitted I was in a huge emotional low.  I went onto some anti-depressives, which helped me cope a lot, but alas had a side effect of even more weight gain.

People ask me what being on anti-depressives is like.  Some people wonder if it “robs you of your soul”.  Before taking them, I was in a very irate and wound up state, partly from my situation, the steroids effect and the lack of support from work (except for some close friends).

Most types of anti-depressives take a while to work – typically up to a month to build up in your system.  And I was lucky in only needed on a relatively low dose.  I remember a conversation with my doctor asking how I felt and my reply was “well things still go wrong in life, and they can hurt, but I don’t feel like I fall to pieces anymore when it happens, like I can cope and weather them”.

Again, long term counselling helped reduce my dependence on the anti-depressives, which I was on for about 18 months before slowly cutting them out.

In each of these trials, counselling helped me to move on … I will be talking about that in my next piece.

Mental Health 101 – The ultimate taboo

Back when I was closing in on my 100th post, I put on Twitter a list of potential future topics for blog posts.  The one I was surprised to see the appetite for was on the subject of mental health.

You see, I was pitching that topic thinking “maybe it’s just me”.

Mental health is a difficult subject to do, and do well.  It is in many ways the ultimate taboo.  By admitting that in the past I have ever had any problem in this area, I potentially run the risk of a future employer coming over this piece and viewing hiring me “as a risk”.  But I really hope we’re coming out of the dark ages here when we talk about attitudes to mental health.

Over this series of articles, I will be frank about my own experiences, and will also discuss those of friends that I've worked with, or know outside of work through various channels.  For these people, I’ll be using their experiences but under assumed names.  The only person I break this for is for my friend Violet, who died, and who was such a crusader for mental health, I know this'd have her blessing.

Make no mistake, these posts that follow are going to be a dark and explicit because of the nature of what’s being explored.  It will probably unsettle some people – but I'm putting this together for those people who need to know “it’s not just me”.  I have had too many people within the IT industry who thought it was.

Insecurity 101 - The Phil Cool Factor

As a kid growing up in England in the 80s, we all were entranced by comedian Phil Cool.  He was a an impressionist with an amazing ability to contort his face into different shapes.  I remember how excitedly we'd talk about the last nights show in the corridors of Abbot Beyne High School in between classes.

Here's a few examples of Phil at his best ...

You might have noticed this blog has a lot of comic tones, and maybe you think I'm making a joke when I say that I do actually take comedy really seriously.  But I love comedy which is clever and unexpected, I despise comedy that is cheap.  So you can imagine how much I was in awe when in 2009 I actually got to meet my comedic legend quite by accident at a Fairport Convention concert.

He was actually part of a folk support act that played before the main band.  Some of his songs were typically comic, but some really very straight.  At then end of the show I bumped into him whilst waiting for a friend.

What happened was a humbling eye opener for me.  Phil Cool, quite literally the coolest comedian on the TV in my childhood - a man so very loud and funny on stage - but in person ... quite a shock.  I got speaking to him, and said I'd really enjoyed his set, and what an interesting (but different) venture.  Although really polite, be seemed quite nervous, and blushing said it was nice to hear that.  The man before me wasn't a loud and bombastic comedian, but a humble, somewhat uncertain human being who struck me as doubtful of his own (immense in my opinion) talents.

Rather than shatter my perceptions of him, I came away fascinated that someone I looked up to was not the stuff of legend, but a flesh-and-blood human being not so different from myself.

You see we all have doubts.  It's a very human thing to have internal fears and insecurities.

During KWST3, talking about the same cloud of doubt, there was a point where Aaron Hodder asked people to put up their hands to say if they ever felt a fraud as a tester ...

Most of the room put theirs up, but I have to admit I didn't put my hand up.  Commentary from Michael Bolton suggested that was because of the Dunning-Kruger effect.  This is the "grad phenomemon" where someone just out of University thinks they know everything, whilst someone with 20 years experience seems to show less superiority because they're more aware of their limitations.  People who put their hand up were experienced testers who knew their limits, whilst those like myself who kept them down were "deluded newbies" who thought we knew it all.

However for myself, despite Michael's criticism, I've been in the industry, and in teaching and research science enough to know I am a tester.  In my time, I've thought enough to get feedback and to ask around both my superiors and my peers, and it turns out that much like Phil Cool, insecurity is a common thing.  We're often hiding it beneath bravado.

I never think of myself as a fraud as a tester, simply because I've had a couple of non-testing careers.  I would not have spent 16+ years in the IT industry if I was plagued by doubts about me belonging here or having worth here.  Simply put, life is too short, and I would have abandoned ship long ago.

But it doesn't come easy.  I've get to know others, and be open, and sometimes talk about how I feel out of my comfort zone with peers that I trust.  My wingman on RAF projects 10 years ago was John Preston, and we still exchange emails talking about problems and challenges we face in IT.  Through both my career and through the internet, I've built up a wide peer network, many of them people I trust to ask big questions.

I've also looked up and followed some industry leaders in IT, and got to know a few.  They can seem to tower over us as Titans, and we can look at our projects and go "I bet Heracles Tester doesn't have these problems".  What has surprised me as I've got to know a few better, is that the Phil Cool effect takes hold - even in IT.  People who seem superhuman figures, powerhouses who can get things done, the more you get to know them up close you realise they are not Testing Titans who have been empowered with mighty and mystical powers from the Gods Of Testing themselves.  They are human beings, vulnerable and at times caught and ensnared in their own emotions.  Just like you or me.

This revelation has not diminished them in my eyes - it moves them from being something iconic (but also people I can't relate to), to being more peer in nature.  But at the same time, they become people I can relate to more, and who inspire me more in daily life.  Because if they do not have to "skip the hard yards" because of their status, if they have to go through the same assault course, then maybe I can too.

I know being a "famous" tester doesn't mean the learning curve of a new project is any easier, it doesn't exempt you from the occasional tussle at work, having to explain your position as a tester or having to do the (occasional) extra hours to get a project launched.

With that knowledge I've gained through networking that there are no magic solutions or attributes, there was no purpose putting my hand up to feeling like a fraud.  It serves no-one to be modest.  And as I said, if I really felt like that, I would have jumped to a new profession by now if I genuinely did.

That said, I do have doubts and even insecurities.  To steal the words of Douglas Adams, I'd like to call them "rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty".  I worry sometimes there are things when planning testing that I don't know, areas I'll not think to test enough, bad assumptions I'll make.  

These doubts are not about me as an individual, but about whether I know or have thought about enough things about what I'm testing.  But then again, isn't the first law of testing that the profession exists because people are fallible and make mistakes (in code or design).  Given that human frailty why would testers be exempt?

The answer to that is just as we do with testing, just as I mentioned about personal insecurity.  We put it out to a network and get feedback.  We put it in front of people we trust (hopefully who you work for), and ask their opinion, critique and questions.  Then the planned testing isn't a one-man-band, but the sum ideas of everyone on the team, some of whom might have different ideas to how things work to you.

Getting people to positively critique to make something better is a superb strategy for fighting neurosis and feeling more confident about what we do.  At the end of the day, giving critique and feedback to produce a positive outcome pretty much sums up what we do as testers.

The Road Not Travelled

I think everyone will have had a similar tale of someone who they admired or had a crush on in their youth, but never quite had the courage to break the ice with from sheer awkwardness.  As age creeps in, it’s easy to play the “what if” game about “the one you let get away”, wondering who they were and what would life be like.  This is the disturbing tale of one such crush of mine, and the revelation of the last week.

Let me take you back in time to 1995.  I was studying for a Masters degree in “the physics of laser communications”, it was a course ran partly at the University of Essex, and ran in partnership with a number of foreign Universities as an exchange program.  I was feeling somewhat bored with life in the UK, and the idea of study abroad seemed an exciting adventure not to be missed.

I also had substantial chip on my shoulder from school –I’d bombed out of my German language exam with a “U” grade for “Ungradable” (really, really bad).  So when the opportunity came up for study in Jena, Germany at the Friedrich-Schiller-University, this was my chance to revisit this failure – after all some German would be better than none, and how could I fail to be fluent if I immersed myself in the language?  “Besides”, people kept telling me, “everyone in Germany speaks great English, you’ll get on fine”.

The other thing people kept telling me was a recurring prophecy that “you’ll probably meet some German girl, and never want to come home”.  Part of this was due to me going through a particularly bad break-up recently, which to be honest was part of the allure of getting as far away from the UK as possible.

Arriving in Jena it turned out that the “everyone speaks English” myth about Germany was spot on … for West Germany.  Unfortunately I was going to the part which until 1990 was part of “The Old East” under the thumb of a brutal Communist regime that had the gall to describe itself as the “German Democratic Republic”.

Jena in 1995 was only a few of years into reunification.  It was part of a country struggling to find a new identity, whilst reconciling it’s past.  Even in our time we were told at the Institute of Applied Optics how a few members of staff were being “asked to leave” after accusations that they had been “too friendly” with the old Communist regime, especially the dreaded Stasi, the East German Secret Police.

The people had lived under a regime which had taught them to distrust each other, but especially to distrust foreigners.  Whilst many we met relished the freedom the fall of the Communism had brought, and rejected these old values, amongst a few, that attitude had prevailed.  I remember being shocked at an altercation on a late night bus where someone had taken great offence that a black guy had boarded a bus holding hands with a white girl.  I remember me and fellow student Donnacha being one of the many on that bus forming a wall between the racist thug who wanted to get violent with this interracial couple.  And I remember the man who stood up to this thug and told him to his face how out of line his behaviour was.

It was a rude awakening.  And this was the country people told me I’d be falling in love with?

As students we lived in Lobeda – a small district 5 km outside of Jena where we studied.  Getting to and from town, we all travelled the commuter bus.  Buses being probably one of the few things East Germany got right.

Although Lobeda had a few historic and “quaint” buildings, most of it consisted of massive, ugly, run down accommodation blocks.  The Communist government had designated it a suburb, and hastily thrown up a wall of concrete apartments – each with a now boarded up office in the foyer, where (it was explained to me) a representative of the Stasi would clock people in and out of the building, as well as regularly turn over people’s apartments looking for anything suspicious.  The Communists may have left, but the still suburb had all the charm of a high security prison.

Every day was a shuffle back and forth between Lobeda and Jena on the bus network – as a young student you got to notice familiar faces.  Especially female ones.  I never knew her as anything else than “the Lobeda bus girl”, but I’d see her most days.  I thought as she got off at the same stop, she was another student.  She was pretty, but I never got the nerve up to ever speak to her properly – with my poor German, it’d be a struggle to communicate, and she seemed surly a lot of the time.  But then at the time I was a recovering Smiths fan, and I didn't really do “happy” much myself.  My lab partner Donnacha was totally different - with his Irish charm and non-existent German, he was still able through sheer Irish bravado get results in breaking the language barrier by just speaking very loud in English and laughing a lot – whilst I never really had the knack of breaking the awkwardness of introducing myself to someone who didn't understand me.

I met “the Lobeda bus girl” a couple of times around Jena.  I’d learned to stay close to Donnacha, as it seems an Irishman in East Germany was a novelty, and a lot of German girls would come over just to hear him speak.  Staying friends with Donnacha, you’d always be invited to the best parties.  Beate was friends with one of the girls who was entranced with the Irish rogue, and Beate would always tag along.  We would exchange half-smiles – Beate was the quiet friend to her excitable German friend as I was the quiet friend to Donnacha.  Half smiles and looks was all I think was all the language we managed to communicate in.

She was hard to forget – it was a long, hot summer in Germany.  The boys wore shorts and T-shirts all the time, and the women too wore minimal attire – and I was young, hormonal and disastrously single.  Yes, she burned herself into my memory.  So that’s my tale – the tale of “the Lobeda bus girl”, one of many “what if” scenarios which play through my head.  One of the many “what ifs” we all have running and meshing through our lives.

That was until this week, when I read the story of Beate Zschaepe in the news.

The news described her as "the lone survivor" of a criminal neo-Nazi gang called the NSU (National Socialist Movement).  The other two male members, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Böhnhardt, had committed suicide after a botched bank raid, and Beate handed herself into the Police in Jena after destroying her apartment in Zwichen..  As a gang, the NSU are suspected of being involved in the murder of at least 10 people (mainly Turkish immigrants) in Germany, as well as responsible for a series of bombings in migrant areas and a string of violent bank robberies.

This was horrific stuff, but the face of Beate Zschaepe was just too familiar, and looking up details of Beate’s life, there is was clearly – the old photos, the details of her past living in a studio flat in Lobeda in the 1990s.  The chance of it being someone who just looked like “the Lobeda bus girl” dwindled to almost nil.

It was unsettling – a rose coloured piece of my past, tainted. That attractive girl, who seemed one of the few highlights of the drab and oppressing urban landscape of Lobeda had been exposed as something disturbing and horrifying.

It was chilling.  We’re too used to watching films and seeing the villain signposted.  Some actors are typecast now as playing villains – Sean Bean just has to walk into a scene and I’m sure he’s the one behind it all (bit of a shock when Game Of Thrones played out the way it did, I can assure you).  Yet every day there’s another tale of a serial killer unmasked, a teen who goes on a shooting spree or person found to be behind a terrorist attack.  And almost all the time the story is the same “they seemed like a nice person … just normal”.  Seeing her on the bus, Beate was an “object of affection” who looked like she might be a student protester who wanted to hug trees and save whales.  But she wasn’t, she was engaged - even at the time – in something truly evil, and was on the run soon afterwards being implicated in bomb making and bomb threats.  But when I saw her on the bus or with her friend, there was no warning placard above her, she didn’t sneer or laugh like a witch – to be honest she seemed more normal than me.

So on the one hand there’s the memory of that pretty (if surly and quiet) twenty year old girl, who seemed to traipse around Jena during a hot summer braless (I noticed) in baggy T-shirts and the shortest of shorts.  It’s hard not to have very strong and sensual youthful memories of her.  But on the other hand there’s the tale of the 38 year old handing herself into the Police for her involvement with a terrorist movement motivated by hatred to perform a series of sick crimes.  It’s difficult to reconcile that these two Beates are one and the same.

A friend of mine noted “she’s still a bit of a looker” after seeing her court appearance, though failing to grasp the fact that though she was the girl I once thought cute and desirable, there’s nothing attractive about hatred.  And through her involvement with the NSU she has committed her life to that hatred.  I’ve spent years judging that particular book by it’s cover – and where I saw a hopefully erotic romance, someone else opened the pages to find only Mein Kampf inside.

Maybe the game of “what if” in our past makes us forget to be thankful for the gifts we truly have in the here and now.

The pictures of a a girl who I guess I'll always have trouble "seeing that way" (the evil way she really was) from how I knew her ...

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There is an eerie after word, which perhaps serves as this saga’s only uplifting piece.  In looking through the old photographs of the NSU, I came across this picture below, a series of pictures circa 1996

The man in the middle is named Uwe Boehnhardt, one of the double suicides of the NSU after that failed bank raid.  And he, like Beate, has a face that is disturbingly familiar.  After almost 18 years, it’s impossible to be certain, but he looks distinctly like the “bus racist” who I spoke about earlier.

It was the last bus from Jena to Lobeda on a Friday night – a bunch of us had been drinking in town, and Uwe was at the back, when an interracial couple came on the bus, hand in hand.  Uwe was immediately agitated, shouting abuse in a language that both myself and Donnacha had trouble understanding.  But when he got up aggressively and started walking down the bus at the couple, his violent meaning was plain.

I wasn’t the first person to act, and I don’t know who did.  But someone got out of their seat to block the bus walkway from Uwe so he could not pass.  Once one person did it, it’s as if we all did it in unison – including me and Donnacha – it was a true “I’m Sparticus” move of solidarity and defiance.

At this point, his violent intentions were frustrated, and there was no way for him to go through us, when a middle aged man got out of his seat, slapping Uwe around the head.  The man looked like a Germanic version of Ray Winstone – a tough, hard man who’d be able to have most people in a fight.  Yet when he spoke he spoke, he did so emotionally, almost in tears talking about “schade” or “shame”.

Uwe reluctantly got back to his seat.  When the interracial couple got off the bus, Uwe tried to as well, with the intention of following them – however the other passengers wouldn't let him get off for another two stops.

Germany gets a raw deal - because of World War Two, they are often portrayed in popular culture as Nazis or people “only obeying orders”.  But Germany is so much more than that.  Germans, especially East Germans have experience the harshness of first Fascism and then Communism, regimes that promised much, but turned out to be more brutal than the problems they vowed to solve.

Over the next few months there will be a lot of talk about the NSU, of Beate Zschape or Uwe Boehnhardt and of their victims.  But no-one will hear the tale of the last bus from Jena.  The people on that bus could have ignored what was going on – they could have looked the other way in case Uwe turned on them.  But they didn’t.  Because one person found the courage to make a stand, countless others, including myself also found that same courage, and found that we were not alone.  And one remarkable man, who I’ll never know his name, stood up to a bully and a murderer and said “this is not right, this is wrong, and what you do brings shame to us all”.

Prejudice is ugly, and it comes in all shapes and sizes – against colour, against gender, against sexuality.  If there is a lesson from the last bus from Jena against all the murder and hatred of the NSU, it’s this, make a stand.  Make a stand, you won’t be alone.