 Hello. Thank you. So, a few of you may have seen that I put up a blog post on WP Tavern a while ago. And for many years, I've suspected that I might have mild depression, but I've never really known what it was, or who to talk to, or how to talk about it, or where to go. You know, you end up seeing articles from other people online and reading through them. And I mean, I'm up here now on stage, and that even surprises me. When I was in school and I'd have to give a presentation, I'd be absolutely terrified of doing anything at all like this. I wouldn't be able to talk properly. I would struggle with basic English. I couldn't string sentences together. But I started speaking so that I could get over that, and I enjoy it a bit. I feel quite anxious quite now, quite nervous. And it looks quite easy when other people come up and they start speaking, especially when they've been doing it a while. And I think everybody has that, especially when you're talking about subjects like this, and especially after Sonia's talk just now. But I want to say that I've been in talks where people talk about depression and their situation, and because I can empathise with it, and I'm sat in the audience, it's moving, but at the same time, it makes me very self-conscious. And it can make me feel very uncomfortable sometimes, especially if I feel emotional, and I'm wondering what other people are doing. Are they going to see that I'm being emotional? Are they going to see that I'm feeling anxious? Am I shaking a little bit? So I just want to say that that's okay. And that you just need to... You don't need to do anything like that. Just don't worry about it. And so, when I wrote my tavern post, I was thinking similar things. I speak because I feel that there are things that people need to know that they're not being told, or that if they learned a lot sooner, it would help them a lot. And I thought, because I had not long gone through a bout of counselling, I thought that I could help people. So I wrote a tavern post. And if you want to go and read that, I would recommend that you look through, but I'm not going to talk directly about the content in there. Instead, I'm going to start with the consequences for me. So I wrote the tavern post. I sent it off. I thought I would have a few edits back and go through the review and it would be published. Instead, it actually went out a lot sooner than I thought. Some of my best friends didn't know that I had these issues or that I was going to write a tavern post and were completely taken by surprise. A lot of people contacted me asking if I was okay or saying that they'd gone through issues of their own, maybe their own family member, and basically saying really nice things. I didn't know how to respond to that. I didn't know if I should say thank you, if I should enter a lengthy conversation about my own issues and their issues, or try and give advice. And I ended up with many other issues, such as, for example, I was on a date and it was going really well. And the person said, well, can I add you on Facebook? So I thought, okay, so they searched for me. But because of my settings, I don't show up in the search. But my WP tavern post does. So the first thing they see is me talking about me having anxiety and parts of depression and things that I went through, which is quite heavy, especially when you're in a completely different context. And I have no idea how many times that's happened, aside from the one where I was there when it did happen. So, going through these problems, it's easy to sort of push them under the rug in previous jobs. I've had them and I've never really understood. I mean, until I went to counseling, I didn't realize how big a factor of anxiety actually was for me. And in hindsight, a lot of it does make sense, but a lot of situations could have been avoided. I communicated that there was something wrong. And so, how do you do that? I mean, what do you say? I mean, it's the very first time I talked about it to an employer and I didn't have a proper conversation about it. I actually felt that I was cornered into talking about it. I'd left it way too late. There were problems and they were affecting my job. And I ended up in a situation where I basically sort of broke down and ended up feeling that I had to tell a lot of these problems when I wasn't ready to talk about it myself. And I didn't know what I was doing and I sort of steamrolled over the whole thing and it was a complete mess and it was not good. And I mean, this is years and years, years back. But how do you go across doing that? So, I would say that telling someone is important and that you should definitely do that but you should be mindful and prepare in advance what exactly you're going to tell them and how much do you need to tell them. If you're in a job and you feel that what you're doing is being compromised by your situation, you should tell your line manager, your thing that there is a problem but you don't need to tell them what the problem is. You don't need to tell them whether you've been to counselling, you don't need to tell them if you're on medication, you don't need to tell them if it's a temporary thing. They don't need to know your situation, they just need to know that maybe you need a few days off, maybe you need to leave early one day in a week to go do something and you'll make it up another time. They just need to be mindful that something is happening and they can trust that if anything else happens that you'll tell them and that they're in the loop but they don't need to know your life story. They don't need to hear everything and that helps because you can talk and say something and you don't have to worry that they're going to judge you and you don't have to worry that you're going to cause new problems by saying something. Of course if you're a line manager or you're an employer you inevitably are going to end up in a situation where one of your employees comes to you and they're going to tell you something and regardless of what they're telling you there's this sort of really awkward situation like before I went to counselling I went to my GP, a doctor in the UK and I tried to explain that I suspected that I might have depression but I wasn't sure what the situation was and I didn't know where to go for help and she smiled and she tried to be nice and she tried to sow sympathy and I could tell that she was a bit uncomfortable with the situation herself she didn't really know what to do there's this sort of general thing that you go and you sort of give sympathy and you're like oh I'm really sorry that you're feeling this way and some people are scared of that they don't want sympathy, they don't want pity they're terrified sometimes of people judging them and that is slightly judging them in a way so all you have to do is listen and you can't expect anything that's going to be told to you you shouldn't expect to hear their life history their medication, their thing you don't know what their situation is maybe they've been suffering from depression maybe they've been perfectly fine all their life but it's been really stressful the last week or two and they're suffering from burnout and they're stressed in which case maybe it's a temporary thing maybe that a family member has died but they don't need to tell you that and you shouldn't feel the need to ask questions you shouldn't feel the need that you're in a conversation and you have to sort of move it forward it's enough to just be told just be thankful that they trusted in you to tell you and be mindful of it going forward so aside from that telling someone why I think that's important there are things that you can do to take care of yourself and I know that a lot of people say that you should take care of yourself and maybe you've spent too much time on the computer and your hands are a bit divvy because repetitive strain injury or you've done something weird but for me that means really obvious things for example I have a reminder to eat a second time a day because if I'm not careful I forget and then it's 11 in the evening or I'll eat and it's actually the next day and it seems really simple but sometimes if you get carried away work or you get carried away with other things you miss it and you miss other little things that are everyday routines that most people try to do and then maybe after a week or two those tiny little things all build up into one massive thing which then sort of knocks you over for a few days so one thing that I'm focusing right now at the moment is separating when I'm working and when I'm not working and if you work with me you might understand that that can be a little confusing at times and this sort of person who usually has their computer open and I never close anything I never close slack for work I never close any of my support tickets they're just there in tabs and they just don't look at the window but if something happens at work I know about it because it's there in the background and it comes to the forefront but being able to switch off and not think about work not be mindful of what you're working on not have any of that in your head at all just to sort of completely disconnect and I know it seems really simple but you have to go to the full hog and go through the whole thing and being organised when I started working at WordPress.com on the VIP team it was a different job but I underappreciated how much organising I would need to do and at first I thought I had some imposter syndrome things but keeping on top of it you think that you can manage and you do what you've always done and after say a few months all those tiny little things coalesce and suddenly you start to very slowly lose your grip on what you're doing and you're no longer on top of things and everything snowballs and it comes crashing down on you and people are asking questions why haven't you done this, why haven't you done that and you don't even know that you said you'd do them because there are so many other things and I know that doing to-do lists and calendars and stuff like that can be a bit of an effort at first but it's really worth getting into I would say if you're struggling with things that counselling is something to consider and I know that there are stigmas which are going to counselling some people might think that it's an admission that you're broken as a person which is not true at all most people have issues in their life at one time or continuously for me I went through counselling in the UK it's usually 12 sessions with a counsellor that you spend an hour at and the first session which counsellor is just checking that you and your counsellor actually get along that it's going to be productive and not just going to be randomly talking and when you're counselling it's all about your feelings not so much the narrative so for example when I went to the automatic grand meet-up and then I had a counselling session it was all about how I felt at the meet-up it wasn't about what actually happened and the narrative that goes through there but you don't have to go through a full counselling session of 12 or continuous you can go for one you can go for one maybe every other year if you go through a lot of support and it wears down on you maybe it will be helpful to talk for an hour to someone who knows more about these things and can help and sort of realign you and check that you're okay and at that point it's not because you have something wrong with you it's because you're just taking care of yourself and you're double checking so what about others so at automatic specifically in the VIP team we're quite close and it's not enough to be mindful of yourself and the person immediately above you sometimes it's helpful to look out for other people and I don't mean that you should quiz them do you have a problem with that or asking if they're okay just simple things like once someone I was working with said oh you seem really happy you've been I was worried you've been down last few months but you've really perked up this week and that was really good that made me feel really happy because I hadn't realised that other people noticed and that they cared and that they were quite happy to talk to me but at the same time telling people that they did a good job telling people what you think they did that influences you most that helps them that they think will help you that matters a lot more than people realise and it's not so much about just saying oh thanks for doing all these things today it's more just you know the little things at automatic we have a feedback tool and I used that quite recently I said what do you think that I'm doing really good I could work on and some of the responses I got back from that were unexpected and I got some really useful feedback about the things that I should work on and it was really good to see the response when I started setting up this is what I'm going to do but more the things that I was worried about that people actually said quite the opposite and it's the same especially if you have things like imposter syndrome that you do that that people then have the opportunity to say you're actually really good at this stuff and you think that you're worrying so the one thing that we have as well is a blue hackers group internally it's a private invite only group where people who have issues can vent and talk about things about having the entire company looking at them I know that there are some IRC channels and forums online and if you go to bluehackers.org there's some information about setting that up in your company or in your community and the things that you can do and the last one I have every two weeks with my team need a check-in sometimes it's in person, sometimes it's on the phone, sometimes it's video a lot of the time it's text if I'm feeling emotional or down or I'm having issues I might not want to have the immediacy of doing a Google Hangout and do it over several days but it's really helped it gives an opportunity if I want to talk about something that I can say that there's a problem and that I need to work on things and that I need a little bit of space or I need something and it's an opportunity as well to talk about what I'm going to do next so for example I get to plan what I'm going to do in the next week or two which can have a big impact on how I feel some work is more stressful than others it's easier to break and work on something that is easier to meet that's more the path of least resistance and then another week I might have other ideas so I'm Tom Noel and I work at WordPress.com VIP and you can find me on Twitter and if you don't feel comfortable speaking in front of people and you want to talk to me about something or you want to say something I will be in the happiness bar after this and if not come find me around and I'm usually quite shy I tend not to talk to too many people I'd make a concerted effort but it would be really nice to speak to some people so thank you