 Hi, thank you so much for having me today. My name's Laura. I'm the marketing manager at Pragmatic, a Brighton-based WordPress agency. I'm the lead organiser of our local WordCamp, WordCamp Brighton, which is taking place this August. I also have a generalized anxiety disorder, which I try to manage on a day-to-day basis. So today, I'm going to be sharing with you four tips for how you can help yourself, and four tips for what your employer can do to help you. But before I get into that, I thought it would be useful to try and explain what anxiety actually is. If you don't suffer with it, even if you do, it can be pretty hard to understand. It's often banded around as just worry or stress, and whilst those do come into it, it doesn't really touch upon what it really feels like. This is a personal favorite description of mine. You know when you're leaning back on a chair, and you lean a list too far back, and you anticipate going down, and you're scared. Yeah, that, but you never actually go down. Anxiety is a constant, and it doesn't matter how seemingly big or little the worries and concerns going through your head are, anxiety can treat them exactly the same. Say, for example, if I think I've left the oven on at home all day, that can inflict the same amount of anxiety as standing on a stage like this. I'm talking to you guys. There are dozens and dozens of symptoms of anxiety ranging from headaches, severe stomach pain, and full-blown panic attacks. And last year, my symptoms got so bad that I was signed off work for four weeks. I wasn't sleeping, and panic attacks were becoming a daily occurrence. Now I love my job, so I wasn't that happy about this when the doctor told me I couldn't go in for four weeks. So I spent the first week of my four weeks off doing as much as I possibly could. I cleaned everything, I rearranged all of my wardrobe, and so like not relaxing like the doctor suggested. So when it came to week two, this happened. So if you can't read this, it says, Maenor is really anxious because she can't find a reason to be really anxious at the moment. Now, this makes no sense, but it really does happen, and it is up there with feeling anxious about the fact that you're anxious. Like what is that about? But yeah, it's a really horrible feeling, and this is a bit of a turning point for me as I realised that having four weeks off work to binge watch all the Netflix series I could ever hope for is all and good, but that isn't going to help me in the long run. So these are the few of the things that I've done to help myself. As the name suggests, a worry diary is a journal in which you log all your worries in real time, and you give them a rating between one and 10 depending on how anxious they make you feel. Then, on a weekly basis, I'll go through and review this, and starting with the most severe, try and map out some practical ways I can make that activity or task a lot easier for myself. This is a real excerpt from my worry diary, which is Travelling by Train. As you can see, I've broken this down into exactly what about travelling by train makes me anxious, and this is like an eight out of ten on the anxiety on the top for me. And most of my concerns revolve around being late and train delays and not being able to get a seat. Now, I'll be thinking about these leading up to the day of travel during my journey when I'm at the destination because then I know I have to get back home, and it's utterly exhausting. So these are the few of things I've done. I will always get one or two trains earlier than I need to get in case of any delays. Where possible, I'll travel during off-peak times. However, if I'm travelling for work, this isn't always possible. So in that case, I'll upgrade to the first class ticket to make sure I get a seat. And then I also looked at what my local travel service could do for me. TFL, Transport for London, are one of these travel services. And I discovered that they have this fantastic initiative of these please offer me a seat badges. Anyone with a disability can apply for one of these. And it means that I get a seat every time I need to use a tube, which makes that journey so much more comfortable for myself. They've also released a tube map which highlights all of the routes which have the most tunnels. And again, it just makes travelling on the tube a lot easier for me. Number two, Make plans and stick to a routine. Try and schedule as much as your work into your calendar as you possibly can. I know this can be difficult if clients or project managers sort of dictating what you need to do on a day-to-day basis. But even if it's just when you should check your emails, it will stop you thinking about those tasks when you're trying to focus on other things. And this goes for your home life as well. So I set days which I will do by laundry, by cleaning, and I'll also try and make meal plans. And again, it just prevents my brain sort of worrying about those tasks when I'm trying to do something else. Talk about it. This can be the most difficult thing to do, but it is by far the most beneficial. Before I had that time off work, hardly anyone knew that I had anxiety and that in itself would inflict more anxiety because I'd be really worried about people noticing or finding out what they'd think. But so when I was signed off, I kind of figured that I need to start talking about it because having four weeks signed off work is not a standard thing to happen. And I did it and it was amazing. Slowly but surely I started opening up to friends, families and colleagues. Anxiety had been quite alienating at times and you often feel like you're the only one suffering and everyone else around you has got it together and they don't. When I was chatting to people about this, loads of people were like, oh, I have anxiety too and I had no idea. It shouldn't have really been a surprise to me. 60 million people in the EU are affected by anxiety every year. So the only crazy thing is that we're not talking about it more. And finally, be kind to yourself. You'll have good days and you'll have bad days, but it is totally okay to not be okay. It's just a sign that you need to spend more time doing something for yourself and give yourself a break. Now, how your employer can help you. Under the Equality Act, there's legal duty on employers to make reasonable adjustments for employees with a disability. And if you have a mental health condition, you do have a disability. This is the case for all countries within the EU. But what's a reasonable adjustment? It's defined as an alteration an employer can make to make sure that employees with a disability are not at a disadvantage to others. So this will vary from workplace to workplace. But these are a few things that I think are pretty easy for most workplaces to implement. Flex for working. Nine to five doesn't work for everyone. Allowing an employee to come in an hour earlier or an hour later can make the world of difference. It might mean that they miss that horrible rush hour commute that really stresses them out. It could mean that they could attend a meditation session or even just get an extra hour's sleep. And similarly, the office environment can be too much for people. So giving someone the option to work at home when they need to may prevent them from having to take a day off sick. Keep a nice working environment. Generally small, cluttered spaces really heighten the symptoms of anxiety. So try and keep your workplaces open plan and clear as possible. If that isn't possible, maybe say to your employees that they can use a co-working space or work from home if that's a better environment for them. Promote a healthy work-life balance. Don't put pressure on people to put in extra hours. Make sure they leave on time, they take their holiday and don't message them when they're not supposed to be at work. Yes, sometimes urgent requirements will come up, but maybe offer your employees some extra time off to compensate. And you can help yourself in these situations too. Turn off your Slack, turn off your emails and say no when you need to. And finally, listen. Take the time to listen to your employees if they've come up to you with a worry or concern. It may seem trivial to you, but it obviously isn't for them, otherwise they wouldn't have made the effort to speak to you. A fractured mind can be just as serious as a fractured leg, so do whatever you can to help. And finally, they have some really good resources that I've found useful. I'll be sharing my slides after this talk, so if you want to check them out, I'd recommend it. And I'd now welcome any questions. Thank you, Laura. Do we have any questions? Anyone on the mic? All right. I have a question. So I imagine people might want to talk to you about this. Are you going to be around here to the rest of the day? Yeah, definitely. I'm going to be busy for the next 45 minutes, half an hour, so I'm in a media room. But after that, please do come and find me. I'll try and make myself available in the main sponsorship area near the cool Google networking place. So, yeah, come and grab me. I'm more than happy to talk about any of the things covered in my slides. All right. We still have maybe a minute or two left for questions. I actually have another question. Do you... What of the things that you recommended right now has made the most impact in your kind of battle with anxiety? I think talking about it, definitely, it was, yeah, really scary at first, and you kind of feel like you're sort of exposing yourself as being weak or something, but that's really not the case. And everyone I've spoken to has been super, super supportive and lovely, and now, you know, it just makes general life easier as sometimes I'd be feeling anxious about even going out with friends. I might make an excuse up and, you know, be like, oh, I'm really sick. Actually, I was just feeling anxious. So, meaning I don't have to, you know, lie and cover up is being a massive weight lifted. That's the best thing. Talk about it. All right. Thank you so much, Laura. Thank you.