Professional Growth through the lens of Mental Illness
Guest Post
by Jill
Hi, my name is Jill and I am an amphibian biologist. I love my job – it is fulfilling, stimulating, and fun, but like everything else in my life, my professional experience is shaped by mental illness. I have always struggled with depression*. Hiding it has been a skill that I have practiced my whole life and honestly… I’m fucking awesome at it most of the time. I have zero confidence in any of my other skills, but I’m like the Michael Jordan of concealing depression. But here’s the thing, Michael Jordan never had to play in the NBA finals while also doing field work, writing papers, and debugging R code.
While I’ve always dealt with depression, there’s something unique about entering the professional world that is hardly ever acknowledged. A lot of people don’t process childhood trauma until they are in a safe environment to do so. For me, that was when I moved in with my partner just before starting grad school (and despite all I have put him through, we are now married because he is a remarkably patient and resilient human). So, while I was learning to navigate the role of a professional scientist, I was also battling severe insomnia and a long dormant sense of deep self-loathing, which also happen to feed each other. When you haven’t slept, you get tired and careless with your words. Because of that, I often leave conversations feeling like I said not only the wrong thing, but the worst possible thing, which gave the impression that I am a bad, cruel, unintelligent person. It’s hard to be productive when those thoughts (of which there are many playlists) are circling in your head all day. And it’s hard to face your colleagues when you’re real shitty with makeup but spent all morning trying to cover up any evidence of self-harm with it. These thoughts get stacked on top of whatever it is we should be thinking about and making progress on a task can feel like running in knee-deep water.
To echo Amy here, accomplishing these things comes at a cost, and the costs for me have been my worsening memory and the capacity to make music – something that was once a huge part of my identity and brought me a great deal of joy (I’m working to get this back). I’m no longer scared of my menacing thoughts, though. I’m used to them being there all the time and now they just feel like really shitty roommates. But I’m learning that we need to grieve the things we’ve lost along the way; time, relationships, the blissful unawareness of just how dark things can get. I know the longer I avoid working through those things, the more I risk losing.
I know that a whole lot of people in my field and others are going through their own versions of this. Amy has given us an outlet to reach each other and hopefully make barrier-breaking confessions to our colleagues, which can only improve the way we work and collaborate. Unfortunately, when we hide what we’re struggling with, our mistakes at work look like incompetence. In reality, all we really need is a day off without faking some 24-hour flu-like illness (no one in my current workplace has ever made me feel like I have to do this, just ‘society’). I won’t say our struggles only make us stronger because for the most part they just make us exhausted, but I do hope by seeing each other, we can learn to be kinder to ourselves. I’m in no position to be preaching, but if there is any wisdom I can leave you with regarding mental health, it’s that self-care is not selfish! By taking care of ourselves, we can not only accomplish more, but we can also be in the position to care for others.
*I’m more than willing to talk about my specific diagnosis in more private conversations/DMs.