I’ve not written anything on here for a while. I think the reason for that was that my writing in part was (selfishly) a therapy for me and I’ve been through the longest stable period of mental health I can remember over the past year. I’ve been busy enjoying my life and haven’t felt a need or a strong enough desire to write.
I can’t say that I’ve not felt low, been sad, down, depressed. My anxieties and triggers are still there and always will be; my faithful friends. But I feel better in myself and better equipped to work with them, not against them these days. I hope this lasts.
So why am I writing again now? Well thankfully I’m writing now for a positive reason. Having moved jobs during the middle of last year I’ve now found myself involved in a diversity and inclusion working group. I care deeply about creating working environments that embrace neurodiversities and support those suffering poor mental health. I was inspired to write again because I want to share some of my thoughts around this wider than at my workplace.
Let’s start with neurodiversity. It’s a big word for a simple concept – neurological differences and disabilities are only ‘different’ and problematic because society says so. Neurodiversity argues that if you embrace, rather than try to cure conditions such as depression, anxiety, autistic spectrum disorders etc, the ‘sufferers’ can bring more to society than we can achieve with the normal brains alone.
For example, people with anxiety are greatly practised at deep questioning of an idea. They make awesome analysts. They may not function so well in an office environment with very cliquey teams and strong social norms, but if you adjust to accept an anxious person on to your teams you can bet it will pay off in higher quality interrogation of decisions and analysis of issues.
Similarly you may have seen A Beautiful Mind or The Good Doctor – shows that demonstrate how people on the autistic spectrum have incredibly detailed pattern oriented minds. They can understand deep technical concepts and very quickly calculate problems before most of us have had time to find the right Google search term. Autistic people struggle to make human connections, with ‘team player’ being a key skill required in most job adverts who’s giving these people capable of incredible computation jobs? If we stop thinking that those who can’t express their ability well to others don’t have any, we will find a whole new world of incredibly talented and valuable employees.
I’m trying in my current role to push for the design some new office environments to be inclusive of neurodiversities by mixing up the open office space (which can be hostile for those who suffer certain conditions) with quiet working areas, small meeting rooms where you can close yourself off and also to encourage working from home as much as working in the office. I try to mix up my meeting style too – sometimes face to face works, but some people struggle with eye contact so sometimes taking a walk while you meet can mean you still talk in person but without the eye contact becoming uncomfortable.
So on to the support of those with poor mental health. I find it really important to distinguish between having a mental health condition and having poor mental health. I have a condition, that I will consider myself a sufferer of for life. But for the last year I’ve handled that without the need for any additional support. When I’m suffering a bad low, when my mental health is poor, then I really rely on my partner, friends and (to be effective at work) my line manager for additional support. This one is harder though. Any anyone can suffer a period of poor mental health – grief over a death, anxiety through awaiting bad news, or stress are simple examples of things everyone might go through.
Workplaces rarely train line managers to effectively deal with poor mental health. It can be terrifying and baffling the first time your report admits to you that they’re suffering mentally. And thus as employees we’re generally pretty adverse to being honest about how we’re feeling, or that we’re not coping. Most managers would have no idea how to handle that, and others can actively damage that trust by simply refusing to help, though thankfully I think most managers aren’t being callous rather they just have no idea what to do.
Again in my new role I’m hoping to change this at my employment. We’re looking at Mental First Aid training courses, and providing managers with support to understand and recognise mental health issues.
I’d like to end by leaving a few practical tips for how to help support your reports if you’re a line manager and Mind have put together a guide that is far more useful than I could ever be
I’d encourage any of you reading this who feel your line manager isn’t being supportive to forward it on to them, or to your HR team. Make it known that there are things they can do – most people want to help us get better and be effective again in the workplace.
heartbeat infinity 