In a Time of Layoffs, Solutions from a Therapist for Tech
In a departure from the usual format, I’ve taken the liberty of sharing the transcript from a recent video podcast appearance. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Vidhi Raval, a project manager in Silicon Valley. Vidhi has launched a video podcast, “The Mental Balance,” where she explores mental health concerns among those who work in tech. We discussed how to cope with the threat of layoffs, whether this constitutes trauma, common mental health concerns in the tech world, and more.
Therapy for tech
Vidhi: Hello everyone to our third episode for the Tech Minds Unwind series. My name is Vidhi and I work in tech in the Silicon Valley. In this episode we are joined by Andrew Kushnick. Andrew spends most of his time supporting folks in the tech industry, and has been doing so for the past several years, working with age groups ranging from 20 to 40 years old. Hi Andrew, I’m so glad to have you here. Thank you for joining us.
Andrew: Thanks for having me.
Vidhi: You’re a therapist, and what has your journey been like so far?
Andrew: This is actually a second career for me. I worked as an attorney for about 10 years in a past life. And I found that the legal system, it’s so huge and unwieldy and sometimes dysfunctional. And for anyone working within the legal system sometimes you get the sense that you’re not really able to help people as much as you want to on a day-to-day-basis. And see the result of your work on a day-to-day basis. So as a therapist it’s really fulfilling to see clients make progress over time. That’s how I know I’m in the right field.
Vidhi: Awesome. So then what would be the ratio of the people that come to you today, and you have sessions with? Is it only people in the tech industry? Or are there others as well?
Andrew: I would say about half or a little bit more than half of my practice consists of people that work in tech. And that ranges from beginning software engineers or designers up to management. People who have been in for a while and they either stay as an independent contributor or go the management route. And a lot of the struggles, a lot of the issues are pretty similar throughout the different levels.
Vidhi: Yeah. What do you think led to the tech industry being such a big portion of your practice today?
Andrew: You know I think it’s my education and experience as an attorney that lends itself to a very pragmatic, practical, logical mindset. And I think what’s required for a coder for instance, a programmer, is that same mindset. To follow a sequence, and to troubleshoot, and to try to fix things. If-then thinking. So I think people who I work with who work in tech are able to relate to that. And I’m able to adapt my methods and my… how I conduct therapy to cater to that.
Vidhi: Got it. So you apply your previous career being a lawyer and things you learn to the life of a coder today, the life of an engineer today in the tech industry. Would there be some exact other patterns that you’ve noticed which help you become a go-to therapist for people in the industry here?
Andrew: You know, people want to be able to leave a therapy session and try something. Like in their interactions with coworkers. Or when they go home that night and they’re struggling with anxious thoughts. They want to be able to implement something right away. So I try to make it as actionable as possible. So that’s one way that I try to adapt and make it really accessible for those who work in tech.
Anxiety from layoffs in tech
Vidhi: I think we need to address the biggest thing going on in the industry right now, which is the fear of layoffs, and how so many people in the tech industry have been laid off. And while some that haven’t been, they’re constantly worried about being laid off. It’s concerning everyone around here. So what do you have to say about that?
Andrew: It’s a big problem. I see it across my practice, and the news, and just the general atmosphere these days. In the Bay Area, it’s just a heightened state of anxiety. People are worried about their jobs, and they’re really focused on “What should I do now?” They’re trying to do really well at their jobs. Maybe they’re working longer hours, or they’re trying to prove themselves indispensable. And have their manager really see the fruits of their labor. But at the same time there’s distractions from thoughts about “Should I be looking for another job?”
Vidhi: And is the pattern that you see for the folks that you have, who come to you for therapy sessions as well?
Andrew: Yeah. They’re talking about strained relationships. If they’re maybe not getting good sleep, and if they’re stressed all day, people are not themselves. So strained relationships are one way that it shows up. Interpersonal conflicts at work. Worried about whether their manager likes them. Worried about whether their ideas are being taken seriously when they’re meeting with their team. Problems with sleep. Quality of life issues. People find they’re not able to see friends as much because they’re working so hard, and they’re not able to exercise. They might say, “I really should meditate but I just can’t… I’m too busy, I just can’t stop, the thoughts get in the way.” So those are some ways that it’s been showing up.
Solutions for coping with the threat of layoffs
Vidhi: Thanks for sharing that. So what would be the solutions that you would offer for all of these folks, or people who are listening who are also worried about layoffs today, and that can help them out in their everyday life?
Andrew: So there’s an expression that comes from Dan Siegel. He’s a psychiatrist and professor at UCLA. And he says “Name it to tame it.” And he explains that when we put a label, when we put words to our emotions, it actually sends a soothing neurotransmitter from the left side of our brain to the right side of our brain. So it may sound funny, but putting words to what we’re feeling actually feels good. It’s almost like an anesthetic effect. So I would recommend that people actually tell themselves “Yeah, I’m stressed. This is anxiety.” Or “I’m worrying right now.” Or “I’m focused on something and it’s repetitive. I can’t stop thinking about this.” You’re making sense of your experience, which is really helpful. That’s one.
Vidhi: If you don’t mind me asking, beyond that. So how would you say people can name a feeling? Because usually someone is churning all day long for 24 hours, it’s very hard to check in and stop and be like “Oh, I am feeling something.” So would this be like an hourly check-in or something that you recommend where a person just pauses and is like “Okay, I need to name my feeling now and what’s going on”?
Andrew: It’s most helpful in the moment if you can actually pause. Maybe just take a deep breath, and just close your eyes for a second, and just check in with yourself. You just ask yourself, “How am I doing right now? What am I feeling right now? Are there any words I can use to describe this? Oh yeah, I’m really stressed, I’m tense. My chest is tight, my breathing is faster.”
So ironically, it actually helps you feel a little bit better. It doesn’t solve anything in the moment, but it’s nervous system regulation. It actually regulates your nervous system a little bit.
Vidhi: Well thanks for sharing that. I think that will be a great technique for people to remind themselves every moment, now and then, whenever they can.
Andrew: And beyond that, sharing your experience externally really helps as well. It’s along the same lines of naming it to tame it. Journaling is helpful, just writing down what you’re feeling. Doesn’t have to be a whole elaborate paragraph every day, or anything like that. Just break out the Notes app on your phone, and just write whatever you’re feeling. “Really stressed right now.” And sharing how you’re feeling to another person, someone in your life who cares, really helps.
What that does, this merges into trauma a little bit… This situation with the layoffs, it’s an extended period of time this is happening. And we don’t know when it’s going to end. We don’t know when the jobs are going to come back. So people feel helpless. They feel like this is a situation they can’t control. That’s pretty much the definition of trauma, by the way. An event or circumstances that we feel like we can’t get through. So the reason I say to name it to yourself, journal it, speak to someone else about it is because we weave a narrative around what’s happening. We put a story around it, which stores it in our brain in an adaptive manner, so we don’t get as stuck in it.
Vidhi: Thank you for sharing the science behind that. I think that’s very relatable and I feel like a lot of folks will be going through that right now, without even actually being aware about it. So what would be some other solutions where we go back to this chain of talking about your worries with a friend or someone else?
Andrew: Beyond naming it to tame it, beyond making sense of your experience and putting a narrative around it, I would recommend boundaries. We hear therapists say that word all the time. It’s overused. It’s in popular culture. “I need to set boundaries.” But it’s actually really important. Especially when people are available, they're on Slack every waking hour. And maybe they sense that their manager appreciates how available they are.
But we really need a separation of work life and personal life. Just for our system to recharge. Just so we can do something that gets our mind completely off of that stuff. Binge-watching something funny. Or hanging out with a friend or significant other. Exercising. Or getting actual sleep, like a decent night of sleep. So if at all possible, I would recommend just deciding “Okay, these are the hours that I work, and these are the hours that I’m not at work.” And see if you can turn off devices, and try to just let your system, your whole self get absorbed in something else. Something relaxing, something fun.
Vidhi: It’s hard to get out from the mind and focus on the body. I think that is one of the biggest things that I’m realizing as you’re speaking about boundaries, and “name it to tame it,” All of that is a theme it seems, of not being able to feel yourself in your body. Would that be correct?
Andrew: Definitely. That actually leads into another solution. We hear about breathing all the time. Everyone knows, “I have to breathe.” It’s obvious. But intentional use of the breath to relax your nervous system is really, really helpful. So there’s something called 4-4-8 breathing. And if you breathe in for four seconds, then hold it for four seconds, and then a long, long exhale, like eight seconds or longer. It’s believed to reset the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the portion of our nervous system that helps us unwind and relax when we’re ramped up.
Vidhi: And is there anything else from the solutions that you’d like to point out?
Andrew: I would say this is a little bit less immediate, but I would say to take a longer-term view of the labor market. I’m definitely no economist, so I don’t know what’s going to happen obviously. But I’ve been alive long enough to know that these trends come and go, and there’s periods of time when there’s layoffs, and it's followed… Maybe months or a few years later, an influx of hiring. So matter how someone is doing now, maybe they just need to be in the mindset of taking care of themselves during this period of uncertainty, knowing that things will change. “This too shall pass.” You’ve probably heard that.
Vidhi: I think there are moments where, if my mind is sharp enough it believes in “This too shall pass.” And then there are moments where I’m just very anxious and agitated and it’s like I don’t know what is going to happen. At that point things like “This too shall pass” are like “I don’t know how much I can believe in this right now.”
Andrew: You’re like, “It’s not passing right now; it’s right here.”
Does the threat of layoffs in tech qualify as trauma?
Vidhi: Yeah. It’s getting that balance of being able to accept that. So thank you for sharing that. With that we can jump into something specific that is your area of expertise, which is you specialize in trauma. And when people in the tech world worry about layoffs, does this qualify as trauma? I know you touched a bit on that, but can this exactly be diagnosed and labeled as trauma? And what do you think makes it so difficult for people to get through it?”
Andrew: I’ll just define trauma really quickly again. It’s an event or a set of circumstances that overwhelms our nervous system. Where we feel helpless. Or we feel overwhelmed or lacking control over our circumstances. This extended period of not knowing if you’re going to be able to keep your job, worrying about what you’re going to do if you lose your job, that does qualify as trauma, depending on the person. Depending on how they’re experiencing it. But so many people are having persistent intrusive thoughts about this, and they’re stressed. And it’s showing up in their nervous system. So they do seem overwhelmed and lacking a sense of control.
What makes this time… It’s a particular brand of trauma, if you will. We don’t know the end date. We don’t know when this is going to get better. And so that adds to the feeling of lack of control. It’s a little bit similar to the pandemic actually, the very beginning of the pandemic. Think March or April of 2020, when we didn’t know how bad it was, we didn’t know how long it was going to last, and our lives were different. Back to the present, it’s almost the same thing. You don’t know… If you knew that “Okay I just have to deal with this for a month or two,” then you think “Okay, I just have to stick it out and use my normal coping skills.” But not knowing how long this is going to last, and what’s going to happen in terms of your job, whether you’re going to get another job, that adds to overwhelming someone’s natural ability to cope.
Trauma and tech workers
Vidhi: So what would be common patterns that you’ve seen for people working in the tech industry, or in the tech industry as a whole?
Andrew: Anything can really be experienced in our system as traumatic. And what I’ve heard a lot over the years among people who work in tech is upsetting work interactions. One-on-ones with your manager where it doesn’t go well. Or where someone’s convinced that your manager doesn’t like you. Or someone on your team will dismiss an idea at a meeting, and you wonder “Am I good enough to be here?” Or personality mismatches between someone and their manager. Or previous layoffs. If you’ve been laid off before, that can make your current work situation that much tougher.
In terms of someone’s history, I’ve heard a lot among people who work in tech… I don’t want to over-generalize at all. But if you think about it, if someone’s always been good with technology, always been good with computers, they in the past may have withdrawn, socially isolated a little bit. Maybe it felt safer to be behind a screen than to be interacting with peers in school. And again, this doesn’t apply to everyone, this is just something I’ve seen here and there. I’ve seen people feeling like social interactions haven’t gone well. Replaying in their heads things that they say to a friend or a classmate, and then beating themselves up over the way they said it, for instance. Maybe a sense of not fitting in with their peers, especially if they came to the United States from somewhere else. The immigration experience can be super traumatic.
Vidhi: You touched on two great points which we can delve in deeper. You’re right, I don’t think there is a way to generalize the fact that everyone is sort of an introvert in the software world. It’s also a running joke in the software department or in engineering that engineers are introverts and prefer to stay by themselves and that’s how they are. Which is where I think you were going. Not having socialized that much before. Which is why fitting in with peers is more difficult.
Andrew: Definitely. And it doesn’t apply to everyone, but it can make it tougher to make friends. It can make it tougher to engage in those social interactions at work that enhance your reputation. Sometimes networking within your company is really important, but if someone feels less inclined to just go up to someone and ask how they’re doing, that can lead to more of a withdrawn feel. It’s unfortunate that that social dimension is often so important, sometimes even in hiring decisions.
Vidhi: And that’s a complexity the person has to work with every day. A part of them is constantly worried about not being able to fit in with peers, and a part of them is still trying to work and be productive and do things. So it’s somewhere in their mind, at some point.
Andrew: Definitely. Maybe there’s economic hardships. Concerns for so many people about getting a green card. Feeling like they have to keep their job because their visa depends on it. That adds some serious pressure. And then mixing in with dominant American culture, that’s got to take energy.
Vidhi: Which is why I think layoffs for immigrants are tougher. Obviously it’s tough for others as well. But I think for immigrants it’s the pressure of maintaining their visa so they can continue their life here. So it’s more of a burden. Is there anything else that you want to cover, other trauma patterns that you’ve seen for folks in tech?
Andrew: There’s also sometimes bullying. If you’re a teenager and you’re not feeling as comfortable socializing, a lot of people feel like they didn’t fit in, and sometimes other kids in school would pick up on that. And kids can be mean. Kids can be awesome, but kids can be mean. That sometimes gets stored in someone’s brain as trauma. And anytime in the future, as life goes on, anytime anything reminds their system of what they went through before, it can be triggering, and they can really feel it. Like the experience of being rejected. Or feeling like you don't fit in on your team. Or making a joke and no one laughs, and feeling like “Is there something wrong with me?” So that experience of bullying or not fitting in early on, in childhood and adolescence, that can really shape interpersonal patterns in adulthood at work.
Vidhi: Wow, I never thought that the two could be so related, where all of these childhood patterns could show up even in the workplace today. And the thought of having to revisit those, and resolve those. Being able to resolve yesterday in general.
Andrew: Absolutely. It’s almost like a recording. Back then a kid may internally store a belief like “I’m not good enough.” If they feel separated from social groups. And they can easily conclude it’s something with them. Or if one of their parents is not into videogames or computers in general. And there can be a mismatch between what the kid likes to do, and what the parent likes to do. It’s so easy to form that belief, “There’s something wrong with me.” “I’m not good enough.” It’s almost like a recording that’s made. And then when you fast-forward to adulthood, when anything similar in our environment happens that resembles what we went through, it’s like someone is pressing play on that recording, and we feel not good enough all over again. As if what happened then is happening now.
Vidhi: Thanks for sharing that, that’s very insightful. Past the things that people experience with trauma, what are some ways for them to cope with those, or act on those?
Andrew: Figuring out what works to self-soothe is really important. So again, if you’re about to go into a meeting with your manager, and you can feel your heart racing, and there’s so many thoughts, and your palms are sweaty. And you’re thinking like “This is not going to go well” Or “My entire job depends on this.” Figure out what works for you. And again it’s going to sound cliche, but breathing really helps. That 4-4-8 breathing that I mentioned earlier.
Or even self-talk. You can almost be your own therapist at any given time. Even if you don’t completely believe some of these comforting thoughts you may tell yourself, it still helps to tell yourself, “You’re going to be alright.” “It’s going to go fine.” “Maybe it won’t go so badly.” “Maybe my boss does like me.”
EMDR for tech workers
And beyond that, therapy really helps. I work pretty extensively with EMDR. That’s one leading method of treating trauma. With EMDR you’re rewriting the neural pathways in your brain, the way that memories are stored. So that’s one form of therapy that really helps. And it’s evidence-based; it’s backed by decades of studies. So for the time being, figure out how to stay regulated, figure out how to take care of yourself. Physiologically regulate your nervous system. And if it feels like something traumatic is showing up again and again and affecting you, it’s maybe time to reach out to a therapist.
Vidhi: Thanks for sharing that. How would you define EMDR? Is it a therapeutic model?
Andrew: It was developed in the ‘80s, but it’s really caught on in the last 10 years. It stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. In the ‘80s when it first started, the therapist would have a pen or the therapist’s finger and move it back and forth. And the client would track the finger or the pen. And that would engage the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain, alternatingly. I’ll explain why that is.
These days there are other methods. I have clients hold these tappers. They’re like buzzers like when you go to a restaurant, and they give you a buzzer to tell you your table is ready. So there’s these two buzzers called tappers and they buzz alternatingly - left right, left right. So what happens is the left side of your brain and the right side of your brain attend to that stimuli. And the reason we do that is… Trauma is really stored in the right side of your brain, in fragmented form.
So to use an example of what we talked about earlier: bullying. Say someone’s in middle school and they’re 12 years old, and they get bullied. What gets stored in the right side of your brain are images from that, maybe how you felt in your body at the time when it felt really scary, what you believed about yourself. Maybe “I’m not safe.” Sights, sounds, smells, all of that. So it gets stored in the right side of your brain in fragmented, undigested form. Imagine a mirror falls to the floor. It’s all these different pieces that are mixed in. With EMDR, we want to link all of those pieces or fragments with the left side of the brain, because that’s where language is. That’s where you can develop a story around what happened. By linking the left side of the brain and the right side of the brain, we integrate all of those fragments from whatever was scary with a narrative. And we make sense of it. And it’s stored in our brain in a more adaptive, healthy manner. Where we feel like we got past it. “That was then, this is now.” “I survived.” Or “I am good enough.” Or “I’m safe.”
The unique mind of a coder
Vidhi: Thank you for sharing the science behind that. That is very valuable to know how it gets stored, and how you also use this, and help your clients through processing traumatic memories. Andrew, why do you think black-and-white thinking does not work well? Why do people need to adapt to gray-level thinking?
Andrew: From working with some very smart minds over the years, I’ve picked up on some patterns in the manner of thinking. And one is… My understanding is that to do a good job as a coder, you really have to engage in some black-and-white thinking. You’re writing a line of code and it’s either going to work, or errors are going to show up. The feature isn’t going to work. And so you really have to embrace that style. It’s a little bit more rigid. If-then thinking, like a flow chart. Following a logical sequence. And I think that leads to a discomfort with a relativistic statement. In other words, say someone makes the statement to themselves “I hate my job,” or “My job is the worst.” That’s an all-or-nothing, black-and-white statement. What might be more helpful is to embrace more of a relativistic way of looking at it. Like “There are certain aspects of my job that I don’t like, and there are some things that I don’t mind, or that I do like.” That rigidity in a cognitive style, it’s actually characteristic of a lot of anxiety disorders and a lot of depressive disorders as well. It’s really helpful to embrace the shades of gray.
Vidhi: What would be the solution that a person can adapt to gray-level thinking?
Andrew: It probably works really well at work, but in relationships, when emotions are involved, it’s really important to tune into the shades of gray. I think it’s being able to form a statement that correctly captures how you’re feeling, without it going to an extreme. There’s catastrophic thinking that characterizes black-and-white thinking. “I’m never going to make it.” “I’m definitely going to be fired.” “My job is the worst.” Or “Nobody likes me.” Or “I’m the worst coder ever.” If you can pause and prompt yourself to come up with a more realistic statement, you’ll actually feel better. You might think of someone asking you, “Hey Vidhi, is there another way that you might think about this? What might be a more nuanced way of looking at this? A more realistic statement?” And you might say “Oh well, my boss just gave me a hard time but I think they know I’m doing a good job.” Or “I’m struggling right now this week, but I’m going to work on it and things will be okay.” Or “There’s some people on my team I like, and there’s some others I don’t like.” That would be more nuanced, less black and white.
Vidhi: So it’s making sure that you have a balance and you try to think of it from different perspectives and use that in your everyday living and relationships and how you think about yourself. What would be some other patterns that you see?
Andrew: I would say that in communication, that analytical sense that so many people who work in tech really need, like a logical part of us, like a troubleshooting part of us… It can pull people away from emotions. From noticing how someone else is feeling, from noticing how they themselves are feeling. And in communication that can be a problem. Say you’re having some sort of disagreement, or some sort of tense exchange with a coworker, and you’re trying to figure out the logic of this. “This has to make sense somehow.” But what really might be happening is that that other person feels a certain way. That person is tense, that person is having a rough time, or is in a bad mood, or whatever it might be. And that you yourself are feeling a certain way. You’re feeling frustrated, you’re feeling tense, anxious. Maybe you’re noticing that in your neck or your chest. Like real tension. Those are things that you can notice in someone else, and can notice yourself.
Relationship concerns in tech
Vidhi: With this discomfort with accessing emotions, how do you think this plays out in people’s personal lives, and even for themselves, apart from work?
Andrew: In friendships, in romantic relationships or in relationships within your family, people are going to upset each other. People are going to make each other angry. People are going to misinterpret or misunderstand what you’re saying. And you might feel alone. You might feel resentful. You might feel really disconnected from people around you. We’re going back to “name it to tame it” really. Being able to put words around what you’re feeling, and being able to express that to somebody else in a healthy way, in a constructive way, is really important.
So that leads into what’s called the I-statement. I would say so many therapists work with clients on forming an I-statement. What’s really optimal is to be able to convey how we’re feeling and what we’re needing in a way that’s least likely to cause defensiveness in the other person, or cause the other person to criticize us back, or cause the other person to shut down. So I think emotional literacy is really important. It’s a different side of our brain. We’re back to the left brain and the right brain again. Logic and linearity are based in the left brain, and a sensing of how we’re feeling or empathy for how someone else feels… that really comes from the right brain.
Vidhi: I experience this personally myself. And I’m wondering if this is a very common thing about having a strong analytical brain, which makes it difficult for you to work with emotions and reflect and think. Because you’re analyzing and re-analyzing and ruminating, that accessing the real emotions and the depths of things is harder.
Andrew: Yes, and I think that can be improved with practice. I regularly speak with my clients about developing a meditation practice where you’re just reading yourself. Putting words to your emotions, as we’ve discussed. Just practicing, “Hey this is what I’m feeling now.” It can be developed over time. And you find that you feel good when you’re able to make sense of what you’re feeling, when you’re able to tell yourself, “This is how I’m doing right now.” It’s not just going to affect me outside of my awareness. I can actually put words to it. And maybe I can empathize with somebody else. And maybe even say, “Hey it looks like you’re having a really rough time.” Or “Maybe I said something that upset you.” There’s words for that. It is possible to practice that and get better at that, where it becomes more like habit.
Vidhi: Let’s continue jumping into the other patterns. What would you say would the other ones be?
Sense of isolation in tech
Andrew: Another pattern that I’ve noticed in my practice is a sense of isolation that people are experiencing. Especially people who work in tech. They’re working longer hours. Again they’re fixated on whether they’re going to be able to keep their job, how they’re doing at work. They're thinking about work, they’re thinking about performance. And remote work is making that sense of isolation even more pronounced.
And you know what? Even when people are in the office… Imagine cubicles and an open floor plan. People are more likely to jump on Slack or some other form of messaging to message a coworker, than to just stand up and walk a few feet over to ask the person, in person. It’s so easy to hide behind technology, because that feels more comfortable for a lot of people. People don’t feel like they have someone to talk to, and they’re less likely to be talking live, face to face, to their peers.
Vidhi: Do you think COVID has made this isolation more concrete for a lot of other people who might not be using technology to hide, but now are bound to do that, because they’ve been doing that for the past three years or so?
Andrew: That’s a great point. Especially early on in the pandemic, we were all socialized to avoid each other. We had our masks on, and we felt comfortable and safe behind those masks. And for introverts, or for people with social anxiety, that was actually comforting. A lot of us lost out on socialization. On practicing social skills. There’s a lot of articles, a lot of talk in the media about how so many people were struggling with normal social conventions when they were back in the office. When the masks were off.
Vidhi: What would be the solution that you’d say could be used for people, for getting rid of their isolation, or just trying to get out of that comfort zone?
Andrew: Anything involving connection. Joining things. This can start at work. Engaging coworkers to hang out. If you’re remote, just asking if they want to do a video chat, one on one. Or if you’re in person, take a walk, go for coffee, go for lunch, anything to talk about your experience, to experience that commonality. You’re going through something similar. So it really helps to feel like you’re in community with other people who are going through the same thing, the same stressors. And getting mentoring; if there’s anyone higher up at your company who has a good sense of how to survive, how to hang in there and take care of yourself, that’s really helpful. There’s meetups and other groups for people in tech, to really bond with people who are going through the same thing. You can even blog about your experience. And people are reading it. Put it out there, put it on Medium for instance. And it’s a way of sharing. You might not hear back from people, but at least you’re engaging in some community of like-minded people.
Vidhi: I think it’s important to point out how people have gotten so comfortable with being isolated that they think functioning like that is okay. But probably a push to get yourself outside your comfort zone is what we all need, especially after the pandemic.
Andrew: I agree, and it is okay. If people are more comfortable curling up on a couch and reading a book, that’s great; that’s what brings comfort. That’s awesome. But long-term health outcomes are improved when we’re connecting. In the U.K. they have a Minister of Loneliness, a government official who’s charged with implementing solutions, just to help people deal with loneliness. And I think that’s amazing that they’re doing that. Because it’s not only a mental health problem, but also a physical health problem.
Vidhi: Exactly. We need that too definitely in the U.S. Pretty soon. Okay, what would be the last point that you want to cover, for a pattern that you see in your everyday workings?
Finding meaning and fulfillment
Andrew: I have seen people talk about a lack of sense of meaning in their work. This comes at every single age. And I experienced this in the law years ago. And I’m seeing it a lot among people in tech. They're asking themselves, “What am I doing? Am I really contributing to society?” They sense all these problems in the world - global warming, school shootings and political polarization. And they get the sense, “Hey, our society, our world is going through a rough time, so while I’m on this earth, I really want to be something that’s making a difference.” So they’re asking themselves, “Is this product that my company is putting out there… do I care about it? And this work that I’m doing - does it really fulfill me? And what would I really want to be doing? How do I really want to be spending all of these working years?” Maybe 50 years of our life, in which most of our days are working. I think the pandemic led people to really go within and ask themselves, “What am I doing?” But I think in tech it’s been pronounced. People are really wanting to make sure that they feel good about what they’re doing.
Vidhi: And how do you help people when they come with this question of “Hey Andrew, I don’t know if this makes any sense to me?”
Andrew: Good question. That comes with exploration. Therapy can really help with that. Everyone has a different flavor of what they find fulfilling. Some people talk about, “I want to work on the environment.” Or “I want to help lift people out of poverty.” Or “I want to make people feel good.” Or “I want to be a healer of some type.” It’s different for everyone. So I think therapy helps people identify whether their lack of sense of meaning is significant enough, whether it’s really a problem, that they want to do something about it. And if they do want to do something about it, then what do they want to move towards. What really speaks to them. And for some people, it doesn’t mean giving up their day job, especially if it pays well and they’re generally okay. Some people can just adopt hobbies and volunteer work, for instance, in their free time. Whatever free time they have.
Vidhi: Awesome. Where would you like folks to reach out to you if they relate to you, and this entire episode that we’ve had, and want to actually get therapy from you?
Andrew: Sure, they can contact me through my website. It’s andrewkushnick.com. Or they can email me at andrew@andrewkushnick.com. And I’d be happy to explore that with anyone.
Vidhi: Sure, thank you. And I’ll make sure I link it in the description here. And with that, I think we can close this. And I just want to ask, do you have any questions for me?
Andrew: What led you to start this video podcast?
Vidhi: I think the same thing that you pointed out, this sense of lack of meaning, which I could relate heavily to. I was starting to realize a lot of people around me were starting to have mental health troubles. Or people weren’t realizing it. And I felt like there was something I needed to do to step up. And I’ve always been interested in this mental health space for the past few years. And I thought this would be the easiest way to reach out to a lot of folks, using social media and using my expertise in tech. I’m trying to combine both of those at once, and trying to help as I can.
Andrew: That’s great. I hope people hear about it. I hope people find it. You’re putting out a valuable service out there on the interwebs.
Vidhi: I hope it doesn’t go into the void, but we’ll just let the tech algorithms play its games, and I’ll do my hard work. So thank you Andrew for such a warm and insightful conversation. Thank you for everything that you do, and helping people. This is going to help me and a lot of folks in tech, especially my friends I’m very sure, after recording this episode. So thank you.
Andrew: Thanks Vidhi, thanks for having me; this was a lot of fun.
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Andrew Kushnick is a psychotherapist and a former practicing attorney, Andrew’s approach is practical and concrete, using science-based and evidence-based methods. Video appointments are available during afternoons and evenings.
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