## Emotional Triage
-### FIXME
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-We have a tendency to want to run away from our feelings or try to suppress them. Our feelings aren't always pleasant and we want to avoid things that make us unhappy or uncomfortable. We want our internal story to be one of someone who is smart and capable of making the computer do anything we put our mind to doing, but when we feel negative emotions or fail to live up to our stories we start to feel crappy about ourselves. We wonder if this is worth it and wonder if we will ever be happy working with computers.
+One of our learned behaviors with our feelings is to run away from them or try to suppress them. We do our best to avoid feelings that make us unhappy or uncomfortable. We also try to hold back our positive feelings lest we show too much exuberance. This can lead us to be confused or conflicted about what we're feeling and why we're feeling that way. By sitting with our feelings and emotions and understanding where they're coming from we can get a clearer idea of what our mind is thinking and the story we're telling ourselves.
-Think of this practice as emotional triage. Hopefully you've never had to go to a hospital emergency room, but if you have you'll see a whole string of doctors and nurses who are trained to diagnose what just walked through the door and determine the severity of the problem. When we recognize that we're having an emotion we too are diagnosing what emotion we're having and the severity of the emotion. We take these moments when we're having these emotions to see what the emotion is. As we review our emotions we are gentle with them and see them for what they are. A good doctor or nurse doesn't impose their own desires on the patient; they simply accept the patient for who they are, diagnose what brought the patient in to see them, and act accordingly. When we recognize our emotions for what they are and determine where they are coming from we can better understand what we're facing.
+Think of this practice as emotional triage. Hopefully you've never had to go to a hospital emergency room, but if you have you'll see a whole array of medical professionals who are trained to diagnose what just walked through the door and determine the severity of the problem. When we recognize and reflect on our emotions we too are diagnosing what emotions we're having and the severity of those emotions. We take these moments when we're having these emotions to determine what the emotions are and what triggered those emotions. As we review our emotions we are gentle with them and recognize them for what they are. A good medical professional doesn't impose their own desires on the patient; they simply accept the patient for who they are, diagnose what the patient is experiencing, and act accordingly. When we recognize our emotions for what they are and determine where they are coming from we can better understand what we're facing.
-The more we do this practice the better we'll become at recognizing our emotions and why we're having them. We'll be better able to see what we're feeling and understand why we're feeling them. When we feel anxious we can recognize that we might be in an area of development where we don't fully know what we're doing. We can then feel the anxiety for a bit (don't try to chase it away just yet) and then think about what we're currently working on and the areas that might be new to us. We can then mentally note them, or (better still) write them down or journal them so when we complete what we're doing we can review the areas that caused us anxiety.
+The more we do this practice the better we'll become at recognizing our emotions and why we're having them. We'll be better able to notice what we're feeling and understand why we're feeling that way. When we feel anxious we can recognize that feeling might be because we're exploring an area of programming where we don't fully know what we're doing. We can feel that anxiety for a bit (don't try to chase it away) and then think about what we're currently working on and how we can explore those areas that are new to us. We can then mentally note those areas or write them down (preferably in a journal) so that when we complete what we're doing we can review the areas that caused us anxiety.
-With this practice we can turn our emotions from something that drives us into something that guides us. We can use our emotions as a tool to better calibrate our internal stories. We can stop telling ourselves stories that we're going to be amazing programmers who generate enormous amounts of production-ready, bug-free, readable code (which is not only fiction, but borders on the realms of legend and myth). We can instead tell ourselves that we're going to spend the next 10 minutes exploring this area of our work and see where the gaps are. We can be curious about where this next 10 minutes will lead us. As we continue to explore we can notice our emotions and anxiety. We can then use our emotions and anxiety to let us know where we feel we need to improve and adapt. This will allow us to change our plans as needed and address those areas we feel are lacking or need improvement. This cycle continues with each practice container, with our emotions acting as a barometer for our comfort level with this topic, and a road-map for how best to proceed. We turn our discomfort and anxiety into indicators of where we feel we need to focus our attention.
+With this practice we can turn our emotions from something that drives us into something that guides us. We can use our emotions as a tool to better calibrate our internal stories. We can re-frame our stories about how we're unworthy of being called programmers and instead give ourselves the intention that we're going to spend the next 10 minutes exploring this area of our work and find where the gaps are. We can set an intention to be curious about where this next 10 minutes will lead us. As we continue to explore these topics we'll notice our emotions and use those emotions to let us know where we feel we need to improve and adapt. This will allow us to change our plans as needed and address those areas we feel are lacking or need improvement. This cycle continues with each practice container, with our emotions acting as a barometer for our comfort level with this topic, and helping us draft a road-map for how best to proceed. We transform our discomfort and anxiety from things that hinder our progress into indicators of where we feel we need to focus our attention.
## Burnout
-One thing that our emotional triage can help us diagnose is feeling burned out. Burnout is a collection of emotions coupled with emotional and physical exhaustion. Burnout can be something as simple as being bored or overworked but it can also be the sign of something more serious. Burnout can lead to physical or mental complications if we're not careful. We can work ourselves into serious levels of exhaustion and delude ourselves into thinking it's part of the price we have to pay as programmers.
+One feeling our emotional triage can help us diagnose is the feeling of being burned out. Burnout is a collection of emotions coupled with emotional and physical exhaustion. Burnout can be something as simple as being bored or overworked but it can also be the sign of something more serious. It can lead to physical or mental complications if we're not careful. We can work ourselves into serious levels of exhaustion and delude ourselves into believing it's part of the cost of being a programmer.
-Burnout manifests itself in different ways. For some it may be the feeling of dread while working on a project. They feel like they are ineffectual in making any changes. For others burnout can be feeling exhausted. They feel as though they're on a treadmill that just will not stop. Worse, they wanted that treadmill to stop a long time ago. Burnout can also manifest in feeling creatively drained, where imagining a different future is difficult and things you used to find inspiring or interesting no longer generate that spark.
+Burnout manifests itself in different ways. For some it may be the feeling of dread while working on a project. They feel like they are ineffectual in making any changes. For others burnout can be feeling exhausted. They feel as though they're on a treadmill that will not stop. Worse, they wanted that treadmill to stop a long time ago. Burnout can also manifest in feeling creatively drained, where imagining a different future is difficult and things that were once inspiring or interesting no longer generate that spark.
+
+### FIXME
-Burnout is tricky to self-diagnose because it is a collection of seemingly unrelated emotions. Our feelings of boredom, fear, exhaustion, and anxiety can all have different root causes, but when we combine them with an unrelenting working schedule and loss of control we amplify those feelings. Left unchecked we can lead ourselves into trying to numb out those feelings. We find ourselves not wanting to program anymore, and resent ourselves for ever getting into programming in the first place. We can cause ourselves more undue suffering by just "powering through it" which can lead us to compound and complicate our emotional state.
+Burnout is tricky to self-diagnose because it is a collection of seemingly unrelated emotions. Our feelings of boredom, fear, exhaustion, and anxiety can all have different root causes, but when we combine those feelings with an unrelenting work schedule and loss of control we amplify those feelings. Left unchecked we can lead ourselves into trying to numb out those feelings. We'll find ourselves not wanting to program anymore, and resent ourselves for ever getting into programming in the first place. We can cause ourselves more undue suffering by just "powering through it" which can lead us to compound and complicate our emotional state.
There are some things we can do to understand and help alleviate burnout:
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / blobdiff