Mental Health Matters More Than Meetings

Have you ever been too sad to function? I don’t mean that you’re sad because your favorite football team didn’t make it to the Super Bowl (there’s always next year, Cowboys). Or sad because you missed the latest drop from your favorite designer and now you must succumb to the ever expensive resell market. I’m talking about emotions that penetrate beyond surface level. The emotions that leave you in therapy for more than 8 months trying to find ways to cope with the reality that what has happened is now…part of your life.

Well, what happens when you take that sadness and mix it with the fact that you’re an adult with a full-time job and responsibilities?

You get a visit from a mental breakdown.

Or at least you climb to the precipice of a mental breakdown. That’s where I found myself recently after the passing of my great grandmother followed by the arrival of Valentine’s Day.

My great grandmother passed away a week ago. She lived to be 103 which is honestly amazing for a Black woman born and raised in the South. That hit our family pretty hard and sent me on a spiral of having to mourn another death. Which, by the way, I have a challenge grappling with the concept of death but I’m working on that in therapy.

Valentine’s Day used to be one of my favorite holidays. That was until 2019 when the holiday became more grim than full of love. We almost lost my fiancé that day to a stroke. Ever since then, like clockwork, the events of that day replay in my head every February 14th. And as you could imagine, every traumatic response you could think of occurred throughout my day as I sat on the couch waiting for him to come home yesterday.

And then there’s work.

I shared in my previous post Shift Happens: Turning Career Change into a Power Move that I recently started a new role at work. Things had been going great! I was working on projects that brought me joy. I became responsible for some pretty big stuff that would eventually get my name mentioned in a ‘thank you’ email from stakeholders. The feedback coming in from my manager and our GM was great. I even had meetings lined up with execs to help me expand my network. I was living the corporate millennial dream!

If you don’t personally know me, let me fill you in on the fact that I’m a stereotypical “high performer”. For years, I placed so much value on career and working hard to climb the corporate ladder. I didn’t know what lazy felt like. If you asked me today to complete task x, well, it was completed 2 weeks ago because I anticipated that you’d eventually ask for it. Having a bad day? I’d deal with it after work, never during. I seldom took long periods of time off. And I did all of that with a smile on my face because I knew that one day, I’d reach the top of the pyramid.

Well, at 33, I can conclude that this mindset was so flawed. Have I gotten far in my career taking that path? Sure. But if I could go back and start over, I would’ve focused more on taking care of my mental state before placing my career first. And with the death of my great grandmother, a few other personal challenges, and the traumatic day that is Valentine’s Day on the horizon, I felt myself go numb. Not numb in the sense that I toned everything out and acted like all was normal. I mean numb in the sense that I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think straight. People would speak to me, and I literally heard nothing nor could form any rational thoughts.

That was a red flag and a sign that I needed to take care of my mental state instead of suppressing my feelings (like I usually would).

It took a lot to swallow my pride to say that I needed time off. For the first time in a while, when asked at the beginning of a meeting how was I doing, I responded with ‘Not good.’ It’s amazing how we’re socially conditioned to say ‘Great!’. But any emotion outside of ‘Great’ or it’s cousin ‘Good’ just seems taboo to say in a work environment. Especially when more and more people begin to pile into a meeting.

There was a moment in time during my years in management when I couldn’t fathom taking more than 2 days off work. I had this thought that the team couldn’t function without my presence. And I’ve heard this from other managers throughout my career as well. So ha, I wasn’t alone!

However, that’s not the sort of flex that you think it is. If anything, it’s a tell-tell sign of your inability as a manager to develop your team members to a state of functioning well without your presence. Develop a team to function properly in your absence? Now, THAT is a flex. And if your gut reaction is to argue me down that ‘no, it’s the people on the team’, just save your fingers the keystrokes. I’ve been there. Let’s take some accountability.

Regardless, I’m an IC now and I don’t have the responsibility of a team to manage these days. But instead, I have the responsibility of all the opportunities that were bestowed upon me when I landed my new role. A part of me felt that I was showing a sign of weakness and inability to handle the work that came my way while grieving loss and dealing with heavy emotions.

In my head, I played a mean round of 21 questions. What impression was I making 3 weeks into my new shiny role? Would the opportunities present themselves upon return? Would I be dinged during Connect season (our bi-annual performance evaluation)? Would I be trusted to take on any more big assignments?

Despite all of that, I looked up our bereavement policy, synced with my manager on the length of time I’d be away, and transitioned all my assignments to someone else. All of that was a tough pill to swallow. And I hate taking pills.

I was fortunate enough to have the support that I needed to spend some time away. I didn’t let my pride fully get the best of me. I’d be lying if I said some of those questions aren’t still frolicking around in my head. But the reality of it all is that I needed some time away to work through my mental state before returning to work fully present.

So, my millennial coworkers, if you’re working through a tough time and debating on whether you should take some time to tend to yourself, I encourage you to put yourself first. Check-in with HR to see what benefits may be available to support your time away. When I had to search for our bereavement policy, I learned a lot about various forms of time-off that my employer supports and wish I had known about years ago.

If you’re going to be out but still in the middle of working through some assignments, sync with your manager to see what may be transitioned to someone else in your absence. But do try to leave things in a proper hand-off state. I know that sometimes life be lifeing and you just want to drop everything and wash your hands of what you’re doing. However, try to bring your current assignments to a point where there’s enough context and notes for someone else to pick things back up from where you left off. Before I started my leave, I was working on an important writing piece for work that was just about to enter review rounds. I felt like trash for having to hand it off given the gravity of the matter. However, I pulled together all pertinent slide decks and prior threads about the assignment and shared with my manager so that whoever took over my work wouldn’t be left in the dark. I’m not gonna lie, it took a bit of extra effort to pull that together, but I’d rather leave on a high note for the next person rather than leave someone in a condition of struggle.

Since not all jobs are created equal, if your employer doesn’t support some sort of mental health time off policies, this may be a fine time to advocate for one. That may be a tall order given the current heightened state of lay-offs and budget cuts. However, you don’t really know what’s possible until you try. Change has to start somewhere.

I’m on Day 4 of my bereavement leave and I’m sad to report that I’m still not altogether. Apparently, I left my house keys in the door last night. I gotta pack soon though for my great grandmother’s funeral. I’ll be back in 2 weeks with my next article. I need to spend the rest of my time off decompressing and focusing on getting life in order.

We’ll chat soon!