So, uh in a few words, this presentation will be about burnout. I don't know if some of you already lived it. In any case, through this talk, I would like to share with you my own experience about it. What was my feelings?How, what I did afterwards to get out of it? In any case, it's each person has its own uh feeling about it. So don't take all I'm saying as the truth, it's not uh it's not the thing. I'm just sharing with you my opinion what I lived and I hope that you will find some answers about it. So, in fact, according to forms and a study made by blind, approximately 60% of tech people experience or are currently experiencing a burnout right now, can you imagine six in 10 people, this is huge mental ill of tech people is in danger. Beno became a sin for all field. But still this is a taboo subject. In fact, many people are still having their own prejudice about it, that burnout victims are fragile, weak minded, not able to manage stress, but it's not that at all because of this lack of information. And those prejudice people going through this tough situation can feel alone and shy to ask for help. And we need to do something about that. And that's why I decided to share my own experience of burnout with you to conscientize people and to help you as well.

If possible, following some specialists, we can qualify the burnout as a collision, a collision between a personality and a context. And this means that some of us are more susceptible to make a burnout than others due to our character and our current lifestyle. And for the personality, you are more suitable. If you are a perfectionist, you have a lack of self-confidence, you are pessimistic, you have a type, a personality or are always in the need of control. But being a perfectionist or having a lack of self-confidence doesn't mean that you will definitely make a burnout, of course not and hopefully, but you need to be careful about that. As I just said, there is also another factor to be taken into account the context following Christina Maslach, the creator of the Maslach burnout inventory and the author of the book, The Truth About burnout, we can identify six main causes, the work overload, a breakdown in community, a lack of control and insufficient rewards, an absence of fairness and conflicting values with the enterprise.

But when you think at those elements, in fact, none of them is exclusively linked to the work. It's more how people can feel in certain situations that can either be linked to the work but to the private sphere as well. So what does it mean? It means that Bernard can find its sources in all or environments, both professional but private as well, thinking that it's only linked to the work is wrong by my side. My burnout began a bit more than two years ago. And at that moment, I was accumulating almost all the personality traits that I mentioned. I was a perfectionist, very pessimistic, always in the need of control. And I always struggled with self-confidence for the context. I'm a software engineer since six years now. And um sorry for the noise.

And uh the beginning of my career has been pretty smooth. I worked in nice companies on challenging projects and I had the chance to work with many people that inspired me a lot and that supported me as well in my tech career. But one day things begin to change and one by one, the context preconditions that we mentioned appeared in my life, conflicting discussions with the client, overwhelming work, double overwhelming work. As my colleague was not working at all, betrayal, injustice, feeling to not be listened to, not count.

Well, a perfect cocktail if I can say the in my personal life as well as I was struggling with a lot of pressure. So I didn't have any escape. In fact, in the very first weeks, my body was warning me very lightly that something was going wrong. Head spinning, tiredness, but I had no time to deal with that. So I just took some vitamins. I went to holidays some days and voila done. But it's not that easy. As soon as I came back to work the first day, my tiredness and my head spinning returned just like if I didn't take any holiday at all. I remember that. I thought there, I won't be able to make it until next year. But which other choice did I have? So I continued, I held on, but pressure was even more intense from that moment. In fact, moreover, my usual work, I had to go through a series of audits and to provide support to the first clients for our platform, all of that alone. As apparently my colleague was extremely busy to provide any help. He was also a bit annoyed that I was asking for this help from him. But in any case for a bit later, I began to lose appetite. And in a bit more than one year, I lost 9 kg.

I went back to my, the weight of my first high school year. It was terrifying me at the moment. It became too hard. So I decided to talk about the situation to my manager, the pressure, the overwhelming work, the guy that was not working at all. I was lucky because my manager always supported me and wanted to protect me. So he directly talked to the superiors of the guy about the situation that I was going through. But those superiors decided to not do anything except giving a promotion to the lazy dude for his good job. So the guy became my team leader. Wonderful. I felt betrayed and value this. Even after asking for help, people decided to not listen to me. The more and more time was passing, the more and more I was feeling despaired and hopeless because I knew that nobody would bring me out of this. Many of my relatives advised me to leave the project in fact, but I didn't want in my head. It was not fair. He had to change something, not me. My convictions were there. But I was already exhausted to fight. Yes. Because each and every morning, I was fighting to tap into my resources to go to work. And as soon as I was coming back to, to home, I was directly going to my bed. I was having no energy anymore. I was exhausted. I was afraid to meet with my family as well because I knew that they would be worried and I didn't want that.

I'm fine. I'm just a bit tired. I was saying, but they were not blind. They saw that something was going wrong and that I completely changed. In a few months, I was crying and getting mad. Each time they were telling me something, I felt guilty and like a burden for that one day. Ah, I also begin to have insomnia and to have nausea each time I was eating and finally I also begin back panic attacks. This was a breaking point for me because in fact, when I was at school, but school was so terrifying me that each and every night I was making a panic attack. Stepping back to that moment of my life broke me in thousands of pieces and one day my mind just broke very often. The guy was criticizing my work. And uh yeah, just like if I was a competing competent. In fact, he just forgot that a few weeks before I was doing exactly the same job without any help from him. And it was fine. It was such an injustice for me each time that he was criticizing me. It's like if a bomb was exploding, my ears were, were hissing, my whole body was shaking, my heart was beating so fast. I thought I could have a heart attack. It was draining all my energy.

And that day, in fact, it's like after the bombs shock, her voice was sobbing and begging me in my head to run away faster and faster and louder and louder. It was screaming to me. I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here. And at that moment, everything got blank. It's like if something cracked in my head that I was disconnected, so I just ran away. Literally, I was in a meeting, I escaped from it. I went back to my home and I cried, I couldn't stop myself anymore. I had the feeling to have lost something important. I was trying to convince me to go back over there. But this time I couldn't. So I called my manager to explain to him that I would not go back to work. And I called my doctor that told me that I was exhausted and very close to burnout. You can continue this way. You need to change something. She said, but changing what in my hand, I just needed one thing to be stronger. I had zero big issues in my life. So no right to feel this way. I just needed to control back the situation and hold on. That's what I was thinking. But I was wrong, I came back to work without changing anything. And after a few months and a new shutdown event, I went back to the doctor that told me that I was in burnout at the end of the way, I was broken and exhausted. I just wanted to sleep and never wake up to that point.

Maybe you're thinking, yes, I'm not exaggerating. In fact, I was feeling so guilty that I couldn't manage the situation. It was just work in my head. I had to manage it, but I was feeling so bad that I couldn't that in my head, I didn't deserve anything anymore. Life. Neither burnout can have devastating effects, but it's certainly not because you are fragile weak or something. People making a burnout are the most engaged ones. You really want to give your best to everyone, but giving your best doesn't mean that you need to be perfect.

People won't blame you because you did a mistake. And if they do, I'm sorry, but they are idiots. We are all human and failure is a right. We need to accept us in our imperfection. With our success, our strength, but also with our doubts, our failures and our fears, we need to accept us as a whole person to deepen the perfection subjects. I really advise you to read Brave Not perfect. The book of RMA Sony, the founder of girls who could. This book has been a revelation for me and really helped me to accept me as I am perfectly imperfect as she is saying, and it helped me to start to change in my life. Ok. But how do we start this change? What is the recovery procedure if I can say? But I'm sorry, but there is no universal magical formula. It would have been way more easy that something was working for everybody. But sadly not each person needs to find its own receipts. The most important is that you need to listen to yourself, to watch your things is saying, do you think it's a good thing for you to begin meditation or sport? Activity hanging out with friends or going into the nature. That's perfect if it suits you the best. If I can just give you one advice, try to not stay alone and try to have support from your family, from your friend, from someone. If you can, in order to do the recovery way, it will help you.

By my side, I found that supports in, through my friends and my family, but I also need you to understand. So I made a lot of research I discussed with other victims. I read books, articles, looked at testimonials, all of that in order to decorticate what happened and how I could avoid going back in that vicious vicious circle. Sorry, this research also helped me to understand me. Who am I, how I'm working, which are my values, my priorities in life. And I think this is a very important step, understanding you, your needs will help you afterwards to listen to you better and to act accordingly in your life. In this research. I also discovered a technique from the psychologist Crystal Pica in her French book, Jon to she's saying, advise you that you would advise a friend. This helped me a lot because it's helped me to accept me as I am. And I would like to share some of the advice that I found for me. Maybe it can help some of you as well. I hope so so to the ones that are pressuring themselves. Stop doing that. I have to do this. I have to do that. Keep cool. One thing at a time today, focus on what is important, feeling better and getting better and stop flogging yourself for that. You're important to the ones that are ruminating. I know it's not easy but try to avoid it. It's toxic for you. Past is past.

Try to focus on the future. What you can do afterwards and don't take the responsibility of everybody on your shoulders about what happened. It's useless and toxic for you to the ones that are adopting, you're someone capable, you know, it, you already did a lot of things, having the approval or not from others won't give more or less value to your work if you want to do something, just remember that you have the skills and the will to do it to everybody.

You're doing your best and that's all what matters. Keep, continue this way through this talk. I try to light up the different steps of the burnout and what can be afterwards victim of a film that is more and more pressing its people. I've been able to get out of it. There's hope today I decided to organize my life around what is important for me, my family, helping the ecology and helping others. I'm now able to listen to myself and to follow my instincts, but I come back from far, far away. Take field is a really bad student. Concerning the mental health of its people. We need to put back the human at the center and we can do that all together. We all have a role to play in this adventure. For some of us, it will begin by an awareness, a work on ourselves to understand us and for some other some other sorry, it will be by providing support and help to people that need it without any judgment. The only thing that we need to remember always is to listen to ourselves. Thank you to all of you for attending the session. I see that we, as I was expecting, we don't have too much time for a question and answer.

But if you have in any case, please, you can contact me. In any case. I uh as I was saying at the beginning of the session, I share my linkedin. You can also contact me through the woman tech uh Slack, please. I didn't stop programming. Uh I'm still uh doing, I'm still a uh oh sorry, I'm still a software engineer. In fact, but now I became a freelancer. I wanted to have that total independence. In fact, in my life, how much time did I did? It took to feel better. Um After the burnout. In fact, I took approximately approximately two weeks to go back to work, but I was only concentrating, concentrating yesterday on resting afterwards. There was all the work to think a bit differently to accept me as I am and to accept that perfection is not a good thing. So, but there is, there was also something else I went back a bit early to work, but uh I was also taking some days off when I felt I needed it. So it was very current that I was uh taking some big weekends if I can stay to rest because in any case, burnout is something that is exhausting. You really thank you all of you for all your comments.

Uh I'm I'm really proud of it and thank you for sharing all your opinion. Uh I'm really happy about that. I see um for the women tech network Slack. In fact, Noel, um you can normally, I guess you should have received a link uh to access the Slack of uh the conference. I'm uh in that slack too. So if you want to send a direct message to me, you can, in any case, do you recommend some books therapies for someone who has gone through burnout and still have pain? Um In fact, uh me as books I read uh Brave. Not perfect. That's really helped me. I also watched the video of fresh misogyny or TED talk about that. The video is recorded as well, Virginie. Um Another book that I read, but that was in French is repre from Cristal particular and um I didn't read it personally, but there is also the book uh called Truth About Burnout but in fact, I more looked at testimonials on, at articles that I read about uh about burnout. Thank you. How do you manage programming and other things in your career? So, um at the beginning, uh when I went back from the bur not, I was still an employee and I felt that something was missing for me. I really liked my company.

It was an amazing uh company and people were really nice, but I needed to work on a project that were giving sense to what I wanted to do. So helping the ecology, that's why I decided to go as a freelancer so that I can have more freedom if I can say to work on the projects that I want and to start projects that I want as well. So, Voila, I hope it answers your question. Oh, I guess that's, it's ok if you have any other question, please, in any case, as I was saying, do not hesitate to contact me. I would be really happy to, to uh to answer you. I think that we can close the session uh Right now. Uh I wish you a very good afternoon. I wish you a very good conference. Take care all of you and thank you for attending. Bye.