PurePerformance - You Are Not Broken: A Candid Talk on Burnout & Mental Health with Roman Ferstl

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Three years ago, Roman Ferstl — entrepreneur, founder, and returning PurePerformance guest — found himself experiencing something he struggled to explain to anyone who hadn't lived it. In this episode, he joins Andi Grabner and Brian Wilson to talk openly about burnout, anxiety, and depression: how they overlap, how they build on each other, and what the science of sleep, the nervous system, and neuroplasticity reveals about why recovery is genuinely possible. Honest about therapy, medication, and mindfulness — what worked and what didn't — Roman's goal is simple: if even one person listening takes one sentence away that changes something for them, the conversation was worth having. You are not broken. And it can get better.

It's time for pure performance. Get your stopwatches ready. It's time for Pure Performance with Andy Grabner and Brian Wilson. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Pure Performance. My name is Brian Wilson and as always I have with me my wonderful co-host Andy Krabner. How are you doing today, Andy? I'm doing really good except a little bit of back pain. I made a strange move on Saturday.

I lifted a box that was too heavy and I didn't move it correctly and then I felt it immediately in my back. Lift with your knees. Yeah, I know. I've been doing really good lately. Sorry to hear about your back pain. That's never fun. Although it gives you an excuse to lay in bed longer.

Work from bed. But yeah, no, I've been doing really well lately last few months. It's kind of related to the topic today. Kind of related, yeah, because the well-being of humans is very important. And I have to say I'm really impressed by our guest today that he's getting on the podcast and is discussing this topic. It's a repeating guest. We had him back on April 12, 2021, so more than five years ago,

on the topic on how to scale performance engineering in enterprises, where we talked about how he's passionate about performance engineering, about how important it is to performance tests systems to make sure that they are resilient and that they're also healthy. But today we're switching the topic to, I think, a much more important aspect of software engineering. It's the healthiness, the performance and scalability, if you want to call it, like the resiliency of the humans. How do we monitor that? Yeah. How do we know somebody is not healthy or not resilient or is impacted by

whatever factors. Without further ado, Roman Fierstel, thank you so much for being back on the podcast. And as I said, really thank you so much for coming on the show because I know this is not an easy topic, especially talking about burnout and anxiety and depression. These are topics, also as you have experienced it yourself. So thank you so much, Roman, for being here. yeah hello Brian hello Andy it's great to be back at the show and sorry to hear about your back pain

Andy I hope it was at least beer delivery the big box you did how do you know it actually was a combination of beer and rum oh it was but I think I filled it up

we were doing a little birthday celebration on the weekend and oh so were we yeah it was my wife's birthday and then my wife put together a surprise party for her mother-in-law and her stepdad I guess yeah

big big party week for a big birthday week for us yeah same here my wife's birthday and my birthday so we oh happy birthday you and Gabby thank you yeah good birthday thank you hey Roman would you mind just give a quick introduction

on who you are I know had you on the previous podcast where you talked a little bit about Triscon, but maybe just a quick introduction for people that haven't listened yet to the previous episode. Yeah, sure. So my name is Bromann. I'm from Austria, working in Vienna. I founded the company called Triscon, where we focus on performance testing and performance engineering.

So load and performance tests, stress tests, and also, of course, performance monitoring and observability is our daily bread. And we've been around for about eight and a half years now. It's good to be back after five years. I really enjoyed our first podcast episode as well. Yeah. And our paths crossed a little, it was in Frankfurt, I think, at an event years ago, where we first interacted.

I believe it was Frankfurt. And then we stayed in touch. Obviously, we did a lot of collaboration. you presented it perform, we presented at the Guild, you were on the podcast. We try to do a sync every other week

just to stay up to date with each other between you and Fabian and while we are only a little apart like between Linz and Vienna. Unfortunately, we only see each other off and on but I think it was one of the last times we saw each other. You actually brought up

the topic that you were going through a tough time in your life. Exactly. So I've made actually a decision to deal with it in a very open way. That it's nothing that someone should feel the need to hide. And I was at first already quite open with it in my, I would say, closest surroundings like friends and family. also in the work environment,

but I just extended this. And I really, since we have a very good relationship, and I really felt the personal need to tell you, Andy, what was going on now. And I remember it was in Vienna, we walked around. I think we started at the train station where we have our office and then we walked around a little bit. and chatted.

And then I also said, you know, this is, unfortunately, this is not the first human being that I know in the recent past that had problems, anxiety, depression, burnout. I remember just like a week before talking with a colleague who had similar issues. And this is why I said, Roman, if you are up for it, I know this is not an easy step, but as you're open with this topic, it will be really be good to get you on this podcast, because I know we have a lot of listeners that I'm sure have also either friends, family,

colleagues or even themselves that have gone through a period. And also now seeing everything that is happening with AI, I also know that this brings also additional anxiety to many people. Does this mean I'm out of the job? How does my future look like? I've invested everything in my career and now everything is questioned. or have to change. So I'm pretty sure there's many factors

that contribute to potentially running into a situation where you feeling depressed, anxious or burnout. And Roman, you did a great write-up or I asked you, you know, what should we talk about? Because you've obviously put a lot of time in there to think about this and fight it. And you actually brought up a very good first point, which is the differentiation or the difference

between burnout depression and anxiety. which I never thought about that these three topics should be separate. But can you fill us in? Why is it important for you to differentiate? So I don't think it's necessary important to differentiate. It's more like understanding that these things are usually linked together. So some feel more if they say, they are burned out. Some feel more like the depression side of a burnout. Others feel more the

anxiety side of a burnout. And some just avoid these terminologies in general because they feel uncomfortable using it, which I don't. So anxiety has a lot to do with how actually your nervous system works and how you manage your own thoughts. Depression and burnout is of course highly linked. So some of the people I know they are experiencing burnout in a way that they cannot make it out of bad anymore. Everyone is very exhausted and it's generally very hard to do things and things that you could do effortlessly before are just a taking an insane amount of energy. And for me, actually, it was the opposite,

which is also, I would say, a variant of depression or burnout. So I was in a state, the Americans even have a nice phrase for it. It's called wired but tired. So it's not like you sleep endlessly. It's the opposite. You just don't get tired.

You feel. like under constant stress and a sort of restlessness. You wake up in the night a couple of times having trouble to sleep again. So I actually had nights where I was sleeping for two hours and then I woke up just as I would have experienced sleep for 10 hours with no feeling of tiredness at all. And I was just ready to go, yeah? And of course, this is not a healthy state to be in for a while. Yeah. So that means that lack of sleep in there, because in the end it's still your body doesn't get the time to recover, I guess.

That means after a while you will feel it in your body. Eventually, you have to obviously feel the impact of that lack of sleep. Yeah. So this is something that I honestly believe is one of the core drivers. and core aspects in this entire matter. I rarely heard about anyone experiencing symptoms of this sort who had no trouble with sleep at all. Like if it's too much or to less sleep, it's either or.

But having sleep issues is something that many people have in common. And it's actually also an early size. of when you start to slip into this extreme state, I would say. A lot could be prevented, I believe, if you are still able to get your sleep. And for me, it was actually very interesting to understand how the, since you introduced the episode in a very nice way, so how to monitor the human being. I thought a lot about how we actually work and how sleep and how other effects are actually linked to how we think and feel and function as human beings.

And it's very interesting. One particular thing that I found very, very interesting is so the function of REM sleep, everyone knows what REM sleep is, right? So rapid eye movement sleep. And usually when you go to bed at night, you have like this 19 minutes sleep sectors where you go from like deep sleep to REM sleep. And during the morning phase, like the second half of the night,

you still go through the cycles, but the REM sleep part just becomes more increased. So it's much larger. And meaning when you lack sleep. only about two hours a night. So let's say you sleep for regularly eight hours a night. If you now deprive your sleep for two hours, so you still sleep six hours a night, which is still okay.

Many people function and don't feel a lot of impact, but it actually means that you lose almost 50% of your REM sleep. And this is very important, because the REM sleep is actually the part in your brain where everyone knows like when you have a situation at one day and it really felt upsetting and yeah you probably went through a lot of difficult feelings actually it's the REM sleep that sort of detaches the memory from the emotion and that's why we humans like to sleep over. things because at the next day things may feel different, less intense. And it sort of meant to me also, okay, it somehow makes sense that there is uneasiness and worry that starts to build up faster as soon as you sleep less, because you get less and less REM sleep.

And you get less of that separation. That makes, you know, I've always recognized the, let me sleep on it thing, right? But I never had the knowledge of that separation that occurs during REM sleep. You know, that's really, it really just makes a ton of sense. Yeah, it suddenly started to make a ton of sense to me too. And this is all things that I didn't come up with. So I'm also not, for me, it's important to say, I'm not here speaking to you as a success story or guru or someone who says like I'm through this, I made it. I'm just here to share thoughts that actually helped me.

And there's a lot of content out there. And if someone is interested in this old REM sleep, there is a guy called Dr. Matthew Walker. He is very famous. He's so to say, called the sleep doctor. If anyone wants to dive deeper into knowledge of REM sleep and the functions, that's like a very good place to go. Roman, quick question, because as you talk about this, I just opened up my Fitbit app.

So I'm using Fitbit. I'm sure many people have whatever device. Do you measure your sleep now with the device? I don't. I absolutely don't. And I thought about this very, how should I say, for a long time. I thought, should I monitor my sleep? Should I gather these metrics like I used to do for this IT systems that we're testing and revealing the root cause problems? And I thought there is potential in there to identify, certain habits that you do during the day, which may improve your sleep during the night. So there is a very positive aspect to this. But then I thought, I do not want to become obsessed with the sleep scores and numbers. And I know people who actually monitor their sleep vigorously.

And if you're already in a state where you feel unwell, where you have trouble sleep, you, a lot of stuff is going on in your mind. I felt like I don't want to have another metric where I know that the numbers will be read. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And help for a lot of people. And if someone would want to measure their sleep, I think one of the best ways is the

aura ring. Just look it up. So the aura. The gold standard to get your sleep metrics. They say that it's as good as in a sleep lab, but I personally don't have experience with it. Yeah, I found a very similar thing with, I used to wear an Apple Watch and it would, you know, track my sleep,

tell me how many steps I did during the day, and it became another source of anxiety, especially because I felt like I couldn't trust the Apple Watch because I would sleep maybe eight or nine hours and it would tell me I had 20 minutes of REM sleep. I'm like, that can't be right. You know? Or I would say like I wasn't in deep sleep in late.

It's like I don't even remember the night at all. You know? So I'm like, and it would make me anxious like, well, am I not going into deep sleep? How is this going to affect me? Right. I think it might be, to your point, maybe a good thing to track for a little while

just to help you get back on the way. But as soon as you find yourself obsessing over it, We're thinking about that too much. It's time to just take it off. Because then you start focusing, us being, I think, you know, analysts, we love numbers. We love analyzing things and looking at that stuff. But, you know, even a little while, you know, many years ago,

I used to try jogging, right, and all, and I wore the heart monitor. And I'd be focusing on that while I was running. Instead of just, like, trying to clear my head and run. So I think a lot of times those can be, quite a big distraction if you don't know how to handle it, right? So if you, again, if you're using it and it's fine, great. But if it's a source of anxiety, just like Roman to me, I'd say like you just ditch it, you know,

or maybe see if you can not look at it. Maybe click the data if you have to go back to it, but stop looking at it, you know. Yeah, I have a just, I looked it up on my end, right? But I just wanted to confirm what you said earlier. I definitely have longer REM phases at the end of the night. and overall I got to, I mean, in my app at least, there's some, you know, so-called benchmarks where it compares to the sleeping average of my age group. And it seems I am rather typical everywhere, so fortunately.

But it's interesting. So definitely I can confirm that the REM phases are later in the night, which then also makes sense if you are taking away that piece of the sleep or that time of the sleep that you have, as you correctly said, right, or as you said,

REM sleep is detaching the memory from the emotion, right? Yeah, in simple words, put in simple words. Yeah,

like I understood this, but I think it's, it's, how it works. Yeah. And, yeah, since Brian mentioned already, anxiety,

which is also something that, I think, depression and with anxiety, probably people can have more, let's say, an idea of what it's like. If you've never experienced it in a very intense way, probably it's difficult to understand from the outset, but it's even more difficult to explain someone how feeling burned out or depressed really is like. And I thought about this long and hard because there will be people listening, to this episode who may have people like in the environment who suffer from these things,

or they go through it themselves. And the way I experienced it is whenever I tried to explain what is going on with me, it was like explaining someone who was born blind, and you tried to explain the color red to them. You can like explain it's the color of blood or the color of stop signs and it's flashy and it feels a bit warm. But if you've never experienced any color, it's really, really difficult to actually describe someone the color red. And I think it's with this state of mind pretty similar. If you've never experienced it, it's really difficult to put your in the other shoes.

But I actually found for me, because, well, this was something that really went through my mind a lot, like, how can you make it understandable to others? And I actually found a way which may be of use for some to better understand first, actually, what's going on inside the other person. And if we simply talk about... let's say how a depressed mind works I want to give you an example

of like a daily situation imagine you have a goal set that you want to lose some weight that's like a lot of people have this goal at the moment and then you hit the gym and then you go home or go out with friends and you think about health having dessert. And then a process starts in your mind and there is a voice saying, yeah,

we've hit the gym, we deserve this. Come on, let's have the dessert. And then there is another voice saying, yeah, but we will reach our goal faster. Maybe let's do it tomorrow or no, you shouldn't do this at all until you have reached your goal. So there's like a lot of different opinions going on inside your own mind. Everyone knows this. I think every human being has experienced something similar. And the way you can actually imagine this, because at the end of the day, you make a decision to eat a dessert or not. So actually, you can think of all these different opinion holders as a parliament. It's like a parliament in your brain, discussing whether you should do something or not. And that's like how humans work, right? And nothing there out of the ordinary yet.

But if you have a depressed mind, your parliament tends to be more like in the opposition part. So there is a lot of critic voices. Those are like louder and stronger in comparison to the others. And yeah, if you imagine a person being, imagine a person of what you think that makes you feel uncomfortable. Someone who makes you feel uncomfortable. Like Andy? Yeah. Well, Andy always makes me comfortable.

but I'm sure everyone has a person like that experienced before in their life. And now imagine that this person is somehow within your parliament. And so there is thoughts that are very unpleasant that you usually don't have or pay attention to. And suddenly this becomes louder and it impacts your decisions. And it actually can also fuel the anxiety part because anxiety. part because anxiety, what is it? It's just a worry, a thought of something that may occur in the future, which could be very negative for you. So it's the difference of fear. Fear is something that you experience immediately. Anxiety is usually linked to something that may

occur in the future, which did not occur yet. And suddenly, if you have, you have a lot of this critic parts of yourself becoming louder and more important, it automatically starts to fuel anxiety. And if you link that back to the sleep, if you sleep less, your emotions become detached less from unpleasant memories. So it's actually a cycle to keep this up and going. So all these things are somehow linked together. And I don't know, this is actually the first time for me speaking publicly about this. Also my thoughts, I've heard someone describing these thought processes like a parliament in your head. But not in the way that I put it now, but it's question from me to you too now,

does it somehow make sense? Is it understandable? Oh, yeah. I mean, for me, the parliament in my head is my mom's voice, right? Especially when it comes to talking anything about my parents, but it's like all these objections that I imagine my mom will put up, or anybody, but like, you know, it all started with, everything comes from my mother now.

It all start, you know, anytime, and I say this because I'm curious, you know, I'm sure a lot of other people go through this situation or there'll be something you want to do or something you want to propose or whatever and you'll hear all the objections in your head and then you'll start logically trying to counter them in your head but it's this irrational

imaginary person who's just like well no you know and you can't fight them you can't get past them right and that's very much like the objector in the parliament or if you're like in the states you know the Congress and all that kind of stuff right but it's I think we've lost him now

yeah I think so Yeah, but you're big now. Yeah, but we just lost five seconds of audio. Okay, well, it should be on my side, but I'll say to start over again. What time is it?

It's 939. Now you're out again. Let me turn my video off. So this helps. Can you guys hear me now? Yeah. Okay. You know, I experienced this a lot.

It's usually the voice of my mother or just somebody being stubborn in my head. When I have a thought or idea or something, they'll be, it's almost like in the old cartoons where you have the angel and the devil on your shoulder. I don't know if you had those over in Austria, but it's this completely irrational person saying, like, with irrational arguments against your thought process, right? or what you want to do, or no matter how you try to propose the idea, think of the idea, express what it is, is somebody coming back with a completely irrational thought.

And this all just happens in my head, right? And that drives that anxiety up even before I've gone to do the thing. It's almost that self-sabotaging, which I think anxiety brings a lot into people, is this isn't going to go well. I think the anxiety a lot ties back to imposter syndrome with the whole work side of things. And in my opinion, that then goes back into the depression because you then start feeling like, well, why bother in the first place? Which, you know, the difference between anxiety, at least to me and depression, is, you know, anxiety is worry about stuff.

And depression makes you just not want to do anything. you know and anxiety is a lot more recognizable you can feel it I tend to think of it like depression is a tsunami out in the middle of the sea it's there it's mild you can't really notice it because you know if you're in the middle of sea it's just like

the levels higher something's moving but it's not like a big wave but when it's crashing on shore that's the anxiety it's very obvious it's very worrisome it's very kinetic right but yeah I think your parliament explanation at least to me makes perfect sense it's that you know you see it all the time on TV too right I'm not sure if your politics get broadcast on TV like ours do right but like it's just somebody saying the dumbest thing you're like but this is we need this thing and someone's putting up the

dumbest argument and you're like yeah for me Roman it also resonates but when you brought up the word parliament the first time I had it a slight a similar but slightly different scenario mind, I thought about a coalition where you have to come to a majority to vote and then you never get the majority, like the two or third majority. It's like you have all of these voices in your hand

and then they keep discussing and keep discussing and there's no conclusion and therefore you end up doing nothing because there's no conclusion of what you do. And this could be also something where I thought depression is something where you're just like, your lack of enthusiasm

your lack of energy you're not doing anything in the end because there's so many voices in your head that are keeping debating what's the right thing to do and in the end there's no consensus and therefore you don't do anything but I think for me visually it makes a lot of sense

that's the state that you describe is actually something that would be the paralysis paralysis well. Ah, okay.

That's cool. Yeah. You pronounce it for me now. Paralysis. Paralysis. Thank you. All right. Yeah.

So paralysis is also something that can be happening if it comes to anxiety. Everyone knows this. Like if you're in a situation and something you didn't expect and your mind is suddenly empty or too many things are going on at the same time and you are not able to act and decide what to do. Actually, anxiety is something that ultimately can be broken down to how your nervous system also works, right? So basically we have two major parts, like the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous

system. And the sympathetic nervous system is called the phympathetic nervous system. is called the fight, flight, freeze response system. So it's, for instance, like ancient human beings, if a very dangerous animal in the jungle is appearing in front of you, it's like the sympathetic nervous system, trying to call you up to action and saying, we need to fight, flight, or freeze,

and just play dead. And playing dead and freezing is actually just what you describe. and with just a parliament situation. And so one thing is actually if you are very stressed and your cortisol level is very high. So everybody of us experiences stress during the work, right? So every human being is experiencing stress in some sort of way. But stress has really become a pandemic, I would say. So a lot of unhealthy stresses out there in the world

and people must do, in my opinion, tremendous job to maintain and still stay healthy and happy as a human being despite the stress. What it causes is actually a rise of your cortisol level and it's linked to the nervous system. So your fight, flight, freeze response system gets activated more and more intense when the cortisol levels are high. And this also determines your way of thinking.

So if you are slipping into this state of mind where you feel stressed out, burned out or whatever you call it, there is a high chance that you should not try to make any hasty, like because the way it works your mind will produce thoughts and solutions that actually are in aligned with the fight, flight freeze response it's like oh my god it's my life is over I'm never going to work again this company it doesn't work out I need to quit immediately yeah like thoughts like this this is actually just the the flight response yeah It's like I'm in danger.

I need to leave this situation immediately, but it might not be true. But it's what will, just from a physiological point of view, it's inevitable to have these thoughts when you feel stressed out. Because your thinking just narrows down to these three options. Being aware of that was very important for me. I have a story about that. I've got stories about everything. But when I, so it's interesting because you're talking, you know, just going back to the idea of the openness of talking about therapy, at least here in the States, I think a lot of people became a lot more open about it during COVID, right? Because I think a lot of people like started realizing they needed that. And especially some other things going on in our environment, you know, we had quite a lot to deal with. And I finally went to therapy. So I have a special needs daughter. at home and one of her things is like crazy behaviors right and i'd gotten to the point where

she would do the smallest little touch of her crazy behavior and i would automatically react to an extreme level so it was that fight level that was coming in um and it was affecting my family like it was just like the slightest little bit from her i'd be like ah you know and uh when i went to therapy and again I'm just mentioning the med in case people want to look into it or if they have a therapist, my therapist gave me something called propranolol. What propranolol does, it does a lot of things, but they've done the studies with it where it helps suppress that fight-flight reaction. So instead of immediately going into that situation, you're a lot calmer about it.

And it doesn't like make you calm, calm, you know, but like you just don't have that knee-jerk reaction as they say. So the reason I bring it up is usually you can tell if you're in that situation where you react quickly to anything. As soon as something happens, you have a reaction like immediately and it's an extreme reaction. That's that piece. That's the sympathetic side kicking it. And I think it's important to recognize when you're doing that because not only is that going to affect your own health, but it's going to affect people around you because you're becoming a very volatile person. Right. and to me it was just

I mean again I'm not here to promote but for me I would say I felt zero side effects from it that only lasts for like two hours right so you take it as needed I guess if you're in a situation where you need that if you're going to if you're like a hunter or something maybe you don't take this

because of a bear is charging at you you want that flight response or I guess you want to freeze in that point but I think this is where medications can really come handy, but recognizing those situations is very key. And I don't know if you went through that situation where you were just overreacting to everything.

But if you're a listener and you feel yourself doing that, that's definitely something, you know, to recognize is going to have an impact. I know part of this whole idea of this episode is to encourage people, you know, therapy's fine, like at least talk to someone about it, right? but it's definitely a real thing that has tremendous impact. Absolutely, yeah. Thanks for sharing your story as well. It's really interesting to hear.

And that's also one reason why I decided to come to this podcast. I've just realized the moment I started to speak up, like what was going on in my mind and sharing things. people felt more comfortable actually opening up and telling me about what's going on in their life. And I mean, it's what's life about. It's all about human connections, right? So we have, I can, for instance, explain, like, the thought process of mine was like, so maybe to give you a timeline, three years ago, I experienced these symptoms for the, for the,

for the very first time I didn't know what hit me. It was like I didn't experience anything similar in my entire life before and it's like you're knocked into a different life so suddenly and you don't know if you ever like get back to the other side because it's just a different state you're in that you've never experienced before. So it's like when the anxiety side kicks in And you start to have thoughts like, oh, how is my life going to work out if this happened to me now? How in my case, should I run my company? How should this work? And a thousand thoughts like obligations and whatever I felt that I had to do still in my life suddenly became viewed on the different angle.

and you mentioned something very important actually two things it's medication and therapy I'm not a doctor I'm not going to name any medication or give some suggestions here I just want to say a few things to it I know that it can help I've seen a lot of people taking medication like for many years years to deal with such things. And there's a lot of rumors out there, like that medication may change, like, your character or something. That's all bullshit.

I would have never observed this for anyone that is close to me. So if you're already suffering to some degree, if you're just having trouble sleeping, even, and you're not at a very, very bad place yet. trouble sleeping, it's always worth to go to your doctor and speak about this. Because as mentioned earlier, it's usually a cycle and many things that are linked to each other, which then can lead to a very bad situation. And the sooner you do something about it, the easier it is. And obviously, therapy and being able to talk to someone is very, very important.

It's one of the most important things was for me not therapy itself, although I do have experienced there as well, but being able to talk to people who have experienced similar things, because if you start to feel and live things the very first time in a completely different state that you've never experienced before, it can feel very lonely because the people you usually talk to, your closest friends who have never experienced this before, they cannot relate. And you don't even want them to relate because it would mean that they would need to go through the same things, right? But being able to talk to about this and learning how others deal with it and get better and that it's absolutely 100% possible to get. better even to leave this behind and live a joyful life.

That is something that I want to say on this episode as well. So if you're going through something and it feels like this is like a very low in your life and you wonder if it can get better, it can get better. I know it can. And there is certain things that I'm going to say in a couple more minutes. where I can actually prove that it's possible to get better, no matter how bad the situation is, if it comes to this, of course, mental states I'm talking about them.

So regarding therapy, I want to also mention my thoughts here. So it's a super complicated topic in Austria. I think it's about 23 different types of psychotherapy are legally licensed and approved in Austria. And they all have different names. And if you're just a regular average show person with regular problems and you want to decide you want to go to a therapist, usually you wouldn't pay attention and I didn't as well to what sort of therapy type it is. Does it matter? You don't, you haven't studied it. You don't know like what it's about. It's just like for you, it's a person you're going to talk to about your problems, right?

But there is actually a huge difference. If you're already having, at least that's again, just speaking from my experience. I think the most important part, like everyone will say is that you should have, feel, some sort of connection, like, to the other person, like to the therapies, to someone that you're talking to. So you should really get the idea that he or she gets me when I talk. And that is one important thing, but still, if you are in the state of, let's say, burnout, anxiety, whatever you call it, and you have a lot of worry going on in your head and thoughts, that are maybe even racing or ruminating about something.

And you decide to do a very traditional analytical psychotherapy approach where I'm now over-exaggerating. I imagine yourself lying on a couch, speaking for an hour, and now that a person is just listening and making notes. This can actually be something that keeps up the cycle of, of your anxious thoughts, because in a very analytical approach, you share a lot of things what's going on inside your mind, but it's not really about how do I deal with it. What can I do to actually improve?

And there is one form. It's called cognitive behavioral therapy. And this type approaches it in a very different way, the entire topic. it's all about skills and tools, how to deal with certain situations, with your own thoughts, with certain feelings. So you feel like there is something that I can do to actually improve the situation. It's more, if you're more like a practical mind, this, at least from my experience, is something where you see changes a little bit faster.

and of course all of the therapy forms they serve their purpose and they have the red to exist. It's just I personally believe that this one particular form differentiates from the others in a very fundamental way. And if someone is out there thinking about doing therapy, which is always a good thing to do, these are my thoughts that I wanted to share yeah I think so my therapist is more of the we talk right but he doesn't just sit there and take notes and go

so how does that make you feel right it's a lot more like probing on some of the stuff but also guiding me to realizations about that behavior and helping me discover tools to use to deal with it, right? So to your point, I'd say, you know, liking your therapist and feeling comfortable with your therapist is the number one thing, right? If you don't like your therapist,

if you feel like it's a chore to go, if you don't get along with them, if they don't understand you, it's not going to work. And drop it. Go to go to somebody else, right? It's very important, especially, you know, I don't know if therapy is covered over in Austria, but here in the United States, it's mostly not. You know, you get a few dollars towards. each session, you know. So don't, you know, you're going to be spending some money to go therapy if it's $10 or if it's $300, right? So you're the shopper, make sure you like your therapist.

That's very, very, very important. My therapist does, both can prescribe and we do those sessions. So, you know, a lot of times people will go to, what is it, I forget which one can prescribe. I always forget the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. One's a doc, you know, an MD, the other one isn't. But a lot of times, the prescriber. ones just prescribe your pills and don't do anything. And then you go to talk therapist and they just do the talking thing. I love that I have a combined one because they're directly getting feedback of how

the medication's working. And it's, yeah, it's just very, very important on that side. The other thing, too, with medicine I wanted to bring up and my wife who just walked by is going to claim she takes credit for this. But I didn't hear it until my therapist said it. I had the idea, like, I'm going to be stoic, I'm going to solve all these problems are within myself. I'm going to work on myself and fix it myself, even though it's hard. And he just said, you don't get anything written on your gravestone that says you got through life without medicine. It doesn't happen. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking the help of medication.

And yeah, you shouldn't. If you're feeling it, if people are saying it's changed you in a weird way, it's probably not a good medicine for you. or you're on too much. But I can say from personal experience, like it's just, it should be very, very subtle, you know,

um, but these are important things like be choosy. Understand what you're shopping for. You know, because that's going to make a world of difference in how this works. Because I'm sure you've talked to people. They're like, yeah,

I tried therapy, didn't work this and that. Uh, I kind of feel like, that's like Frank Zappa, the musician. If you don't like Zappa, you haven't listened to the right album yet. If you don't like therapy, you haven't found the right therapist yet. Or the right kind of therapy. But there's something out there that's going to connect with you.

I think the one other thing that's important to mention too, and I know I'm going off on a little tangent here, but this is especially true, I think, for men, right? Men are very emotionally bottled up. Men don't talk about things. Men don't talk about their problems. So at least having a therapist is bare minimum of what you need, because you need someone. where to let that out. A lot of men in their 40s to 60s die of heart attacks of stress and all this kind of stuff, right? And this isn't to diminish anything on the female side, right? But I think women are generally a lot more open about their emotions, especially when they talk to each other. Men aren't going to typically sit around drinking a beer saying like, oh, if you're really sad,

you know, and this is happening, right? So therapist is good for that. But also find a group of friends that you can have those conversations with, just like you and Andy had that conversation, right? There's such a stigma on men to not open up about their emotions. And this is not a manosphere or, you know, the anti-women men's group kind of thing. This is more about like, as a man, it's very important to open up about your emotions because we're trained at birth not to, right, at least especially here in the United States, right? Everyone's got to be tough and macho and all that. I don't know if that's over where you guys are,

probably somewhat of it, right? You know, everyone wants to be Arnold. But, yeah, having people that you can have those discussions with comfortably is important. And the thing is, to your point, you don't know who you can talk to about that until you have those discussions, right? I remember even when I started going to therapy, I'd be at work and I'd be talking to my colleagues and you're like, oh, I have my therapist appointment. I would just say it out loud.

And they're like, oh, I go on Tuesday. Right? And suddenly you start finding more people out there doing this stuff. And then that breaks the ice and allows you to talk to more people about these things. Not that you want to unload on everybody. Right. It's the idea of like someone asks, a stranger asks, oh, how are you doing? You're like, oh, great, even though you're not. But you're not going to unload on a stranger.

But Andy asks, how are you doing? I'll probably go be honest with him, you know. Anyway, that's what I was going to. say. I don't know how to wrap that up, Andy. I don't have to... No, I want to... No, no, that's... I wanted to... It also something, if you don't talk, you don't even know if somebody, even within your close friends groups, has gone

to this. And this also happened to me just a couple of days ago where we were at a party with friends, right? And the topic came up, and one of my friends actually said, well, I'm going to therapy. And I never knew and I never thought about it. And then we had a long time. longer discussion about this. So it can also happen within your friends. Like Roman knows you proof with me. It's just, you know, once you bring it up, you all of a sudden learn that this also

exists in your close group of friends, even though maybe nobody dared to bring it up. Yeah, we need to normalize talking about it. Yeah. I mean, especially these days, you know, it's like change happens so randomly. been through so many events. Historic events happen much quicker these days.

It used to be like there'd be big time gaps, but we had COVID. We had everyone's had some crazy political stuff in the country. We had 9-11 for, you know, I'm at least talking for the United States. We've had the 20 years of war. We've had so much insanity going on that it's like you

can't just deal with it. If these things happen once every 10, 15, 20 years. Probably not good. But you're, you know, we're all trying to survive in this insane world. Now you've got AI coming in, right? This social media, all kinds of craziness from that, right? There's so much going on.

There's no way a human can just deal with it. We have way too much novelty, as some might say, going on in the world. And it's more than we can take in and process. And it's okay to be like, yeah, I can't, I can't process this. It's too much. Hey, Roman, I got a question for you, kind of going all the way back when you said three years ago, this is when this started. How did you, what was the first step that you would have maybe said, you would have done sooner,

like from realization to then taking a step, or was there something where you said afterwards, I wish I would have seen this particular sign sooner so that I have to take an action sooner? Let me think about that. I thought about the why a lot. Since it's in my nature sort of way to understand why certain things lead to problems, if I now project this to work, I kind of fell into the same mindset. And it's very difficult to do this. with your personal life because there is not usually the single thing that makes the difference.

Usually if it comes to these kind of things, it's a lot of different things that may be linked to each other happening at the same time, which ultimately lead to you being in a very different place than you were maybe a couple of weeks before. So for me, it went very fast and I took action very fast. I did not hesitate to take the help that was available to me. And I had a great team of employees who were very loyal during that time. And I could rely upon them that the daily business is running even without me, who's the head of the company there every day.

And that was a sort of very important experience for me to make as well. Because when you found a company and you started yourself and you get your first employee and so a lot of stuff depends on you. And it really always feels like there is so much dependence on yourself as a person that it's difficult to imagine that things are actually, you've set it up perfectly, if things are running smooth even without you. And I was able to make this,

I would even say wonderful experience thanks to my team, which ultimately helped me to focus on myself and get better. And it didn't take so long. And when I say not so long, some people fight this for many, many years. I actually, over a time of about six to eight months or something like that, I became so much better and happier again in life. And this was three years ago, and I was able to do my job with energy and passion again,

which I'm doing right now as well, and it's great. And it doesn't mean that you never experience something similar again in life. And this was also something that since I recently, like the beginning of the year, realized, all right, so I experienced symptoms which are very alike and they're very unpleasant. And it helped me to take action even faster to avoid slipping into a very, I would say unpleasant state where I don't want to be, but this is not something that, where I could provide a recipe for. To give you an example, maybe it's a good idea to give an example of what it was like three years ago. So my daily work was working with my customers,

working with my team, with partners. And I usually like being in the middle of the field, solving performance problems. It's something that I really enjoy. And actually reaching a state of burnout or whatever you call it from my personal experience has nothing to do with the amount of hours you put in. Of course, if it's like 120 per week, probably. it is, but if you do 60 hours a week and you absolutely do what you love, it's very unlikely to reach the state that I was describing earlier. It's actually when things occur in your life

and those are difficult to deal with and you sort of have to figure it out or try to achieve some goals anyway, right? Or feel like you don't have another option. It's when this pressure starts to build up. It's when you start to experience more stress and sleep less. And I think everyone knows that there is no perfect, independent human being who says, like, it doesn't matter what happens in the world. I will always be fine. That would be a very inhumane thing, at least from my experience. To give an example, some things are just outside of our control, right? And we need to accept that.

I was experiencing a lot of stuff in my role as a managing director. So one story is three years ago I decided to do a trip to the USA. Actually, it was sort of like a nice idea of a present. to my parents, they are traveling a lot, but they are not so well in English-speaking countries when they try to navigate through themselves. And so I thought it might be a very nice idea to have, let's say, like a family trip. And the last time I traveled with them to the, in general, it was 20 years ago. And so we decided to go to New York, Washington, and also the Niagara Falls. It was beautiful.

and it was already a very intense time before that. So I was very looking forward to this holiday. And during the holiday, I received certain information from one of my most loyal employees. And those were that one of our customers, which we were working, we were working, a very long time, many years together with them. Did a great job, almost too great the peers since they decided to make offers to our employees or to my employees to become employees of their own company. I think the English word is called poaching.

It was for me a very huge customer and I had a couple of people in there and since we're not a big company. I was on holiday with my parents receiving updates on this matter and something, suddenly this came up, right? And I remember the thought process that I had, like, what are they going to do? It's absolutely out of my control. I'm on the other side of the ocean. I can't really even, like, get into this situation. What will be there when I get back?

Will I still, like, have a company? like half the company what like what is it going to be like and it was of course very difficult to then you know like enjoy and recharge your batteries um during the vacation ultimately it turned out to be the story went on and it was not you know finished when i got back but ultimately i had turned out that i have a very loyal team and only um one of them decided to take upon this offer. And also him, he made a personal decision and I wish him all the best. But of course, this was very difficult time for me because when you experience something

like this and it's your company, the thing where you put many hours of your lifetime the last decade into. And suddenly it's such existence. substantial thoughts that appear, it's difficult to just say, like, yeah, but I'm going to deal with those tomorrow. Just going to enjoy the Niagara Falls for now. I tried to. I was able to, to some degree, but I was not able to, yeah, it was one of the many puzzles or domino stones that played a role in my journey. you know. I was wondering if you, you bring that up, that example up, and in my head, at least I'm thinking that sounds more like an anxiety-inducing situation. But also, you know, with work, I think there are two main things that can happen, anxiety and burnout. I was wondering if you could like talk about the difference between the two and how you might be able to recognize what's burnout versus anxiety. I think usually anxiety probably comes before the burnout. Like, at least in my head, it's like,

prolonged anxiety leads to burnout. But, you know, I think a lot of times people are like, I don't know if this is just anxiety or burnout. Not that it necessarily matters, but I think in knowing how to deal with it, if you can recognize which one it is, there's different ways to deal with them. What have you come across in your time looking at this stuff?

Absolutely. It's an important topic. So let me think about how to put it in the best words. to be honest I think what I saw I'm also talking to other people I think

burnout slash depression can lead to anxiety and anxiety can lead to burnout and depression. It's like those it's like what comes before the hen or the egg

so I think one situation can lead to another and it doesn't necessarily need to be the anxiety part, the first one to appear. But usually it is for many people that I talk to. Because what is anxiety? So anxiety, I tried to explain it before, it's worrying about something that's happening in the future,

me worrying about a situation that is out of my control where I don't have any influence and just need to. to see how it plays out, right? So this is where anxiety can have, so to say, it's like the ground where it's nourished. So worrying thoughts are the nourishment of anxiety. Anxiety then leads to these physiological symptoms, like increased heart rate, tightness in your chest,

and a feeling of uneasiness. feeling stressed out. But they all originate in one thing, and that's actually the thought. So this was something that was very important for me to understand what is at the top of everything, at the top of burnout depression and anxiety. At some point, it's thoughts.

And if you don't deal with it, in a very healthy way, it can have physiological impacts and the burnout depression side, since you wanted to talk about the difference. So when you are in a very depressed state, things that you usually liked to do, enjoy it to do, it's just different, right? You don't have enough sleep. You feel different. The things you do the same, you act the same, but it just isn't the same. Your partner is still there. The love that you get from other people is still there. You just can't feel it. You hear the jokes, the funny jokes. You can actually rationalize that those jokes are very funny and under other circumstances, you would really feel joy and love about them,

But you can't because your mind is in a different state. And that is when the depression and burnout side is more appearing, more intense or in focus in comparison to the anxiety. And of course, the exhaustion. We haven't talked about the exhaustion. So you start to do something and suddenly you are way more exhausted than you used to be, even for simple tasks, this is also something that is very typical if you feel burned out. It's like having an ice cream cone with some delicious ice cream,

but your taste buds aren't working and you can't taste it. You know it's probably really good, but you're like, eh, can't taste it. It's a lot of, I think I remember from COVID, one of the side impacts that some people have lost a sense of taste, right? Yeah. And I really, you know, I really like your analogy now. I like the parliament analogy. But I think this one is also really interesting. Because I think we can all, at least I also know,

personal experiences where your state was in a different mind when somebody was telling a joke, but you were currently focused on something else. And you knew it's funny, but you couldn't really enjoy it. But I've never experienced this as a constant state. This is exactly what it is, right? That's a very good comparison. Because sometimes you may have, you know,

you heard about, you know, some relative, you know, passing away. And obviously this depresses you, but you're in a situation where somebody tells a joke because they don't know. So you are fake a laugh, even though you don't feel happy. And I think that's a great analogy.

A great analogy. It's a good explanation, yeah. I think the key there, as you said, Andy, is it's that constancy. and I know Robin U. That's the big difference. Roman, I have another question for you.

So first of all, earlier, when you said about, you analyzed, where did everything start? And you had the analogy of your job where you're analyzing distributed systems.

I would actually argue that it is kind of similar because in distributed systems, small changes from multiple different things can have an impact that then has a bigger blast radios. I think the difference is when you're looking at a system, like in our job as performance engineers,

we're analyzing a system that somebody else built, that somebody else is operating, and then it's easy for us as an outside observer with our experience to then give recommendations. And I say, hey, of course, the queue is too small. There's not enough threats, and this had a rippling effect. Doing it on yourself is probably really hard, because sometimes you don't really have this outside view

or at least you have perceived all of these changes that happened around you and then you can make a rational analysis and piecing it all together. My question now is if you're going through this phase and you have, like you said, six to eight months you came out of it, you are enjoying work again,

enjoying life again. How, is there anything you do now that keeps you in the day? state? Is there something that you constantly do now that you haven't done before? And I come back to how I started the episode. My back pain is not only caused by lifting the heavy weight. It's also because last time I had this issue, I got some things I should do normally on a regular basis, some exercises. And obviously you only do it when it starts hurting. You don't do these exercises when it doesn't hurt, even though you should, because I have a general problem with my

back. So now I'm asking you, is there something that you now do on a continuous basis to prevent a future incident like this to happen? Since it's in our human nature to like to control things, and this is one, actually one thought of that I had to let go of. to actually be able to control these kind of things. You cannot know, like, a lot of things can happen in your life that lead to you being in a very, very bad place,

which is only natural, and it's out of your control. Of course, you can do things to improve your well-being and mental health. It's not like you're not able to do anything, but it would be presumptuous for me to say that if you do these things, then you're totally safe from everything. I'm just wondering if you found something for yourself. Yeah, absolutely. I did, actually. What I liked, I remembered things that I really enjoyed in the past, and one of these things is playing badminton. So sports, and it really helps me to just be in the

moment. It's not such a popular sport in Europe. It's very big in Asia. And I'm doing this with quite an intensity a couple of times a week in a group. So you do something in a group. It's fun. It keeps you in the moment. And that is what I enjoy about it, because it's a very fast sport, and you don't really have time to think about anything else. But it's actually, How do you discover these things for yourself? I think, and this is something that I also have to learn, it's not something, because people say like, oh, you're anxious or depressed.

You should do meditation. You should do breathing exercises. You should start journaling. There is tons of material out there that you could do, and those may help. none of it is actually guaranteed. So I would encourage people to actually try the things that feel right to them. And of course, try out new things, but do not try to discover a solution by finding an activity,

the right activity, which knocks you out of this state. That's not how it works. And I think one important thing is that to accept that these things, they don't come and go in a day. So you need patience. It's not like you can expect a huge change within one week, right? If it's like a sort of crisis you're in, it's going to take time and that's okay. And it's something that at the very first time, if you're used to be in a high pressure, high stress environment or job with a lot of expectations and dependencies you need to manage, suddenly not being a part of this, taking yourself out of this, that this is even an option is usually the first step.

And I believe it's more like the things that really help in that moment is the mindset. For me, it was something that needed to change in the mindset that actually helped me to experience less pressure from outside and inside them. Yeah, I think that the big conundrum in that situation, though, is like I completely agree with the idea of like getting an action. activity do something, right? Whatever it might be. But it's also the catch 22. I don't know if you're familiar with that phrase, but like, you know, damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of thing is when you're in these kind of states, it's really hard to motivate yourself to actually get out and do something. And you go back to why bother is it's not going to do anything, right? You know, the parliamenter, the parliament comes back and argues all against it, right? And, you know,

my one bit of advice would be just go and don't stop until a few times at least. Maybe you discover you don't like that activity, but you're not going to know from the first time, right? If you had never played badminton before, right? When you went, if you get there, people are going to probably be kicking your ass in it.

And you're like, oh, I'm terrible. This is no good. Of course you're going to be terrible. You're just starting, right? It's okay to be terrible at something when you start, right? Just go. And over time, you'll feel better. But the thing is you're out,

you're having a good time and don't even worry about how you perform at it right if you think your journaling is terribly written who cares you're doing it if you're terrible at bedman you'll get better over time and you're not going to win a gold medal than anything so don't put the pressure on it you know um the other thing i think is really important and i love the way you talked about you know analyzing the system so for a while my my idea had been like there are three main outside factors that impact you friends family and job right so we can think about that as infrastructure, code execution, and real user performance. Right? If they're all running great, you're doing fine. But I think when all three, those things, those three items being in good states is a lot more rare in everybody's life. You'll have times when they are. But to me, it's like if you have two out of the three in balance, you're generally good. the bigger problems come when two of those factors are sources of pain, depression, whatever.

That's when it gets really hard because you have two-thirds of, let's say, the world against you. But if you can identify at least where those sources are coming from, like you identified, it was your work thing. You know, at the one point, okay, I can identify everything's going well with my friends, but it's my family and my job that are stressing me. out you then at least have the areas that are you know your safe areas with your friends at that point but you also know what areas to work on and then i think roman one of the things you said that was very very important is understanding what you can control and what you can't control and not letting the things you can't control get you i mean i know you see it in the movies all the time the the what is it the um serenity prayer whatever for like uh you know alcoholics anonymous like give me the strength to deal

the things I can, you know, be at peace with the things I can't, right? The things that are happening outside, like, I can't control what's going to happen on global politics, right? So, let me not stress about those. Let me work on the things that I can locally, and let me figure out which area that it's in. One thing that can happen, though, at least for me, for my own personal story, because I went through a really tough time with work recently, there's a difference between when one of those things is not going well and when it's really out of proportion, right? Even if it's really out proportion, even only if one thing is going wrong, it could be really devastating. So if you're feeling like, yeah, two to the three are going well, why do I

feel this way? Well, maybe it's that one is really way out of whack, right? And this is when you, again, have to think like, I need to do something. I need to talk to somebody. I need to see if therapist, maybe I need to go on medication or at least just have those conversations with my friends. But, yeah, I just found that very helpful for myself, looking at it that way. And I also started getting into Camus. It was a Camus? Who's the absurdist one? I always confuse Aber Camus with the other author, the idea of absurdism, right?

the concept of imagine Sisyphus happy, right? So Sisyphus is the Greek legend, whatever. He'd keep rolling the bowler up the hill. And everyone's like, oh, that's so miserable. But the idea of this is like, well, imagine him happy. Like saying like, yeah, this is my lot in life, so I might as well enjoy it. Or if things are going bad and everything's terrible, go have a beer with a friend. You know, your house is burning down.

Can't do anything about it. Go drink a beer. You know, or whatever it is. You know, find a way to just like. Like, everything's, everything's on fire. I mean, that's the state of it. Right. Anyhow, I'm babbling here.

But, you know, point is stuff is very, very important to talk about, right? Yes. And everybody you meet, you're meeting a character of them, right? You're meeting what they present. Inside, everybody is going through the same issues. everyone's having fears, everyone's having doubts, everyone has bits of anxiety, everyone has either longer or shorter bouts of depression, right? Recognize it in everybody. We're not different like that, you know? And if you open up just a little bit about what you're going through,

chances are they're going to jump at the chance to open up. And then the two of you can really just have a real conversation and feel better at the end of it. But like, we're all hiding stuff inside. Everyone who looks, like I look at you, Roman, right? If I didn't know

this stuff, you're wearing a nice shirt, your hair is well done and all, you've seen put together well. I could be like, oh, this guy's not going

through anything I am. You are, right? You know, it's like everybody is. Yeah, don't chat to book by its cover,

right? Yeah. Now I actually, to be honest, I do feel great and fine at the moment. And life straight. So that's,

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I want to actually, and a thanks for a compliment, I want to actually pick up on something you said. It's a very important concept that helped me as well. You called it friends, family, and work. And there is a concept, just in a nutshell, not something I came up with. I think it was Adler, one of the famous psychologists,

who actually defined these. There's three pillars of where you put yourself on it. And that's just the way that you described it. If one pillar breaks, there is still two others to hold you standing upon these pillars. And if there is two that are breaking, then it's already quite a difficult and bad situation and you don't feel well anymore. And of course, it's like in life, since Andy mentioned, like what? What is a good thing, like, to most likely avoid having a super intense crisis? Of course, it's like similar than if you think about investing, you don't want to put all

your piece in one pot, right? So if your entire life is just about work and the other parts are very minor, play a minor role in your life, if work pill, if the work pillars, starts to crumble, there is nothing else there to hold it. And this is something that I actually tried intentionally to build up in my life. I started to live my friendships more intense and intimate by just talking about feelings and what's actually going on and going beyond the superficial side that we sometimes try to keep out of comfort.

And another thing is, of course, a pillar for me, like the sport that I'm going to do where I don't need friends to do it because I have a whole different group there or a trainer or something was the family part. And it's not some, these are pillars that you don't build in a day, right? So it's just something that helps to keep in mind that it's, um, a very good thing for you and your mental health, to have these different areas, of course, in your life that are not heavily linked to each other. Sometimes people run family businesses and even employ friends. That's a very, very brave thing to do. But of course, everyone can build their life as they like.

I really like what you said about the pillars because I never thought about the aspect you said about them being equal in terms of how much of a part of your life they are right? So in my head it was like you're talking about the strength of the pillars right? If they're all sound, they're going to support

if one of them becomes unsound, it's going to break but the way the additional dimension you added to is the pillars need to be approximately the same height to support the structure well and if one is much taller than the other you're going to have a lopsided building which might slide off its end anyway

so that just adds that new dimension that you gave me something really strong to think about in terms of the balance between the three because I definitely think we do tend to favor certain ones right but yeah it's amazing thank you

you're welcome it's just like I've never thought about these things for years ago. Yeah. And it's actually thought a lot about should I do this podcast or not. And one of the inner drivers from me, actually, there were two, but one of the inner drivers were that I heard a lot of mindset and thoughts and concepts in the last months

and years that really helped me. And sometimes it's just. this one sentence that someone says and it leads you to suddenly look at things in a different way. And I've experienced this in the past a lot. And I decided if only one person listening to this podcast can take one sentence that helps him in his daily life. in any way, I'm already happy that I've done it. It is definitely an awesome way to summarize also what we've discussed so far.

And also, I think there will be more than one person that will benefit from this. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. And also I mentioned before we hit the record button that I had also time in my life where I went through strange situations but I never knew what it is

now hearing in the very beginning from you on your sleep issue right where you only had two hours of sleep and then you were awake and then we went on and did you work and then went back to your regular day. I had the same thing about 20 years ago and it also went

over a longer period of a couple of weeks but then really also felt and felt the physical impact it had on my body. I mean, back then I was in my 20s, so I guess I could withstand that pressure, or my body could handle it a little bit longer. But I never thought about this, that this could be a potential sign of depression or anxiety burnout.

And I think this is also why this will not only help people, that this discussion will help people, A, that are currently experiencing symptoms, I guess, and now understand how they can, how they can, you know, analyze them and how they can, that this could be a problem. It also helps people that may have gone through this in previous times and didn't know, but now understand these signals. And it will also help the people that, fortunately until now, never had to go through this, but I think it will help them to understand

why this can happen and how important it is to open up to other people and listening to them and I think also with the analogies that you brought with the parliament and with the joke that you cannot enjoy I think this also helps a lot of people that have never experienced it to at least a little bit understand what this is like Yeah. So, yeah.

Roman, is there anything else that you wanted to discuss? Anything else we've missed? I remember that I made a promise earlier. I want to pick up on that. I promised that I was very bold saying I have proof that it's possible to get better. Yeah. Since we talked a lot about my mind. mindset and what helped me.

I'm just sharing my experience. Of course, I don't know if it really helps you. But what helped a lot is actually all these things that I just explained, like how it works, like how your experience that you had 20 years ago, if I would talk to the Andy Grabner 20 years ago, I would say like, Andy, it's scary what you're going through, but probably this is your sympathetic nervous system, which is just stuck in on mode. It's just not being able to go to the parasympathetic state, which is rest and digest, because you're experiencing a vast amount of stress, and it's perfectly natural. It doesn't mean you're broken. Your body just works

exactly the way it is supposed to work, because when you start to be less resilient and start not to become a function and whatever that means, being in society, being able to do your nine to five job or whatever, people start to think, I'm not functioning anymore, maybe broken or something. And the message that I want to say is no, you're not broken if you're feeling these things. It's just the natural process of what's happening in your body and your mind. It's perfectly explainable. This is something that brought a lot of comfort for me, together with one more thing.

And this is now about the change part. Up until the 1990s, it was the common belief also in science that the human brain is not able to change anymore when you reach a certain age and become an adult. but up until the 1990s and after that and about the 2000s around they discovered something called neuroplasticity and it's a complicated word but it actually means the ability of your brain to adapt to changes and to actually rewire itself and to make new experiences to learn new things and it may be hard to learn a different new language or Chinese when you're 80. So of course there are things in our physiology which make changes harder when you age, but neuroplasticity is given in any human being

and it means your brain is actually able to change completely. It just takes more time when you're older, it takes more repetition to learn new things. And it takes time. patients to get out of a very bad state or whatever, you call it, depression, anxiety, nervous system that is stuck in on mode, whatever. It can change. It's, of course, if you break it down, it's electrochemical signals in your brain telling your nervous system to do things. But these things are not set in stone. And this is something that was for me, very comforting because if you are experiencing these things for the very first time, a certain thought appears immediately.

It's like, how long is this going to last? Is it ever going away? Like, what's it going to be like from now on now? And knowing that this is how it actually works is in a way comforting because there is always room for change. That was a very important thing for me to understand. And there is one more concept that I want to share that helped me a lot. And it was actually, if we go back to the parliament, the thoughts that we have.

We talked a lot about the link to the trace, like to the observability and performance bottlenecks. Let's say we have a trace of a problem and we can identify a bottleneck. At the root of a trace is always like some entry request, right? And if it comes to the human mind, this very top level span, I think it's always a thought. And so how do you deal with that? That was something that was very interesting to me. I explained a lot how things feel differently,

you start to think differently, and one important thing is actually to make space between you and your thoughts because it's very easy to identify yourself with the thoughts you have because they are very frequent, right? We all have them a day during a day. And if they are very unpleasant, like what if this is never going to be?

better. I don't know. A lot of thoughts like my friends did a great job in building a rich life. Have I failed in life? Whatever. There is many thoughts we have during the day that are unpleasant. And if you're depressed, those can become very heavy. And for me, it was very important to separate the self like the me from the thoughts that occurred during the brain that the brain produces and if you think about it the sentence I think therefore I am I think it's the biggest lie and in this sentence there is a huge danger because the thoughts that our brain automatically produces during the day, that's not really the you, because we learned we have a whole parliament in our brain.

And by knowing that there is a parliament where you can actually listen to and even interact, that actually means that the real you is something that is able to observe these thoughts. And in this, this creates a distance a gap between you and the thoughts you're having. And in this little gap, there is a lot of freedom because suddenly there is space between whatever is going on inside you.

And what you really believe is what makes you, like the conscious of yourself. I know this sounds maybe a little bit esoteric, but it's a lot like even a Buddhist mind and in meditation something similar happens so that is something that I wanted to share right now I think that's very profound and I think that's really at the heart of a lot of this not that it's the easiest thing in the grasp

but I think you know pondering upon thoughts like that trying to dig deeper into them is what helps lead you to understanding it better and then at least seeing that gap whether or not you can act on that gap or choose right I think every day we choose how we're presenting ourselves subconsciously. Right? So when you have that, you have that gap there, and this is my analogy to it,

it would be, let's say you're feeling a little depressed, right? If you didn't have that gap there, you'd automatically walk out of the house wearing all black, put a black eyeliner on, getting, you know, looking all emo and goth, right, because you're depressed, right? When you have that gap there, you have a chance to say, well, what do I want to wear today? I have a wardrobe things. I have my goth outfit. I have this that and that gives just that chance to put a little

bit of choice to how you're going to approach that today because you have those options and you have different ways of handling it. But yeah, I think this is really, really amazing stuff. And I hope our listeners has been funny.

And I know this is a very long episode, but I think it's an important topic that you know, hopefully it's helpful, right, with, especially with the length, that we're not just given at these, you know, the shorter time. But it's, you know, the other thing I would say, too, is if you're another way I look, you know, especially the things about what I can control and what I can't, right, is let's say you live either, like, if you're familiar with stranger things, you live in the upside down or some post-pocalyptic world where it's just, ashes just falling outside the whole time, right?

but you're in your house, right? You can be in your house with the people you want to be in. You can paint the walls, nice colors, put up some artwork, make some good food, right? That's your immediate surroundings. Those are all the people you interact with even yourself on a daily day. So separating the outside from the inside of what you control. You can live in a world where it's falling ash all the time, right? That's outside, right?

sweep the ash back out, keep your little space inhabitable and enjoyable and find that happiness there because it's not going to be out in the outside world necessarily. Which is why, again, if you're having these conversations

with friends, you're going to be deepening those bonds. If you meet someone new or whatever, you're going to probably develop a deep friendship with that, if you can talk about this with family members, you're suddenly having that deeper connection, less superficial, with your family members,

which again helps improve all of that stuff. So it's important to be as open as you'll allow yourself to be. I know not everybody can be open or feels comfortable being open, but I think you'll find the more open you are with other people, most people are going to reciprocate and be understanding. And that just brings you a richer experience with people, which helps turn all of this stuff around just on its own. You know?

So that's my two sense. Roman, thank you so much for opening up and for walking us through your experience, for your lessons learned, for the analogies, for the friendship that you opened up to me initially, and for the fact that you will with this encourage many to start talking about these things because the impact us all. You will definitely touch more than one soul today. And, yeah, I'm glad to see you smiling again, that you're enjoying your job again

because we need those performance engineers that find the challenges in distributed systems. I'm looking forward to seeing you again in Vienna or wherever, so then share a drink with you and talk about this face to face. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show. This is the topic, Andy,

and I probably would have never thought to have. With the fact that you had the courage and say, like, yeah, let's talk about this. I really appreciate you doing that. And I think that just shows, you know, an amazing amount of strength to do that in a public forum. Yeah. So I can't thank you enough for that.

Well, then I want to join in and say, Thank you from my side as well. Thank you, Brian and Andy. It's been crazy that the time passed so fast during the recording of this episode. Thanks for having me. And if anyone goes through something and wants to talk about it, I'm also on LinkedIn. And do not hesitate to reach out if you would like to. Definitely make sure to add.

Obviously, we will post this on LinkedIn and tag you so people can follow up with you. And you mentioned a couple of books maybe or some material. We will add, Roman, whatever you have, whatever you want to share, just send it over to me. And we'll then add it to the description of the podcast. Hey, one last thing I wanted to get out there for the listeners, right? Because I think this is a very important one. Never discount what you're feeling, right? Earlier in the podcast, we said things can always be worse, right?

but no matter what you're feeling that's that's you know you could look at somebody else who's going through something much worse right and think well it's not that right but for you in your world it is that right so you don't need outside validation to compare what you're going through

if it's affecting you it's affecting you and don't don't diminish it or don't try to downplay because it's not as bad as what somebody's going through if you have a great life and something kind of small happens that's bad, that's the worst thing you've experienced, right?

You should feel fortunate that you, you know, or you shouldn't feel fortunate. You should just like, you know, acknowledge it and own it. And it's okay if, like, you got all mad because of traffic and you look outside and somebody's, you know, walking with their grandfather and their grandfather fell down, which is much worse than you sitting in traffic, right? But traffic's bad for you, right? That's okay. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure nobody downplays what they're going through.

Absolutely. I can 100% agree with that. And I have nothing but compassion for people who are going through these things. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you very, very much. We really appreciate being on here. We hope this was good for our listeners. Just like Andy and I always say, we keep doing this podcast selfishly for ourselves

because we love having conversations with people. And this is another one of those fantastic ones that we couldn't have had if we weren't doing this podcast. And having fantastic guests like you who are willing to come on and share with us. So thank you very, very much. We'll see you next episode, everybody. Bye-bye.

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