Spend some time with me and our colleague Mike as he share's with us what it's like being an accountant with depression.

You can follow Mike on Twitter at @mavidormike.

Timestamps:

00:01:01 What is depression?

00:04:48 Mike introduction - family, childhood, college, entering public accounting

00:08:59 Mike's chronology of depressive episdoes and their impact on school, work, etc

00:20:38 Being an accountant with depression

00:24:17 Mental health from the employer perspective

00:33:36 Thoughts and tips - being an employee with depression

00:39:17 Conclusion & encouragement

Resources:

https://988lifeline.org/ Mental Health hotline as of July 16, 2022 - call, text, chat

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/major-depression

https://thedepressedaccountant.com/

https://www.goingconcern.com/mental-illness-in-accounting-profession/

https://www.goingconcern.com/its-time-accounting-profession-get-serious-about-mental-illness/

https://www.goingconcern.com/ocd-adhd-yes-mental-health-issue-public-accounting/

https://www.hopetocope.com/blog/accountants-overwork-depression-and-anxiety/

https://www.goingconcern.com/are-accountants-really-that-depressed/

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444230504577617381107874516

Some of the signs of depression are fatigue, heavy fatigue not feeling up

for doing anything, counting it as a win.

If you get up and take a shower, right.

Being numb to certain things and that's not cynicism, but just numb watching

your life sort of go by and it could be three months, six months that go by

and you're sort of like a spectator.

and not a participant of your own life, and you don't

even realize that's gone by,

Hey, this is Allison.

Welcome to under withheld the podcast by accountants and for accountants,

where we talk about our ubiquitous professional and personal struggles.

You are not alone.

This episode is a conversation I had with Mike MOEYS.

Mike is an accountant based out of Boston, Massachusetts from childhood.

And into his college and working years, Mike has had an on-again

off-again relationship with depression.

Uh, Mike shares experiences of growing up and working in accounting with depression,

as well as some thoughts on how folks in accounting might approach their own

depression and how others might help them.

Before we jump into the conversation, a little background on the topic.

Per the national institutes of health, depression is quote a

common but serious mood disorder.

It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and

handle daily activities such as sleeping, eating, or working.

To be diagnosed with depression.

The symptoms must be present for at least two weeks in quo.

And IHS website lists 12 signs of depression.

I will go through each one in the event that something resonates with you,

certainly the list isn't all-inclusive nor miss someone present with all

symptoms to be considered depressed.

And of course, any of these symptoms could be indicators of some other

underlying issue that may or may not be related to depression.

In short placing medical care.

If you think you may have depression, here we go.

Number one.

A persistent feeling of sadness, anxiety, or just feeling empty.

Number two.

Hopelessness.

Pessimism.

Number three.

Being irritable.

Number four, not being interested in hobbies or activities.

Number five decreased energy levels being tired.

Number six, moving and talking slowly.

Number seven, feeling restless or having trouble sitting still.

Number eight difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions.

Number nine difficulty sleeping.

Early morning awakening or oversleeping number 10, appetite and or weight changes.

Number 11.

Thoughts of death or suicide or suicide attempts.

Number 12 aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems

without a clear fiscal cause.

And or that do not ease even with treatment.

NIH reports that approximately 8% of us adults experienced at least one

major depressive episode in 2020.

It therefore seems reasonable to me that there are quite a few

accountants who have depression.

My research on this was a mixed bag.

While I found indicators through various articles, that depression is possibly a

systemic issue in the accounting industry.

I wasn't able to locate any industry-wide resources for help.

If you have resources specifically where these two topics meet, please reach out

to me with those under withheld.com.

I'll add them to the resources already listed in the show notes.

In case it needs to be said.

I know my guests are therapists.

We are not offering therapy.

We may say things that just don't resonate with you.

And if so, that's totally cool.

There's nothing prescriptive here.

Just colleagues talking about an issue we think is important.

And we hope talking about it will help someone else.

If something sounds helpful to you here.

Cool.

If not, just ignore it.

Welcome to the show.

Mike.

Hey, welcome to the show.

Hey, Hey, thanks for having me.

Appreciate it

Yeah, absolutely.

How's it been going?

going pretty well.

I took a lot of time off actually recently, so that's good.

How about yourself?

tired.

I'm ready for a little break myself.

So I'm going up to the mountains for a few days and I'm looking forward to.

So you haven't taken a break yet

Not just yet.

My out of office is kind of a lie.

I usually put on longer than I'm actually gone., so I can refrain from

answering client emails for just a few days, get caught up on a few things.

Good.

So I guess the key question right, is you're gonna be out of office where

you, are you gonna be on Twitter?

I.

Ah, okay.

That's like the ultimate shutdown.

If you, if you're gonna be off of Twitter or LinkedIn or whatever you use the.

Yeah, I think if you're gone for more than a week, you have to

put on it out of office on Twitter.

Right.

Checking out, see you later.

I am introducing myself a lot nowadays.

I actually say that I am a poet and child raise in an embassy.

Wait say that last part, a child.

I'm a poet and a child raised in an embassy.

So I'll explain it a bit, but you know, for the listeners, right?

My name is Mike Moise.

I'm a CPA by training, currently a consultant.

And the reason I say that is a, I actually have done a ton of poetry.

So that's kind of a metaphor for what I'm gonna be describing, but

poets, really, our creative people, they have huge imaginations and they

have the power to really create.

What doesn't exist through just their words.

Right?

So I've, that's actually been something that's marked my career.

My life in general gets into some of that a little bit, and actually

creative people are more prone to what I like to call melancholy.

So if you actually study a lot of great musicians, a lot of great

artists or what, like, they feel a little more deeply sometimes

than just the regular population.

That poet metaphor has always been appropriate for me, at least.

And then the embassy thing, that's just, if you think about an embassy, right.

An embassy is literally, it's a, it's a foreign country.

That's, established on domestic soil and my parents are from Haiti, so they

were born and raised in, in Haiti.

Right.

I was born here, but like a lot of immigrants, I always felt like I had

to navigate the, like these dual ID.

So I would be at home and in my house, the embassy, right.

My home would have the Haitian customs, the Haitian language Haitian Creole

and just the culture in general.

So I would have to like, I'd live by that.

Right.

But when I stepped foot outside of the house and I went to school or,

you know, wherever else, it was the American culture that I had to sort of

navigate and navigate for the first time.

Right.

So my joke is that, you know, my home was like an embassy that I was raised in.

Once I stepped foot outside of that embassy, it was the

United States of America.

And I had to learn how to both be patient American or, a child of immigrants and be

a young man growing up in the Boston area.

So that's the area that I'm from.

Yeah, so that's, , that's, that's kind of like my intro to people

just in general, because it's true.

It's just it's marked who I.

did you get into accounting?

Good question.

So we were talking about this before, but essentially I always knew always, actually

I always knew when, since I was a kid that I wanted to be in business, right.

That was people who would always ask me, Hey, what do

you wanna be when you grow up?

I wanted to be a businessman, not knowing what that meant or the different avenues.

But when I got to college, I actually studied economics.

So I wasn't actually going down the accounting path and I think maybe I, you

know, maybe I'm risk averse, who knows, but during the financial crisis, right.

I saw people lose their jobs.

And when I say financial crisis, I'm talking about the oh

seven to like, oh nine crisis.

People were losing their jobs, their homes.

I was working in sales at the time actually saw a lot of sales folks

that were making six figures.

Just lose that overnight because of just a shift shift in demand.

Right.

And then if anybody.

Was aware or, you know, alert enough during that time.

It was actually really scary.

Right.

I just happened to be studying economics during that crisis.

So I was just hyper aware of what was going on.

So I had always known about the CPA profession, not to the

extent that I obviously do now, but I'd always known about it.

And I always said in my mind, I want to choose something that would cause me

to be confident if this ever happens.

So if another crisis comes around and a company says, Hey

Mike, we're gonna do some cuts.

We're gonna have to let you go.

I don't want that to send fear in my heart.

Like I actually want control over my life.

So that's actually why I chose the accounting slash CPA route to begin with.

So I, studied economics, but I went and got my masters in accounting.

I attended the university of Massachusetts Amherst.

So that's in the new England area and I went the typical big four

route for, students in that program.

And I started off working at Ernston young.

So I started working in public accounting, doing, auditing for a while.

And that was my journey into, accounting.

I didn't know much about it.

I just knew it was something that I wanted to do.

And I think I just learned more about the industry as my career went.

So Mike, you are here with us today to talk about depression.

Yep.

I was doing a little bit of research in advance of our conversation.

Of course my research tool is Google,

Yep.

Mm-hmm yep.

Google, accounting, and depression.

And I was curious as to what I would get.

They were stories from other accountants about their struggle

with depression in the industry.

I didn't see a lot.

Yeah.

itself about, Hey, we, you know, we think that depression.

Or other concerns are systemic in the accounting industry and here's, here's

what we're doing about it, or here's what we would like to do about it, or here's

what we think you should do about it.

It was honestly kind of a little sad.

I even found a website called the depressed accountant.com and about, yeah.

Yeah.

The depressed accountant, . Looks like it was a blog started in 20,

20, 20, 21, somewhere in there.

mm-hmm

And somebody just started journaling about what it was like to

be going through depression and to also be in the accounting industry.

All of that to say while I did find some information out there, it felt like,

I guess I'll summarize it this way.

It felt like enough that this seems like it's a systemic issue.

And yet there doesn't seem to be anything industrywide that is available to help.

So I just wanna say that and I'd like to hear, of course from you, your story

with depression, with what it's like in the industry, going through this.

Yeah, no, Allison, I, first of all, I appreciate you Googling that.

I'd never even thought to do that.

I've definitely Googled a ton.

I guess I've done a ton of self teaching on depression and I'll get into that in

a bit, but I never thought to actually combine depression and accounting

together and research an issue with that.

So I'm actually glad that you're bringing it up, cuz even for myself, I never

thought to bring the two together.

So I'll take a step back.

And just when I think about depression, right?

It's been a journey for me just to understand what depression was

just to begin with and in my life.

Depression has been a series of like distinct, tangible chapters.

they've, they've been chapters.

So I've known like I have chapters in my life where I know, okay,

this was like that dark period.

Right.

You know, and then I'll come, I'll come out of that.

And then it'll be, you know, let's say five years, we'll go by six

years, then it'll be something else.

And every time that's happened, I've learned.

So I'll start with the first, my first known instance,

but I'll actually go back.

And I think this is important just to actually like reflect

on yourself in general.

So I'll go back to when I was a kid and I don't even know why

this was, it might have been just the whole, the immigrant thing.

Like I told you I had some great parents that cared about me, but there were

some struggles with just growing up a being black, but then not really fitting

with, with my black peers and actually fitting in more with immigrant peers.

Because I was Haitian, but then B I'm doing everything for the first time.

Like I, you know, things that kids knew by second nature were just different for me.

Like I didn't have a Google, so I would, research for example,

how to even talk on the phone.

Yeah,

To like my peers.

Right.

I would write scripts before I wrote on phones, because I just didn't even know

how that, how to kind of navigate that.

And it, it is just because , I wasn't used to the, American culture as

much as I was the Asian culture.

So growing up, I used to actually pull my hair out a lot.

So like, I would, I didn't know this, but I was pulling my hair out and

then I would have like patches in my eyebrows or like on my, you know, near

my forehead where my hairline is and my parents didn't know what it was.

I didn't tell 'em I was pulling it out.

They thought something was wrong with me.

And something was, I just didn't know what it was fast forward to today.

I sort of Google the symptoms and obviously I'm not diagnosing myself.

I'm an accountant, not a doctor, but those symptoms are tricot.

Hmm.

And it's a disorder caused by anxiety, stress, depression, et

cetera, and anything can trigger it, but that pulling out of your hair,

, it's an actual condition, right?

I've had the ingredients for what I think is depression for a while.

What happened later on in life was in college for a various number of reasons

that I, I had to actually unpack and sit and journal and go to therapy for.

I had bout of depression.

That was so bad that I failed three semesters in a row.

I got all F's I'm a nerd.

I was always a great student or a decent student.

Right.

And I had to actually sit and think, Mike, if you you're a decent

student, if you actually failed three semesters in a row, something's wrong.

If you can't open up a book and actually read the book and have some

takeaways and be able to take a test because you can't even remember what

you read, like something is wrong and I'm, I'm barely 20 at this time,

but I, I knew something was going on.

I was, I remember vividly actually being in my dorm and I

didn't want to see the sunlight.

So I would have the shades down all day.

And the only time I would leave my dorm was because my stomach could no

longer take the fact that I was hungry.

So I was kind of forced to leave just to go get a bite, to eat, come

back and then stay in the dark again.

Right.

So, and funny enough, I failed intro to accounting three times.

Oh, gosh,

So that's bad.

Yeah.

Right.

So I failed intro to accounting three times.

I failed three semesters in a row.

And as I was so scared to go back for that fourth semester, because I knew if I went.

I would fail outta I'd get kicked outta school.

Cause that was my last semester I had a 1.9, six GPA.

I remember that vividly.

And that's what I told, the school that's what I told my parents

and my friends and my family.

I'm afraid to go back because my mind is not working.

The one thing that you're relying on , you can't even trust it to go

back to school and actually , pull a C let alone in an a right.

So that was a time period.

And I took that time off.

So like, I, I left school.

People thought I was gonna be a dropout.

I, I didn't know where this was gonna go.

Cause typically when you do dropout, it's harder to get back.

But yeah, I took some time off really pause.

I, I pumped the breaks on like life and you know, long, fast,

long story short, I ended up coming back and doing really well.

And I thought that depression was behind me.

That that was just one.

And you fast forward, maybe.

So that was around like 20, let's say 2008 ish,

Mm-hmm

seven, eight.

Around that time, I think.

Yeah, 2007, 2008, just really, you know, dealing with that depression.

But then I ended up coming back.

You fast forward to maybe 2015.

I had family members that.

We had all gone through like a large dispute and, and we lost

some relationships because of that.

And I lost some like key relationships in my life as well.

And that caused a, that triggered, you know, some grief in me and

that was another bout of depression.

So this is now I'm working in accounting.

And that was the first time I'd contemplated suicide.

And that's when I knew, okay.

Like I, I thought this was behind me.

Right.

Like I thought I'd, you know you know, gotten over things.

And so that's when I went back and, I went back to therapy as well.

And this entire time I'm not doing a good job of consistent maintenance

or hygiene for my mental health.

I'm just thinking that, Hey, I got through.

I'm okay.

But then four or five years later, or sometime later an episode

will happen where I'll just go back into this dark place.

Now, thankfully by then I had sort of known what was going on because

in college, when I'd gone through that, I'd done a lot of just my own

research, just reading up on depression.

Cause I didn't know anything about it.

I didn't, I thought I was just maybe tired or, you know, God forbid

like maybe just lazy or over life.

But I learned that, Hey, like this is actually something that happens to.

And here are the symptoms and you know, this is not unusual, so I

kind of knew but it still happened.

Right.

The last time this happened was around 20 18, 19 ish.

Right?

So fast forward from 20 15, 16 to now, like 20 18, 20 19.

Oh,

And you, what I'm noticing, is the time periods between

when these chapters show.

Shrinks.

. So my first time was around, like, let's say, oh 7 0 8, then seven years.

And now it's like 2015 ish, right?

20 14, 20 15 ish.

Around that time.

, but then only a few years between that.

And you're looking at, you know, 20, let's say end of 2017 to 2019, I'm

being, you know, liberal with my dates, but that's around the time range.

And that was actually, that was a culmination of a lot of things.

A I'd lost time from school.

So I felt like I spent my entire career trying to catch up.

Right.

So I, I felt like I felt like I did a version of me a disservice

because I entered into the accounting industry a little bit later.

You know, I hadn't progressed to where I wanted to be.

I should have been you know, pick a level, pick a title, pick a,

compensation band or whatever.

Like I should have been at that place.

And I wasn't.

So what I found is to validate my self.

And I know this now I didn't know well was going on, but I know this now to validate

myself where I was doing a lot of things.

I started my own firm.

That was one thing.

I was working overtime and just trying to just assimilate as much information, get

as much experience as possible to be the super CPA, know, I don't know what, yeah.

Some, I just wanted to, I wanted to.

Exactly, exactly.

So I just wanted to I wanted to be the best that I could be,

but in a very unhealthy way.

Right.

And where it came all crashing down was I actually tore my Achilles

playing basketball in 2019.

The foundation was cracky before that, but when I tore my Achilles,

I could not keep up with anything.

Right.

I, just couldn't.

And.

To be honest, I've actually been battling my way out of that for a while.

Cause you know, you, tear your Achilles, you have surgery.

You're just not the same, you need to rest.

And I've never done that because I think there's always been this thing

in me where, I believe every action that I take or every thing that I

accomplish is sort of validating or making up for the mistakes that I

made or the person that I wasn't when I was maybe younger or in school.

COVID, wasn't helpful because that was sort of isolated.

I'm actually gonna go check out that website, the depress accountant,

because around that time as well, I was dealing with that depression.

I isolated myself.

One of my friends was so worried that she ended up actually calling

the police to come check in on me.

Some of the signs of depression are fatigue, heavy fatigue not feeling up

for doing anything, counting it as a win.

If you get up and take a shower, right.

Being numb to certain things and that's not cynicism, but just numb watching

your life sort of go by and it could be three months, six months that go by

and you're sort of like a spectator.

and not a participant of your own life, and you don't even

realize that's gone by,.

You miss a lot of things.

So those are sort of the three chapters.

When I think about depression, those are three chapters in my life

all caused by different things.

But I think the underlying root for me, this is me saying this, the underlying

root has just been a lack of self worth.

And then also a lack of self.

So this is the last time with COVID.

I think a lot of us, and I've seen this on Twitter or blogs or whatever.

A lot of people in our profession, we just went into a black hole and I think

we're now starting to come out of that.

And trying to detangle from unhealthy ways of thinking and patterns

and behaviors that came with the pandemic and all the regulations

just the fast moving pace of things.

Would you say Mike, that depression impacts you as an accountant?

well, I definitely say I missed out on opportunities.

I said to myself, Mike, this is actually costing you not taking carry yourself

on the front end, cost you, right?

Like you can finish the project or you can.

You can write a killer memo or do whatever, but on the back end you

will pay for it and it actually costs you and makes you miss

out on certain opportunities.

And what do I mean by that?

Right.

I think if I'm not depressed, for example I have more mental Dex, sturdy

or vitality to actually let's say propose or think through a job better and propose

better, I'll give you one, one great example if I was, so I was so tired for

this one client that I was doing work on.

And when I say tired, mentally tired that I didn't, I didn't

have the time to actually stop.

And think about the scope of the work that they were asking us to do.

So this was, this was an audit readiness type of client.

They weren't really doing their books and they were getting ready to get

audited by a big accounting firm.

And I, I knew because I'd worked in the industry, I'd seen this playbook before.

I knew that this was gonna be more than what we could handle.

So it was myself and another more junior staff, but I didn't have

the time to actually sit, analyze and inspect the proposal because I

was kind of just going with things.

And when you're tired, sometimes you're open for you're just open.

You don't have the ability to actually push back.

and, defend a position or think, right.

So what ended up happening is that because I didn't actually have the

energy for that this whole project ended up becoming what I knew it was

gonna become, which was a giant mess and causing me more hours anyway.

So I ended up working seven days a week for X amount of weeks

straight, which actually didn't help.

no.

Right.

That just exacerbates the problem.

Yeah.

So that happened and not having the energy to speak to folks caused me to not be

able to network as much as I usually do.

And I don't even like using the word network, but just relationships,

both professionally and personally.

Right.

I, I either don't develop the ones that I should or the ones that I do

have suffer a ton, especially with people that don't understand what

it is that you're going through.

Right.

So, Got a lot of people that think that I either abandoned them or I had an

issue with them, or I just, you know, I'm disinterested in the relationship.

The relationships suffer.

And I think relationships for me are one of the things that mattered the most.

Sounds like there's heavy costs.

Yeah.

Heavy, heavy costs this time around.

Definitely.

It's almost like whenever.

This happens, I go into a cave.

I come out and the world has changed.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, so that like, it's, that's actually how it, what it feels like.

It feels like I I'm frozen in time.

And then once I kind of get out of that, now I'm catching up with what's going on.

And so you, you lose time, right?

Which is the VA most valuable resource.

Even some of the technology and tools that people are using , I missed

out on that because I haven't been around really for, a number of years.

So in my mind, I'm still thinking of zoom as being a revolutionary

technology that no one knows about.

But in reality, Zoom was adopted by the entire world, almost because

of the pandemic, but I've been using zoom since like 20 16, 20 17.

You see what I'm saying?

I was a champion and a cheerleader of zoom.

I loved it.

You know, I was using it for all my clients cuz I was

doing the whole virtual thing.

So my mind is still back then before zoom became what it is now.

Right.

Or any of these other tools that , have either popped up or have been adopted

widely by a lot of firms in our industry.

Mike, do you have any thoughts about how employers who have staff.

Who may have depression might be able to help them.

That's a, that's a good question.

I don't.

So I, the reason I don't immediately is because I wasn't ready for

what you told me about that depressed accountant website.

Right.

I never thought to look up or think of accountants and depression.

And to be honest, in my mind, I don't think you think of accountants as

being, or allowed to be depressed.

Are you allowed to be depressed if you're an accountant?

, is that even a thing, right?

You don't think of that.

talk about that.

Keep going with.

I'm a Googler at heart.

Like I Google everything.

Right.

But why did I never Google depression and accounting?

Why did I never go down that route?

Even though I've been Googling my condition or researching my

condition for, 12 years now.

And when you think, when I think of an accountant, at least, the

perception of accountant is you're a numbers person, you're business

oriented, there's logic to it, right?

There are rules and regulations that you follow, right?

There's no, it's almost emotionless where it's like, Hey, that

deduction is that deduction.

There's no emotion behind it.

Or that position that I'm taking for the financial statements.

It is what it is when I argue or debate with the auditors.

We're not debating based on how I feel about so.

But based on what the guidance says, right?

So there's no, there's no feeling in this industry and I'm obviously I'm kind

of exaggerating, but there's no feeling it's, it has nothing to do with feelings.

So I would not associate accountants with having, and I'm, I am one.

Right.

But I wouldn't associate our industry with having a feelings type of issue.

And that's partly why I think for me, I probably, would've never, bring this

up the workplace or with colleagues cuz it's not even something I've

even heard talk about, you know?

So I think talking about it might be the first thing, like what you're

doing right now is probably honestly the first thing to do because , we

don't deal in the realm of Ebo, which is also probably why as a separate.

Accountants, I think find it difficult to move into other, maybe more

management positions, cuz we're taught to be technical early on, but some of

the more managerial, soft skills I think a lot of accountants probably

struggle to transition to that.

But yeah, I think having the conversation first is important cause I've never

really had the conversation about mental.

in any firm, never at EY.

Maybe they do at the big four firms now.

I don't know.

Cause I haven't been there in a while, but especially not at my firm.

We don't talk about that.

So talking about it is, is the first step for sure.

I guess so a question for you though, like what do you think, like do you,

was that ever discussed when you were growing up, so to speak in the profession?

Can you get depressed during busy season or is it just a

Rite of passage for everyone?

Yeah.

So I've been in accounting for about 20 years, 10 of those,

roughly working for others, 10 of those, roughly working for myself.

yeah.

So the last 10 years, maybe like you, Mike, I may be a little bit

out of the loop as to what goes on in larger firms that have multiple

people, HR departments, all that.

But my experience before I think they were still STR trying to struggle

with the upper out mentality.

Mm.

Yeah.

That was probably about as quote unquote, mental health

related as they could get.

And I, I think that was just sort of touching on, there are other job paths

besides partner, maybe we can't afford.

And we're really seeing this now.

Maybe we can't afford.

To dismiss people from our industry, from public accounting specifically

because they don't wanna make partner.

And now of course we have a huge staffing problem.

And a lot of that was because a lot of good people got to senior maybe

manager and realized, you know, there's no part-time partner here, or I don't

wanna work 60 hours a week or 70 for the rest of my life or whatever it is.

So I think maybe that was the beginning.

So if there is more out there, I actually don't know what is there.

Yeah.

I'm honestly, I have images of people, before they quit right at my oath.

I remember one person I had interned when he was like a staff

or senior or something like that.

And I know he'd worked a lot on a ton of jobs.

That's what they do.

They just staff you on jobs.

And I remember maybe a week before he quit, I actually saw him.

I remember his image cuz he was sitting around the, the table.

His back was kind of bent.

You notice he'd like gain a ton of weight.

He hadn't shaved , he had dark spots under his eyes.

He looked broken.

gosh.

It was almost like he went from being this youthful person that

just probably graduated college to a manager that looked like he had been

beaten up broken and was finished.

Now someone would look at that in during our time and

say, oh, he just worked a lot.

Or, you know, it is just the grind of, of being accountant, but.

One of the triggers and my trigger this last time around for being more prone to

being depressed is , that constant work and not treating yourself as a, being

, with a mental and emotional component.

Right.

So you think of that and would someone say, oh, he's depressed

and that's an actual condition that needs to be considered, or would

someone look at that and say, oh, you just need a break or maybe you

need to just go and find another job.

You're gonna work better hours.

Let's promote someone else to do what you're doing, which is

work all these crazy projects.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

you're saying.

Yeah.

so think of that.

Like if that's our industry, at least from what I remember is predicated on

that type of lifestyle, you can't hack it.

Leave.

So the people that I guess do hack, it must mask those issues.

Like you have to mask I used to eat Reesey's all the time at night

during one of my, on one of my jobs, just to make me feel better.

But even thinking back, that was just a way to cope with what I was

feeling, you know, that was a way to cope with just the slog of it all.

Yeah.

So this is actually I'm even, I'm thinking of this on the fly.

This is just coming to me.

I think this is incredibly important to discuss, and I don't think people want

to discuss it if there's money involved.

Cause you have to bill , the name of the game is billing, right?

And, and you utilization rates.

Like even if you're the nicest partner or owner of a firm, there's

always gonna be this tension.

you have people that you're paying and you wanna make sure they're utilized to

a certain degree, cuz if you don't build them out, you don't make any revenue.

I think things would change if you could actually, on the P and

L measure the cost of, right.

Right.

You have to incentivize people to do certain things.

, I think if I'm incentivized as a partner firm owner, whatever the case

is to, to hit certain numbers for my bonuses, then no matter what someone

being sick is going to, it's just gonna be a temptation for me to not care

about that sickness, because you're always gonna be looking at that prize.

Right.

And that, that sickness is just gonna be something that gets in the way.

Right.

And you can measure that bonus.

You have no way of measuring the cost of that person being sick or them

actually saying, you know what, in six months I'm gonna quit because

this person or this environment doesn't care about how I feel.

You don't have a way of measuring that or measuring how long it's

gonna take to replace someone new or pay a recruiter's fee or whatever.

. I'll actually share, how I approached this now that I'm on

the other side one of my staff I could tell on this job, right.

I could tell that one of my staff was really just going through it.

He was working a lot of hours.

We were definitely under staff of this project and he was

ready to go to the United Kingdom.

He was going because he's part of a rowing crew.

And he had told me , Hey Mike, I really don't want to

have to deal with this client.

While I'm in the UK, I wanna enjoy myself.

So we were trying to actually get the project closed as fast as possible.

Obviously that didn't happen.

Right.

So I had a choice.

I had a choice to say, Let's call him Joe.

Right, Joe.

I know you wanted to not bring your laptop to the UK, but the client's not done with

issuing the financials, can you actually take it and field questions throughout

cuz you were working on your tasks.

I'm not as familiar with them or I'm not as close.

You can answer questions.

A little bit better or faster.

I could have went that route, but then in my mind I said, Hey, when

I was in Joe's position, what would I have appreciated from.

Want a project manager on my, what would I have?

You know, what would've mattered to me.

And although I didn't want to do it . Because part of me

was like, we're all selfish.

Part of me wanted to be like, Hey, like I wanna take my time to relax as well.

I said, you know what Joe, take your trip.

Don't worry about anything.

And I just, I dealt with the client directly in the, you know, in, I

got my hands dirty essentially.

Right.

And I'm not doing that for reciprocity or anything like that, but I just, I wanna.

Hope that I can at least consistently on my projects at leads or, or anything

that I work on, that the people that work with me will report to me.

They get to experience a different mindset or set of values than

what we typically see , in the accounting world at large.

So I don't know how you do it systemically.

I, I think I can try to do it, individually with the

people that I work with, but.

I don't got a quick answer on how you do it across the firm or across the industry

Okay.

Two part question on the employee side.

One, if I'm an employee who has depression, whether it's an ongoing

matter or whether it's something maybe like it is with you where it just

kind of comes up here and there, is that something that you would advise

folks disclose to their employer?

And two, regardless of your answer there, do you have any thoughts,

tools, help, et cetera, for employees in account who have depression ? Oh,

Yeah.

Wow.

That is a tough question.

Cause let's be real, right.

I'll speak for myself.

Especially part of me is that I don't actually want to disclose

that , I've never wanted to disclose that to any of my employer.

And actually , in the cases where I have, I feel like it's been used against

me, but that's a one that's a one off.

I wouldn't say that that's typical.

I think people genuinely care about other people, right?

They're definitely bad bosses, bad, employers or whatever, but yeah, I'd

be hesitant because you have to have a great relationship with that employer.

It's not the company, it's the people that you're working with.

Right.

You have to have a great relationship with.

Boss manager, partner, whatever to even disclose that, because that is

a, that's an intimate part of you.

We're dealing with, we're talking about my mind here.

That's an intimate part of me.

So I would, my counsel would be to say, think about your relationship

with that employer as an employee.

That's what I would say.

Because there's still a stigma, both in the, the, and I'm talking two

cultures here, both in the American culture and even in like our Caribbean

culture as well, like there's still like the kind of like a stigma that

you're, you're weak, you can't hack it.

So I think people are kind of hesitant to do that.

So honestly, I would say, talk to someone that you do trust

in your work environment.

It might not be your direct manager, but I would hope you would

have that relationship with them.

It's just tough

In terms of tools though for me, what I haven't been consistent

with, but that does help and is extremely helpful is a therapist.

And the reason I say that is cuz even with my family who is extremely caring they're

not therapists, they're not licensed.

But secondly, it is really incredibly freeing for me to talk

to someone that doesn't know me that doesn't know my patterns yet.

And it's almost like a clean slate and you can talk to them and talk to

them and just say anything that you probably wouldn't say to someone else.

And I think that's incredibly freeing and healthy.

I think as human beings, we need people to talk to at the ground level.

You just need someone to talk to and then having someone.

There's also license that knows how to work with people that have depression or

more pro to depression, super important.

And you'll probably catch this if you Google it, right?

If you work out and if you're active, go out for walks, get

some sun extremely helpful.

Actually earlier this year I spent a lot of time in Florida.

I had a family member of mine that was six.

So I spent some time in Florida.

And this was during periods where I was working seven days a week.

Which was obviously not good for my mental health, but that's another

story I even noticed me working in Boston was completely different

than me working in Florida.

When you get sunshine and the weather's different.

Yeah.

I felt completely different.

One of the days we went to the beach and I watched the sun go up

being in on that beach, just with no electronics and just watching the sun

go up in Florida, did so much for me.

And it reminded me , especially , having gone through COVID staying indoors,

co myself up , it doesn't need help.

. So going out, getting some sun for me is important and, getting some activity and

the therapist has definitely been helpful.

And if you have really great friends that you feel like, believe in you

that aren't oh, rolling their eyes.

Every time something happens, oh, here we go again.

I think that helps as well because if I have a few people in my corner,

it helps me get through people that believe in me that believe, Hey,

like Mike, you'll get through this.

That don't see me as weak because.

I'm more prone to depression than maybe a lot of people show or actually are.

So those are some things that I kind of think about, but I'll be honest, Alison,

it's just something I still struggle with.

I wish it wasn't so, but I just have to be more mindful, at least

from my perspective than other people about working too much or

not taking care of myself and I haven't been consistent with that.

Even now.

I'm gonna go back to therapy, but I haven't been consistent with therapy.

Even though I know it's something that is actually helpful, the thing

with therapy is , you don't go once and say, okay, I'm better now.

Like it therapy is like a consistent thing, right?

You have to be, you have to be consistent.

And therapy to me is one component of the.

Strategy to stay healthy.

I remember going to therapy and maybe on the 10th session, cuz he would

ask me Hey, how are you feeling?

Maybe on the 10th session, I would start to kind of feel like, okay,

I'm getting this, I'm doing this.

Like getting up, back up my feet.

But the first to the ninth sessions were still kind of dark, you know?

There's never really been a magic bullet for me where it's

like, okay, therapy session done.

No more depression like that.

That's not how it works, , but maybe that's too, that's my

personality I'm type a right.

I like to get, stay organized, get things done, accomplish

things, input, output, right?

Like that's not your emotions, your feelings, your soul, even like that

does not, that's not how it works.

Right.

Where complicated beings and you can't apply an accounting

principle or the tax code to like.

your life how you feel, it just doesn't work like that.

This is great too, even have just have us having these conversations, right.

I feel seen almost right.

Being understood and feeling seen actually has been incredibly

helpful for me just on this journey.

So I appreciate conversations like.

Because I don't, I really don't talk about 'em that often let alone, I think

this is the first time I've spoken to it.

You're the second accountant that I've actually had this conversation with.

Mike, is there anything else you'd like to share?

What I would say is I think this is incredibly important to hear, I can

hear this a million times and every time I hear it, it's actually important

for those that are in this profession.

And they feel like they have the symptoms of what would be described as depression.

A it's it's actually 100%.

Okay.

You don't need to justify, explain or apologize to people.

That's one big thing that I've had to kind of just kind of go through.

I definitely try my best to communicate now a little bit better

to family members or other folks and say, , I'm going through a rough time

or I got a rush patch or whatever, whatever language you want to use,

but for the most part, when I'm going through what I'm going through, if

it is a win for me to get up and take a shower, I'm not gonna apologize

for not being able to make your BB.

If I were to put it that way.

So I wanna just tell people like, Hey, it's okay to not be okay.

It's okay to be going through this.

You are not weak or less of a practitioner or professional because of it.

And in some respects, I think COVID has taught us all this.

You can try, but you really can't compartmentalize your health.

Either physically, mentally, right?

You can't compartmentalize that with work.

For my vocation and the client work that I do to really matter, I have to be okay.

In terms of my health and if that's not okay, I have to go and fix that.

It will impact my client work and it will catch up at some point I,

when it catches up, it's devastating.

, you don't have to really apologize to anyone and I'm still going

through the healing process right now.

Myself.

I've made some commitments, like I said, I'm just coming off , taking

some significant time off and.

I'm saying it now.

And I hope it sticks true, cuz it's important, but I've

made some recommitment to myself.

So make some commitments to yourself.

I've made some commitments and I've said, Hey Mike, you've gone through these bouts.

You've learned, right?

I've gone through these chapters of depression.

I have learned some of the things that caused that work on

those things and commit to them.

Especially when it comes to us and our profession and the hours that we

work and the things that we accept

you have to make that commitment to yourself and say, Hey, , I'm

gonna put myself first here.

Or I'm gonna sign off at this time.

And, and really do it.

And actually I'm daring myself right now to do it and see if

anything actually detrimentally changes, which I don't think it will.

So I'm daring myself to put myself first prioritize what

matters ? And to establish clear boundaries, . And my thesis is that

I can have an abundant, healthy life and still be able to do a great job

That's a wrap, my friends, reach out and let me know what you think.

I appreciate you listening in to this episode of under withheld, the podcast

by accountants and for accountants, where we talk about our ubiquitous

professional and personal struggles.