CG - The Struggle Is Real: My Journey With Mental Health Issues - Joel Cardella

so let me start out by saying that I really don't want to be here I really don't want to be talking to you and I really am having a hard time with the things that I'm going to talk to you about the person in front of you is very composed person but the inner person the voice in my head is telling me right now to stop you know I have a little shake going on I've talked dozens of times but I don't talk about this this is private but I'm doing this for a reason and the reason is last year Jay Radcliffe and I did a talk here at besides LV over the Underground and it

was about mental health and that talk was a sort of a pro and con type approach Jay is somebody who is very open about his mental health issues and about the help that he gets with his mental health issues and I was kind of on the opposite side of that I said look I may have problems everybody has problems but I don't need to do what you're doing I don't need any of that and I had to really explore why that was for us to give the talk and I said look let's do it the underground that way it's not on video we don't worry about it it's it's you know just between us and the audience we got an amazing

response from the audience E I was stopped in the halls here I was stopped in the halls at Def Con I had people approach me at breakfast when I was out all about this talk that we did and from my perspective I wasn't even doing anything Jay was doing although all the talking in we had a little discussion about it we said you know the the worst part about doing in the underground is the underground is supposed to be quiet we don't talk about things in the underground except what's in that room and if you're gonna talk about mental health and you're gonna make an impact you need to do it out in the open I don't want this recorded but

I didn't tell them not to record it I'm doing this because we need to start talking about things in the open so people can understand that the things they go through aren't just what they go through that we go through this together so the big things that help me back hold me back our pride paranoia fear and shame when it comes to talking about mental health pride because for years I've done this on my own for years I've been able to get by for years I've been my therapist for lack of a better word so why would I need somebody else to help me right paranoia what if I tell this person something and it gets out what if they take secret

notes on me that the government then subpoenas I'm gonna tell you story about that a little bit fear what if I actually find out something I'm not ready to deal with right and shame everybody knows shame right I I'm ashamed that I have these struggles I think everybody feels this way but nobody says it nobody says it out loud and that's a really weird thing so something interesting happened about a month ago there's a company that's called ol Ark I don't know what they do and it doesn't matter what they do but what happened was they had a tweet by one of their employees that went viral not only did it go viral on Twitter it started getting picked up in

all the major news media it got picked up by Reuters it got picked up by CNN and it started like this woman by the name of Madeline Parker sent a note to her list her internal list of out of the office and she said hey everybody I'm really having some struggles I'm gonna take some mental health days so I can focus on my mental health and be better when I come back right a simple gesture but here's the amazing thing that happened the CEO of the company responded and said hey Madeline I really want to personally thank you for sending an email everybody needs to focus on their mental health and the importance of using sick days for mental health

should be something we just assume is okay and for some reason this went viral people picked this up it went crazy and if you look at the tweet that she made she went to the CEO and she said hey is it okay if I I tweet this and make it publicly known and he said yeah absolutely go ahead and if you see the responses people had they had crazy responses like my HR person told me that mental health isn't a real condition and that I would need a doctor's note to take sick time for this these are typical things we're dealing with so Ben Carlton who is the CEO who responded wrote a medium post and in that post he

said a number of really interesting things the first he said was its 2017 and were in a knowledge economy if we're in a knowledge economy and we were relying on our brains to do the jobs that our tools will we'll pick up why aren't we focusing on what makes that knowledge good and better he said our jobs require us to execute at peak mental performance which is true I don't care what you do in our industry you have to be a peak mental performance whether you're red teaming whether you're blue teaming with your purple teaming whether you're using every Enterprise tool available to you whether it's best-of-breed or open source you have to be at peak mental

performance to be able to function he said when an athlete is injured they sit on the bench and they recover sure right we are much like athletes maybe we're not physically using our bodies but we're exercising our mental muscles and when those muscles get damaged they have to sit and they have to recover and he said let's get rid of the idea that somehow the brain is different absolutely agree the brain is no different than the body it's part of the body and our mental health state and our physical health state and there's been research to support this are actually connected so you can manifest physical sickness because of mental state and vice versa how about this Josh

Corman talked about this today imposter syndrome in his keynote and it was fantastic imposter syndrome is something that lives in our community all the time I see it all the time I myself have been a victim of it and Josh had a great point he said look if you're suffering from impostor syndrome you are not only doing yourself a disservice you're damaging the community you're damaging the industry because if you can't bring forth your contributions and consider them valid contributions then we as a community cannot get better we can't progress I absolutely agree with this so maybe you're somebody who sits with impostor syndrome I will tell you this I still have it after 25 years of doing IT

and security and I go to clients that I work with them they ask me questions sometimes I'm not sure if I know the answer right that's imposter syndrome how I deal with it is is what really matters so then I started looking around and I said you know how are people feeling and I found this really interesting post on the mighty and what they did is they asked people how do you feel about depression what are the things about depression that you would not talk about and they made this list of these quotes from these people so I pulled a few out because I thought that they were really relevant to what to what I was thinking

mentally exhausted from having to apologize for who you are see this all the time right we go through these traumas we go through these trials and you're just saying I'm sorry I'm so messed up I'm sorry my wife has heard this a million times for me she has hey my wife is in this room for those of you who don't know and I'm having a hard time with that wanting to say what's on your mind and you can't explain it so you cry now I don't cry I'm not a crier I never have been maybe that's part of the problem right maybe I need to get that out but it's just not but the first part of that absolutely

you know you want to say what's on your mind you can't explain it another way I heard somebody say it was you want everybody to shut up but nobody's talking yeah I get that I understand that when I'm having an episode but I'm not so far gone and part of my rational brain is still present telling me you don't need to feel that way and the dark part of the mind won't release its grip this one I absolutely line with reading a book right now by Dan Harris called 10% happier he talks about this talks about that inner voice and he's like that inner voice isn't like voices in your head it's that inner narrator he

goes and it fixates on the past and it fixates on the future to the detriment to the present and that's absolutely true right that inner narrator that we can't shut up that's telling us what we're doing is wrong it's happening to me right now okay not feeling like you can explain it because there's not a tangible reason for it there's sometimes there's not a reason for stuff and that's okay in in order to accept mental state and mental health we have to accept the fact that sometimes there's just no explainable reason right I would posit this is why we have a problem with antibac sirs right now that in in a sympathetic way people are

searching for a reason for their children that have come down with autism or been born with autism right and vaccinations is an easy way to fixate on it so they're looking for a reason but maybe there isn't a reason at least not a reason we've discovered right mental health it's the same way mental health and physical health it all comes down to this mental health is health okay if we say mental health where we're singling it out we're making it a thing on its own but maybe it's not maybe it's health and if you accept this premise that mental health is health then why in the world would you ever diagnose your own disease why in the world if you had

something like cancer would you diagnose it yourself the answer is you wouldn't your gonna go seek your professional maybe several professionals to help you figure out what's going on what's going to be your treatment plan what's your long-term prognosis right these are all things you're gonna do why would it be any different with mental health I don't know the answer to this but it raises the questions that I go yeah I got to figure this out so remember I told you Jay and I were talking and Jay was talking about his therapy and the success he was having with it and I was saying why I wouldn't do it not that I didn't recognize I didn't need it right

the rational part of my brain is saying this is something you should be doing but the dark part was just going no you know deal with your paranoia your fear your pride in your shame it's fine right and that's the way you live your life and that's the way you go on being forever so in order to change that story I had to take a step and that's what this is all about the second part of what I want to talk to you about is the step and I have some videos for you because I figured the best way for me to tell you about this was to have me tell you about it in the moment I was having

those those kinds of feelings so as you can see I'm driving in my car I've just done a major thing it's June 15th which is my second son's birthday it's 8:45 a.m. I just call Blue Cross and ask them for a list of therapists I talked to somebody named Chad on the phone and he was very helpful and he's gonna send me a list of providers in my area to do this this has been a very typical Road you know talking about this openly to anybody you know as myself has been very very difficult and even a customer service person on the other end of my health care provider was extremely difficult for me to articulate that I

needed to see a therapist but I've done this I have to do it with you so here's the interesting thing yep look at that in a minute so the interesting thing is that last line where I said if I've done this so can you that wasn't a message for you that was a message for me that was past me talking to future me okay and it's it's significant it's very significant I want you to understand that it took me almost a year after talking about fear paranoia pride and shame and not dealing with it for me to make a call while I was driving in my car somewhere right while I'm at my weakest and basically said if

I don't do this now I'm never gonna do it and just do it okay so I made this call right so here's some success of things after that well this is the last time I talked to you I have an appointment now in two days today is July 2nd no July 3rd so my appointment is July 5th so plea and I'm really not looking forward to it whatsoever I'm running all of the different scenarios through my head of what could be said of what will be said what direction we might go in what I want to say what I don't want to say but here's the real issue the real issue I'm having is this is literally my first time if I

don't like this person I will go back that's the biggest problem in order for this to work sometimes it's not gonna work and you have to keep going back the rational part of me understands this the irrational part of me just shuts down and says nope it's not working forget it that's a really important thing to remember it's a really important thing to focus on and if I don't click with this person as a therapist then I have to find somebody else it's been really hard to find anybody at all so this is a difficult journey there you go how do you handle difficult journeys you persevere where you give up really no other choice see what happens

so there you go and it was really hard I called 10 different clinics to say to you you are you accepting new patients are you seeing people nope nope nope nope nope five of those were referrals from people that I trust right couldn't get in so I kind of settled for whoever would take me first at least in my mind that's how I feel right I settled I settled it fine I'll do it this is the first time I'm just gonna do it so I made the appointment so interesting thing about that I woke up this morning at 3 a.m. and I couldn't sleep cuz I was like why I gotta give this talk today right see a

pattern here right but that was me and I wanted to capture it and because that's just how it is so I'm here and I am unhappy the entire drive up here don't laugh at my pity just the things that were going through me at one point I was actually shaking late with rage I really really don't want to do this but I'm doing it oh okay so that's important to understand it was about 25 minute drive to to the person I was gonna go see and I was literally like this right I almost had tears I told you I'm not a crier I almost had tears I was just like and it wasn't fear it was anger I was feeling

anger rage at doing this right again pride pride is holding me back it's causing these feelings to happen why are you doing this don't need this this is what's going through my head then I took another video very shortly thereafter in the waiting room reason the camera is doing that as I've got the the phone on my leg and I'm just bouncing my leg alright bouncing my leg because hi I am in a state and guess what right now my heart is racing and my head is pounding and I'm in a state right I get to walk around which is good I can burn some of that up so I had the appointment appointment Ember one this was three

weeks ago okay my first appointment this is the video from that okay I just left um my first impressions of the experience let me talk about the experience first the experience was of a good experience it wasn't yeah I wouldn't say it was great I wouldn't say it was bad I would say it was you know fairly average a lot of it was me having to set the stage so giving all the details of my life and things like that and the comment that the therapist made at the end as he said next time I want to talk more about these issues that are actually impacting you and causing you to feel these feelings of depression and

anxiety and I said yeah I understand that said I'm just trying to set the stage he goes no that's great it's fantastic that we have the background and I told him I said really there's more to set you know as we start to get through this and you know tease out all of all the things that are so this first session really was about me giving background information he didn't ask me very many questions he asked me you know you know do you have good memories of childhood you know which i think is a typical question the therapist asked and stuff like that but it was it was a little bit different than I thought it

would be and it was a lot of me kind of you know giving some backstory which I'm good at so that was that was okay right and setting that stage and they're probably more that so what we have set up now is two more appointments before I see you in Las Vegas and what I'm gonna do is just give you the recap after those appointments and see where we go from there unless I have something that really freaks me out between then and now I'll let you know but so far so good so work myself into a frenzy and that's what I came out with after working myself into a frenzy okay did I click I don't know right at that

point I have no idea I don't know what's going on at that point so the next two are just gonna be the follow-up set to the appointments so you can see what was going through my head and the reason I'm doing this is I want you to see my process and what I'm going through because I want you to be able to take a step and I want you to see what it looks like at least from some some persons perspective so I want to get out some of these thoughts while they're still in my head the first thing that strikes me is the hour went by really fast I'm really surprised at how quickly

that hour went by and again this was mostly me talking the therapist talked a little bit but it was mostly me just talking and I thought I was being fairly stream-of-consciousness that there wasn't a lot of continuity between the things I was saying and I did notice that he was taking notes he actually took a lot of those several pages of notes which I need to ask him about next time but um it really was interesting to me that the time went by so fast because you know I wasn't telling stories really you know there there wasn't a beginning a middle and an end it is just a lot of me just doing like data

dumps I was just doing data dump some chunks here's this here's this here's this here's this these things don't necessarily relate these things do relate you know I talked about my personal life I talked about my marriage I talked about my kids I talked about a little bit about my work life and my amazing work colleagues so you know again it was just it was his data dumps it was just little pieces of things here and there that I could get out that seemed like it would be useful information that's kind of the way I approached it was again in trying to give all the backstory necessary to draw out the details I was doing that I guess

this was the exposition round it was interesting appointment number two it's going to happen I don't know honestly I have no feeling one way or the other today as to what actually is gonna go down and I guess that's good because if you remember the last time I was feeling a whole lot of things so now a pretty neutral on the whole thing let's see what happens all right all right so I feel a little bit better I guess again still kind of neutral and in this session though what we he asked me a question he said what does it look like here when we're done and I said I don't know I don't know the answer that I have

no idea you know and it made me question like why am I here in the first place what's what's my end goal what we finally decided on I'm sorry what I finally decided on is that I need to understand the drivers for why I'm using food as my crutch as my advice and very likely it has to do with things that I've repressed from my childhood which is odd in one sense but it makes sense in another sense maybe we'll see but anyway that's what I discovered so these first two sessions what I would say is there were no breakthroughs and maybe I sort of expected that because when you watch TV you see people and their

breakthroughs we haven't done any of that yet I I wasn't really emotionally moved there was a little bit that came up but not a lot so in some sense I think that this journey again it's just started with a couple of steps and it's a discovery journey and I'm not gonna discover things right away but it's gonna come so yeah what I'll say is I'm I'm satisfied with this process at this point I have one more meeting until Vegas so I will see you then we'll see what happens and I can give you my thoughts and the last one so today we talked about antecedent behavior we talked about cycles of addiction and how to break cycles and using tools like

meditation which is something that I've always been interested in and we talked a little bit about my cognizance of breaking of cycles and just the inability in trying to break them right so these are the things that we're going to work on and I have some homework because I'll be with you in Vegas next week and then after that we'll see where it goes but after three appointments what I can tell you is I think we're walking down the right path and it wouldn't have thought that this would happen after three so I'm kind of impressed that we've gotten to talk about the things that we're talking about but there you have it that's my

impression after three I'll be talking to you soon and I hope that you can learn from this experience and I hope that it empowers you to do better by you all right thank you past me so that's what it comes down to when we talk about mental health when we talk about health would you expect after suffering something to your health to go to three doctor's appointments and be just fine it really depends on the degree to which you're suffering I've been suffering for 48 years okay now I want to say something very very specific I am NOT diagnosed with anything I have not been diagnosed with depression I have not been diagnosed with anxiety

I feel the symptoms of depression and anxiety a lot but I'm going to wait for a diagnosis to actually treat that if that's what it is because it could very well be something else and that's what this process is all about so I hope that you can learn from that I hope that you can see what I've done I hope it inspires you to do better by you to be better and to make your health on number one priority thank you very much [Applause]