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Mental Health in VFX

Introduction:

So……This was a tough one for me to write.

I’ve been wanting to write this for a while, but part of me didn’t want to write it because I wasn’t finished dealing with my own pain from my life events.

But that has changed, that I feel like I am in a better place, and also because of some observations I started to make around me. As well as general fuck’ups I’ve made.

This article is going to be less about sharing my personal trauma, but more about how you can deal with yours in VFX. Why actions and events stick with us in this industry. As well as how to look after yourself. Also listing any mental health resources you may need down below. So let’s get started. But first a little back story, and then I’ll shut up. I promise.

When I started VFX, I had a lot of terrible things happen to me. The first being, that on my first week in the VFX industry, my grandpa died of cancer. I didn’t quite have the time to process it, as I was commuting 3 hours one way to a studio everyday, being overwhelmed with work, and overall being terrified of everyone around me, and trying to prove myself. So it sat with me…for a long time. And I did not realize it until it was too late.

The second one, I cannot mention here, for many different reasons. Because legally I shouldn’t. But two weeks before I started a job in my very first FX artist position something bad happened which caused me to relive a lot of things. It changed my perspective of the teams that I worked with, made me distrust my coworkers, made me incredibly shy, and had huge effects on mood. It ruined my focus for shots, and made me frustrated with tasks even if I did them correctly.

I was silent about it for three years until I decided to mention it to my partner at the time. It was the most terrifying thing I did, and standing up for myself is not one of my strong points. But literally minutes after saying something it was as if…all my back pain was removed. I know that is a weird example, but I no longer felt pain and burdened by something beyond my control. I felt so happy. It didn’t feel like I was lying to myself or anyone anymore.

And strangely enough, in the two months following that, my publishing rates and workflows started to improve as an artist. As well as my general mental health of what I should do to deal with the situation I had been through.

Additionally, I’ve listed some resources for mental health in case any readers need them below. As well as some interesting studies in artist workplaces.

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Trama: Why Don’t You Trust People?

I was asked this phrase by someone who I met at a studio in my first ever FX position. I was his replacement, and on his last day he turned around and asked me: “Why don’t you trust people?” I had no idea what to say, and responded with: “Trama?” At the time, I really didn’t have the energy to open my mouth and explain it. But his question made me think about the environment I was in, and why my body language was the way it was with my team.

I think one thing we forget about trauma, is that everyone has different levels of it. Everyone's trauma is different, and there isn’t really a scale or measurement scale to explain it either. What I mean by this is, trauma isn’t a competition on who’s been hurt more. Any situation can leave you with trauma. This could be as simple as feeling bad that you weren’t there for your child after they had a really bad day at school, someone making a rude comment at you in an interview, or just overall exhaustion.

When you come out of any stressful situation, and thrust into another one, often your mind just refocuses onto the next task. I think there isn’t much argument to say: VFX is stressful. The workflow, hours, and time put into it are not like other traditional industries. Plus, if the studio you are working at has toxic behaviors, this just adds even more stress.

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Coming out of a tough situation where you fully haven’t processed what has just happened, and then walking into work and being told there is a delivery on Monday doesn’t help either. You’ve just come out of a personal situation where everything around you failed, and now you might be set up to fail again by having that urgent deadline. This is a perfect situation explaining why a lot of people in VFX have trust issues.

For female VFX artists in the industry. A few of the issues that impact our workplace trust is being typecast for the same effects, animations, and scenes more frequently. Sexism, gender bias, and harassment are also a few other issues. The industry has certainly come a long way from what it was like 10 years ago. For example, if you visit the wayback machine, look up VFXhell.com, (April 27 2007) you’ll find a thread entitled: “The Hottest Women are in Which Department?” Internet discussions like these would be shut down today extremely fast. Especially if a studio found out its employees were the ones starting it. However, the lasting trauma from incidents like these for senior female artists who worked in the industry during that time has been exponential.

It’s hard to adjust to a safer work environment when the environment that you originally grew up in was toxic, and shaped your own personal work ethic and standard stress levels. The residue stress can cause people to have shorter tempers, more personal walls, and the need for more personal space than might be accepted.

The industry in North America has been the safest it’s been in awhile for female artists. But there are still a handful of examples we all point to in recent years where I think a majority of people would say, regardless of gender: That situation sucked for everyone involved.

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Loss:

You can lose almost everything in your life at some point. Relationships, money, status, pretty much anything. Relationship loss can be the hardest, especially when it’s someone you met in the VFX industry, and you’ve worked, lived, and grown with them through huge sections of their life.

I’ve personally experienced this myself, and it’s not only a blow to your self esteem as an artist, but also to your work-friend group, professionalism, work ethic, and overall morals. Questions will arise in your mind such as:

- Will all my work friends exclude me out of the friend group now?
- Will this breakup ruin my career?
- Should I let our friends know?
- Did work ruin our relationship?
- Was I the dick?
- How should I act going forward?
- How do I move forward?

The worst part about all of those questions is that there is no correct or consistent answer. It’s one of the reasons that relationships in the VFX industry are frowned upon by some people. But in defense of VFX couples, when you are stuck in a studio space for 12 hours a day with a bunch of people who are collectively nerdy like you, something will happen.

But it’s also extremely hard to walk away from someone who works in the same industry as you. When you’re together it’s perfect. You can discuss work, vent about similar things, understand the overtime system together, feed off each other’s growth, and attempt to be the VFX power couple you’ve always wanted to be. But when that comes crashing down, it’s devastating. Especially if you work at the same studio, walked the same route to work with them every morning, had specific days after work where you would meet up, or even worked from home together.

I think it’s accurate to say that having someone walk out of your life after a significant amount of time with you, will always be damaging. You might not have the strength to even walk into an office, or complete more than the daily tasks at work. With work from home now the new normal at some studios, it’s easy to lock yourself away from socially interacting with your peers.

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There are also artists who suffer major financial losses when traveling to other countries to work. This can be due to unexpected living fees, lower salaries than what were expected, healthcare, and generally other unexpected costs. This can leave artists in extremely rough mental states. The pressure to survive in a country that is far removed from your family, support networks, and to be in a different culture is overwhelming. Junior artists who travel the globe can feel the brunt of this a lot more than senior ones. All of this pressure of working for a job that is causing more stress than it might not be worth, can cause artists to leave.

Dealing with death while working in post production is not easy. Losing a family member, friend or colleague mid production or during a crunch period is devastating. Not only to the person(s) the loss happened to, but to the entire team. It can affect the mood how people approach shots on the show, interactions the team has, and overall department interactions.

Death is also hard to process as the emotion with it comes in waves. There will be the initial shock of it happening, the slow month to month realization that your experiences with that person are now over, and the deepening reality that person meant a lot to you.

I often like to equate the loss of a relationship to the result of having someone die in your life. As the emotions are often similar. Some people never get to interact with their significant other post-breakup other than accidentally running into them and seeing how much time has actually been lost.

All of the reasons listed above can contribute to deeper, and longer lasting burnout. Which is why it’s so important to learn when to step away from stressful situations.

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Working Through It: Literally

I think anyone's first gut reaction to dealing with a bad situation is to focus on their hobbies and work more. Personally, I can relate. From experience, I know that when you are under duress you tend to focus on work statuses more, have an inability to shut off after work, need to be constantly doing something, and replay conversations and scenarios again and again.

There is a loop you can fall into where sadness and anger can fuel you to either create the greatest art you’ll ever make, or have an incoherent focus. There is a reason why the stereotypical personalities of famous artists are that they are sad people. Unfortunately you can also never predict how your personal work ethic will change after a mental health crisis.

The downfalls of “working through it”, is that you often start to ignore basic daily tasks versus your tasks at work. It’s easier to focus all your energy into the job that keeps a roof over your head, rather to maintain that roof. It also becomes gradually harder to pick up new hobbies when you are under duress. Hobbies can relax your mind, and give you a brief moment to think about something else.

Working through it places you in a situation where it focuses so much of your attention on one thing, that you’ll reactively limit yourself from creating new social bonds. Which will cause you to remember the painful event for longer, and wallow in your pain more. It’s a very human reaction to want to either try and use a coping mechanism to forget something, or try and hold onto the feelings that you had for longer. Depending if they were once comforting, or you feel the ongoing pain is something you either deserve or need to remember.

One of the worst parts of working through it is that you can easily displace your emotions from the situation you are going through into your work environment. Which is not something you want to do if you want to make friends. Everyone is guilty of this at some point, including myself. It also gets increasingly harder to manage this if the negative situation you are in is getting progressively worse.

I think one of the worst parts of being a successful person in VFX, while also battling your mental health issues, is that you never really feel fulfilled in the long run. I’m not referring to being a big name in VFX, but rather just being one of the various talents in a studio setting. You constantly have this weird feeling of people judging you, that people might be mentioning you behind your back, feeling excluded every time you see one of your studio friends in an event you weren’t invited to. Or even feeling worthless compared to the talent the senior artists have around you. I want to say as a fellow artist; you are not alone in those feelings. It doesn’t matter how much experience you have, those feelings will always be there to some degree.

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How to Be Better: Let it Go

Now I’m not a therapist, I’m just someone who’s lived through some generally terrible things. So this section is going to be a mix on how I’ve seen and experienced things going south during a mental health crisis. As well as how you can be there for someone in your studio going through a tough situation, and not feel weird about it in the process.

I’ll also be adding some advice on tips I’ve found across the internet from professional mental health physicians. All links to these resources will be listed below.

Let’s open with a very VFX relevant scenario: Being depressed on a Beer Friday. Depression and alcohol never mix well. You might think you know your cut off point, but your mental health demon doesn’t. The last thing your coworkers want to deal with is you throwing up, making a move on them, passing out, being violent, or overall being a downer. The last thing you want to ever experience in a studio is blacking out on a Beer Friday, and waking up on Monday and seeing that the vibe around you is different.

My recommendation if you are working through something tough, but also want to enjoy the Beer Friday mentality of the studio, would be several things. The best case scenario is to just not drink anything. Plan ahead, and bring ingredients for a shirley temple(Non alcoholic cocktail) if you have to. Bring a water bottle with you, and drink that instead. If you know you need a flavor to whatever you are drinking, consider adding a lime or lemon substitute to it, or a carbonated pop beverage. Set a general time limit for yourself, and give yourself a “bedtime” that you should get home by. If you have a group of people in the office who you are close with, and are aware of your situation, stick with them. They will look out for you, and help cut you off.

Beer Fridays are one of the most social events of a studio setting, and it feels incredibly awful to not be a part of it if you are a social person. Or even someone who doesn’t enjoy alcohol. So if you want to be social, and you know you’re not in the best state of mind, and you do want to have a beer with your coworkers: Make sure you are in a safe situation where you know you can walk away without repercussions.

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CG Spectrum published this awesome list for VFX Mental Health awhile back. The article is listed below, and I’d figured I’d add on it and list their very useful points.

Stay hydrated
Dress for success
Sit right
Move
Sleep on it
You are what you eat
Say it out aloud
Get to know your cycle
Break it down
Acts of kindness
Social time
Find passions outside of work
Routine
Practice mindfulness
Take a mental health day

All of these CG Spectrum points are incredibly valid.

Your mood will absolutely be based on what you eat. If you don’t eat for hours on end, you will not have energy to think. When you are young, (minus 25) you can get away with this longer than most people. The older you get, you will exponentially feel your focus draining away while you are fasting. If you eat too much of the wrong thing, you’ll be constantly thinking about how awful you feel with a bloated stomach. Maybe how fat you’ll feel after all the food you’ve consumed, or feel the need to throw up.

Moving is a great point as well. Exercise is a lifesaver. If you have body, weight, metal health issues you can literally outrun them with exercise. Generally a half hour to an hour of running, walking, stretching, or stair climbing can help you zone out. Don’t ever feel like it’s uncomfortable to zone out to music and throw your body (as uncomfortable as you may feel) through a series of motions to improve it. The confidence you will get post workout will help you through a lot.

Mental health days are important. For myself, I’ve never really been impressed by how adults never have a summer break. Or how Arthur(animation) reinforced to me how every month should have a long weekend. So the least you can do as an adult is create your own long weekends per month. It’s only fair. Personally, once a month I try to arrange a doctor's appointment, dentist appointment, or family arrangement into a Friday so I can schedule that into a long weekend.

Socializing is a must. Don’t view it as something you have to do for your career. But rather something you have to do for both yourself and your career. You need people around you, no matter how close they are, to make you understand social situations better, as well as professional ones. You can destroy a relationship between you and a supervisor in an instant if you have no idea how to react to something they are saying in either a personal setting or from a career one.

If there is something I could add to this list it would be to smile. Even when you are describing a bad situation. One of my therapists gave me advice a long time ago. The rationale behind it was that when you smile about something, it physically improves your reaction to the trauma. Which over a period of time increases your positive reactions when dealing with it.

Working in both the studio and from home can help your mental health. A hybrid working schedule can give you time to avoid people when you need some space, and days where you can force yourself to socialize. It's a very good way to slowly ease yourself out of isolating yourself from the world, or dealing with social anxiety.

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I feel from this I should move on to what others should do if they recognize their coworker, or friend in need of help. It’s easy to brush off odd behavior from co-workers, or walk away from someone over an angry random outburst. However, you need to consider the reason why those things are happening. Behind every negative reaction, there is usually a reason for it.

I find being CPR-c, or Standard First Aid trained comes in handy. If someone is hurt, throwing up, having an anxiety attack, or going into shock over something, you can quickly help. Standard First Aid usually comes with basic situational awareness training. Which includes dealing with bystanders, reactional trauma, when to call 911, measures for dealing with shock and anxiety, and a lot more. You’re not only learning how to treat someone with an injury, but you are also learning how to control the reactions of people to that injury, and make sure the situation does not get out of hand. It also teaches you how to be calm and collected in a tough situation. Which is a skill that is very applicable to other situations.

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Learning and listening work hand in hand for encouraging better mental health. It’s not your job to listen to someone vent about how shitty their life is. But quite often, people need someone to know what’s going on, and someone to talk to. When people have bottled emotions, they can get the impression that everyone is judging them in a negative light. If you can create a space where people on your team can approach you and explain why their work, mood, or publishing rate has not been up to par, it can really be beneficial for the entire production.

If a fellow artist is struggling with loss, burnout, or something much more, after you listen to them, consider googling the problem. For example, let’s say an artist tells you in private they got diagnosed with a mental health label or disease, feel free to google what they mentioned after the conversation has finished in private. Reading up on the subject matter might give you a better idea what their long term struggles might look like, or what they might be facing currently.

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If you know someone is really struggling, and is trying to hide the fact depression is taking over their life, help them. If you know they have a close friend or a buddie in the studio, tell them privately what is going on, and see if they can agree to check in on their friend once every week. If you are in their close group of friends, privately try and get the rest of the group to help out. Try and plan social events that you know your friend in need can manage to show up to. If you are working with someone who is incredibly antisocial, talking over text or phone call works as well. Group zoom calls are also very beneficial. Try and get the person the help they need at a rate that is not confrontational, comes from an empathic place, and pitch solutions that can work with the situation that they are in.

Everyone’s trauma and mental health is different. There is no “correct” way of dealing with it. Which is why it is always extremely hard to deal with. For some last words of wisdom, I wish to remind anyone going through anything that is causing them self doubt, lack of self care, a lack of worthiness, anxiety, or anything that is causing you pain:

It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.
It is not your fault.

Say it. Trust me, It’s not your fault.

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