Welcome to episode 55 of the Testing Peers podcast.

This episode falls on the same date as the start of Mental Health Awareness Week 2022, and this year's theme is Loneliness and our mental health. We greatly value all the discourse around mental health and see great value in continuing the conversation and so we have dedicated this episode to the topic of loneliness from our experiences and perspectives in our testing lives.

Russell kicks us off with a conversation about renovation and DIY stresses, before we dive into the main topic.

Chris opens up with the formation of the Testing Peers group and how it was born out of a sense of loneliness, isolation and lack of accountability in his context.

The Peers then talk about the impact of the pandemic. How many interactions became stripped of humanity and were only status update related. We talk about starting new roles remotely and the struggles we have found with that.

Some other challenges we touch on are guilt, self-care, routine, dependencies, collaboration and communication.

The conversation does move on to the importance of talking about things, finding people you can trust and share with, asking for help and offering help.

Ultimately, agreeing that is really is ok to not be ok.

We hope you found the discussion useful and would love to hear your feedback.

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