The OCD Diaries

January 31, 2013

My Crohn’s Disease Is Doing Push-Ups

Recovering addicts have a saying: “My disease is doing push-ups in the parking lot.” The meaning is that you can be years into sobriety, but you’re never cured. The disease is ready to beat you down as soon as your guard slips.

I’ve learned that Crohn’s Disease does the same thing.

Mood music:

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As violent and damaging as my childhood Crohn’s Disease was, I haven’t had a full-blown attack since 1986. It would be easy to grow complacent and consider myself cured, but the disease sends me the occasional sign that it’s still there.

From the Resources section: Websites for dealing with Crohn’s Disease

What would otherwise be a minor stomach bug turns into full-blown inflammation. Not an attack with the blood, aching joints and an abdomen that feels like it’s on fire, but one that leaves me feeling bloated and off-balance, dogged by a dull soreness in the middle and sudden urges to make a bathroom run. I’m not sure urges is the best word, either. It’s a rushing discomfort that comes on suddenly.

I started feeling it yesterday, and it helped ensure a lousy night’s sleep.

I’ve been asked if I fear another full-blown attack like those that left me hospitalized and jacked up on Prednisone as a kid. I’m not.

I know I’m not cured, so I expect that one of these days, another attack will materialize. I’d rather it didn’t, of course. But I’ve developed a stoic attitude about it. If it comes, I’ll deal with it. I’ll accept the treatment and do what I must to shut it down, even if it means taking Prednisone — a drug I still blame for unleashing the chemical imbalance in my brain that has led to OCD, bouts of depression and a history of binge eating. I figure the drug can’t do much more to me on that score, though it would certainly give me a temporary bad attitude.

In a way, the little bouts of inflammation like the one I have now are a gift. They keep me aware of the disease that lives inside of me and what it can really do to me.

And they remind me to take care.

Inflamed Intestines

January 30, 2013

My Score on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale

The Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) is yet another of those quick self-tests to see if you have OCD.

While I’m not medically trained, I do have OCD, so I see myself as a good subject for these types of tests. If the test matches my diagnosis, maybe it can shed some light on what’s going on in your head, too.

Mood music:

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The scale rates the magnitude of symptoms in OCD patients based on a series of multiple-choice questions. Half the questions focus on obsessions and the other half on compulsions. Here’s how the site defines the two:

Obsessions are unwelcome and distressing ideas, thoughts, images or impulses that repeatedly enter your mind. They may seem to occur against your will. They may be repugnant to you, you may are often senseless, and they may not fit your personality. For example, the recurrent thought or impulse to do harm to your children, even though you never would.

Compulsions are behaviors or acts that you feel driven to perform, even though you may recognize them as senseless or excessive. At times, you may try to resist doing them, but this may prove difficult. You may experience anxiety that does not diminish until the behavior is completed.

From personal experience, I’d say those are accurate descriptions.

Here are some of the questions:

How much do your obsessive thoughts interfere with functioning in your social, work, or other roles?
How much distress do your obsessive thoughts cause you?
How anxious would you become if you were prevented from performing your complusive behaviors?
How much control do you have over the compulsions?

The higher you score, the more of a basket case you are. I scored 17 out of a possible 40. The number was lower than I expected, but it makes sense. At just below 20, I’m less than half of a full basket case.

Were the questions valid? I’d say so. The test is set up to measure the degree in which obsessive or compulsive behavior has control over the person. It gives you a good sense of whether you have mild OCD, which I define as OCD the sufferer is able to manage and even make use of, or the severe variety that destroys your ability to get through the normal challenges of a day.

On the surface, my score tells me that the OCD is there, but I’ve learned to control it and keep the symptoms to a manageable level. I say on the surface because I answered the questions as honestly as I could, but I realize that some of my answers could be off. I took it during a moment of calm. Had I taken it in a more agitated or depressed state, the score probably would have been higher. Overall, though, I found it to be a handy measuring stick, better than some of the others I’ve taken.

So what should you do if you got a high score? As the site’s disclaimer notes, the people behind the site are not medical professionals and your score is not a medical diagnosis. But if you’ve been wondering if you have OCD and your score on this test makes you wonder all the more, a good next step is talking to a medical professional about your concerns. Start with your primary care physician or a licensed counselor.

You can also check out more online resources for OCD on our Help for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder page.

Living with Obsessive-Compulisve Disorder

January 29, 2013

When We Can’t Hibernate, We Become Bears

Erin recently noted that things tend to get ridiculously busy in January, during a period of winter when our bodies scream at us to slow down. On the work side we both have several big projects coming due. At school and in the Scouts, the kids’ schedules are crammed with one activity after the next.

Mood music:

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In winter, we’re not all that different from animals that hibernate. It’s hard to get out of bed when it’s frigid and dark outside. Because we humans must get up and get moving anyway, it causes us to get easily depressed, which leads to eating too much or too little. We tend to be more forgetful and we snap at each other more easily.

When you’re already given to depression, mental disorders like OCD and ADHD, and unbalanced eating, all that you suffer from gets amplified. Instead of mild depression, there’s deep depression. Things that aren’t really a big deal become huge calamities. Our responses to normal everyday pressures become exaggerated. Spouses tend to argue more. Kids tend to have more outbursts.

A friend who teaches kindergarten noted one day last week that three kids were put in timeouts and two others got sick, all at once. I chuckled, because I remember the same stuff happening when Sean and Duncan were kindergartners. Kids are simply brutal in the dead of winter. Why? Because the academics and special activities ramp up when their little brains are least able to take it.

We seem to experience similar behavior in the summer, but the difference is that activities slow down that time of year. Spring and fall are when we’re most productive and agreeable.

I don’t have any solutions to the problem. I don’t even know if what I and others have observed has any scientific research to back it up. But I do have a suggestion.

If those you work with and live with seem like jerks lately and you want to bite their heads off, take a breath and note that you’re just as bad. Then engage in small acts of kindness. Hold the doors open for people. Remember to say good morning. Smile even if you don’t feel like it.

When we do these things any time of year, we become better people. In winter, it may well be the key to our survival.

Roaring Bear

January 28, 2013

Cancer’s Silver Lining

These days it’s sobering for me to think of all the cancer patients I know personally. I’ve written about my aunt and one of my hometown friends. I’ve known others, as well. I’ve never had cancer, but it’s become a source of anxiety in my life.

Mood music:

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Along with knowing many who battle it, I’m at a higher risk of developing colon cancer one of these days, thanks to nearly a lifetime of Crohn’s Disease. I have to get a colonoscopy every couple of years to keep an eye on things, which gives me confidence that if it ever arrives, we’ll catch it early. But it’s given me a somewhat fatalistic outlook: I assume it’s coming eventually.

NPR recommends asking these two questions of your doctor before having your colonoscopy.

That said, I’ve seen a silver lining around this disease. Simply put, it tends to bring out the best in those who suffer from it.

I never hear the people I know with cancer grousing about it. There’s no “woe is me” going on. No bitterness. Just gratitude. They seem to appreciate what they have a lot more and spread that gratefulness around. I have no doubt they still experience plenty of anxiety and awful feelings out of public view. But that’s what makes their public face so inspiring. They can still show us how to be strong, even though they are exhausted and in a hundred kinds of pain.

I’m thinking about this because my Haverhill friend announced on Facebook that she’s decided to get hospice care. Renee Pelletier Costa often posts her messages from bed, because all the chemo and radiation saps her energy. But everything she posts is about how lucky she is and how much support and love she has.

Her battle is getting tougher, and she has decided on hospice care not because she sees the end in sight, but because the services offered will allow her to cast aside the chemo treatments and focus on healthier daily living. She wants to be able to do more for her family and get more quality from the time she spends with them, and this is how she can do that.

“I have no plans of dying anytime soon,” she wrote on Facebook. “Only God knows.”

Indeed, it’s not about dying. It’s about living. It’s more useful to focus on the latter, because when you get down to it, none of us really knows how much time we have.

Thanks for the lesson, Renee.

Livestrong Tatoo

January 25, 2013

Lessons From the Hemingway Curse

I’ve always been drawn to Ernest Hemingway and his family, not because of his writings or his antics, but because of the deep stain mental illness has left on the Hemingway legacy.

Mood music:

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I remember an English teacher talking about Hemingway’s 1961 suicide. The teacher suggested Hemingway was an asshole, that he was too macho to accept that he was getting too old to seek out adventure and thus gave up. I accepted that answer for a long time, and when my best friend killed himself in 1996 the Hemingway perception colored how I dealt with my own loss.

Hemingway was an asshole for doing what he did, the teacher had suggested. Therefore, my friend was an asshole for doing what he did.

It’s too bad I saw it that way. If I knew the truth about mental illness back then, I would have had a healthier outlook on what had happened in my life. I still would have grieved, of course. But maybe I wouldn’t have been so haunted for so long. I’m not bitter about that. I ultimately learned my lessons and was able to make peace with the past. But my awareness has drawn me to other suicide cases, including those of the Hemingways.

Besides the famous author, actress Margaux Hemingway ended her life in 1996, the same year as my friend. All told, seven members of Ernest’s family have died by taking their own lives, according to CNN.

It makes sense. Depression runs in families and so can the coping tools for dealing with that depression.

Looking for resources to manage your depression? Check out our Coping with Depression, Fear and Anxiety page.

The CNN story mainly discusses the so-called Hemingway curse and how actress Mariel Hemingway, sister of Margaux and granddaughter of Ernest, has dealt with it. From the article:

Every family, even famous ones, have secrets. The Hemingways are no different. “We were, sort of, the other American family that had this horrible curse,” says Mariel Hemingway. She compared her family to the Kennedys — but the Hemingway curse, she said, is mental illness. Hemingway explores the troubled history of her family in “Running from Crazy,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. “Knowing that there’s so much suicide and so much mental illness in my family, I’ve always kind of been ‘running from crazy,’ worried that one day I’d wake up and be in the same position,” Mariel Hemingway, 51, said at a support group for families of suicide, as shown in the film.

Making the film must have been a liberating experience for her. By pulling all those family skeletons from the closet, she’s freed herself from some of the haunting and educated a lot of people in the process. That’s always been one of my main motivations in doing this blog.

If blogs like mine and documentaries like hers can bring a few people some peace of mind and detonate the stigmas around mental illness, it will have been worth it.

Ernest Hemingway

January 24, 2013

Bullet-proof Backpacks, Whiteboards: Logical Or Lunacy?

After what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School, would you buy your child a bullet-proof backpack? If you’re a teacher, would you want to have a bullet-proof whiteboard? A couple companies think so.

Mood music:

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A friend who happens to be a teacher brought these to my attention yesterday, and my first reaction was to balk and say, “Here we go again with businesses trying to cash in on our fear.” After a few hours of research, I’m not balking anymore. In fact, I’m still not sure what to think.

The whiteboard idea comes from Maryland’s Pocomoke City-based Hardwire. It developed a hand-held whiteboard teachers could use as a shield if necessary. The company says the shield can stop bullets fired from a handgun at pointblank range. The backpacks are sold by a number of companies, and sales have gone through the roof since Dec. 14, the day of the Sandy Hook massacre.

What to make of it? On the surface it makes perfect sense. Our children live in a seemingly more dangerous world than the one we grew up in. I used to walk to and from school and hang out under the bridge without much fear for my safety other than the occasional threat from bullies. We can’t let our kids do that today. When I drop my kids at school, I don’t drive away until I’ve watched both enter the school.

With all these school shootings, it’s hard to even feel safe when they get in the building.

But my attitude has also changed in recent years in that I don’t think we should overprotect our kids. As scary as the thought may be, they need a taste of the tough stuff so they can grow tougher themselves.

My attitude is also influenced by my past suffering with fear and anxiety. A decade ago I would have obsessed about acquiring extra shielding for my children. I probably would have spent money we didn’t have to get it. Since bringing that fear to heel, I’ve been steadfast in my belief that you have to face what scares you in the eyes and make it blink.

Believing that as I do, my natural instinct is to dismiss these bullet-proof products as a waste. It’s just more security theater, where you may feel safer but you’re not. If a gunman enters a school with an assault rifle, the backpacks will be hanging on hooks out of the kids’ reach, which wouldn’t do any good. And in the confusing first moments of gunfire, will a teacher be quick enough to pull the whiteboard off the wall?

Part of me says life is too short to waste time on such calculations.

But the part of me that writes about security for a living thinks these defenses might just make the difference for a few people in that moment of danger.

I try to end these posts with a proposed way forward. In this case, since I admittedly don’t have answers to propose, I’d like to open the floor for discussion.

In the comments section, tell me if you would buy these things for your classroom and your kids.

January 23, 2013

From Beyonce To The Tragic Manipulation Of Milli Vanilli

Revelations that Beyonce Knowles lip-synched “The Star Spangled Banner” at the inauguration this week remind me of how shallow people can be. Shallow in their expectations of others. Shallow in their need to rip others apart instead of putting themselves back together.

Mood music:

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I’ve always found it silly how people explode when a performer is caught lip-synching. We have this idealistic picture of how musicians should carry on when they perform in front of an audience. They’re expected to hit every note while running around the stage. We forget they are entertainers, often going on stage night after night, enduring travel schedules that are not for the faint of heart. They get sick on the road and their vocal chords are rubbed raw.

I’ve seen singers perform live and wished that they HAD lip-synched. Motley Crue’s Vince Neil comes to mind. I care more about whether they perform on their albums. If musicians need some onstage help to reproduce sounds they made in the recording studio, I have no problem with that.

But to me there’s a bigger issue in all this.

When a performer is caught lip-synching or using recorded background tracks, we pounce on them because it’s always easier to tear someone else down than to deal with our own imperfections. It’s easier still because since they are stars and the rest of us are not, we’ll never stare them in the face. It’s easier to verbally decimate someone when they’re not in front of you. We do it to athletes, too.

I remember hating Milli Vanilli and taking great joy in their downfall. To me the outrage was justified because they didn’t even sing on the album that won them a Grammy.

In hindsight, I feel badly for Milli Vanilli. Those poor bastards were manipulated by the entertainment machine. The whole package was created by Frank Farian, who felt his hand-picked vocalists for the album lacked a marketable image. So he brought in Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan, two younger model/dancers he found in a dance club. The duo fell for the intoxication of stardom as many of us would have. They received a huge advance and continued to be manipulated by Farian. They sold themselves into slavery and he was their master.

When the truth came out, the duo was ruined. Pilatus eventually died of an overdose.

Of course, the case of Milli Vanilli was a bigger deal than most of the lip-synching controversies we hear about these days. People bought their albums thinking Pilatus and Morvan sang on them. We can forgive on-stage trickery. But when it comes to the recorded work, not so much.

It was a much different scenario from the one Beyonce is currently getting tarred and feathered over. But there is one important, common element: We’re eagerly ripping splinters from the eyes of people we don’t know while conveniently ignoring the big chunks of wood in our own eyes. We judge people without having the whole story. And we often do it out of jealousy because they have the mansions and we don’t.

Beyonce has proven time and again that she can sing. Her music is not my cup of tea, but I respect what she’s accomplished.

Should she be dragged through the mud for lip-synching at a presidential inauguration — one of the most choreographed events on the planet?

I prefer not to.

January 22, 2013

The Snow Day Has Been Cancelled

Weather forecasters said we’d get a lot of snow, but only a dusting fell around here. School is on after all, and the kids will surely be disappointed. It goes to show that sometimes life doesn’t work out as planned.

Mood music:

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As a man with OCD, I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. When you have a brain that never stops thinking, you tend to expect certain things out of your day. When the expectation is a bad one and isn’t fulfilled, it’s a huge weight off the shoulders. Expect to be told that you have cancer and then learn it’s just a benign lump is freeing.

But when you expect something good and it doesn’t happen — a snow day, a night out, a promotion at work — the sudden change of events can be devastating to a guy like me.

I know the disappointment Sean and Duncan will feel when they wake up to a day of school after all. I experienced that let-down often enough as a kid. Many of us have. One time in fourth grade, I was so upset that a snow day didn’t materialize as expected that I made myself sick. I got to stay home that day after all, but I spent it throwing up and cowering under the assault of a migraine. It was a sign of things to come.

As I’ve gotten older and gained more control over my OCD, I’ve gotten a lot better at managing the expectation game. At the least, I’m able to proceed with my day and make the necessary adjustments without the old sense of dread and the feeling that maybe God hated me.

But I still get thrown for a loop sometimes when expectations don’t pan out. A couple of weeks ago, I was gleefully anticipating a Saturday night out with Erin watching friends’ bands play. Because of illness things didn’t work out and I was bitterly disappointed. I carried a bad mood into the next day.

It can happen to all of us once in a while. But when you have something like OCD, every emotion is exaggerated.

I’m glad I’m better at getting over it. Hopefully, my kids will get better at it, too.

School Bus in the Snow

January 17, 2013May 10, 2020

Friends Of The Gifted Need To Learn Suicide Intervention Tactics

One thing I’ve learned over the years: Some super-smart, super-gifted, ahead-of-their-time people often battle with depression and eventually lose their war. So it was for my best friend who took his life 16 years ago. So it has been for far too many of my industry peers.

Mood music:

I’m thinking of them and for those who continue to struggle with depression daily. I’m grateful, particularly in my industry, for those who have stepped up to support those who need help.

A few years ago, one friend suggested creating a suicide intervention tactics workshop at security cons, focusing specifically on gifted tech folks who are particularly vulnerable. That idea has led to a lot of great content that has no doubt saved lives.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting this blog, it’s that depression and anxiety run high in the information security industry. I’ve had many discussions with people who have battled their own demons. All of them were brilliant, innovative and downright gifted.

They remind me of my long-dead friend. I often think about how his intelligence made him hyper-aware of the world around him. He had moments of extreme joy and extreme pain. You could say he knew too much to be happy.

If there’s one thing I wish I had back then, it would be the skills to see where he was headed and the tactics to help him back off the ledge.

To Amber’s point, friends and colleagues of the sufferers in our industry need to learn tactics to make a difference.

I don’t consider myself gifted, but in the last several years I’ve found tools to cope with my own depressed feelings. I’ve learned to use music, humor, writing and counseling as weapons against the dark. Medication alone is never enough. Sometimes, it makes things worse.

Those tools are essential, as are tactics we could all use to help those who can’t seem to help themselves. Putting those things on display at tech conferences (virtual and, eventually, in-person again) could be as important as the technology on display.

I’ll keep trying to do my part to make it happen.

January 16, 2013

When Conspiracy Theorists Become Bullies

Conspiracy theorists usually don’t bother me. Hell, I even subscribe to the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald had help assassinating JFK. But a new breed of conspiracy theorist has emerged in recent years. They make threats and act like the schoolyard bully, and they make my skin crawl.

Mood music:

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The clowns who argued that 9/11 was an inside job are one example, though to my knowledge they never actually threatened anyone. Now there’s the Sandy Hook truther movement, a band of conspiracy theorists who believe the government secretly orchestrated the murder of 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, so the public would support efforts to gut the Second Amendment. They take things in a dangerous, cruel direction.

They are the bullies in the schoolyard, the thugs hiding in the alley waiting to pounce.

One of their victims is Gene Rosen, a man who took in six little survivors of Sandy Hook the morning of the massacre. Rosen lives close enough to the school that he heard the gunshots. He found the children at the end of his driveway, and they told him they couldn’t go back to school because their teacher was dead.

He took the children into his home, gave them food, juice and toys, and called their parents. He sat with them as they described the horrible events.

He became a target of the Sandy Hook truther gang because he had been interviewed by the media. The truther thugs believe the government is paying actors to pose as eyewitnesses.

The Salon website describes how Rosen has suffered at the hands of this group:

“I don’t know what to do,” sighed Gene Rosen. “I’m getting hang-up calls, I’m getting some calls, I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor, ‘how much am I being paid?’” Someone posted a photo of his house online. There have been phony Google+ and YouTube accounts created in his name, messages on white supremacist message boards ridiculing the “emotional Jewish guy,” and dozens of blog posts and videos “exposing” him as a fraud. One email purporting to be a business inquiry taunted: “How are all those little students doing? You know, the ones that showed up at your house after the ‘shooting’. What is the going rate for getting involved in a gov’t sponsored hoax anyway?”

As I said, I generally have no problem with conspiracy theorists. Most share their beliefs without hurting anyone. And there’s no question that the US government has engaged in conspiracies and illegal activity. Did the government orchestrate this massacre? Although you never know, I think there are people out there who hate Obama so much that they’ll believe just about any theory where the president is cast as a brutal dictator.

If we ever see evidence that the truther gang is right, Americans will show the same outpouring of anger that has led to the downfall of many a government official.

But whether they’re right or wrong, conspiracy theorists have no right to threaten or harass anyone. If you think the government is behind something terrible, speak out and search for evidence. That’s your right as an American citizen.

But when you limit others’ rights in favor of your own, you become just as evil as the empire you’re fighting against.

Below: Gene Rosen (Credit: AP/Mary Altaffer)

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