The OCD Diaries

April 25, 2016

After “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” Post, A Dramatic Turnaround

After the December 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, when 20 children and several educators were murdered by 20-year-old shooter Adam Lanza, a distressed mom wrote a blog post called “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” The mental distress Lanza reportedly lived with was something Liza Long saw in her own son, Eric Walton.

Sunday morning I heard a report on NPR in which Long and Walton opened up about the turn their lives took after that blog post went viral. And it’s damn inspiring.

Mood music:

Walton, now 16, used to experience rages and suicidal thoughts, including a particularly brutal episode a couple days before the Sandy Hook massacre that left him hospitalized.

He says the start of his rages were like a blackout where he lost all control of his faculties. He had been given a series of misdiagnoses, but after his mom’s post went viral, mental health professionals and others came forward offering help. Eventually, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

“I got the correct diagnosis. I got put on the right medication. And I haven’t had a rage, I think, since that day,” Walton told NPR. “It’s funny, I don’t even keep track anymore.”

Asked how he views his disorder now, Walton told NPR, “I choose to think of it as my superpower. I’m really, really creative. I’m very empathetic. I have a lot of skills that teenagers don’t normally have: conflict resolution, mindfulness — just things I’ve had to pick up over the years because it kind of helped control myself before the right diagnosis.”

That tickled me, because I’ve been describing my own condition as a superpower when all the pieces are managed properly.

The full interview is available on the NPR website.

In the years since I learned how to control my OCD, depression, fear and anxiety, I’ve had my backslides, especially in the past year. I experienced a particularly pervasive bout of the depression in the fall of 2014. But I’ve always been able to find my way back into balance, so I know what Walton speaks of.

Getting sorted out is hard. But with the right support and motivation, it WILL be sorted out.

If you suffer from bipolar disorder or any torment of the mind, I hope stories like these will help you push forward.

April 21, 2016

Sometimes, It’s Good to be Hard on Yourself

Last week, I vented frustration on Facebook after a particularly frustrating day. I was angrier than I had been in a long time.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/lyL58DRZ9KQ?list=PLG5y42X_qOGxGXuyLOr6FJV76M3o5TUcX

By the next morning, the bad feelings had dulled and I had second thoughts about venting my anger the way I did. So I put this on my timeline:

Yesterday I was having a bad-attitude kind of day and I let it bleed onto Facebook. I try to never do that. Sorry to those who had to see it.

The larger reality is that I have a blessed life. I’m married to my best friend and we have two awesome children. We live in a great place. Erin C Brenner is doing great things with her business and I have a great job and legions of friends.

Managing a building on the side has been hard, but things there are steadily moving in the right direction and I’ve been able to keep it from affecting my work. I’ve also picked up a ton of business experience I never thought I’d have.

My biggest problem is that I’m sweating the little stuff too much lately and I haven’t been writing enough.

That’s gonna change.

Thanks to all of you for being in my life.

A lot of people responded, most saying I’m entitled to vent sometimes and that I’m way too hard on myself. I appreciated the words of support. But when people say I’m too hard on myself, I don’t entirely agree.

Sure, there’s a point where self-criticism can take ugly turns and be counterproductive, especially when you beat yourself up physically and mentally, lash out at everyone around you out of shame and fail to move on with life. I’ve gone down that road too many times.

I’ve also discovered that more often than not, when you think you’ve said or done something counterproductive, it’s healthy to acknowledge it. If you’re not hard on yourself once in a while, you never learn and evolve. I don’t want to be that guy. To that end, I feel better for having written that second take on Saturday morning.

The trick is to know when you’re putting yourself in check and when you’ve crossed over into angry self-righteousness. It’s difficult to see when you’ve crossed that line, but I think I’m getting better at it as I get older.

Thanks again for all your support.

April 20, 2016

I Haven’t Begun to Grieve

In recent months, I’ve had a sour attitude. My eating has been erratic, I’ve barely exercised or picked up the guitar, and I have far less patience for people than usual. I’ve come to realize the reason.

I haven’t really been dealing with the emotional scar of losing my father last year.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Dd4Uto-0XZg?list=RDDd4Uto-0XZg

I thought I was. I dove headfirst into the task of untangling his unfinished business interests, specifically managing the building that housed the family business for more than 40 years. It fell to me to manage the trusts associated with it, and there’s been a costly chemical spill cleanup to pay for and oversee.

After several failed attempts to sell the building, I decided to lease it out until the clean-up is done, fix the place up and then sell it in a few years. I brought someone in to manage the building for me, and we’re finally making some much-needed repairs.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to keep putting 100% into my real job, earning a “consistently exceeds expectations” on my last performance review. During the review period, I threw myself into a new role in the company while keeping vigil in my father’s hospice room, dealing with two other family deaths within the same three-week period and, as mentioned, taking the reigns of the Brenner business.

But some things have suffered. In addition to the lack of guitar playing, I haven’t been writing in this blog nearly as much as I should. I’ve been too busy and tired. And I’ve been neglecting other people. I’ve been carrying around a “fuck you” attitude that rivals that of my teens and early 20s, which is saying something.

For a long time, I thought all these things were the result of grieving for my father. But as I’ve heard other family members talk about their own grieving processes, I realize I simply threw myself into all that work, too overwhelmed with the responsibilities to have the luxury to grieve.

Funny that, given everything I’ve written about managing grief.

I’ve had far less empathy and patience for other family members. I think some of that is because I’m jealous of their ability to grieve. I haven’t been able to do any personal travels to contemplate the last year. I haven’t been able to drop a single tear.

Some of it is because I can’t put him on a pedestal the way they can. I’ve spent a lot of time being angry and resentful of the old man for dumping this mess on my shoulders.

To keep doing my real job with all the time and energy it deserves while keeping a closer eye on the building, I moved into my father’s office. His fishing pictures, hanging stuffed sailfish and scattered piles of paperwork have been replaced with my own family portraits and some guitar- and movie-oriented wall hangings. The filing cabinets have an increasing array of stickers about hacking, a nod to my work in infosec.

Sometimes I sit there and remember hanging out in this office as he worked, and it makes me a little sad. It definitely makes me think of the strange turn my life has taken this past year. Never in a trillion years did I ever expect to be occupying that office for my own work.

The logical question is what I’m going to do to start grieving properly. Honestly, I’m not sure.

I know I have to start taking better care of myself. I have to start using my mental coping tools to their full power again. I know I need to start being more patient with people.

I’m still feeling things out in this journey. Maybe acknowledging the problem is the first step toward a solution.

April 15, 2016April 16, 2020

Joey Ramone Fought The OCD Stigma And More

Joey Ramone, legendary vocalist for one of my favorite punk bands, died on this day in 2001, but he has remained an inspiration to me for many reasons.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Tub9e6uxqu8

For one thing, he suffered from OCD and was hospitalized for it on at least one occasion. Given the subject of this blog, that would seem reason enough to celebrate the man. But there was more to the man that I identified with. Besides, if you do a little Google research you’ll find that a lot of famous people have OCD, including Howie Mandel and Harrison Ford.

The think what most inspired me was that someone so damn ugly could get up there and be a rock star. I’ve always considered myself ugly. I don’t really mind, and this isn’t an invitation for people to say, “Oh, no you’re not.” To me, it’s simple fact, and something I’m admittedly a little proud of. Being a pretty boy was never something I aspired to.

Joey Ramone reveled in his ugliness with that glowering stage presence. He talked funny (he was from Queens, after all) and his eyes were almost always hidden behind a pair of shades.

I dare say, there was something absolutely beautiful about the man.

When someone thinks they’re doomed to a less than wonderful life because they have a mental illness or physical defect, just look at what Ramone did. Then you can try to tell me you can’t soar above the things that seem like limitations.

A few items that might interest you:

–One of the many reasons I fell in love with my wife was that back in our college days, I would sometimes see her in the car behind me on the way home, head bopping back and forth. One time, the day after seeing this, I asked her what she was listening to. The Ramones, she told me.

–The night of my senior prom, I skipped the event (I couldn’t find a date anyway) and tried to sneak into a Ramones concert at The Channel. I never did make it in, but I don’t regret trying.

–Joey was said to have come from a dysfunctional family. It’s no accident that I chose “We’re a Happy Family” as the mood music for my post about families and drama.

–Joey fought from the lymphoma that ultimately killed him for much longer than most people knew. Few knew because he didn’t whine about it. He kept going until he couldn’t anymore. He was reportedly listening to the song “In a Little While” by U2 when he died. According to the Wikipedia page on Joey Ramone, “This was during U2’s Elevation Tour, and from that point on during shows Bono would introduce the song as a tune that was originally about a lovestruck hangover but that Joey turned it into a gospel song.”

Back in my Revere days, I would play the Ramones repeatedly as I chain-smoked in the storage room under the concrete patio. That’s a happy memory from a not-always-happy period of my life.

Happy Birthday, Joey.

April 5, 2016April 5, 2016

Layne Staley, 14 Years Later

“What’s my drug of choice? Well, what have you got?” —Layne Staley, Alice in Chains

This week marks 14 years since Alice In Chains frontman Layne Staley was found dead.

Mood music:

Like Kurt Cobain, Staley had a big impact on me in the early 1990s. But while I identified with Cobain’s depression, I identified with Staley for his inability to keep his addictive demons at bay.

I can’t tell you how many times I listened to the “Dirt” album while I binged myself sick. It seems like an unfair comparison, because Staley’s demon was heroin. Mine was compulsive binge eating — a destructive form of addictive behavior in its own right, but not necessarily from the same depths of hell heroin came from.

Staley’s lyrics seeped deep into my soul. When he screamed his vocals, I could identify the pain that came from deep down. I’m convinced that pain gave him the power to sing the way he did.

My writing taps a similar source within me, but the source is a lot more muted, less despairing, because I have something I don’t think he had — faith.

But as a 20-something, I couldn’t tell the difference. I felt like my demons were as vexing as his. When you’re younger, that’s the kind of self-important thinking you get into.

Before I found recovery, my demon would start harassing me long before getting to the scene of the junk. Forget the people who would be there or the weather and surroundings. All I’d think about was getting my fill of food. Then I’d get to the event and get my fill from the time I’d get there to the time I left. I’d sneak handfuls of junk so what I was doing wouldn’t be too obvious to those around me.

Halfway through, I would have the same kind of buzz you get after downing a case of beer or inhaling a joint deep into your lungs. I know this, because I’ve done those things, too. By nightfall, I’d feel like a pile of shattered bricks waiting to be carted off to the dump. Quality time with my wife and kids? Forget it. All I wanted was the bed or the couch so I could pass out.

I imagine Staley felt something similar much of the time, though I’m told by those who have kicked smack addictions that you don’t really care about anything when you’re high, because it’s like being under a warm blanket. The problem is that you spend the rest of your life trying to feel that way, and the only thing that works is more and more smack.

In the end, I know you can’t fairly compare the two addictions. I only know how mine made me feel, and whenever I listened to Staley scream, I felt like someone else got it, and that I wasn’t alone.

Thanks for that, Layne. I hope you’re at peace wherever you are.

April 4, 2016April 4, 2016

22 Years Ago: The Day Kurt Cobain Died

I remember exactly where I was 22 years ago this week, when I saw the news flash about Kurt Cobain’s suicide. I was lying in bed, depressed and reclusive because of frequent fear.

Mood music:

I was living in Lynnfield, Mass., at the time. I had a room in the basement, just like I had in Revere. But this space was much smaller — a jail cell with a nice blue carpet. But I did have my own bathroom, which I never cleaned.

Erin and I had been going out for less than a year, and I was waiting for her to come by after she finished work. I had been sleeping after a food and smoking binge and I still had a few hours to kill, so I turned on MTV, which still played music videos at the time.

There was MTV news anchor Kurt Loder and Rolling Stones editor David Fricke, holding court like Walter Cronkite following JFK’s assassination in 1963. Fricke expressed concern that depressed teens who listen to Nirvana might view suicide as the heroic thing to do; the only answer. “This is about your kids. You need to talk to them,” he said.

Erin arrived, we expressed our mutual shock, then we went out to dinner.

Though I was given to depression at that point, it wasn’t the suicidal kind, and would never become that. I’ve always been the type to hide in a room for long stretches, staring blankly at a TV screen, when depressed. Suicide was something I never really thought about at that point. It was an alien concept.

Then, a couple months later, a close friend attempted suicide. Two years later, he tried again and succeeded. In the 15 years since then, I’ve worked hard to gain the proper perspective of such things.

When Cobain died, I assumed he went straight to hell. I never gave it a second thought. Suicide is one of the unacceptable sins, like murder, the kind that gets you sent to the fire pit.

Today, I’m not so sure.

Kurt Cobain was unprepared for the crazy fame and publicity that came his way. He dove into heroin for solace. You could say the whole thing literally scared him to death.

Fortunately, he left behind a strong body of work.

When I listen to Nirvana, I don’t think of Kurt Cobain stuffing the tip of a rifle up his nose and pulling the trigger.

I think of how anxiety, fear and depression are universal things, how the sufferer is never, ever truly alone, and how we never have to be beaten.

I don’t need drugs to feel like Sunday morning is every day, though two anti-depressant prescriptions do help.

March 23, 2016May 3, 2020

Dealing With People: A Business Survival Guide

From my perch in the information security industry, I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. The best rise to the top of their companies. The worst are crushed beneath the boots of others in what can be a high-stakes, high-pressure field.

Many fall in the middle: They have had soaring success and painful setbacks. Those who manage to bounce back do so because they have learned a thing or two about dealing with people.

I consider myself part of the last category. What follows is a survival guide of sorts. It is a collection of writings I’ve done here and elsewhere about the lessons I’ve learned. May it serve as a useful tool.

Chapter 1: Be a Good Listener to Be Listened To. To expect people to be good listeners for you, it’s important that you be a good listener, too.

Chapter 2: Share the Credit. There’s a protocol that must be followed in the world of security research. If someone is involved in an important bit of research, it’s important to spread around the credit — often. Few big finds are the work of one person alone. I’ve written about countless vulnerabilities as a journalist and in my current role as part of a corporate research team. Most of the time, it’s a team effort.

Chapter 3: Be Patient. Ambition can take us to the highest heights of our careers. But ambitious people often lack patience, and that’s a recipe for disaster.

Chapter 4: Avoid a Rock Star Mentality.There’s a severe rock-star mentality in infosec, and I once fell into the trap. Please learn from my mistakes.

Chapter 5: When Jaded, Shake Things Up or Get Out of the Way. When you’ve been dealing with the same people for too long, it’s easy to lose passion. But there are ways to refresh. These are lessons I learned about making security conference attendance worthwhile again.

Chapter 6: Burnout Can Lead to Wisdom (If You Survive). I’ve devoted several posts to combating career burnout, particularly in the information security industry. But something recently occurred to me: Burnout can be a good thing–if you survive.

Chapter 7: Be Kind Without Being Pwned. Someone once told me that being kind to others is a great weapon against depression. Be good to others and you’ll feel better yourself. There’s truth to that. But I’ve also discovered that kindness must be delivered in blunt and unpleasant forms sometimes. Especially in the workplace.

Chapter 8: Be Careful How You Use Twitter. Twitter can be a wonderful place to exchange ideas. But sometimes it can be a place where we overreach and cause needless drama. Here’s an example of what not to do.

Chapter 9: Avoid Looking Small by Avoiding Public Squabbles. How being part of public drama can wreck one’s reputation.

Chapter 10: Always Admit When You’re Wrong. This is painfully difficult to do. Not doing so can make you untrustworthy. Doing so can make you the opposite in the minds of your peers.

March 15, 2016

When Listening Is Better Than Giving Advice

Sometimes when I’m going through a rough patch or just having a ridiculously annoying day, I need to vent. To do so productively and thus feel better, I need a good listener around.

Unfortunately, people these days don’t want to listen. They have a big megaphone that is the Internet, and they can’t bear not to use it. So they take to social media and give advice.

Mood music:

In saying that, I realize two things:

To expect people to be good listeners for you, it’s important that you be a good listener in return. I often fall short there.
Once in a while, whether I like it or not, I need advice to work through problems, especially when I’m being an asshole.

Even to give good advice, though, you still have to be a good listener.

Some of my friends are going through a rough time and detail their pain on Facebook and Twitter. They’ve noted that they just want someone to listen to them and that they have no interest in advice. Sometimes they need the advice and should suck it up. But more often than not, the advice-giving friends are not being helpful. In some cases they make things worse.

I get a lot of advice that is painfully obvious. I’d relax more if I meditated and prayed (I already do both). I’d have more energy if I exercised more (duh). I’d fight less with family if I simply realized that family is all that matters. (When people shell out that gem, I can’t help but wonder what planet they’re from, since all families argue.)

There are usually reasons people don’t do the obviously beneficial stuff friends and family advocate when giving advice. Sometimes a person’s stress level is so bad that there’s no strength left for a workout or meditation. And if we’re talking about addicts, there’s the fact that addicts have a compulsion to do what’s bad for them even though they’re well aware of the potential consequences. But being listened to allows the sufferer to get things off their chest, helping them to fight another day.

It’s worth remembering that next time someone wants to cry on your shoulder.

March 12, 2016

Patience: A Virtue I Don’t Have (But Should)

I’ve done some soul searching this week and have realized something unpleasant about myself: I have absolutely no patience, and it makes me an asshole sometimes.

Mood music:

That lack of patience tends to present itself a few times each year. Usually, it’s because I’m waiting for an important event to happen — travel to a security conference, for example.

Other times, it’s when a career opportunity presents itself and the waiting process feels like an eternity.

Lately, a lot of it is about getting work done on the old building that housed the family business, so we can lease out the spaces.

Whatever the trigger, it turns me into the kind of person I don’t like — a pushy bastard. A nag, in other words.

Which is kind of amusing, since I despise being nagged.

I’m sure that getting this way has actually caused things I wanted to not happen in the end. Push a process and the people behind it too far and the machinery breaks down. Or people simply decide you’re too much of a jerk to bother with.

When the impatience kicks in, my brain dissolves in flames. Waiting physically hurts. And 99 percent of the time, it’s not a life-or-death situation.

I know where it comes from: It’s one of the more insidious side effects of my OCD. First the delusions of grandeur build up and turn into a kind of high. Then it dissolves into panic and edginess.

The only remedy is for me to catch myself in the act, as I have this time.

If you’ve been one of my victims lately, I apologize and will try to do better.

"Persistence of Time," by Salvador Dali — “Persistence of Time,” by Salvador Dali

March 7, 2016

When Sarcasm Is Mistaken as a Cry for Help

A couple weeks back I caused a bit of a stir on Facebook with this comment:

Many times this past year, I’ve questioned how the hell it is that I’m still sober, given all the dramatic challenges I’ve faced. Today is one of those days.

I got a ton of comments from people offering advice, sympathy and everything in between. I was partly grateful because it showed a lot of people give a shit about me. But the thing is, I wasn’t really in need of it.

Therein lies one of the tricky parts of being on Facebook: Sometimes you make a comment that doesn’t warrant much analysis, but people take it as something different entirely.

Mood music:

That day, it seemed like everyone I talked to was suffering from various levels of butthurt. So I made that comment.

It was partly in jest, kind of like the dude in Airplane who picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue. But part of it was also amazement that some of the past year’s pressures hasn’t driven me back to the bottle. It was something for me to be proud of, not bucked up for.

The pressure I speak of is unfinished family business that landed on me since my father’s death last year.

I’ve mostly gotten control of it all, and thankfully none of it has affected my workmanship in my real job. At this point, there’s no chance of that happening. I’ve been through the worst of it and have that part of my life in its proper box. The me of 12 years ago would have broken, and I see the past year as a measure of how far I’ve come.

But there are still days where I would like to swing a sturdy bat around in frustration. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to fall off the wagon. It just means I’m like all of you:

I have happy fun days and I have irritating days.

Thanks to everyone for the concern. But don’t worry about me.