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My OCD is Alive and Well

Packing for a trip to Toronto, I caught myself doing some very OCD-like things. Even in recovery, it’s always there, below the surface. Here are a few examples.

Mood music:

What I did: I checked all the contents in my laptop bag last night. Three times. I took the laptop out and put it back in three times. I checked my digital recorder three times. I thrice checked to make sure the bottle of Prozac was where it’s supposed to be.

How it’s better than it used to be: Back in the day, I would check everything too many times to count. I would remove EVERYTHING from the bag and put it back in, then repeat the process up to 10 times. I left work late many times because I wasted time on this sort of thing.

What I did: I obsessively took care of house chores to make life easier on Erin. I took out the trash, made the kids’ lunches, carried down a basket of laundry, and went around the living room picking up toys and making sure everything was just so.

How it’s better than it used to be: In addition to doing these things, I used to pace around worrying about everything to do with the travel: Whether I’d get to the plane on time, whether the plane would get me to my destination without crashing, and whether I would measure up to the work task before me. That was the fear and anxiety eating at me.

This time, the stuff I did was useful and I didn’t worry about the rest. Now I don’t give a thought to the airport stuff. I just go to the airport and smoothly go through security and find my coffee. Instead of freaking out over lines, I’m more relaxed, talking to people in line and even enjoying their company.

I don’t obsessively review the schedule for whatever conference I’m going to. Now I look it over once and then play things by ear once there. I always get at least two stories and two podcasts done, and I don’t get sick to my stomach about getting it done. I just do it and I LOVE it.

The lesson of this post is that the mental ticks never go away entirely. And that’s OK.

Now when I catch myself in the act, I laugh at myself and move on. It’s a gift to be able to do that.

The real damaging, time-wasting and binge-inducing stuff is gone. What’s left I can handle. 

People who seek treatment for their struggles tend to go looking for the Happily Ever After. You’ll figure it out and never worry about anything again.

The thing is, that’s a bullshit notion. You’re not supposed to go through life without a care in the world.

The lessons continue.

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Out of the Closet, Into the Light

My kid sister-in-law told me a friend of hers has admitted to some hefty demons. I won’t mention the person’s name (I don’t know her, actually), but I know where she’s been.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5F6rwEF15hN1jnhNk2YQHn]

This is a little message for her friend, in the event she someday stumbles upon this blog:

Outing yourself is a hard thing to do. When I did it, I was terrified at first because I thought my mental struggles would be used to define who I was. It gave me an appreciation for what it must be like when a gay person comes out of the closet.

I felt weird around my family at first. Ill at ease might be the best way to describe the feeling. I’m sure they felt the same. That I had OCD and related addictive behavior didn’t surprise them much. As my sister-in-law will tell you, I’ve always had an abundance of strange behaviors.

The people I work with were most surprised. I guess I did a good job of fooling them back in the day. But they have never defined me or treated me differently over what I’ve opened up about. I get the same fair shake as everyone else.

Since people keep their demons hidden for fear of bad treatment at work, it was an eye opener for me when I got nothing but support for coming out with it.

After awhile, it’ll be like that with your friends. They’ll appreciate you more, and they’ll be grateful that you came clean. Some of them will learn from your example, even though they may not know they need it yet.

I understand one of your problems is compulsive lying. There’s no need to feel like a freak over this, because everyone with mental health struggles and addictions lies. I certainly have. Hell, I’ve never met a so-called normal person that hasn’t lied. It’s not something to be proud of or accept. Lies imprison us and make our troubles deeper. But when we can stop living the lie, there’s a new peace and freedom that’s very powerful and hard to describe.

When I decided to stop living lies, I felt 100 pounds lighter. Physical pains went away.

I understand you are looking at taking medication. I take Prozac and it works. But I’m convinced it works as well as it does because I went through years of hard therapy as well. That’s the most important thing you can do: Find the right therapist to talk to. Therapy will provide you with mental coping tools that will make you stronger. By that point, medication becomes the mop that wipes away the remaining baggage.

Things may get worse before they get better. When you start dealing with this stuff, you find yourself learning how to behave all over again. You will still go through periods of depression.

This is when any addictions you may have will tempt you. Fight it at all costs. I didn’t at first. I completely gave in to my addictive behavior and I paid dearly for it. Even if you don’t think you have an addiction, it might be worth considering a 12-Step Program. The tools you learn from that will help you cope with the mental struggles at the heart of your troubles.

Coming clean doesn’t mean you get to live happily ever after. But happily ever after has always been a bullshit myth. But you will have an easier time dealing with the tough times. That may not make sense right now. But it will.

Here’s the thing about one’s demons: When they hide in the dark, out of view, they own you. They’re too powerful to beat.

Opening the door and forcing the sunlight on them is hard as hell. But once you take that step — as you just did — the demons start to shrink. The light always kills demons. They turn to ash and you become a lot bigger than they ever were.

That’s what I’ve learned from my experiences, anyway.

Congratulations on taking that first step. I wish you the very best.

–Bill

 

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43 Years Through The Minefield

Today is my sister Wendi’s 43rd birthday. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate the day than to explain what she’s been through and how far she has come.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MceneYWgPc4&fs=1&hl=en_US]

A Sister’s Battle with Depression

This blog is chock full of my own experiences with depression and addiction. I even hint here and there about how the addictive behavior runs in the family. But I’ve avoided the story of depression among siblings until now. This post is about my older sister, who had it much harder than me.

I haven’t mentioned it up to this point because it’s her story and her business. I didn’t want to violate her privacy. But recently I’ve realized her story is an important part of my own. So I sought and received her permission to tackle it head on. Hopefully, this post validates the trust she’s putting in me.

Since this blog focuses on my own experiences, I’m not always effective at pointing out other people’s success stories. But Wendi is a success story, whether she realizes it or not.

Growing up, me, Wendi and Michael had our individual problems. I had the Crohn’s Disease, Michael had the asthma that eventually killed him, and Wendi had the misfortune of catching abuse from a mother flustered by all the chaos.

I remember the routine at 22 Lynnway well. Early in the morning, before school, Wendi was required to do a lot of chores. I particularly remember the sound of the vacuum. To this day, I get rattled by the sound of a vacuum because of the memories it brings up. If she missed a spot on the rug, she caught my mother’s physical and verbal wrath. Because me and my brother were sick so much, we also got a lot of the love and attention while Wendi was off on the side trying not to piss my mother off.

When my parents divorced in 1980, things seemed to get worse. When my brother died, things got worse still. In my mother’s defense, there was a lot of hell and heartbreak she had to live through, and to be honest I’m not sure I would have handled it much better if I were in her shoes. Mental anguish makes you do stupid things.

When my stepmother came along, my mother’s jealousy grew worse, and so did the abuse. Wendi caught the brunt of it.

Like me, Wendi had a lot of ups and downs with weight. Like me, she tried to control it through reckless means.

Sometime around 1991, things started coming to a head for my sister. She started plunging into deep depressions. Between 1991 and 1998, I can remember three occasions where this led to her hospitalization. She talked openly about wanting to kill herself. One such occasion, in 1998, was a couple months before my wedding. Since it was only two years after Sean Marley’s suicide, this made me more angry than anything. My anger was a selfish one. How dare she get suicidal and hospitalized and put me through this all over again. And how dare she do this while I was getting ready for my wedding.

I realize something now that I didn’t realize back then: Depression and the collateral damage it causes to others is never really in the sufferer’s control to stop. And it can care less about timetables. Mental illness doesn’t take breaks for holidays and weddings, for the convenience of others. Given my own battle with depression in subsequent years, I get it now.

I’m sorry for getting angry with her back then.

There’s something else I feel sorry about: Because of my own mental turmoil, I chose to avoid situations that made me uncomfortable. Wendi’s depression made me very uncomfortable. The result is that I wasn’t the helpful younger brother I should have been.

In 2003, Wendi caught a bizarre infection the doctors couldn’t make sense of. She spent a couple weeks in ICU and pumping her full of antibiotics didn’t seem to help her much. A couple times we were certain she wouldn’t make it. But since then, things have gotten better for Wendi. Not easier. Maybe not even happier. But better.

A couple years earlier, she had announced to the family that she was gay. It took some family members by shock, but not me. When I thought about a couple of the more “normal” relationships she had tried to nurture in past years and the depression she went into when things didn’t work out, it all made perfect sense to me. She was trying to live a life that didn’t gibe with her true nature.

When she came clean about that, her life didn’t get easier. But I suspect, because she found a way to be truthful with herself, that some things got easier to deal with. She’s been through her ups and downs since then. A marriage didn’t work out. She suffered some nasty complications from gastric bypass surgery. But she has moved on from those difficulties much more quickly than in past difficulties.

Like I said, dealing with one’s issues doesn’t mean you live happily ever after. Putting up with difficult people doesn’t get any easier. Peace is never an absence of conflict.

But when we get better at facing those challenges, life in general becomes a little sweeter.

That’s what I’ve learned from my own struggles. And I think that’s what Wendi has learned as well.

I know a lot of people who have fought the demons and gotten bloodied and grown a hell of a lot stronger in the process.

Wendi is one of them.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

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Say Hello to My New Limit

Another mood swing this afternoon. The dark, brooding sky appears to be rubbing off on me. The happy lamp helps, but if I sit in front of it too long I get the sweats. And it’s not the same as sunshine.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMWhk4u2c4g&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I’ve been having a lot of these episodes lately, and it worries me. It’s most likely the result of my sleep pattern being out of whack. I alternate between too much sleep one day, not enough the next.

The clouds don’t help. It seems like we’ve had a lot of gloomy weather lately, and too much of that will fuck with my head every time.

My biggest concern is that something’s off with the medication, though probably not. One thing I’ve learned is that if you don’t take care of yourself in other ways, like having a consistent sleep pattern, it will blunt the effectiveness of the drug.

The other problem is that I’ve overextended myself, being on team for a Catholic retreat, doing a lot of extra service in my 12-Step program and keeping busy on the work side, along with all the activity that comes with having a first and fourth grader.

Since shaking off the fear and anxiety and cleaning up my act a couple years ago, I’ve had a limitless appetite for new experiences. And so I’ve gone on the road a lot and taken on many projects in and outside of work.

It’s been a blessing. It still is. But it’s possible I’m starting to find my new limit. Perhaps I’m a victim of my own success. There are far worse problems to have.

This is actually a good thing. It’s healthy.

The trick now is in figuring out how to stop over-reaching and achieve the right balance.

It’s too bad I suck at balance.

But it’s never too late to learn how to do it right.

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The Happy Lamp

With the days getting shorter, I’m on the lookout for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), something that hits me like a bat to the head each winter. I’ve written extensively about the medicinal therapy for this, but now I have a new weapon.

Meet my new friend, the Happy Lamp:

Erin bought two of these, one for me and one for Duncan, who also gets a bit crazy when the daylight recedes. To be honest, me and Duncan are highly skeptical.

But Erin spent the money, and her intentions are golden, so we’re taking this thing for a spin.

Here’s one benefit: Duncan thinks the two of us are supposed to sit right next to it for a half hour in the morning, so I get my snuggle time in. The boy may be 7, but he still has just enough squish to him that he makes an excellent blanket or pillow. So at the very least, the Happy Lamp gives us a bit more quality time.

My therapist thinks the lamp is a wonderful idea. He insists IT WILL work wonders.

I remain skeptical. But I do like the warmth it gives off.

I’ll let you know how this experiment turns out later.

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Happily Ever After Is Bullshit & That’s OK

Often, when depression slaps me upside the head, it’s on the heels of a prolonged period of good feelings and positive energy. Especially this time of year, when the daylight recedes early and returns late. These setbacks can be discouraging, but you can survive them with the right perspective.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/NqTuN-35580

It’s easy for people who fight mental illness and addictive behavior to go on an endless, futile search for the happily ever after, where you somehow find the magic bullet to murder your demons, thus beginning years of bliss and carefree existence.

I’m sorry to tell you this, folks: That line of thinking is bullshit.

There’s no such thing as happily ever after. If you want it that badly, go watch a Disney film.

I used to grope around for eternal happiness in religious conversion. But some of my hardest days came AFTER I was Baptized a Catholic. I eventually found my way to abstinence and sobriety and got a pretty good handle on the OCD. But there have been plenty of sucky days since then.

The slide back into depression this past weekend was an example.

I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.

This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.

It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.

The depression flared up this weekend, just like the Crohn’s Disease used to. But I’m better now. And I didn’t have to take a drug like Prednisone to get there. I just needed a little extra sleep.

Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.

The depression I experienced this weekend felt more like a flare up of arthritis than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It was a nag, but it didn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.

That’s progress.

Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.

That’s good enough for me.

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Run Out of Town (Or Off Facebook, Twitter)

One of my security friends thinks she needs to delete her social network accounts because she lacks social skills. She tends to offend people sometimes, you see, and she wants to go away until she can learn to behave. Though admirable, it’s a bad idea for lots of reasons.

At the height of my mental illness and addictive behavior, social skills were alien to me. Isolating myself from the rest of the world was the better thing to do, so that’s what I did. There was no Facebook or Twitter back then, mind you. I sometimes wonder how I would have behaved on those sites if they were around at the time. My behavior probably would have been a hundred times worse than anything my security friend is worried about.

A few notes about this friend: Her posts are laced with sarcasm. She uses the word “fuck” a lot in the adjective form and she makes it plain that she is an atheist.

Of course, as I’ve discovered, sarcasm is a tricky skill that can get you into trouble. When you make comments about someone’s faith or the way they look, it’s almost always going to be negative. So you have to use it sparingly.

Can my friend do better with how she conducts herself on Facebook and Twitter? Sure. But then most of us can do better.

Consider the following:

–A ton of people on Facebook and Twitter use it as a political soapbox. If they’re Republican, almost every post is a tirade against “elitist socialistic liberals.” If they’re a Democrat, it’s the reverse. That stuff has offended me before. Not because they are expressing their beliefs. That’s something I respect. What annoys me is that they never have anything else to talk about, which makes them too one dimensional for my tastes.

–Too many people for my tastes pour their frustrations out on Facebook. If someone’s having a bad week, they complain about everything. Maybe their cat looked at them the wrong way. Maybe their job sucks. One of my friends constantly complains about her job on Facebook.

–Though I don’t set out to insult anyone, I know I do. I push out a lot of links that are relevant to my work in the information security community. If it’s something I wrote, be it a security article or something from this blog, up it goes. I know I’ve been “un-friended” for that. People don’t like their feeds dominated by one person. That person comes off as egotistical and full of himself. I’ve already confessed to that sin. I also write openly about my Faith. That friend at the focus of this post? She’s an atheist and I’m surprised she hasn’t un-friended me by now. And I’ll confess I was a little pissed off last Saturday — the anniversary of 9-11 — when she made a crack about how science flies us to the moon and faith flies us into buildings.

And yet I don’t think she should leave the social networking realm. Why? Because we all have our stuff to work on, and I’ve learned from experience that it’s better to do it out in the open than in isolation.

Hell, I’ve done far worse than being sarcastic on Facebook. I’ve lied to people in the past about my addictive behavior. I’ve hurt people along the way and have spent a lot of time lately trying to make amends to them. There are worse things in the world than being an ass on Facebook. Besides, as I’ve said, we are all asses on Facebook from time to time.

In the end, we all have the choice to disconnect from a connection we find offensive. I’ve un-friended people on Facebook or un-followed them on Twitter for annoying me. It’s like the old saying about how if you don’t like the music, turn to another station.

To this friend of mine who thinks she needs to drop from the world: Don’t be silly. People are connected to you because they want to be. We already knew of your sarcasm when we decided to connect to you on these sites. Some of us enjoy your posts for the sharp, edgy humor you provide.

You need more social skills? OK. But you can’t build those skills in isolation.

And if your friends aren’t willing to hang around as you work through that stuff, then they’re not really friends, are they?

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Alone vs. Isolation

One of the big things I’ve struggled with over the years is when it’s OK to be alone and when it’s not. I spent a lot of years in isolation. I’m slowly realizing isolation and alone aren’t necessarily the same thing. Isolation never amounts to anything positive for me. Alone does — when I let it.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7jVsiWb3o&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I spent a lot of years in isolation when I was sickest with the OCD and addiction. You isolate when it’s time for that next binge, whether it’s drugs and alcohol or compulsive overeating. I always did it in the isolation of my car. Addicts typically get their real fix out of view from other people.

At the same time, I never liked being alone. If I’m left by myself for too long, I get into trouble. And I don’t want to go there.

I seem to always be around people these days. There are the folks in my 12-Step program, including my sponsor and the three people I sponsor. There are the one-to-three meetings a week, and the daily phone calls. For someone who hates the telephone, I spend a lot of time on it these days.

I spend a lot of time around parents of the boys’ classmates. I spend a lot of time around business associates. When there’s downtime, I increasingly seek out friends. Fortunately, they seek me out, too.

But while it’s never good for me to be isolated, I’m finding that I DO need to be alone sometimes.

Not alone in a brooding, depressed state. That better fits the isolation category for me. It’s more like being alone in a state of prayer or creativity.

I’ve come to treasure the alone time I get first thing in the morning, when I can listen to music, write or just flop my head back. My relationship with the car has changed. Instead of using it as a place to isolate and feed my addiction, it’s now a place for reflection, music and sightseeing.

It used to be on business trips that I would isolate in my hotel room whenever I didn’t have to be out in public. There’s a lot of trouble you can get into with yourself when you’re holed up in a hotel room.

Now, I make some alone time for myself so I can walk around the city I’m in and take it all in. Yesterday I roamed the streets of NYC and spent a lot of time at Ground Zero in contemplation and prayer. I continued praying as I walked back across the Brooklyn Bridge to my hotel.

It was excellent.

Later in the evening, it was time to mix with people again and I did — having a long overdue reunion with my cousin Andrew and meeting his beautiful bride-to-be, Violet. We inadvertently wound up in a gay bar, but it’s not like there’s anything wrong with that. And the other patrons were friendly and polite. It’s been years since I saw Andrew. Shit, I remember when he was small enough to fit in a beer mug.

Afterwards, it was time to be alone again. I went back to the hotel and read myself asleep, which didn’t take much.

If the whole concept of isolation vs. being alone is confusing to you, it should be.

It’s certainly something I’m still trying to figure out.

I’m getting there. Slowly but surely.

Of course, it’s time to go mix it up with people again, so off I go to listen and then write about day 1 of the CSO Security standard.

Seize the day.

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Walking Toward Sanity

As a kid living on Revere Beach, long walks were my lifeline to sanity. At least once a day, I walked the entire length of the crescent-shaped coastline, from the edge of Revere Beach Boulevard to the city’s border with Winthrop. In more recent years, I haven’t walked much. But recent events are rekindling my love for it.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwKEdFoUB0o&fs=1&hl=en_US]

I spent a lot of time walking around New York City this morning. I’m staying in Brooklyn for the CSO Security Standard event, but my hotel room wasn’t ready when I arrived, so I looked outside at the Brooklyn Bridge and decided to walk across it, just for the hell of it.

I walked into Chinatown for coffee with a couple friends, then I walked to Ground Zero. Being the day after the 9-11 anniversary, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Last time I was at Ground Zero I left in a pretty depressed mood, but this time, strangely enough, I felt inspired. A lot is happening on that site, including construction of two memorial pools in the footprints of the twin towers, surrounded by trees, with a new Freedom Tower rising up at the edge.

Also inspiring is that nine years later, the people of NYC are keeping the memories of the victims alive. One example is this shrine to the firefighters who lost their lives:

By the time I walked back over the Brooklyn Bridge to check into my room, five hours had passed and I was exhausted. But I felt like I did exactly what I was supposed to do before settling in to work.

Long walks like this have always restored my sanity.

During all those walks on Revere Beach, I’d be trying to think through all the childhood chaos and find a way forward. I always did.

When the kids were still small enough for the double stroller, I’d take them on a 3.5-mile walk in our Haverhill neighborhood.

I stopped walking in recent years because life just got to busy. Or at least that’s how I’ve rationalized it. The truth is, I think I’ve been making excuses.

Yesterday morning Sean wanted to do that 3.5-mile walk with me because it brought back special memories for him. So that’s what we did.

Between that walk and todays stroll around NYC, I’m starting to realize walking was an important tool for me.

It’s time I dusted that tool off and started using it again.


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The Trouble With Wanting It All

Ever since I got over my fear and anxiety I’ve had a bottomless appetite to do it all. I want to travel everywhere. I want to see everything. And I want to participate in as many events as possible. Sometimes that gets me in trouble. Here’s an example.

Mood music: “Serve the Servants” by Nirvana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aztw2s3PZzY

Columbus Day Weekend there are two events I badly want to be a part of. One is something my security friends put together called HacKid. It’s going to be an epic experience for the kids, and I’ve been planning to be there.

The idea is to provide an interactive, hands-on experience for kids and their parents which includes things like:

–Online safety (kids and parents!)

–Make a podcast/vodcast

–How to deal with CyberBullies

–Physical Security

–Gaming competitions

–Interactive robot building

–How the Internet works

–Food Hacking

–Basic to advanced network/application security

–Website design/introduction to blogging

–Manipulating hardware and software for fun

–Meeting & interacting with law enforcement

–Building a netbook

–Low-impact martial arts/self-defense training

Up until this weekend, it was a given that I’d be dragging Sean and Duncan there.

Then, yesterday, the phone rang.

It was someone involved with the Cursillo retreat weekends at St. Basil’s in Methuen, Mass. It’s a Catholic retreat, and it’s very intense.

He asked me to be on team for the men’s retreat happening THE SAME WEEKEND as HacKid.

On the surface, it’s a no-brainer, right? HacKid is going to be a blast, and I’ve already written a CSOonline.com column throwing my support behind it.

But it’s not that easy.

As readers of this blog know by now, finding my Faith was central to my learning to manage a mental disorder and all the addictions that came with it. Without God, I am nowhere. That may not sound cool to some people, but I don’t care.

There’s also the fact that last weekend I was on here grousing about how I was giving God the short end of the stick lately.

I want to do both, but I can only do one. For a control freak like me, that truly sucks.

But I know there’s really no choice for me here. I have to choose Cursillo. My own Cursillo more than two years ago made a huge, lasting impact and I need to give back.

When God comes calling, you don’t say no. That’s a real pain in the ass, but it’s what I believe.

So I’ll be on team for the men’s weekend, and I’ll give it my all. The timing is also good because right after that I’ll start helping out with Haverhill’s RCIA program. My spiritual side will be finely tuned by then. Not perfect. Definitely not without sin. But I’ll be in the groove.

Meantime, I’ll just have to do other things to help HacKid succeed, not that they need my help. When my friend Chris Hoff gets motivated to do something, it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s going to get it done.

But I CAN write about it and make sure as many people know about it as possible, so that’s what I’ll do.

It’s still going to suck missing the event.

But my security friends will understand.