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Guilt Chestnut Number 5: ‘You Never Call’

In a dysfunctional family few are without blame for the things that go wrong. But there’s one criticism I’ve heard time and again that makes me bristle:

“You never call.”

Mood music:

It’s not just that I don’t call the person who says that. It’s that I don’t call a lot of people. I’ve never been a fan of the phone. I always feel awkward on the phone, especially when there are pockets of dead air. I feel pressure to keep the conversation going, and it all goes downhill from there.

Thanks to modern technology, I touch base with family more than I ever did before. I do it with Android texts. I do it with Facebook. To a lesser extent, I do it with email.

But sometimes the folks I’m reaching out to don’t return fire.

I tried using Facebook to communicate more with my mother, but she unfriended me. She found this blog and it pissed her off.

I tried using it to connect with an aunt I haven’t talked to in awhile. She blocked me.

I’d chalk it up to these people not being ready for Internet communications, except that they do it fine with everyone else.

I figure if I phoned, the reception would be about as icy. But like I said, the phone makes me feel awkward. Ironic, since I’ve made my living at journalism for 18 years.

But here’s the meat of the problem:

I’ve had people bitch that I don’t call this relative or that relative to check on them and let them know I care. But the very people I’m scolded for not calling don’t call me, either.

When my relationship with my mother imploded five and a half years ago, a few family members were left confused and angry that me, Erin and the kids had disappeared from family birthday parties and the like.

They talked about it to a lot of people. But no one ever called me for my side of the story. They just made assumptions.

That’s why, when someone tries to make me feel guilty by telling me I never call people, my first impulse is shrug and roll my eyes. Trying to guilt me is bad enough. Do it with hypocrisy and you’re even more certain not to get the response you want from me.

You’re probably reading this and thinking, “Man, he’s bitter today. That’s not like him.” I guess I am a little bit bitter.

But I broach the issue because mine isn’t a special case. Most of us get slapped with the “you never call” guilt trip from family members.

This is the kind of guilt tactic that doesn’t work. If a person isn’t inclined to use the phone much, they’re not going to change their ways. And, if you’re on Facebook and they’re on Facebook but they don’t use it back when you reach out, that’s about the same as never calling.

That said, I do want better relations with my extended family. When a family member sends me a friend request on Facebook, I’ll never turn them down. I want to use the medium to reconnect with them.

My phone line is always open, too. Those who really want to get in touch with me there know how to get the number.

I don’t believe there’s ever a point of no return when it comes to ending family estrangements. I remain willing.

But if someone chooses not to get in touch with me, they shouldn’t expect me to care when I hear they’ve been whining about me from second- and third-hand sources.

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Small Victories

Duncan and I took my father on a little walk around Deer Island yesterday. Dad still struggles from the stroke he had last year, but days like yesterday I admire his fighting spirit.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/Mi_Tm_g6KdA

I’ve been reluctant to take him on long walks, mainly because I don’t want him taking a nasty spill on my watch. But it was a beautiful spring day and he was eager, so who was I to argue?

Deer Island is an interesting place. One of the nastiest prisons in Massachusetts history used to be there. Now it’s the site of a massive water treatment plant — the facility credited with making Boston Harbor far cleaner than it was in past decades, when raw sewage used to get pumped into the harbor.

Dad moved slowly, but he was steady. He was telling us about the new tennis balls he just put on his walker. By the end of the walk, those tennis balls were toast, dragged to tatters.

Duncan enjoyed walking on the rocks, and spent the time talking about coordinates — something he is currently learning about.

We had to take frequent rests, as Dad can only take so much at once. But he was determined to go at least a mile.

Dad struggled toward the end, stopping every few feet. When it was over, he collapsed into the passenger seat of my car. But by then, he had gone more than a mile.

Not bad for a guy who needed a wheelchair to get around just a few short months ago.

Sometimes, it’s the smallest victories that count the most.

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I Pity The Fool — Especially When The Fool Is Me

“I don’t know how much more I can take.”

I’ve told myself that a million times, as I’m sure you have. We say it in times of desperation, pain and blueness.

But here’s an uncomfortable truth — Sometimes we like feeling this way.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/JRlkTNlLy3w

There’s something about feeling bad for oneself that’s so satisfying. Maybe it’s that on some level you’ve made peace with your seemingly miserable existence.

It helps us get through a bad fight with a loved one, because instead of thinking of what we did to cause the strife it feels better to stew over how unfairly you’re always treated.

If we despise our job it feels so much better to focus the hate on whichever bosses keep criticizing us than it does to take an honest look at where we keep slipping up.

If you hate the results of an election, it’s so much easier to trash the “stupid” voters who picked the other guy than it is to think about how the candidate and supporters like you failed to make a convincing case.

If you don’t like the drivel that comes from the mouth of a misguided minister, it feels so much better to steam over the entire religion than it does to think of better ways to practice your own faith.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Sometimes, we love to feel bad. Pure and simple.

I’m trying to enjoy it less as I get older, because I find that self-pity and misplaced blame is like any other narcotic: You feel good for a few minutes, but then an awful hangover takes hold.

You start to wake up every morning with a cold rock in your belly and an ax swinging inside your skull, chopping brain.

Then you go looking for other shallow comforts to hold it together: A few cigarettes, a few glasses of something intoxicating and as much grease-drenched food as you can swallow.

The hole gets bigger, no matter how hard we try to fill it.

Nothing gets better. it all just gets worse.

That’s my experience, anyway.

I’d rather go the other way.

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The Future Of THE OCD DIARIES

After lots of feedback, I’ve decided to change this blog rather than kill it. Erin is going to be my partner in crime in this endeavor. She’s my soul mate and has lived through much of what I’ve written about, so it makes perfect sense.

We’re in the brainstorming stages, but here are some ideas we’re kicking around.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/pAzyeA9-ib8

I kicked around the idea of changing the name, but most of you have advised against that. The blog is rooted in my desire to raise awareness of OCD and other illnesses of the mind, and readers have suggested I should keep the name as a reminder of where this all started. Others pointed out that it’s become a brand name. When you change the name of a known brand, you confuse the audience.

The tagline of the blog will definitely change, though. It started as the blog that kicks all those demons in the teeth, but the topics have expanded so much that it’s really a blog about dealing with life. Maybe I’ll hold a contest for new tagline ideas.

I think the banner will have to change in other ways, but we’ll see. If my cousin Andrew, the artist behind my banner, is reading this and has any ideas, get to work!

I’m going to switch platforms from WordPress.com to WordPress.org so I can further customize the blog and allow for ads. There are many great organizations out there that can help people with their demons, and I want to offer them a place to get known.

I also want to invite more guest writers in.

Erin has a good idea for readers who have followed my no-flour, no-sugar posts: A section with recipes for those who want to live it without getting bored by the same old food.

Since my love of hard rock is an ongoing theme, I want to devote a section to exposing new and local bands I think you should know about.

Faith has been another main theme, so maybe we can create a special section for that.

The possibilities are endless.

This thing is still in the planning stages, and we welcome your ideas.

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Sorry, But You’re Wrong

I got a lot of response to yesterday’s post about possibly killing this blog (Thanks for all the support!). Everyone asked that I continue, but supported my idea of expanding the topics.

I still have decisions to make, but y’all gave me some great ideas on how to take this forward.

I did get one message to the contrary, though. And because I disagree with the writer’s point, I’m going to share it with you. I’ll keep the person’s name out of it, of course.

Mood music:

The writer said:

All I will say is that a blog like this is probably not doing you any favors.

When you know a person for business purposes, you dont want to know about their psychological disorders. If you want an extension of our writing, great. But a blog titled like this makes people who know nothing about you have predisposed notions that there would be something off about you.

That could be ignorance on their part, but why put something out there that is otherwise none of their business, when it shouldnt be an issue in dealing with you?

Blogs like this have got people denied jobs and all. Ignorance? Probably. But either way, how does a blog named for this subject otherwise help you? I cant see a single way it would unless you want to prove the ADA should apply to you.

My thoughts:

–I don’t write this blog for favors, and certainly not for sympathy votes. I write it because good people have been screwed over because of the stigma, which you actually describe quite well. I reached a point in my life where speaking out and sharing what I’ve learned was more important than what people might think of me.

–I knew I was taking a risk when I started this. Fortunately, everyone I work with supports me. The simple reason is that I proved my worth long before I came out with these stories.

–You’re absolutely wrong to say no one wants to know about this stuff. Within days of starting the blog, the vast majority of feedback came from people in the security community who have their own demons and were grateful that someone was talking about theirs. Depression, anxiety and addiction run deep in our community, and when people have a place to talk about it and find ways forward, it makes them better contributors to the industry, does it not? I think it does. By the way, a lot of the folks I speak of are in upper-level jobs — the kind you do business with.

–Part of doing this blog is to help people see that they need not be held back by adversity. That too is good for our community.

–I do agree that I risk being viewed only through the prism of what I write about. That’s why I’m considering changes. But that change isn’t going to be to reverse course. I continue to believe openness is the best approach.

Thanks for the feedback.

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A Confession (Or Four)

This is for those who believe in a higher power — especially the messed-up Catholics among us. Those who might take offense should go away and come back tomorrow.  I won’t think any less of you.

In the Catholic Faith, there’s a Sacrament of Reconciliation — modern language for going to confession. Duncan did it for the first time Saturday. Sean, Erin and I used the occasion to do it, too.

Because you tell your sins to an also-flawed human being (the priest), a lot of people are turned off. I got past that by realizing the priest is really just a direct phone line to God. He doesn’t have to be pure as the driven snow to fill the role.

Mood music:

Being the screw-up that I am, I need to empty the trash from my soul every few months. The poison is constantly building up in my system — anger, resentment, narcissism, selfishness.

Simply put, Confession is where I go to unload all the things I keep doing wrong. It’s just me and the priest. It’s a moment of truth, where I can be honest about myself before God and let the accumulated angst, guilt and exhaustion drip away.

For those of you who have different beliefs, the concept may not make sense. You may even find the concept ridiculous. That’s you’re right.

I know a lot of good Catholics who struggle with it.

One guy I know hasn’t been to Confession in nearly a decade. Last time he went he listed his sins to a priest who was later convicted of sexual abuse. Why, he asked me one day, should he be telling his sins to someone who was supposed to be clean and trustworthy, but was in fact dripping with filth more foul than anything he could confess?

It’s a fair question.

I’m sure a lot of people in Haverhill are going through the same emotions over Father Keith LeBlanc, who allegedly used church funds to buy pornography. Is this the kind of person you want to go to to confess about having dirty thoughts when an attractive woman walks by?

The man who confessed to a sexually abusive priest is a good man. He raised four children who grew up to be pretty awesome. He’d give you the shirt off his back. He also continues to go to church almost every Sunday.

But he doesn’t go to Confession because he doesn’t believe he should be confessing to a priest who is full of sin himself.

It’s a shame he feels that way, because I think Confession would do him good. At the same time, I can’t blame him. That kind of anger takes a lot of years to tame.

Here’s how I see it:

We forget priests are human, prone to all the mistakes the rest of us make. In the case of Father LeBlanc, he was under the spell of one of the most insidious addictions a person could have. When the addiction has you by the balls, you do terrible things to feed the habit. Stealing money, for example.

My most destructive addiction was compulsive binge eating. I always knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t stop. And I used a lot of money that wasn’t mine to feed that addiction. It was money from the family account, but it could have easily been money from someplace else.

My kids have been selling popcorn for the Cub Scouts and I recently took the order form and cash envelope to work to sell some for them. For a good three weeks I had an envelope full of cash sitting in my laptop bag. Five or 10 years ago, chances are pretty good that I would have burned through some or all of that money to get my fix. Thank God I don’t have to face that danger today.

Addicts of all stripes: Food, booze, drugs — know exactly what I’m talking about.

You know it’s wrong. You badly want to stop. BUT YOU CAN’T.

Sounds like every other sin out there.

Priests have a role to play in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, the official term for Confession. Their job is to sit there and absorb someone else’s sins, then grant forgiveness.

What people fail to understand is that they are telling their sins to God. The priest is just a conduit.

It’s a brutally hard concept to swallow, especially when we spend our lives trying to oversimplify the fight between good and evil.

All I know is that Confession is important to me.

I screw up daily. I’m forgiven for sins and then I go out and do the same stupid things all over again. It’s like a trash can. You empty it and spend the next week filling it back up with garbage. Then it has to be emptied again. 

When I go into the Confession booth and dump out the garbage, I walk away feeling a hundred pounds lighter.

If that sounds stupid to you, I don’t know what to tell you.

In this blog, I can only tell you where I’ve been and how I got through my own personal hell.

But what works for me can’t possibly work for everyone.

I’m just glad I found another piece of God’s Grace. Hopefully, I’m a better man for it.

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OCD On My Left, ADD On My Right

It’s been an interesting month in mental disorder awareness. In taking steps to nip wintertime depression in the bud, I’ve learned that OCD isn’t my only mental defect.

Mood music:

It appears that as OCD messes with one side of my brain, Attention Deficit Disorder is toying with the other side. This little epiphany happened when I visited the nurse who helps me manage my regimen of medication.

She asked a lot of questions she usually doesn’t ask about my focus of late. I noted that while I still have frequent OCD moments — particularly if I’m knee-deep in a work project or tackling a list of chores at home — I also seem to be having trouble concentrating a lot. One recent day in work, for example, it took all the strength I had to focus on the work at hand.

That almost never happens. But this time, doing the work was painful. It gave me a migraine. If I hated what I do that would be normal. But I love what I do. Meanwhile, at home, I’d stand in the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that I was standing right where Erin was working on dinner. I would try to give her a hug or shoulder rub while she was in the middle of a task — almost as if I had one foot in this dimension and another foot in some other world.

There’s more to it, but those are a couple good examples.

Looking back on my life, it all makes sense. The OCD-ADD push and pull has always been there to some degree. As a kid I would go into OCD mode, organizing my Hot Wheels and Star Wars action figures just so. Then I’d go the other way and have a hell of a time trying to focus on simple homework assignments or chores around the house.

The Prozac nurse tells me it’s actually typical for someone to go back and forth with these disorders. OCD and ADD operate on the same mental plain. Both spark anxiety (I used to be crippled by anxiety, but that’s not an issue today) and mood swings. Both are effected by the time of year, amount of daylight vs. darkness, etc.

The image that comes to mind is two-face, that villain in Batman with the split personality.

So now I have Wellbutrin to go with the Prozac to balance things out.

Funny how life works. You learn something new about yourself, and then discover it’s not really new at all.

God clearly has a sense of humor.

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Serotonin, Dopamine And Two Blue Pills

As the reader knows, I’ve had a persistent bout of winter depression. Not the “I’m sad and want to hurt myself” type, but the ho-hum, grumpy old man variety.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/c-QnnLudkQA

This afternoon I visited the nurse who manages my Prozac intake and walked out with a new drug: Wellbutrin.

I’ll be taking it in addition to the 60 MG of Prozac I’ve been taking for a few years now. The Prozac increases the amount of serotonin, a natural substance in the brain that helps maintain mental balance. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a substance that helps transmit messages from one nerve cell to another. In other words, it keeps traffic in the brain moving normally.

It has served me well, but this winter the blue moods have been tougher to shake. Enter the Wellbutrin, a drug used to treat major depression and seasonal affective disorder. It’s also used to help people quit smoking because it squashes cravings.

While the Prozac raises Serotonin levels, Wellbutrin shores up another neurotransmitter called Dopamine.

If this all sounds confusing, think of the brain as a car engine. To run properly, the engine needs the right amount of fluids, including brake fluid, transmission fluid and oil. Run low on any one of these and you got problems.

I just started taking the Wellbutrin this afternoon. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Traci Foust Talks OCD on NPR

Erin is playing me an NPR broadcast about OCD. I went looking for the link to include here and tripped over another good NPR segment. This one is an interview with Traci Foust, author of “Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD.”Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD

I recently connected with Traci on Facebook and she’s a great resource for understanding the disorder.

Do yourself a favor and listen to it HERE.

While we’re on the topic, it’s also worth checking out “A Life Lived Ridiculously” by Annabelle R. Charbit, about a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder who makes the mistake of falling in love with a sociopath.

Both writings work so well because of how the authors use humor. Of course, my humor falls on the dark side, so take that comment with a grain of salt.

Annabelle RcAs for that other OCD segment on NPR, here it is. It’s about how art can be used to raise a person’s understanding of the disorder.

Enjoy, and be better for it.

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Do I Think About My Disease 24-7?

Someone recently asked if I think about my disease 24-7 and, if so, whether doing so is perilous to those around me. In this case, the disease is OCD and the addictions that go with it.

Mood music:

Let me try to take a stab at addressing that:

I don’t think my disease should define me and keep me in a box. But it’s also a major part of who I am and how I tick. Writing a blog that focuses on that probably amplifies things. But I see some necessity in it all.

Like any person with an addictive personality, I have to have it on my mind around the clock because if I stop thinking about it I forget it’s there. That’s when I get sloppy and sink into the bad behavior.

The OCD part is a little more complicated and maybe even a little contradictory.

Since OCD is largely a disease that triggers destructive over thinking, you would think that the goal is to teach yourself not to think so hard. In some respects, that is the goal. But it’s about not engaging in thinking that snags your brain like the scratch in a CD does to the laser. It’s about never forgetting that the disorder, like addiction, is nearby doing push-ups, ready to kick your ass when you get too comfortable.

I’ll admit that I’m not even close to having this stuff in balance. But to those who think I focus on my disease at the expense of all else, I disagree. The me of today is a deeply flawed animal. But go back and meet the me of five or 10 years ago and you’ll meet a monster. A wounded monster. Everyone is probably better off with me as a flawed animal. I’m less harmful that way.

That doesn’t mean I should tell everyone to fuck off and carry on with no regard for the needs of others.

I need to keep working on being a better husband, a better father, a better friend and colleague. I’m never going to be perfect. But I can be better. If I have to think about my disease 24-7 to keep getting better, so be it.

I also think it’s necessary to remember my disease so I can be be more helpful and supportive of other people dealing with their own diseases — not necessarily cancer and the like, but everything from work stress to a loss of identity.

Am I pulling that off?

I guess that’s a question only others can answer.

"Obsession" by Bill Fennell