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6 Guys I Look To In Times of Trouble

This is the perfect time to write about why I’m such a history nut. I’m in a rotten mood because my office technology is on the blink, keeping me from getting things done.

People with OCD don’t just shrug off such things. We zero in on the problem like the proverbial laser beam, trying anything and everything to fix the problem until, exhausted and bewildered, we realize what we knew in the first place — that some things are beyond our control no matter how much we’d like to make it so.

Now that I’ve found my bearings and poured another cup of coffee, I’m ready to sit back and let the IT professionals do their thing.

What does all this have to do with history? Plenty.

Yesterday I wrote about all the pictures and statues of historical figures I have scattered across my desks at home and in the office. Today is about why these people are important to me.

Bottom line: The historical figures I revere all had to overcome disease, mental illness and personal tragedy through the course of their lives. I look up to them because they dealt with challenges greater than anything I will probably come across in my own lifetime. And they achieved what they achieved despite crippling personal setbacks.

I’ll stick with six examples, though there are many more:

Teddy Roosevelt was a sick kid who wasn’t expected to live a very long life. He had serious asthma and other ailments. His first wife died giving birth to his first child the same day his mother died in the same house. Yet he went on to fame as the Rough Rider and President of the United States. He wrote countless books throughout his life, went on a danger-filled journey to South America to map The River of Doubt after he was president and already in declining health.

FDR was a pampered child whose world view changed when he was crippled by polio in 1921. A lot of people would have given up right there, but he rebuilt his life, became a mentor to other polio victims and was the longest-serving president in history, dealing with war and economic calamity that could have broken the spirit of healthier leaders. Through it all, he carried on an outward cheeriness that put people at ease.

Abraham Lincoln has been covered at length in this blog. He suffered crippling depression his whole life and lost two of his four children, all in a time before anti-depressants were around.

JFK had plenty of flaws. But he achieved much for a guy who spent most of his life in bad health. He suffered searing back pain, intestinal ailments, frequent fever and he had to see two siblings die and another institutionalized before his own death.

Winston Churchill held his nation together and led it to victory over the Nazis despite a lifetime of suffering from crippling depression, which he often called his Black Dog. He also spent every waking moment in a constant buzz and smoked long cigars that I’ve tried but couldn’t handle.

Now for the most important example of all:

As mentioned before, I’m a convert to the Catholic Faith and would be nowhere today without it. Jesus appears sixth because I wanted to save the best for last.

The picture above speaks volumes to me. Here was a man who went through suffering of the most brutal kind. And he did it to give me and everyone else a second chance.

I don’t dare put myself in the same light as these individuals. I relate to what some of them went through in their lives, though, and here’s the point:

When work isn’t going the way I want or I’m going through an episode of depression or other compulsive behaviors, I can look up to the people tacked to my workspace walls and be reminded that my troubles are nothing compared to what the REALLY BIG ACHIEVERS went through.

And when my ego blows its banks, the sixth fellow on the list is there to take me down a few pegs and remind me of where I fit in the larger order of things.

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Fear Factor

In this installment, the author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This morning I led a meeting of Over-eaters Anonymous, a task that included standing before a room of people for 30 minutes to tell my story of OCD, addiction and recovery.

It was my third time “qualifying” at an OA meeting this past year. Meanwhile, I did a fair amount of public speaking for my day job as senior editor of CSO Magazine. I sat on panels at security conferences and did solo presentations in front of various information security groups around the country.

Five or so years ago, the notion of me getting up to speak in front of people would have been laughable.

I was too busy hiding in my cage of fear to do such things. Fear will rob you blind, forcing you to avoid life and retreat into the sinister world of addiction.

Breaking free of it was a gift from God. But it took a long time to figure out how to unwrap it and realize my potential.

For me, fear was one of the many byproducts of OCD, something that went hand in hand with anxiety. It kept me away from parties. It scared me out of traveling. I turned down a lot of living in favor of lying in my bedroom watching TV. There are a couple examples in particular that I’m not proud of.

1991

One summer night I was hanging with two friends in front of Kelly’s Roast Beef, a popular eatery on Revere Beach. As we started walking the mile back to my house, we noticed we were being followed by some 15 punks. It was clear they were looking for trouble. I panicked and ran to a nearby bar. As I looked back, I couldn’t see my friends.

The punks had circled them and started kicking and punching their guts in. I called the police and the beatings ended quickly, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I ran away. Worse, it marked the end of my walking along the beach at night for many years to come.

It was a huge fear-inflicted injustice. I grew up on that beach and loved the place. I walked its entire length daily. It gave me peace and clarity. And I allowed some punks to scare me away.

2001

A week after the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

There are smaller examples in between and in the years after, but those are two of the more vivid memories.

Fear also fueled the binge eating and kept me from standing up for things that were right in the family and workplace. It was better to keep my trap shut, I thought. To do otherwise would put my job in danger or have me blackballed.

Then there was the fear of loss I wrote about a few blog posts back — fear that if I didn’t overprotect my kids I might lose them to some imagined beast; that if I spoke my mind during a spousal spat my wife might walk out on me. In hindsight, these were foolish ideas. But in the grip of fear, you think this way and act on it even though you really know better.

When I began getting treatment for the OCD the fear actually accelerated for a while. If a toe went a little numb I’d think I was suffering from a blood clot. A headache would leave me wondering if a tumor was growing inside my skull. A pain in the chest became fear of a heart attack.

I can’t remember when the fear finally began to lift. I think it was in early 2007, shortly after I began taking Prozac. Once the medicine untangled the chemical imbalances in the brain, situations I had feared suddenly seemed manageable. It was pretty weird, actually. I didn’t know what to do with this new feeling. Or maybe it was the year before, when I converted to the Catholic Faith and increasingly let God into my life. When you have God on your side, there’s really nothing to fear, right?

Then little milestones came along. There was a business trip to California that would have consumed me with worry a few years before. There was the first time giving a presentation in front of a room full of security people who were almost certainly smarter than me. The computer holding my PowerPoint presentation went on the fritz and I was forced to present sans slides. I told the audience that I was just going to wing it and that broke the ice.

Today, I look for opportunities to give talks in front of crowded rooms. I have work to do on my speaking skills, but I want more. The more I do, the more my confidence grows and the smoother and more organized the presentations get.

I look for opportunities to fly as well. And though I work hard on the business at hand, I ALWAYS make a point of building in a day to go out and explore, especially if there’s a piece of history to see up close. I want to see it all. Staring at the hotel room TV will no longer do.

Sometimes I worry that the fear will return and I’ll again retreat to my old cage. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though, for one simple reason — the world has been opened up to me. I’ve experienced too much joy these last couple years to go back to the way I was.

I couldn’t go back if I tried. Not that I would want to try.

To be clear, I still worry about things. But I don’t let it shut down the rest of my life. Instead of being engulfed, I can put the concern in its proper mental compartment and move along with my life.

There will be difficulties ahead, I’m sure. That’s life. But I feel more ready to deal with what may come than I’ve ever been before.

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The Bad Pill Kept Me From The Good Pill

In a previous post I mentioned that I take medication for OCD: Prozac. It’s been extremely helpful, but it took a long time for me to even consider trying it. Here’s why:

Mood music:

As a kid sick much of the time with Chron’s Disease, I was often put on the maximum dose of a drug called Prednisone. The side effects were so horrific that I forever after resisted the idea of taking medication until I reached a point in my OCD treatment where I felt so desolate I was willing to try anything.

Prednisone does an excellent job of cooling down a Chron’s flare up. If not for the drug, chances are pretty good I wouldn’t be here right now. More than once the disease got so bad the doctor’s were talking about removing my colon and tossing it in the trash. Each time, the medication brought me back from the brink.

But there was a heavy price — literally and figuratively.

The drug quadrupled my appetite, which was already in overdrive because of the food restrictions imposed upon me during times of illness. It contributed mightily toward the binge eating disorder I wrote about a few posts back.

The drug also fueled vicious mood swings and introduced me to a lifetime of migraines, many of which were so bad I’d end up hunched over the toilet throwing my guts up.

So when I started to confront my mental disorder and specialists started talking about different medications available, I balked. In fact, I told one therapist to go screw.

I focused instead on building up an arsenal of coping mechanisms. That helped tremendously, but it wasn’t enough. I found myself against one final brick wall; one I couldn’t seem to punch through.

And still I resisted.

I had plenty of excuses. I knew many people who had gone on antidepressants and were still depressed most of the time. Some had gained weight — a problem I already had. I just didn’t see the point.

I also couldn’t shake the memory of a dear friend — a man who essentially became an older brother after my real older brother died in 1984 — who had been on medication for depression but ultimately committed suicide anyway. I walked away from that nightmare with the theory that antidepressants made people worse rather than better.

Finally, I resisted because the depression that often sprung from my OCD wasn’t the suicidal variety. Truth be told, I’ve never once considered taking my own life. It just never occurred to me. Mine is a depression in which I simply withdraw, saying little to people and spending as much time as possible on the couch zoning out in front of the TV. To me, medication was for people in far more serious condition.

And so I resisted until I was so desperate I was willing to consider anything, no matter how extreme or stupid.

After researching the various medications and consulting the doctors, I started taking Prozac in January 2007. The results were almost immediate.

I stopped re-spinning old anxieties in my head. I automatically stopped obsessing over things I couldn’t control, like the possibility that the plane I was on might crash en route to a business conference. Suddenly, I had an overwhelming urge to experience all the things I used to fear.

I fell in love with travel. Work challenges became fun instead of something to dread. I finally became comfortable in my own skin.

The compulsive tendencies still surface on occasion. I still get batty over getting chores done. I still get bent out of shape if my sons use my desk and move a few trinkets out of place.

But the fear and anxiety went away in 2007, and haven’t returned. For that, I am grateful beyond words. Nothing robs a person blind quite like fear. You spend all your time hiding from all the beautiful aspects of life.

The medication also gave me the last little push I needed to stop living my work life in a way that was all about pleasing others and maintaining some imagined golden-boy image. By the time I moved over to CSO Magazine to be a senior editor, I was well past that sort of thing. While there, I’ve never had a problem speaking my mind, expressing ideas forcefully and simply enjoying the heck out of the work itself. I’m certainly lucky in that I work with a wonderful group of people. I truly like everyone I work with.

I did do some research on anti-depressant medication and found that there is an actual science to it all. I learned that while personal history is certainly a factor in the things that trigger mental disorder (a history of child abuse, for example), the root cause if often an imbalance in the fluids that direct traffic in the brain. The WebMD website explains it pretty well:

“One common theory is that depression is caused by an imbalance of naturally occurring substances in the brain and spinal cord … Major depression affects about 6.7% of the U.S. population over age 18, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Everybody at one point or another will feel sadness as a reaction to loss, grief, or injured self-esteem, but clinical depression, called ‘major depressive disorder’ or ‘major depression’ by doctors, is a serious medical illness that needs professional diagnosis and treatment.”

It goes on to say that most anti-depressant medicines improve mood “by increasing the number of chemicals in the brain that pass messages between brain cells.” That’s a key point. Mental disorders that are often viewed as stereotypical insanity and craziness are rooted in a chemical imbalance. When the brain chemistry is out of whack, the thinking process is disrupted. In my case, side effects of that imbalance included compulsive behavior and the inability to move on from certain preoccupations.

A good example: In 2005, when I was still at the beginning stages of dealing with my OCD, the hype about bird flu started to circulate. There was endless talk about that strain evolving into a pandemic as deadly as the 1918 Spanish Flu; far worse than the H1N1 pandemic we are currently experiencing.

I spent the following months in blind, silent panic. I feared for my children. I scanned through three pages of Google News results per day to keep track of the bird flu deaths in Asia and elsewhere.

When I started taking Prozac, that sort of thing stopped.

Make no mistake: Medication does not turn us into uncaring, numb and slap-happy beings. I still worry when my kids get sick. I still worry when the economy tanks and layoffs occur all around me.

But instead of stewing over these things around the clock, to the point where I can focus on little else, I’m able to function and still enjoy the precious present despite the mental burdens of the day.

Medication isn’t for everyone. I have no doubt that a lot of people on antidepressants don’t need to be. But in my case, the diagnosis was dead on and the prescription has done wonders for me. Three years ago, the concept would have been absolutely absurd.

The ultimate lesson: If you are in the grips of mental illness and you face the prospect of going on medication, don’t be afraid.