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TV News and Depression: How I Learned To Turn It Off

This week’s news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombings and the aftermath only hardened the feelings I express below. I have nothing but contempt for the big three: CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Local news did a far more admirable job covering this tragedy.

 

I find myself increasingly outraged at what I see on the TV news channels lately. I’m not talking about the news itself, but the way it’s presented with loud graphics, dramatic music and louder newscasters.

To watch CNN, Fox News, MSNBC or any number of local news affiliates is to be rattled. And, in fact, before I learned to turn it off, I couldn’t take my eyes away. It took an already depressed, out-of-control person and made him three times worse.

I should probably laugh it off and move on. But the fact of the matter is that this stuff used to leave me a crippled mess.

When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the cable news networks. I’ve written before about the anxiety and fear I used to have over current events. I would think about all the things going on in the world over and over again, until it left me physically ill. I personally wanted to set everything right and control the shape of events, which of course is delusional, dangerous thinking.

Right after 9-11 I realized the obsession had taken a much darker, deeper tone. This time, I had the Internet as well as the TV networks to fill me with horror. Everyone was filled with horror on 9-11, obviously, but while others were able to go about their business in a depressed haze, I froze. Two weeks after the event, I refused to get on a plane to go to a wedding in Arizona. Everyone was afraid to fly at that point, but I let my fear own me. It’s one of my big regrets.

Part of the problem was my inability to take my eyes off the news. To do so for a five-hour plane ride was unthinkable. To not know what was going on for five hours? Holy shit. If I don’t know about it, I can’t control it!

I really used to think like that.

The start of the War on Terror brought out the rock-bottom worst in TV news. Every possible danger, no matter how unsupported by facts, was flashed on the screen with the urgency of imminent doom. I remember how Wolf Blitzer of CNN used the word “alarming” just about every night as the analysts discussed the hundred different ways the terrorists could really kick us in the balls next time:

— Releasing smallpox back into the air

–Detonating a nuclear device in front of the White House

–Diving planes into nuclear power plants.

In a time when the right answer would have been to hold our heads up and show the bad guys we don’t hide in the face of danger, this stuff brought out the worst in us, especially an already emotionally sick guy like me.

It didn’t have to be matters of war and peace, either.

In the weeks leading up to the 2004 presidential election, all the TV news commentators could talk about was the last election and how there was growing fear that a repeat of the electoral deadlock of 2000 would repeat itself.

Analysts talked about all the glitches that could happen as if they were watching a knife go into their chest. Already consumed by fear and anxiety, I freaked over this, too.

A year later, right after Hurricane Katrina hit, TV news stations felt the need to go over every conceivable disaster that might wipe us out next: Bird flu, nuclear plant meltdowns, earthquakes and other unpredictable events. It made a mess of me.

I can’t pinpoint the exact period where I decided this stuff no longer had meaning to me, but I think it was around the time I started taking the right medication for OCD in early 2007.

All of the sudden, I didn’t care as much about watching the news. I simply lost interest. And I’ve been a lot happier as a result.

The timing may be a coincidence. My Faith also started to deepen around that time, and the more I learned to trust God and let go of the things I couldn’t control, the more meaningless CNN’s loudness became.

Today, I’m as addicted to the Internet as I used to be to the TV. But I don’t really watch the news online. I’ll quickly glance over the headlines and maybe stick around if a political analysis intrigues me enough. But I’m much more likely to get sucked into all the music videos available on YouTube or who is saying what on Facebook and Twitter. That too is something I know I need to be careful of, but it’s fair to say that that stuff doesn’t send me into shock and panic like CNN and Fox used to.

Somewhere along the way, as I watched news reports of bomb explosions and natural calamities half a world away, I looked up and realized everything outside my living room window was tranquil and uneventful.

I’ve operated on that mindset ever since.

Call me apathetic or ignorant. Tell me I’m in denial.

All I can tell you is that things in the world look much different to me now than they did just a few short years ago.

And though I consumed more news this past week than I have in a long time, I still managed to walk away quite a bit. That’s probably why I’m able to type this without my hands shaking.

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Julian Assange: Autistic Hacker Or Just An A-hole?

Last year I wrote a post about a report suggesting autism is an affliction of the brilliant. One man mentioned as an example was WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has described himself as having the “hacker’s disease.” Yesterday, a reader’s comment inspired me to revisit the issue.

Mood music:

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The reader said in part:

This compares a neurological disorder to genius people whose curiosity takes finite state machines to places that their creators never imagined. How’s that? Julian (who I met once) is an egomaniac and an arrogant prick, and Daniel (who I do know) and the rest of them have given him the Heisman. If he’s representative of hackers, then I’m cancelling my membership! Kids have always been a PITA for parents, especially ones that “won’t behave”. First it was “hyperactive” – then it was “ADD” then “ADHD”. It’s always some excuse for f**ked up parents who hit their kids, kids who are too smart and see through their parents’ bullshit.

 

A friend in the security community once took me to task for using the autism angle because he felt it was unfair to compare someone with a neurological disorder with me and my OCD struggle. He was right that the two are vastly different things, but for me it wasn’t simply about comparing myself with someone who has autism. It was more about my interest in people who have abilities within them, diseases and disorders be damned.

We’ve seen countless stories about people who rise above physical and mental limitations to achieve greatness, and I’m always inspired after hearing about them.

As for the reader’s comment, I agree with one thing: A lot of parents do make excuses for kids who don’t fall in line, and that often leads to a misguided diagnosis. But that’s beside the point.

Is something like autism a hacker’s disease? I have no idea. Frankly, I don’t care.

Each of us has something from within that can either hold us back or propel us forward: A blessing hidden inside a perceived curse.  That’s what OCD has been for me: A curse when left to rage out of control, and a blessing when managed and properly harnessed.

Some of us are afflicted with disorders that can’t be managed so easily; maladies that force people into wheelchairs or psychiatric hospitals. The victim has little control over it, and is trapped. For some, the affliction attacks the nerves and muscles. For others, the disease targets the brain and disables basic functions. In both cases, all or part of the brain still burns brightly, and the individual is able to ride that to something good. Like Stephen Hawking. And, in some cases, like hackers.

The one constant is that we’re all handed challenges in life. If the mind works, what matters from there are the choices we make and the lengths we’re willing to travel to rise above.

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Human Tourniquets And Freaks Who Love Them

I originally wrote this three years ago. Looking at it again, it’s an important post describing a time when not even best friends were safe from my insanity. I’ve updated it for the present. 

Mood music:

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You know the type. They hang  out with people who act more like abusive spouses than friends. They are human tourniquets. They absorb the pain of their tormentor daily and without complaint.

This is the story of the man who used to be my tourniquet.

I met Aaron Lewis in 1985, my freshman year of high school. He was the kid with really bad acne. But nothing ever seemed to bother him. I’m sure a lot of things bothered him, but he was very good at hiding his feelings.

That made him the perfect target for a creep like me.

Don’t get me wrong. He was a true friend. One of my best friends. We shared a love of heavy metal. We both got picked on, though unlike me, he didn’t take it out on other, weaker classmates.

We hung out constantly. He practically lived in my Revere basement at times. I let him borrow my car regularly. And if I drank, that was OK, because he almost never drank. He could be the driver.

Except for the time I encouraged him to drink a bottle of vodka. He had just eaten a bag of McDonald’s and I told him I was sick of him trying to get buzzed off of wine coolers. This night, I told him, he was going to do it right. He got smashed, and proceeded to puke all over my basement — on the bed, the carpets, the couch, the dresser. That was some strange vomit. It looked like brown confetti.

I sat on the floor, drunk myself, writing in my journal. I wrote about how drunk Aaron was and prayed to God that he wouldn’t die. Man, would I love to find that journal.

We saw a lot of movies together. We watched a lot of MTV.

He was the perfect counterweight to Sean Marley. Marley was essentially my older brother and I spent a lot of time trying to earn his approval. I didn’t have to do that with Aaron. He didn’t criticize. He didn’t judge. He just took all my mood swings on the chin.

I would sling verbal bombs at him and he’d take it.

I would slap him on the back of the neck and he’d take it.

I was evil. And he took it.

That’s a true friend.

Aaron got married, moved to California and has a growing family. He’s doing some wonderful things with his life. I cleaned up from my compulsive binge eating, found my Faith and untangled the coarse, jagged wiring in my brain that eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

If he’s reading this, I apologize for all the times I was an asshole. I hope somewhere in there, I was a good friend, too.

Buddies
Left: Aaron Lewis. Right: His asshole friend
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In the Cold Spring, Whine Flows Freely

Fellow New Englanders are pissing and moaning about the latest blanket of snow we received yesterday. Today is the first day of spring, but it looks and feels like January. Nothing is more discouraging and depressing, especially if those with depression feel it the worst in winter. I know this as fact because I’m one of those people.

Mood music:

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It’s been said that New England is particularly defiant in the weather department. We get excessive heat in fall and spring. Winter loiters well into April and sometimes even May. I suspect  this sort of thing happens in most temperate climates, though.

Fact: Very rarely does spring arrive with warm temperatures and blooming flowers. Even when it does, we get plenty of days that feel like winter afterwards. One year we had a blizzard on April 1. I remember another year when school was called off for two days well into April because we had received more than a foot of snow.

Fact: Eventually, we get the warmer air and blooming trees. This year will be no different.

So cheer up. Before you know it, the dog days of summer will be here and everyone will be whining about the heat.

Winter

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The Information Technology Burnout Project

The Information Technology Burnout Project, created by friends in the security community, addresses something most of us experience at one point or another: work-induced depression.

Mood music:

The website is only part of the project. Project members have also held panel discussions about job stress and burnout at various security conferences across the United States. During those discussions, people have been open about the depression, despair and hopelessness they’ve traveled through in the face of mounting job stress. We know that stress has led to suicide in the IT world. Aaron Swartz is just one of the latest examples.

When I started this blog, I worried about how I’d be perceived in the infosec community. By that point my need to rip the skeletons out of my closet overrode such concern, but I held my breath and sweated it for a few days. I didn’t expect the eventual response, though I probably should have.

My work community started opening up about their own struggles with depression, anxiety and the resulting addictions. These were and still are people that are tough as steel, which was actually comforting. If people like that could let cracks in their armor show, perhaps I wasn’t so crazy after all.

The work of breaking the stigmas around mental illness took on a more intense urgency for me, and here we are, more than three years later.

Related posts:
“Friends of the Gifted Need to Learn Suicide Prevention Tactics”
“Fired for Being Depressed”
“Mental Illness and Cybersecurity”

I’ve had my bouts of job burnout and all the depression and anxiety that goes with it, though most of it was before I started focusing on infosec. As an editor at a daily paper, I struggled to keep newsroom politics from getting to me. I tried to stay above all the backstabbing, criticism from upper management and side effects that came from working late-night hours. I failed, at least for a while, and conducted myself in ways I’m ashamed of to this day.

When I finally got out of the mainstream news business and landed in a much more supportive office environment, I remained on edge. On the surface I appeared calm, and the bosses were happy with the work I was doing. But inside I was dying, one traumatized molecule at a time.

I eventually found my way out of it. But when someone in my work circle is going through something similar, I can spot it from a mile away.

Fortunately, I’m not the only one who can.

I’m proud of the friends who started the Information Technology Burnout Project. They are breaking the stigma and, through the website, offer coping tools and inspirational stories that can and will make a difference.

One such friend noted last week that the project has lost some momentum since last year’s RSA Conference, mainly because everyone is increasingly busy with work projects. He’s hoping to rekindle the earlier momentum and asked for help.

Count me in, starting with this post.

Burnt match

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Lessons From the Hemingway Curse

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

Mood music:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ernest Hemingway

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Friends Of The Gifted Need To Learn Suicide Intervention Tactics

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

Mood music:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Skeleton in Pain

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‘Lincoln’ Captures Presidential Triumph Over Depression

Since Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln arrived in theaters, I’ve been asking myself: Is the depression issue adequately addressed?

The 16th president is a hero of mine because he showed depression sufferers how to rise above the despair and even turn it into a powerful ally. In fact, it was the subject of one of my first posts when I started this blog.

Mood music:

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Lincoln lived through horrific episodes of melancholy in an age where there were no meds to help take the edge off. Rather than succumbing to the scourge and taking his own life, though he did consider it more than once, according to Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, he developed layers of coping tools that carried him through terrible periods of grief, which included the loss of two children (Willie Lincoln died in the White House barely a year into his father’s presidency) and the darkest days of the Civil War.

When I first saw previews for Lincoln, it was clear that the film would focus on the fight for the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which finally outlawed slavery. But it was unclear how much we’d see Lincoln dealing with the melancholy.

I’m happy to report that it tackled that part of Lincoln’s greatness to my satisfaction.

We see Lincoln’s difficult relationship with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. We see him putting his personal grief aside to comfort his youngest son, Tad, who still struggles with the loss of his brother. We see him standing firm in the face of heated opposition over the 13th Amendment, which many in his own circle consider a daft distraction from the business of ending the Civil War.

His coping mechanisms are on full display, especially his sense of humor and writing. We see him telling off-color stories during moments of high tension. We see him using the power of writing to rally himself and his countrymen through the obstacles ahead.

Daniel Day-Lewis really does an inspiring job capturing those strengths.

The movie isn’t perfect. Like most books and films dealing with Lincoln, the president is portrayed in an almost Christ-like manner, glossing over flaws the man certainly had.

The film shows Lincoln pushing to end slavery as a simple matter of morality when a deeper read of history shows that, at the beginning of the Civil War, he was perfectly willing to allow slavery to survive in the South under certain conditions. Keeping the Union together was his primary goal from the outset, not abolishing an evil institution. His parenting also left much to be desired, when you consider how he kept a certain distance from oldest son Robert and coddled Tad almost to the point of spoiling the boy. Meanwhile, certain civil liberties took a beating under Lincoln. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, paving the way for unlawful detentions, as one of my libertarian friends often points out.

But I can forgive Spielberg. Lincoln was an imperfect person, as we all are, but his evolution as a human being was profound and inspiring — especially his growth in tackling depression. The movie captures it well.

Go see it.

Lincoln Movie Poster

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Five Inexpensive Christmas Gifts for the Depressed

It’s easy to find Christmas gifts that poke fun at a person’s OCD. I’ve captured some good ones and bad ones in previous posts. Less easy to find are gifts that are appropriate for a person in the grips of depression.

Why are these gifts so hard to find? One reason is that if you are suffering from depression, especially from the sad, suicidal variety, gag gifts can backfire, adding to the hurt because the recipient feels they are being mocked. All gag gifts mock, mind you, but it’s easier to see the humor when the world doesn’t look like it’s about to implode.

Another reason is that we can’t always tell a person is depressed. Sufferers can be masters at masking their feelings. It’s hard to get a gift to help a person if you don’t know they need help in the first place.

But the biggest reason is that the gifts a depressed person needs usually can’t be found in the mall or on Amazon. Sure, getting stuff can make you feel good for a short while. That’s why people run up their credit cards for retail therapy. But the good feelings won’t last long if there’s a gaping hole in your soul.

With all that in mind, I’m going to take a crack at gift suggestions that might really help the depressed soul. Despite what I said about material things, those included here can a positive, almost medicinal effect. These items are based on my personal experiences. It is not meant to be the definitive word on the subject, nor is it meant to be a one-size-fits-all list.

  • A HappyLight. If the root of a person’s depression is the darkness of winter, getting them a natural-spectrum light can give them a dose of springtime. The lamp blasts a room full of the kind of light you would normally get from the sun. In 30-minute intervals, the lamp has provided me with a boost.
  • Music. For any type of depression, few therapies are as powerful as music. In my case, massive doses of hard rock gives me immense strength and comfort. The key is to be sure of what the recipient likes, be it country, classical, jazz, etc. You can deliver this gift in multiple, inexpensive ways. One is to get some blank CDs and burn some songs on to them. If you know a person’s tastes, chances are better than average that you share those tastes and have music in your collection that can be passed on.
  • Homemade treats. Find out the recipient’s favorite foods and, if you have the cooking skills, make it. Homemade will always make a more personal statement than buying something from a grocery store. My wife gets that, and if someone is having a birthday, she insists on making the cake herself. Buying from a bakery is unthinkable to her except for certain situations. But be aware that a gift like this could backfire. In my case, depression has compelled me to binge eat in the past. You don’t want to enable a person’s addictive impulses. Make sure food isn’t the problem for your recipient.
  • Your time and attention. When a person is badly depressed, the biggest source of pain is isolation and loneliness. Visit this person often, call them and, if they’re on Facebook, check in with them daily. Don’t lecture them on how blessed they really are or what kinds of vitamins they should be taking. One of my personal peeves is when someone tries to tell me about self-help books I should read. Trust me: When you’re depressed, the only reading you crave is material to help you escape. Just show up and talk about whatever. Or, better yet, just sit there and listen to them. Let them vent without trying to make judgments.
  • Space. Sometimes, a depressed person just needs space. Their depression can be made worse when people bug them with suggestions on what they should do about their problems. Just as human contact can be a powerful gift, so can solitude.

The trick with give someone who is depressed a worthwhile gift is knowing what they really need. While asking them directly may be out of the question — they’re not likely to know or be willing to ask for it — pay attention to them and you’ll find inspiration.

Charlie Brown Christmas

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Another Christmas Season, Another Depression Diagnosis

Though I’ve made peace with the demons that left me hating Christmas for many years, I’m still easy prey for winter depression. Last week, after asking me lots of questions and taking lots of notes, my shrink told me what I already knew: I’m once again clinically depressed.

Mood music:

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When most people hear the word depression, they immediately think of someone who is sad, anguished and afraid to leave the house. In the more extreme cases, death becomes an appealing option for ending the pain. I’ve never been suicidal, but I have experienced the other things in my day.

This depression isn’t like that at all, however.

I’m not sad. I’m not anguished. I’m not even in a bad mood (as I write this, anyway). I feel incredibly blessed every day. I’m in love with my wife, kids and extended family. I immensely enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree yesterday. I recently described this state of mind as happy depression.

In my case, being clinically depressed means three things:

  • I’m tired a lot.
  • I’m forgetful to the point where my wife wants to club me at least once a day.
  • I’m experiencing fluctuations in appetite. That used to result in days and weeks of binge eating. This time it’s a lack of appetite. Frequently at meal time, I’m simply not interested.

For some species, seasonal depression isn’t even considered depression. If you’re a bear, for example, it’s simply time to hibernate for the winter. I guess that makes me part bear, because that’s essentially how I am these days. My body says it’s time to hibernate. But humans don’t get to curl up in a warm cave until spring.

I still have parenting to do, a job to do, family to attend to. And so I do. I just do it in a messy, disorganized fashion this time of year.

To some extent, this is something I have to accept. My family has to accept it to. It’s a medical condition, and you can’t just flip a switch and turn the light back on. I can, however, minimize it. I’m going to get my meds adjusted now instead of halfway through winter. I’m also going to build a routine to use all the new present-awareness tools I acquired during my recent mindfulness-based stress-reduction class.

I meditated this morning for the first time in a couple weeks, and it did make a difference. At the least I started the work day in a calm enough mental state to plow ahead with work.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Christmas Lights