Learned a bit ago that my sister-in-law Robin has gone into labor. Expect future installments of “Stuff My Kids and Niece Say” to include the nephew…once he learns to talk. In the meantime, the other kids will no doubt continue to run their mouths off enough for a few more sequels.
What’s This Freakin’ Blog Really About, Anyway?
I’ve gained several new readers in the past month. They have a lot of questions for me, which I like and appreciate. The most common question goes something like this: “What exactly is the focus of this blog?”
Mood music:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4eVul99m50&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
It’s a fair question. Here’s the explanation. In this case the embedded links are important to seeing the whole picture. But don’t try to read them all at once. That would be insanity.
I call it THE OCD DIARIES because it’s primarily about my struggle to manage the disorder. If I have an OCD moment, I write about it. Where I’ve had success in gaining the upper hand, I share what I’ve learned so other sufferers can try it for themselves. Where appropriate, I laugh at what it makes me do. Sometimes, the result of an OCD incident is humor. But this isn’t a blog that tosses the acronym around to loosely describe every hyper moment of my existence. A lot of people say they have OCD to describe their Type-A personalities. This blog is about the real thing and why it’s so insidious.
It’s also about my upbringing in Revere, Mass., my childhood battle with Crohn’s Disease and how those things helped shape the manifestation of OCD within me. Every person’s struggle is shaped by where they’ve been in life. Historical perspective is important.
It’s also about the byproducts of my OCD, specifically addictive behavior and, even more specifically, my struggle with a binge-eating addiction. Part of that means telling you about how I brought it under control, which is why you see a lot about the 12 Steps of Recovery and Overeater’s Anonymous. I also tell you about all the stupid behaviors that goes with being an addict, including the secondary addictions that surface after you’ve put a lid on the main, most disruptive addiction.
It’s also about relationships, specifically with my wife and children, extended family members, colleagues, friends and the legions of nameless souls who have come and gone, helping me along the way. It’s about relationships that were destroyed along the way, and about broken relationships I’ve been able to repair in my recovery.
It’s about my Faith, which is all over the 12 Steps and is central to my ability to get honest with myself and get the help I needed. You’ll see a lot about my church community, the beauty as well as the warts, which we all have. 
It’s about daily learning experiences. Sometimes the mood of the writing is depressed and sometimes it’s joyful. It’s merely a reflection of all of us.
Finally, it’s a blog about metal music and why it’s so important in helping me with all of the above struggles. Most posts include musical selections that capture my emotions at the given moment.
Some posts will reassure you. Many will make you uncomfortable.
In the end, it’s just a collection of my experiences.
Mister Rogers’ Mother Was Right
Say what you will about Mister Rogers. His speech and mannerisms may stop being cool after you hit puberty, but the lessons he taught are timeless and ageless.
My friend Olivia Gatti shared this quote from Mr. Rogers on Facebook awhile back:
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers–so many caring people in this world.
The man was so right.
I suspect Olivia had the earthquake and tsunamis in Japan on her mind when she decided to share, and it certainly fits. There’s been so much tragedy in the last decade, from 9-11 to the tsunamis of late 2004 to this latest event, and for many children — especially those with emotional disorders — it can be enough to terrorize to the core, no matter how far away they are from the given disaster.
I used to have an acute fear of current events that started early in childhood and lasted almost into my mid-30s.
As I’ve written before, fear and anxiety were byproducts of my particular brand of OCD, just like my addictions were a byproduct.
The fear meant a lot of things. Working myself into a stupor over the safety of my wife and children. An obsession with cleanliness, which was interesting since depression always meant my personal hygiene took a dive. It also meant a fear of world events. When that Nostradamus movie “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow” came out on HBO in the early 1980s, I was terrified by the “future” scenes.
Later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, I thought the scene from above was playing out and it left me in a huge depression, one where I stayed in my basement with the lights off.
Similar emotions took hold on Sept. 11, 2001. Of course, those emotions took hold on everyone that day.
It fed a lot of my addictive behavior in adulthood and blackened parts of my childhood that might have otherwise been happy — even with the bad things that happened. Bad things happen to everyone. That’s life. But some people can maintain a certain level of happiness despite it.
Mr. Rogers learned a powerful lesson from his mother. I wish I had it in my head to focus on the helpers growing up. In hindsight, they were always there:
–The doctors and nurses who saved me from brutal bouts of Crohn’s Disease.
–The therapists who guided me through a diagnosis of OCD and showed me how to manage it.
–My family, especially my wife, and also my father and my mother, who tried to do their best for me. The help Erin has been to me is way too big to be measured here.
–My friends, who have always helped me make sense of things, made me laugh and done all the other things a person needs to get through the day.
–Many of the people in my faith community, who showed me how to accept God’s Grace, even if I still suck at returning the favor.
With the bigger events like what happened in Japan, it’s so easy to see only the calamity, death and sadness. It’s easy to get fixated on whether such a thing could happen where we live.
But when you look at it the way Mr. Roger’s mother suggested, it becomes a different picture altogether. The bad stuff is still there, but you also see that no matter what happens, there will always be enough kind souls to help the rest of us through to the other side.
When you can see the good in people even during the darkest of hours, it restores your faith in humanity.
I’m grateful for the reminder.
You of All People …
Recent weeks have pounded home the point that I’m seriously lacking in patience. With Duncan’s issues. With Erin’s workload. And more.
Mood music:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjto02iDNZA&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
Four words repeatedly ring in my head: “You of all people.”
I of all people should be patient with Duncan. I was a problem child on a much deeper, darker magnitude than him. He’s a good boy. I should be a lot calmer when he has his meltdowns and gets uncooperative. Because I’ve been in his shoes. And yet I’m not patient with him at all.
Erin put up with a lot of grief when I was slowly melting down and needed to find treatment. She has stuck by me through the long, brutal years of therapy, religious conversion, addictive behavior and now she’s having to deal with me at the other extreme — throwing myself into insane levels of activity simply because I can now.
Yet I get impatient over her workload. Starting a freelance business from nothing is hard and sometimes crushing. I’m proud of what she’s accomplished. But the business is like a newborn child, in constant need of attention. Sometimes — more than sometimes, actually — I get jealous of the newborn.
I forget that at one point everything I did revolved around the needs of my job. She stuck it out through all the 12-hour night shifts that left me more than useless during the day. And that was with a toddler and newborn in the house.
She was patient as wave after wave of depression washed away my libido and made me a dark, brooding presence you had to walk past very carefully.
For the most part, I’ve since gotten my shit together, and now it’s time to be patient for them.
But I’m failing to do so. A lot.
You of all people.
I lost my temper with Duncan more than once this past week. We don’t hit our kids, but when we yell, we really yell. When I do, I feel terrible afterward, like the ultimate failure of a father.
When Erin has to focus in on her work or she’s too tired at the end of a long day for anything other than TV, I start to think like an ass (she doesn’t want to be with me. She no longer finds me attractive, etc.). I forget that she stuck with me for years as I failed to meet her needs. And when that point is driven home to me, I feel like the ultimate failure of a husband.
I know I’m not a failure on either of these counts, but when you let anger and uncertainty take over, you start thinking in absolutes. That’s always a bad idea.
So patience is clearly something I need to work on.
Maybe it’s no accident that my therapist asked me when I’ll start doing yoga during my appointment yesterday. I keep telling him I have no patience for yoga.
I’m starting to see the absurdity of my response, even though — truth be told — as I write this I still have no interest in yoga.
However I get there, massive amounts of patience will be required.
I should know how to muster the patience.
You of all people.
But for whatever reason, I’m not there yet.
But after recent events, finding it has become a big priority.
Wish me luck.
For Cousin Martha
Cousin Martha — Erin’s cousin on the Robinson side, specifically — is way up on my list of favorite relatives. I love her humor, her wit and her ability to absorb all the needling I direct her way.
The kids love her spiky hair, and to prove it they spiked up their hair after a bath one night and ran around yelling, “Look! I’m Cousin Martha!”
I got a kick out of that before noticing the kids were doing this without clothes on.
Martha has been going through a rough patch of late. She recently had some major surgery and has felt less than stellar for some time.
So I wanted to dash off this post to let her know we’re all pulling for her.
She’s been through some serious shit in her day. She’s dealt with addiction and family tragedy as I have. And instead of being crushed by the weight of it all, she developed a spine of steel. Whenever she stares adversity in the face, she comes back stronger than before.
So it will be this time.
Good thing, too, because I miss her cooking.
We love you, Martha.
Keep fighting.
Sympathy for the Unsympathetic
I tend to get a lot of mail from people who read this blog, particularly the stuff about the rougher parts of my life. God Bless ’em, because they’re good people who want to buck me up. But I think they misunderstand where I’m coming from sometimes.
Mood music:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvJGQ_piwI0&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
There are days when my posts cross over to darker territory, especially when a wave of depression or OCD moment hits. I also do a lot of soul searching here, which is part of what I started this for. Some see those posts and tell me I’m way too hard on myself.
When too much of this happens, I need to come on here and tell you why you don’t need to worry about me or express sympathy. This time, I got a nice, shiny five-point manifesto to make my point:
1.) If I write about something bad that happened to me or something I’m feeling bad about, it’s never, ever a cry for pity. I approach my experiences from the point of view that EVERYONE has bad stuff happen to them and that EVERYONE screws up. I’m nobody special. But many times I need to expose my raw feelings to make a point. That’s what writers do.
2.) This blog is all about me making an example of myself. The way I see it, I’ve learned a lot of lessons and developed a lot of coping skills every time I’ve failed. If I don’t admit to my own failings to show where I used to be and where I’m going, the reader won’t walk away with anything useful.
3.) When sharing a bad mood or experience, the goal is to tell others they’re not alone. A lot of people with depression and addiction suffer in silence, thinking they’re different from everyone else in a bad way. The more people come clean about their own struggles, the more those sufferers can see that they’re not so hopeless and strange after all. In other words, some of the stuff readers try to buck me up over are based on my attempts to buck other people up.
4.) Never think for a moment that I don’t love who I am and what I have. It’s easy to read the darker posts and see a guy who loathes himself and curses his lot in life. But these posts aren’t meant to be that way. I still have my struggles and always need to be better than I am, but I also appreciate who I am, where I’ve been and what I’ve learned. And I know when I look at my wife and children that I’m THE luckiest guy on the planet.
5.) Writing all this stuff down is excellent therapy for me, too. Some people may be taken aback by some of the stuff I come clean about here. But in doing so I clear my own mind of the obsessive thinking that can hold me back. Then I can move on to the next thing. That doesn’t mean I don’t get locked into OCD moments, but spilling it here makes things better.
So you see, my friends, there’s no need for sympathy. I’m doing just fine.
But I am grateful for your kindness and good intentions.
Now, as MC5 once sang, “Kick out the jams!”
We Need Routines, Part 2
Here’s one reason February has been such a bitch: My routine has been so far off the rails that it has been hard to keep my perspective. It hurts the whole family-work dynamic. For a person in recovery, routines are beyond huge.
Mood music:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YzKLRM-pr4&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
Being the restless, boredom-shunning soul that I am, I always look forward to the next trip. I always miss my wife and children during these outings, but it’s also good to get out of the normal environment from time to time. It tests you and can even rejuvenate. I’ve also learned that recovery is portable. You can take your program just about anywhere. I’ve also learned that God is with me wherever I go, and that makes it much easier to approach life in a fearless way.
Here’s the problem: Do too much of this sort of thing and you hurt yourself and those around you. That’s exactly what I did in late January and the first half of February. I went to Washington and San Francisco within a two week period and came home violently ill. Served me right, but my family didn’t deserve having to carry on while I was passed out on the couch.
I thought I had the groove of a traveling man down pat, but I was being stupid.
Last week was a lost week of sorts. I was home a lot with my family, but mentally I was pretty vacant.
But it’s a new week. I’m in the office doing routine things. This afternoon I’ll go home and do more routine things. And I’ll be happy doing it.
I started on the path back to sanity yesterday by going to Mass. Driving there in a snowstorm wasn’t sane, mind you. But by the time Mass was over I felt so happy to be back. When you travel and focus on work too much, God gets the shaft, too.
That point was driven home to me when I did another routine thing last night and went to a 12-Step study meeting.
The main topic was fear and the things addicts do because of it. People discussed how their fears — over being accepted, over an abusive, drunken spouse, over work — made them drink, drug and binge eat. I sat there silent because I’m still too early in the Big Book-study process to share at these meetings, but I had a different, stranger take on fear than the rest of the room. I’ve lived in their brand of fear, to be sure.
My problem of late has more to do with the collateral damage caused when you lose the fear that held you back. You get a big lust for life, which may sound all well and good until you realize it’s just another extreme way of living.
Extremes are like absolutes: Both have caution signs plastered all over them. You go too far in one direction and neglect other, important parts of your existence.
I’ve always been a man of extremes. I’m either badly depressed like I was last week, shut off from the rest of the world, seeing only the calamities, or I’m ON — working, playing and grabbing on to every activity I only think I can handle at the time.
The middle speed in my engine rarely works right. It’s either all or nothing, and that’s a problem that may well plague me for the rest of my life.
But I’m not giving up without a fight.
This much I know: I’m always closest to the middle gear when I follow a rigid routine. That includes three weighed-out meals sans flour and sugar, an early bedtime because I rise early, at least two 12-Step meetings a week, regular check-ins with my sponsor, regular visits to the therapist, and daily prayer. It should also include time set aside after work to catch up with my wife and kids.
This is the stuff I need to work on, and I don’t tell you all this in a search for sympathy. We all have issues to work on every day. We all have our good days and bad days. I’m nothing special. I just happen to have a blog where I can process this stuff aloud.
The blog has become another important part of my routine.
But my use of it can become unbalanced, too.
This is just one of the crosses I carry.
But 10 of my crosses are absolutely nothing compared the Cross Jesus carried. I just forget from time to time.
Some of you think that kind of talk is nonsense.
Nobody’s perfect.
Learning to Adapt and Liking It. Maybe
Of all the things I’ve always been considered pretty good at — writing, drawing, etc. — one of the things I’ve never appreciated enough is my ability to adapt.
Mood music:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Bh7eE3zW2c&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
When OCD is out of control, adapting to change is pure hell. You want everything just so, in just the right amount and the right amount of order. Change anything and the person who loses control goes into a tailspin.
But in recovery, adapting to change is a gift I’ve only recently come to appreciate. When you finally realize you don’t have control and you surrender, it becomes easier to pull off.
I used to be terrified of job changes. I remember the day before starting at The Eagle-Tribune and the day before starting at TechTarget. I was strung out on anxiety and walked around full of depression and dread. By the time I got to changing jobs again in 2008, I had already evolved in my recovery enough that the dread didn’t come. The day before I started at CSO Magazine, I was giddy as a kid on Christmas Eve. I was learning to adapt.
Now I’m learning to adapt some more. I’m learning that my current process of distributing this blog needs to be tweaked. And I’m ready to adapt.
This form of adaptation should be easy because it requires me to do less, not more.
When my old colleague sent me a note calling me an “obsessive poster” it gave me real pause. As I mentioned yesterday, I can be obsessive in that task. There’s some publishing science behind what I do and I explained it, but I admit I am obsessive-compulsive about being part of a discussion and worrying about my words being missed along the way. It’s purely selfish, and I’m not proud of it. But I can adapt.
And so starting today, I disabled the automated tool that has made it far too easy for me to tweet and Facebook posts multiple times a day.
I’m pulling it back to three times a day: Once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once in the evening, so the blog will still be exposed to those online traffic cycles. But no more posting things every two hours, for example. That’s just me being ridiculous.
Also — eventually — I’m going to build a separate Facebook page for this blog. That way, the folks who really want it have a place to go and connections that don’t want it won’t have to suffer the barrage.
I’m not sure if the Twitter approach needs changes, but I’m open to suggestions. My security writing already goes out on a separate Twitter feed, though I still push the security content from my personal Twitter page. Do I want to make a separate feed for the diaries? I don’t know yet. But I realize it might be necessary.
LinkedIn is a much more complicated beast, because that is a purely professional social networking platform. I’m not sure how a separate OCD Diaries presence on LinkedIn, separate from my security presence, would work. Complicating matters is that A LOT of my audience on the security side reads this blog as well. I don’t want to make it harder to find.
So you see, I need to adapt this stuff to be more in tune to people’s sensitivities. I can’t change the flavor of the blog. It’s mine and I don’t write it to please people, though it is pleasing when someone gets something from it.
I can change how I deliver my posts, however.
Ideas are welcome. The change in posting frequency starts now.
The other things will be worked out in March.
I also want to include more local music on here, but sound quality is important. So to all my musician friends, let’s talk.
Seize the day (or evening, in this case).
A Look In The Mirror
Written in early 2011, after one of my more spectacular failures as a husband and human being.
I’ve been dealing with a pretty sour mood in recent days. This post is my attempt to explain it all.
The other day, I wrote a post called “When the Truth is a Lie” and a lot of you commented that I’m too hard on myself. I appreciate that, but I don’t think I was being as open as I needed to be at the time.
I’ve realized a few things in recent days. One is that I’m not the bucket of honesty everyone thinks I am. Sure, I reveal a lot about my struggles. But I hold back a lot, too. Some of that is for the best. We all need to keep some things to ourselves, don’t we?
But this week, in a moment where I was feeling stupid about the things I forgot to do in my hurry to catch a plane, I lied to my wife and everyone on Facebook who was following the thread.
I found a Valentine’s Day card from her in my suitcase when I got to San Francisco. Then I remembered that I left her card at home, unsigned. I meant to do it right before I left, but forgot. She would have understood.
I lied about it, anyway. I told her I forgot to take it out of my laptop bag.
Why did I do that? I guess it was one of the stupid things you do in a moment of guilt. She found the card in a drawer while I was away. Naturally, she wasn’t happy about it.
Who could blame her?
I’ve always had a hang-up about Valentine’s Day, and I always seem to find a way to screw it up when I should be doing what everyone else does: Using the holiday to remind those around you that you love them. Especially the spouse and the kids. When I hurt my wife, I lose the ability to function.
If you look at the posts I wrote while I was in San Francisco, you can see this stuff slowly eating away at my soul.
Why am I telly you this? Marital disagreements are a private thing, after all.
I’m doing it because I didn’t just lie to Erin. I lied to everyone who was following that Facebook post.
I’ve realized something else recently: I’ve gotten a little too full of myself. I’ve had success in my professional life, and with it I’ve gotten praise. That praise has been addictive, so I push myself harder. In this case, I did more travel than I was mentally or physically prepared for. The result was my coming home violently ill. Thursday and Friday, I couldn’t move from the couch or the bed. Those who know me will tell you it takes a lot to render me motionless like that.
I was definitely down with sickness. But maybe some of it was me feeling heart sick about not living up to who I should be.
My life has gotten very busy. I’m involved with things at church and in the security community. I have a busy family life.
My skills at going through all that and prioritizing need work.
Family comes first, of course.
I also realize that I can’t just drop out of sight and stop doing what I do here.
I need to find the balance.
I also have to remember how small I am in the grand scheme of the universe.
I don’t have all the answers right now.
But I know I have to find them.
Meanwhile, to those I’ve lied to or been pompous and cranky to this past week, I’m very sorry.
Some Days, I Don’t Have My Shit Together
A lot of people read this blog because I always try to put a silver lining on tough stuff. But some days I fail to live up to the image. Yesterday was one of those days, when I let a 7-year-old get the better of me.
Mood music:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX8n5IiSB-8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
You see, Duncan is like me in that too much winter messes with his mental balance. He’ll get goofy, sad and every emotion in between at the drop of a hat. And he has a terrible time focusing.
We’re not sure what it’s about, but since it happens every year between December and March, it’s not a stretch to conclude there’s a winter-related cause.
Yesterday he was unfocused when he needed to be getting his homework done. He had a Cub Scouts meeting early and that put some added pressure on us. When he does his homework, you really need to stand over him. But I always struggle with this, because the OCD pushes me to do seven things at once, especially on a tight schedule.
So Duncan kept fooling around and doing his homework in an excruciatingly slow manner.
So my voice started to get a little louder every few minutes. And Duncan still stayed all over the place.
So then I really snapped at him.
I didn’t hit him. We don’t believe in hitting our kids. But I yelled. A lot.
I nixed his going to the Scouts meeting. That was appropriate, since he still had too much homework left and that comes before the fun stuff.
To some or most of you all this may read like a typical afternoon with children. Kids get a little out of control and the parent in the room has to open the can of whoop-ass.
But to me, it was a loss of control. Worse, I feel like I should be A LOT more patient with the boy, since he’s under the same spell I’m under.
Whatever it was, I didn’t feel good about it.
I am thankful for a few things, though:
–We’re getting Duncan evaluated by a medical professional to see if he has any disorders. Whatever the verdict, we’ll get some direction on how to help him along.
–Duncan is a sweet boy, and it’s impossible to stay mad at him for long. Especially when he gives you a big hug and apologizes for being difficult.
–Erin was a calming presence, reminding me that this is a particularly bad winter and everyone is on a short fuse because of it.
–At the end of the day, I kissed my wife as she was leaving for a school board meeting, I tucked Duncan into bed and got some one-on-one time with Sean.
–There isn’t the thick, stinking cloud of rage hanging in the air. Love wins out over anger.
Because of all these things, this family is going to be just fine, thanks.
Even if I can’t always get my shit together.