Many of you fear what will happen in the days, weeks and months following this election. You’ve already been in a long depression, fed by dread about civil unrest and a million political and policy implications.
There are Biden and Trump voters among you — sick inside over what might happen if the winner is the guy you opposed.
You feel unhinged about all the yelling back and forth on Facebook and Twitter — a lot of people on there say some crazy shit — and what you see in the media. It seems like every newspaper and TV news show is yelling at you with opinions over facts. Some of you get that reaction from CNN, MSN and the New York Times; others from Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.
Whichever political side you’re on, you fear violence in your cities and neighborhoods.
As you nurture these worries, the continuing depressive effect of the pandemic hangs over you like a blanket that rapidly alternates between being soaked and on fire.
I feel it, too — the anxiety, the depression, the anger, the uncertainly.
But I still feel hope. The overreaching part of that hope is the possibility that the worst won’t happen and November 3 will pass us by the way Y2K did at midnight in 2000.
The realistic side of that hope is the knowledge that we’ve fallen into the abyss many times and many of us managed to crawl out of it each time. We’ve seen darkness but the daylight has always followed.
I can’t predict what the coming period will bring. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it push me into a corner.
It’s a tricky subject to write about because, like anxiety and depression, fear has many different facets. I’ve focused mostly on the bad and perhaps not enough on its usefulness in helping us adapt and meet challenges. I’m gaining a better perspective lately, especially when trying to apply things like the OODA Loop to daily routines.
The kind built on mistrustand distortion, where people make tragic choices because federal, state and local officials refuse to be straight with them about the extent of the contagion’s spread
The kind based on truth, which scare people at first but quickly give them the wisdom to adapt
In order for an authority to maintain the public’s trust, it can’t avoid some scary truths. Barry writes:
The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that those who occupy positions of authority must lessen the panic that can alienate all within a society. Society cannot function if it is every man for himself. Those in authority must retain the public’s trust. The way to do that is to distort nothing, to put the best face on nothing, to try to manipulate no one. You don’t manage the truth. You tell the truth.
—John Barry, The Great Influenza
How leaders tell that truth matters, though. They can’t talk solely in abstractions and euphemisms. “A leader must make whatever horror exists concrete,” says Barry. “Only then will people be able to break it apart.”
Barry expanded on that second point in a recent interview, saying:
Authorities need to tell the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable — especially when it’s uncomfortable. This is important for two reasons. First, it lessens fear. People are always more afraid of the unknown. When people don’t think they’re getting a straight message they feel uncertain. In a horror movie, it’s always scariest before the monster appears. Once the fear becomes concrete we can deal with it. We can deal with reality. Second, if you want people to comply with your recommendations — and compliance is crucial to success — they have to believe you and trust you. If they doubt you they will ignore you.
I’d like to think I’ve abandoned the unproductive, panic-inducing fear that’s based on the unknown and put the truth-based fear to good use.
My approach is admittedly fatalistic on the surface: I’m just assuming we’ll be in this fight for a long time. I take nothing for granted — my job, my health, my ability to avoid episodes of depression. Losing ground in these areas is all within the realm of possibility.
By accepting that things are and will remain bad for some time and that anything can happen, I can adapt and focus on what’s in front of me — and what’s in front of me is pretty good.
In the face of the current crisis, we are already seeing humanity’s ability to adapt: we’re keeping business and learning going remotely, repurposing plant operations to churn out medical gear and moving from lost hospitality jobs to those that are in demand — grocery stores and medical facilities, for example.
To adapt is to survive and thrive. But we can’t adapt unless we face our truth-based fears first.
Amid the pandemic, we hear a lot about social distancing, which produces images of people isolated and alone, cut off from the world. The sound of it alone can bring on bouts of depression. What’s really happening is anything but — if you’re willing to use the tools available.
Mood Music:
On the work side, we may all be at home, but through GoTo Meeting, Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Facetime, my colleagues and I are getting a lot of time together. There are the meetings, of course, but a lot of us are also using these platforms to have lunch together and just banter:
Checking in with my colleague, Hillary BlairColleague Charlie Carey telling me, “Your humor is best when socially distanced.”
Some of my friends in the security industry have set up Zoom meetings and kept them running. Folks can come and go as they please.
My friend and former boss, Akamai CSO Andy Ellis, has used these tools for family dinners and spiritual gatherings. The following is posted with his permission:
In some respects, I think our extra efforts to socialize these days has been good for us. There’s a certain solidarity in all this.
The war footing we’re on with COVID-19 remains serious and will be for some time to come. We can’t let our guard down or return our lives to normal — whatever that was — for the time being.
But we can put the future into a better perspective. As harsh as life seems right now, there are myriad examples of humanity doing the right things and seeing measurable progress. Here are five of them.
With a vaccine for COVID-19 still a long way from being realized, a Johns Hopkins immunologist is working to revive a century-old blood-derived treatment for use in the United States in hopes of slowing the spread of the disease. The treatment could be set up at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore within weeks.
South Korea reported more recoveries from the coronavirus than new infections on Friday for the first time since its outbreak emerged in January. The downward trend in daily cases raises hopes that Asia’s biggest epidemic center outside China may be slowing.
Distilleries across America are stepping up to mitigate the shortage of hand sanitizer by making their own and giving it away. Another example of the best humanity has to offer.
Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.
Mood Music:
This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:
The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University
Reading this energized me.
My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.
But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.
So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.
Then I saw the DealBook article.
It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.
Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.
“Humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.”
Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson
Several lifetimes ago, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. I saw a lot of tragedy and depravity in that line of work: fatal car wrecks, families burned out of homes, murder and, yes, health crises.
Mood Music:
https://youtu.be/QPNqojbyIDk
I used to walk over homeless people sleeping in the Lynn Police Department entrance, the place wreaking of piss. I’d sit in courthouses to report on arraignments, watching some of the unluckiest, choice-challenged people I’d ever seen in my life.
Along the way, my sense of humor took a dark turn.
I’d joke to other court reporters about whether someone standing in front of the judge was guilty of whatever they were charged with (“Of course they are!”). When listening to police-scanner chatter about fire trucks being sent to a triple-decker fire in Lawrence, some of us would place bets on how quickly they’d put out the flames. Lawrence burned so often that the firefighters learned to do their jobs with ninja-like precision.
My colleagues and I felt a lot of sadness and heartache along the way. Our hatred of human suffering was always just below the surface. But joking about some of it is how we survived.
This gallows humor is something a lot of police officers, medical professionals, security practitioners and military veterans have shared with me over the years based on their own experiences, most of them a lot more harrowing than anything I’ve experienced.
No matter how dangerous and tragic something is, sometimes laughter is the only armor you have.
I mention this because there’s been some backlash over memes and commentary making light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Some say it’s cruel to laugh about such a grave threat, that we have to take it seriously. Some who joke about it are called dismissive.
And some of those people are dismissive. I shake my head more over people who seriously downplay what’s happening, writing it off as a media conspiracy to undermine Trump.
But those memes joking about toilet-paper hoarding? That Onion article about wearing two face masks (one on the back of the head in case Coronavirus attacks from behind)? Those are keeping me sane.
If the humor bothers you, I’m sorry. I certainly don’t want to see you hurting.
But don’t expect everyone to walk around their quarantine holes with a dour stare 24 hours a day.
To the jokesters: Keep it coming. You’re helping me through this, and I appreciate you.
One of my biggest OCD habits has always been a tendency to over-research things. In 2005-06, when some “experts” predicted an H5N1 bird flu pandemic that would kill as many or more people as Spanish Flu in 1918-19, I googled “bird flu” multiple times a day and would go five pages deep per search. You can find some terrifying shit in a search like that.
That period and the one we’re now living through has brought three things into focus for me:
No matter how experienced the scientist or medical professional, predictions are a roll of the dice. One expert you see on the news a lot lately is Michael Osterholm. He’s painting a bleak picture now and painted an even bleaker one during that bird flu cycle. Things didn’t turn out as he predicted.
Deep Googling will drive you mad. I love data. My profession requires that I sift through and make sense of a lot of it. But when you dive deep out of fear, looking for numbers and analysis that suggest everything will be fine, you will almost always be disappointed because of reason 1.
Getting news from social media will drive you even madder. Every article you find comes with all manner of opinions and predictions from your friends and family, most of whom have no medical expertise. They might know someone who is, and they think that magically makes them an expert.
As I’ve learned to manage my own depression, anxiety and OCD, I’ve refined my armchair research habits. These are not cure-alls by any means, but these are what I’m doing.
Avoiding the Google search barrel roll
Instead of typing in “COVID-19” in the news search and scrolling several pages of results, I’ve limited my search to finding specific data points that paint the current picture without the emotion of news commentary.
Using dashboards FTW
I bookmarked the best examples early on and now I just check those sites once or twice a day. I get a lot more information and have to do much less scrolling, and I get a calmer picture every time. The dashboards that are particularly helpful include the World-O-Meter Coronavirus page I mentioned in the last post and this excellent piece of work from a high school student.
Staying current with the CDC
The Centers for Disease Control website has a good FAQ section on COVID-19 — actionable guidance that focuses on what you can do in the here and now and not what might happen a week or a month from now.
Filtering social media
I could tell you to stay away from Facebook, Twitter, and the like, but that would make me a hypocrite. I’m on Facebook all the time. Yet I have learned to look at shared articles with more scrutiny. If it’s an article from Vice, Rolling Stone or Mother Jones, I’m less inclined to click the links; often their titles are laced with scaremongering and political bias from the left or right. If it’s from NPR or the BBC, I’m more inclined to go in and read or listen.
I’ve also gotten a good sense of who among my Facebook friends will react to news with cooler heads and who filter the news through political bias, overreact and or be too dismissive. I’m starting to conclude that it’s pointless to engage the latter camp in a reasoned discussion. Splitting hairs over whether COVID-19 is more deadly than the flu is worse than useless and you won’t change minds. The same when it comes to whether the Trump Administration has done a good or poor job managing the crisis. You won’t change emotionally charged, politically charged opinions. My mental health has been better since I decided to stop trying to do so. (I do go in and poke a little fun at these friends from time to time. Humor helps when the recipient takes it in the right spirit. Most do.)
Reading the big papers
In the past, I’ve been skeptical of the political biases within the big daily papers (the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Washington Post). But I must say that when it comes to COVID-19 reporting, all have done valuable service and are worth visiting once or twice a day.
The New York Times in particular has done a good job keeping the news simple and visual. Yes, I love these visuals. The Wall Street Journal has done a good job as well, especially with its special insert on managing the business fallout. Both have kept live updates concise as well. Even CNN has done that part well.
Parting thoughts
In this crisis, I’m heartened by a lot of the good things I see. I’ve been on two grocery runs this week where the stores were packed and shelves were empty. But I haven’t seen the fistfights and shouting matches others have reported. I’ve come across a lot of friendly folks who understand the absurdity of it all and are being friendly and helpful to each other.
I’m seeing a lot of businesses adapting almost seamlessly to all the closings and quarantines. The Canlis Restaurant in Seattle shut its dining room but switched gears to food delivery. My own company now has employees working from home until further notice, and we’ve switched a lot of our events from in-person to virtual with little hassle.
We are adapting. We are being good to each other. And that leaves me with hope that we may yet get through this in better shape than where we started.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, deciding there was nothing left to say about life with OCD, depression and anxiety. I learned to live with it, accepted that ups and downs would be part of the journey (they have been) and saw others stepping up to share their challenges in powerful fashion.
So I departed, leaving the blog online for those who might get use from it. My work here was done.
The unprecedented anxiety and fear over COVID-19 has compelled me to return for two reasons:
Rationality is in short supply. People either crudely dismiss the dangers of a virus the world has never seen before or they go into full freak-out, predicting another Great Depression and millions upon millions of deaths. Those of us in the middle need to speak up.
I’ve haven’t curled up into a ball. I should be doing my part to be there for those who aren’t handling this as well.
I’m very concerned about the pandemic. Not about the virus itself, which so far appears mild for most who catch it, but about the economic chaos that comes with it — with everything getting cancelled, the stock market doing barrel rolls and the prospect of a health-care system overrun with panicked or seriously ill people.
But I don’t see an apocalypse. The economy, battered as it may be, isn’t fundamentally broken as it was during the financial meltdown of 2008, when credit froze and companies went under en mass. This is a forced slowdown as people make what I see as the right decisions, cancelling sporting events, business travel, conferences and everything in between.
The storm will pass, in large part because in our hour of danger, good people step up and help their family, friends and neighbors. We’re seeing plenty of that already.
That is, however, cold comfort to those who suffer from depression, anxiety and other instances of mental adversity.
If you thrive on activity and, for example, travel the world on business, the cancellation of well-laid plans will surely be a depressing thing. I’ve had to scrub two business trips planned for the next two months, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t phase me. A friend has had to cancel a lot more than I have and admitted that a wave of depression was one result.
With so much of life on hold and COVID-19 being pretty much all you see on the news, people with anxiety are undoubtedly suffering through bouts of mental whiplash. The space inside their skulls is filled with the sound of sirens and the sight of red strobe lights whirling away. In the past I’ve described this anxiety as level red, one of five colors in the anxiety rainbow.
I’m relieved to say that my own anxiety level, which would certainly have been at red a few years ago, is much lower right now. I’d say it’s at yellow: The concern and worry are there, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by them. I’m still able to live my life and do my work. For me, that’s progress. It also makes me feel a bigger sense of responsibility to help calm the waters, and I’ll do that in upcoming posts.
I’ve also seen glimpses of light cutting through the fog.
While the negative, emotion-laden media coverage is certainly loud, I’m finding plenty of common sense guidance. Some examples:
Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan are successfully managing COVID-19 without some of the draconian measures China took. It shows a potential path the rest of the world could take.
There are some great data visualizations available to put things in perspective. One of my favorites, the World-O-Meter Coronavirus page, because it presents data points clearly, calmly, and without the freak-out factor.
A lot of people are finding humor in all this. I’m sharing a lot of memes on my Facebook page because I’m a firm believer that humor is one of our most powerful weapons against the darkness. A couple of favorites:
Two final thoughts:
A lot of kids are scared right now, and some parents will find it hard to explain what’s going on. In times like this I always think of what Mister Rogers once said: Tell them to watch for the helpers. They always show up.
For those wondering what they can do right now: Just be the blessing in someone else’s life. You don’t have to do something big to make a difference. Help those around you where they need help. Help them smile. Help them find the good news in a sea of bad news.
I know some people who hate God right now. One lost a child to illness. Several have simply had a bad run of luck in recent years. They can’t understand why an all-loving God lets bad things happen to them.
I used to be there: When my brother died or when my friend Sean Marley died. In the aftermath of those events, I wasn’t on speaking terms with God. At other points in my life, like my struggle to contain OCD and addictive behavior, I was talking to God, but nothing coming from my mouth was making much sense. I was rattling off prayers designed to make my life safer and more comfortable.
My relationship with God has gone through changes in recent years. I no longer pray for the safety of everyone I know. I just pray we’ll all have the wisdom to live our lives the way we’re supposed to for whatever length of time we’re going to be around. I’ve come to see life’s body blows not as a punishment but as situations we’re supposed to work through to come out stronger.
To those who ask why it’s worth having faith when there’s always the chance that there’s really nothing there after death, I ask, what’s the alternative? Even if there’s nothing on the other side, I’d still rather live by beliefs that include treating those around me right and striving for good. I’d still rather strive for a clean soul, though I admittedly have a lot of work to do on that one. If there’s nothing on the other side, at least I’ll have taken a shot at being a better person.
In the movie “Pearl Harbor,” there’s a scene where FDR meets with his military advisors and expresses his desire to strike back at Japan. His advisors give him all the reasons why it can’t be done. Then he mentions the polio that left him in a wheelchair and how he’s spent every hour of his life wondering why God put him in the chair.
Too dramatic? Maybe. This was a product of Hollywood and the scene was probably only loosely based on what really happened.
Still, I can totally picture FDR saying those things. He did say them at various times of his presidency.
His faith helped him deal with some of the biggest challenges mankind had faced up to that point. In that war and wars since then, faith has helped a lot of people push forward with the tasks that terrified them.
They chose to believe despite all the terrible things that happen around here.
I couldn’t let the day go by without acknowledging a grim anniversary. Twenty-nine years ago today, Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed when the band’s tour bus flipped over on a lonely road in Sweden.
Mood music:
The band’s first three albums had a huge impact on me.
In fact, Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” album helped me get through my last major attack of Crohn’s Disease.
It might seem bat-shit crazy of me to intertwine these two things, but the fact is that the “Master of Puppets” album DID help me get through that attack. That, and the book “Helter Skelter.” I read that book twice as I lingered on the couch, rising only for the frequent bloody bathroom runs that are the hallmark of Crohn’s flare-ups.
I listened to Master of Puppets nonstop. It tapped right into the anger I was feeling as a 16-year-old still reeling from his brother’s death and under the influence of Prednisone.
I had plans back then. I was going to lose 30 pounds, grow my hair long and find myself a girlfriend. I was going to live a life closer to normal. Not that I knew what normal was back then. As an adult, I’ve learned that normal is a bullshit concept, really. One man’s normal is another man’s insanity.
When the blood reappeared and the abdominal pain got worse, I wasn’t worried about whether I’d live or die or be hospitalized. I was just pissed because it was going to foul up my carefully designed plans.
When I listened to the title track to Master of Puppets, the master was the disease — and the wretched drug used to cool it down.
“The Thing That Should Not Be” was pretty much my entire life at that moment.
I related to “Welcome Home: Sanitarium” because I felt like I was living in one at the time. I was actually lucky about one thing: Unlike the other bad attacks, I wasn’t hospitalized this time.
Though Master of Puppets came out in March 1986, it was that summer when I really started to become obsessed with it. At the end of that summer, the Crohn’s attack struck. The album became the soundtrack for all the vitriol I was feeling.
That fall, as the flare-up was in full rage, Metallica bassist Cliff Burton was killed in that bus accident in Europe. It felt like just another body blow. I found this band in a time of need, and a major part of the music was ripped away.
I recently found a track of “Orion” where Cliff’s bass lines are isolated. It puts my neck hair on end every time I play it.
I haven’t been much of a Metallica fan in recent years. I enjoy some of what they’ve done from the fifth album to now. But the first three albums were special. Especially “Master of Puppets,” which was there when I needed it most.
