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Perception or Reality?

A couple friends who were at the 1992 Lollapalooza show I recently wrote about agreed with my general retelling of events but experienced something much different than I did.

Said one: “I guess it’s true: Perception is reality.”

Mood music:

I couldn’t agree more. It reflects a point I’ve repeatedly tried to drive home: The events I describe in this blog are based on my own personal truths, the most accurate retellings I can offer. But I know my perception of things isn’t exactly the whole picture.

I’ve heard from family and friends over the years who have suggested that my take on particular events was different from how they remembered them. One family member whose privacy I’ll respect here told me that most of my childhood memories are fabrications.

Many people tend to see the world in black and white. Something is either the truth or a lie. Nothing in between. I’m not one of those people.

From my perspective, we all see things our brains try to interpret as honestly as possible, but there’s no objectivity. We have built-in biases and perceptions of the world around us. The result is that if you put 10 people in a room and something eventful happens — a fight or medical emergency, perhaps — two people will tell you what they saw and it’ll differ from what three other people saw. The rest of the room will add different perspectives to the story. This is especially the case if you ask those people to describe the event a year or more later.

In the case of that Lollapalooza show, what I saw was filtered through a brain that was off-balance and sick, which made my memory one of terror. Others will tell you that they were there and were not afraid. They just had a good old time reveling in rock and roll. Some will have seen events through brains that were also unbalanced at the time, but in different ways. I suffered from heightened fear, but someone else could have been prone to death wishes and such.

To really get at the truth, you have to get multiple perspectives from multiple people. The real truth will usually be something in between the opposing perspectives.

This case is no different.

Lollapalooza II

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Lollapalooza 1992: Case Study In Terror

The other day I came across some YouTube videos of the Jim Rose Circus, a freak-show act popular among my crowd in the early 1990s. I first saw them live at Lollapalooza 1992, and watching the videos reminded me of what a terrified 20-something I was back then.

Mood music:

I was excited to go because the band line-up included the biggest rock acts of the day, including Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, The Red Hot Chili Peppers and an industrial metal band I was into at the time: Ministry.

I enjoyed the Jim Rose act and was chilled and relaxed through Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. Then Ministry came on stage and flipped the switch on the intense anxiety and fear I struggled with back then. They launched into a cover of Black Sabbath‘s “Supernaut” and all hell broke loose behind me. The setting was an outdoor venue known back then as Great Woods, and behind the seating area was a grass-covered hill. The sun of the day started to dim and I thought a thunderstorm was afoot. Then I looked behind me and saw that the dimmed light was the sun being blocked by a cloud of dirt. The crowd in the back had begun tearing up large pieces of sod and tossing it in the air, creating a soil sunscreen.

At first I thought it was funny. It was all part of the metal spirit. Then the thick chunks of sod started making its way toward the seating area and stage. A piece slammed me in the side of the head and that’s when the terror switch in my soul turned on.

The crowd in the back didn’t stop with the sod. They started tearing the rear fence from the ground and piled the wood high, setting it aflame. I was convinced there would be a riot and stage rush that would crush us all. I fled to the men’s room and stayed there a long time. The group with me included Sean Marley, who was older than me and often played the role of big brother.

Sean was fearless, and though the depression that eventually ended him didn’t come on for another couple years, I’m pretty sure he already had something of a death wish at that point. He was a lot less patient with me. But he never gave up on me. He put up with my fear a lot and was always working to break me of the fear. It took many years after his death for the fear to be broken, but I’m always going to be grateful to him for trying.

We stayed long enough to see half of the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s headlining performance, but left before it was over. My certainty that we were all going to get killed or arrested had gotten so bad that I was twitching by that point, and my friends saw the writing on the wall. No one ever complained, though. Not to my face, anyway.

Though I don’t carry the fear anymore and my anxiety is mostly under control, I really can’t say how I’d react if I were at that same show right now. Would I smile and drink in all the chaos and stay until the end? I’m not so sure. I would have scowled at the stupidity of some in the audience, and probably wouldn’t be afraid to say something aloud. I might even yell toward the back that people should stop being idiots.

Most likely is that I’d have left early anyway — not for fear of physical danger, but because I’m simply too old to put up with that kind of behavior.

lollapalooza4

 

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Kiera Wilmot Case: Proof We’ve Gone Off the Deep End

You want an example of how fear has pushed society off the deep end? Check out the case of 16-year-old Kiera Wilmot.

A student of Bartow High School in Florida, Wilmot did something worthy at least a few weeks of after-school detention: She mixed a few chemicals together in the science lab and caused a small explosion. But she had no sinister intent. She was being a curious teen, doing something stupid and reckless.

Now she faces criminal charges and has been expelled from school. There was no damage and nobody was hurt, but she’s being treated like a terrorist.

Florida’s WTSP News 10 reports that Wilmot was charged with “possession/discharge of a weapon on school property and discharging a destructive device,” both felonies. According to WTSP, Wilmot has been expelled. She will need to finish high school through an explusion program

By all accounts, Wilmot has been a good, well-behaved student who gets good grades. But because she did something stupid in a society overfilled with fear, the authorities want to make a convicted felon of her.

Back when I was in high school, we made stupid decisions all the time. We threw rocks through windows. We pulled fire alarms and ran. We set off stink bombs. When caught, we were punished, as we deserved to be. But the police and bomb squad weren’t called in, as they are today.

Wilmot did wrong, intentionally or not. She deserves some kind of punishment. But felony charges? That’s way over the line. It illustrates how easily we overreact these days whenever something goes boom.

Kiera Wilmot

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Williams-Sonoma’s Overreaction to Boston Bombings

I wish I could appreciate Williams-Sonoma’s decision to pull pressure cookers off the shelves in Massachusetts following the Boston Marathon bombings. It was done to show some respect for those who might be traumatized at the sight of a pressure cooker, which the bad guys used as their bombs.

But the move was foolish. It’s the typical knee-jerk reaction to fear that makes me wonder how the human race got this far.

Mood music:

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According to Dedham Patch, the store manager of Williams-Sonoma’s Natick store said, “It’s a temporary thing out of respect.

I’ve struggled with crippling fear and anxiety, especially after 9/11, and I can appreciate the sentiment. But bad people use all kinds of tools to conduct evil. These guys used pressure cookers and put them in backpacks. Pulling pressure cookers off the shelves is simply feeding the fear the bombers want us all to feel. I can’t help but wonder when someone will suggest pulling backpacks from shelves. That would be unfortunate, too. Kids need backpacks to cart all those heavy books to and from school.

Objects don’t murder people. People murder people. You’ve heard that line often enough to roll your eyes and groan. But it’s the truth.

We can’t rid the world of the tools murderers use, nor should we. Most people use pressure cookers, backpacks, knives, automobiles and firearms responsibly.

People kill people every day with cars. Does that mean we pull all the cars off the road?

Williams-Sonoma overreacted to the bombings, just as we tend to overreact to other national tragedies.

Here’s a thought: Instead of banning and packing away everything, why don’t we try harder to identify people who are in danger of turning down a violent path and help them turn the other way?

We can’t save every soul, of course. But I’d rather put my efforts there than on removing every potentially scary object from view.

Williams-Sonoma

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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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The Worst Abuse of All

I’m taking a lot of abuse lately, the kind that leaves me mentally tired and physically aching. It’s not abuse from family, work colleagues or law enforcement, however. I’m doing it to myself.

Mood music:

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In the past, I’d binge myself sick in times of uncertainty, but these days the abuse takes other forms: I allow myself to get lost in the deep weeds of worry. The kicker is that I’m not worried about anything bad. No medical scares or fresh family strife in my world. Deep-fried worry over those things would be more understandable.

In this case, I’m worrying about potentially awesome changes in my life. Someone with a more balanced mind would enjoy the potential for good things and take it a day at a time. But when you have OCD, anticipation is the spiked club you use to repeatedly club yourself. We crave control like a newborn craves mother’s milk. In reality, however, there are few things an individual can control.

So here I am, walking around in a daze, waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble going back to sleep, checking my computer way too often for some sign that answers will come.

I keep repeating a phrase that I learned in a recent course I took on mindfulness-based stress reduction: “The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and the present is a gift.” I know these words to be true. Knowing them and living them isn’t necessarily the same thing in my world.

Eventually all this will pass; it always does.

I’ve been praying a lot. Some of you scowl at the idea of praying, but it really helps me. If nothing else, it calms me down and reminds me that I’m not a soul adrift or alone. I have all the support I could ever ask for, and that’ll see me through.

I did a lot of house cleaning this weekend. Ironically, this activity, often conducted in OCD overdrive, helped me wring out some of the anxiety. I guess I needed the exercise that comes with running up and down three flights of stairs all day.

I played a lot of guitar, too. Few things have been better at helping me stay in the moment. And I feel younger when my kids tell me to turn it down.

I used to be a mental mess most of the time, so I’m grateful that these worry binges only come in waves now. The trick is to take them from frequent or even infrequent events to absolutely rare moments.

Out of control

Art by Bill Fennell
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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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This Time, Anxiety Won

A confession: This past week, I’ve done a miserable job using my many coping tools to manage OCD and anxiety. What makes this particularly sinister is that I’ve just finished a week of vacation with the kids.

Mood music:

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Everything I’ve told you in past posts about learning to enjoy the precious present and not let worry take over is true. Weeks like this simply drive home the reality that I can never be fully free of my demons. I can only manage them and keep them from overtaking me most of the time. I’m fine with that. We all have our special challenges that dog us for life. It produces a pain we gain wisdom from. And from that wisdom comes joy.

So what set me off this week? Travel plans.

Tonight I fly to San Francisco for a few days of covering RSA and Security B-Sides. I was supposed to leave tomorrow morning, but was forced to leave a day sooner because of another impending winter storm in the Northeast. That made me resentful right off the bat. I was expecting a nice day with my wife and kids before leaving, and this was a big monkey wrench in the plan.

It also stoked my anxiety. Not the fear part, but the part where I worry to the point where I can’t see two feet in front of me. I watched the weather like a hawk. I downloaded no fewer than three weather apps on my Android and followed them all throughout the days. I checked all the weather sites every time I opened the laptop or switched on the TV.

If the predicted snow count went up, I grew depressed. If the projected amounts went down, I became unreasonably euphoric.

That kind of mood swinging does terrible things to the human body. Hormones go nuts, muscles tense into headaches and you sleep terribly.

I have no one to blame. I did this to myself. I sometimes get so cocky about my ability to manage the demons that I’m thrown for a bigger loop than I otherwise would be when things don’t go as planned.

As for the anxiety, it didn’t have to be that way, because it really was a good vacation otherwise. I got in a lot of quality time with the kids. Erin had to work most of the time, unfortunately, but Wednesday we had a nice dinner out and Friday we had a family day with a visit to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, N.H. After that, Erin and I did groceries together for what was probably the first time since the kids came along. That was pretty cool.

But I let my worry overshadow it all, and for that I’m a little pissed with myself.

It’s time for me to regain my control.

Def Leppard Hysteria album cover

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What’s Your Phobia?

I’ve recently come across a couple of interesting phobia lists, and being the OCD head I am, I decided to carefully go through the lists to see which applied to me.

Mood music:

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The Phobia List is a straight-up dictionary of phobias, in alphabetical order. Here are some of the phobias that have applied to me at various points:

  • Agateophobia: The fear of insanity. Who’s not afraid of insanity?
  • Aviophobia or aviatophobia: The fear of flying. This used to be a big one in my book. The thought of being in a metal tube hurling across the sky with no safety net below terrified me. Because of that, there were many years I didn’t travel beyond what I could do by car. I got over it, though, and love flying today.
  • Brontophobia: The fear of thunder and lightning. This one dogged me as a kid. There was one storm when I was about 10 that made it pitch-black outside at 1 in the afternoon, and for a long time after that every clap of thunder hit me like a whip to the back. I don’t feel this one so much anymore, but there are still occasions where a good storm will rattle me.
  • Claustrophobia: The fear of confined spaces. I used to find confined spaces safe and cozy. Now I can’t stand them. I much prefer big, open spaces.
  • Iatrophobia: The fear of going to the doctor or of doctors. I avoided doctors for several years because of this. Then I went to the other extreme, running to the doctors for everything. I don’t fear doctors today, though I have met many who are so incompetent that they should be feared. But I’ve know some outstanding doctors, too.

Some of the items on this list surprised me and even made me laugh at first. Then I realized how cruel life would be to hand a person such fears:

  • Anthrophobia or anthophobia: The fear of flowers.
  • Bibliophobia: The fear of books.
  • Dendrophobia: The fear of trees.
  • Francophobia: The fear of France or French culture.
  • Geumaphobia or Geumophobia: The fear of taste.

The other site is The ABC of Fears: The Famous People’s Phobias. It’s actually the website for a leather-bound book of art focusing on different phobias. Here are a few pages:

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It didn’t take long before I gave up scouring these sites; the lists are just too vast. We all have our little fears, and if you look long enough at a list, you’re bound to see a bit of yourself in many of the definitions. I’m no doctor, but I don’t think you automatically have a phobia if you tend to fear or loathe certain things. The question is whether they make our lives unmanageable.

If you never leave the house and avoid all human contact for fear of catching a disease, for example, it’s a safe bet that you have a phobia. If you simply find certain things unpleasant, such as doctors or certain foods, but you’re able to deal with them, it’s probably not a clinical phobia.

The good news is that phobias don’t have to dog us for life. Or so I’ve learned from personal experience.

web-COVER

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Naming Winter Storms: Good Intentions, Bad Idea

Here we are, waiting for another “potentially historic” storm to strike the Boston area. Two feet of snow is expected, along with high winds and five-foot snow drifts. Fair enough. It’s winter and we haven’t had a significant snowfall yet. But I’m baffled by the logic behind naming these storms.

Mood music:

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The weather forecasters have named this storm Nemo, presumably in honor of the clownfish from Finding Nemo, a movie that has nothing to do with blizzards. Apparently the weather experts decided after Superstorm Sandy that every single storm should have a name. One storm following Sandy was called Athena.

The good folks at The Weather Channel came up with the idea, explaining on their website:

During the upcoming 2012-13 winter season The Weather Channel will name noteworthy winter storms. Our goal is to better communicate the threat and the timing of the significant impacts that accompany these events. The fact is, a storm with a name is easier to follow, which will mean fewer surprises and more preparation.

I can respect the logic behind this. But there are unintended consequences: One person’s mental preparedness is another person’s nervous breakdown.

For those who suffer from fear and anxiety, named winter storms bring up the worst weather images of the past. A name makes one think of hurricanes and the destruction they cause. In the mind of the fearful, naming a storm is tantamount to declaring doomsday. This is especially true for children.

Also see: “For Parents With Kids Freaked About Winter Storms” and “Fear, Anxiety and Storms: From the Blizzard of ’78 to Sandy“

Take it from someone who once suffered from crippling fear and anxiety: Living through this stuff is hell. If someone has lived through Hurricane Katrina or Superstorm Sandy, such promotion brings back the bad memories and nightmares. 

Given all our advances in long-term weather forecasting and the heightened mindset of preparedness we’ve had in recent years, naming storms strikes me as overkill.

Hopefully, I’m wrong and the overkill won’t hurt anyone.

Finding Nemo over winter storm map