I have a major case of OCD Fidget Syndrome today. It started with an 8 a.m. meeting in work and seems to have gotten worse as the morning has dragged on.
In the meeting I noticed I kept swiveling my chair back and forth and changing positions. I kept tugging at my clothes. I must have gotten pretty slick about it, because people didn’t seem to notice.
Then we had a small editorial meeting and the itch started to feel more intense. Doodling on a piece of paper as we discussed business kept me from flailing wildly.
It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out what my problem is. Quitting smoking cold turkey Friday night is having the expected effect. It’s all I can do not to smoke. From there, the urge to binge eat is high.
I’m not going to do either of those things, though. I’m strong enough and I know I’ll feel better in a few days.
The key for now is to chew lots of gum so my sharp tongue doesn’t fly out of my mouth and slash whoever is unfortunate enough to get under my skin.
This afternoon I’m doing a site visit with some old friends in the security community. Wish them luck. š
You’ve heard the sorry old tale of the addict who cleaned up from the addiction that made his life unmanageable, only to pick up three more vices. That’s me. Take the surprise Erin got when opening my work bag.
Mood music:
She was cleaning and found earphones that belonged to me. She unzipped a front compartment in my laptop bag to put them away and had the unpleasant shock of discovering where I’d been hiding all my smoking products.
Everyone knows I like cigars. What people don’t know — and what Erin discovered — is that I’ve been sneaking cigarettes, too. Two packs were hidden in the pocket.
She took it better than I expected. I probably deserved a far harsher reaction. But she knows how addictions make someone like me tick. Instead, she talked me through the things I might be able to do to replace this crutch.
I agreed to stop smoking immediately — the cigarettes and cigars. And you know what? I’m pissed off right now. Not at Erin, but at my lot in life. I can’t seem to do anything in moderation, and so I have to put everything down.
I resent not being able to have vices. It makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
It’s nobody’s fault. It’s simply a problem with how my brain ticks. This is just the latest in a big shift I resolved to take three years ago when my binge eating compulsion brought me to my knees.
When you give up your worst addiction, you go looking for crutches to help you through. In the first year of not binge eating, I used alcohol as a crutch. Then I put that down, too. I picked up cigars, and, more recently, cigarettes.
If you think that’s pathetic, that’s because it is.
As I write this, I’m on day three without my smokes. I’m pretty fucking irritable. Nicotine cravings have nothing to do with it.
Like I said, I resent having to give up all my vices.
Coffee is all that’s left.
If you think I’m giving that up, you’re out of your fucking mind.
My initial reaction to that was irritation. Too fucking bad, I thought. So sorry I allowed Mr. Sunshine to take a sabbatical. How inconvenient for everyone.
After a few minutes of that, I realized I was being a prick.
People simply care about me and they are worried.
Thank you for caring.Ā Sorry for being a prick.
I guess it has been a long, rough road. I’ve been back and forth to the rehab center each week, and it’s an hour from my home and my office. Seeing Dad in the wheelchair, plainly depressed, has had a rub-off depressive effect. I know how hellish the inactivity is for him, because he passed that trait down to me.
Meantime, I’m keeping it full steam ahead with my own work. And it’s taking all I have to keep from sliding back into binging.
Naturally, trying not to binge means I’ve picked up another destructive crutch. I put that crutch down on Friday, and while it’s the right thing to do, I’m resentful as Hell about it. More on that tomorrow.
The bottom line is that I am not a sunny guy right now. But don’t worry. I’ll be fine. This is life, and despite all the toil and trauma, I am a lot better at this shit than I used to be.
In the meantime, thanks for being patient and caring. I do appreciate it.
I’m in my therapist’s office, going over the things he routinely asks about to make sure I’m playing with a full deck. He asks if I’ve talked to mom recently. No, I tell him. But, I expect to see her this weekend — the first time in two years.
Mood music:
He asks if I’m nervous about it. To my surprise as well as his, I tell him I’m not — and I actually mean it.
I won’t repeat all the background of what happened between my mother and me. You can get the back story by reading an earlier post called “The Mommy Problem.”
Let’s just focus on the present…
The last time I saw her was the summer of 2009. I met with her for lunch and told her all about my treatment for OCD and how I was in a 12-Step Program for the binge eating disorder. She seemed to get where I was coming from. I was certain this was the start of the healing.
Then she sent an e-mail a week later asking when she was going to see her grandchildren. I told her Erin needed more time but I was ready to sit down with Bob on my own. I expected heād sit there and call me every name in the book and tell me how much I had hurt the family, and I was ready to just sit there and take it. He was entitled to that.
But they were having none of that.
My mother sent another e-mail suggesting I was whipped and controlled by my wife, and that I was the laughingstock of the family as a result. Back to square one.
That was in August 2009. We havenāt spoken since.
So why am I calm about the expected Saturday encounter? I guess it’s because I feel comfortable in my own skin and I feel like I’ve done a lot of hard soul searching in the five years since our combined mental illnesses imploded the relationship and took a few people with it.
I’ve taken it to the confession booth at church too many times to count. I tell the priests I wrestle with the whole “Honor thy mother and father” commandment. I’m always told that honor thy mother and father doesn’t mean sit there as you’re repeatedly run over by a tank.
I did make a big effort at reconciliation two years ago. I even connected with her on Facebook, for heaven’s sake. When I realized my efforts were going to fail, I de-friended and then blocked her from my profile.
Looking at the whole sorry affair, I still think she did the best she could with the tools she had. The problem is that she’s really lacking in the tool department, mainly because in her mind she has no problem. She’s a victim. Pure and simple.
We often look at abusive relationships in black and white. Thereās the abuser and the victim. But itās never that simple.
I forgave my mother a long time ago for the darker events of my childhood. I doubt I would have done much better in her shoes. HerĀ marriage to my fatherĀ was probably doomed from the start, andĀ the break-upĀ was full of rancor. MyĀ brotherĀ and I were sick a lot, and one of us didnāt make it.
I didnāt fully appreciate what a body blow that was until I became a parent. After Michael died, she became a suffocating force in my life.Ā I did the same to my own kidsĀ until I startedĀ dealing with the OCD.
I hold nothing against her. Thereās a lot I can get into about this, but the reality is that this relationship is a casualty of mental illness and addiction. This one canāt be repaired so easily, because much of my OCD and addictive behavior comes directly from her.
For the sake of my immediate family, recovery has to come first.
Without it, I fail EVERYONE.
Right now, I don’t see how saying much to her will be helpful in that regard.
I’ll be nice. I certainly won’t be mean.
And despite what has happened in recent years, I expect her to behave the same way.
After all, the day will not be about us. It’ll be about my cousin and the awesome gal he’s marrying.
I’ve always been fiercely protective of my children. Part of it is thatĀ fear of loss. I’m like Marlin the clown fish in “Finding Nemo.” Like Marlin, I’m starting to realize I need to let the kids have some adventures.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/E5H8DwJI0uA
Any good parent is going to be over-protective to a point, and that’s how it should be. God gave us these kids to nurture, and we have to make sure they make it to adulthood and beyond.
But we’re also supposed to teach them how to survive adversity. For all my talk in this blog, I haven’t always done that part very well.
Some of it is my own background. Having watched my parents divorce, a brother die and a best friend commit suicide, I’ve had an overwhelming urge to shield Sean and Duncan from danger at all costs. That kind of compulsion is tailor-made for someone with OCD, because we drive ourselves mad trying to control all the things we are absolutely powerless to control.
I’ve gone crazy over all the usual things. I see a mosquito bite or two on their legs and I go into a fit of lunacy because mosquitoes can carry dangerous diseases. Letting them out of my sight would fill me with dread.
But I also remember something else from childhood: After my brother died, my mother, who was already overbearing, became absolutely suffocating. I think she wanted me to stay in whatever room she was in straight on through adulthood.
Naturally, I rebelled.
Thank God I did, because without taking some chances in life and breaking free of your protective sphere, you amount to nothing.
I can’t put my kids through the same thing, no matter how much I worry about them.
Learning to better control my OCD had been helpful. When I learned to break free of the fear and anxiety, I stopped going crazy over the little things.
This summer I’ve suddenly realized how far I’ve come.
Sean and Duncan have a couple new friends from the neighborhood. One boy’s family runs the farmland all around us and is accustomed to exploring all the woodland trails. Sean and Duncan now run off with their new friends, hanging out in a secret fort they built in the woods and digging holes in the mud by the culverts.
A funny thing has happened here. I find myself kicking the kids out of the house on sunny days, telling them to go explore and enjoy the outdoors.
A couple years ago, the prospect would have terrified me. Now it feels natural.
This doesn’t mean I no longer worry about my kids being in danger. I worry about it all the time. I don’t think that’s the OCD. I think it’s the normal reaction from a parent who adores his children.
But now, when I get uncomfortable about it all, I remember a scene from the movie I mentioned at the beginning of this post: Marlin and Dory are inside a whale, and Marlin laments that he failed to keep a promise to his son. The exchange went something like this:
Marlin: “I promised I’d never let anything bad happen to him.”
Dory: “That’s a funny thing to promise. If nothing ever happens to him, then nothing will ever happen to him. Not much fun for little Harpo.”
Kids need adventure. They even need to experience adversity. That’s how they learn to be good, strong adults.
When you hear about people with conflicting personalities, the image of an insane asylum patient comes to mind. If that were indeed the accurate picture, we would all be committed.
Mood music:
The truth is that we all have more than one personality. We can be one person in one group setting, then go to another group setting and become somebody else.
I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, either.
This all came up a couple weeks ago as I had coffee with my friend Audrey Clark, a Marblehead, Mass. native and singer-guitarist for The 360s. We were talking about how we can be at ease and talkative in a one-on-one setting or in a small group, then go off to another group setting — in this case, a crowded rock club where the lighting is dim or nonexistent and people don’t look like they do on Facebook.
For me the multiple personalities are something I treasure.
I consider my multiple personalities a strength, with a bunch ofĀ recovery toolsĀ rolled up into one happy mess.
Thereās theĀ history nerdĀ who has his work stations at work and home festooned withĀ busts of historic figures, old news clippings and framed copies ofĀ LincolnāsĀ Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address and a variety of nautical artifacts. The guy who put his family in the station wagon last year and drove to Washington D.C.for a private tour of the White House West Wing (a friend works there).
Thereās the security scribe who writes about the world of hackers, security vendors and government cybersecurity officials forĀ CSOonline and CSO Magazine. On this one I actually have multiple personalities within multiple personalities.
Many of my friends in the security industry are a colorful mix of characters. Some are the hacking types who dress like rock stars and share my musical tastes. Others wear a suit and tie every day and work for multi-billion-dollar corporations and government agencies, and they often share my love for history. I float easily between both camps.
FaithĀ is connected to everything I do. I live for God ā or try to ā and in all my other pursuits thatās what drives me. Iām active in my church community, getting up and doing readings at Mass and helping out with programs like RCIA. My personality is much different from that of my fellow parishioners, but we get on well, bound by a love for our families, children and God.
Finally and most importantly ā I actually consider this central to my Faith journey ā thereās theĀ family man, the one who adores his wife and children and tries hard to make decisions that put them before work. I donāt always pull it off, but in the end, they are THE MOST IMPORTANT forces in my life. Well, God is, but my Faith does compel me to put family first. Itās complicated, I know, but Iām sure most of you understand.
All these things make for a challenging life. But I wouldnāt change it for the world.
Ever since I lifted the chains of depression, OCD, fear-anxiety and addiction off of me, I’ve loved all the jagged pieces of my life all the more.
So if you have multiple personalities, donāt hide them. Donāt run from them. Embrace them.
As long as those personalities arenāt dominated by the darker forces of human nature.
Erin and I have been married for 13 years. We’ve been together for 18. I don’t know where the time goes, but as I sit here typing this I’m the luckiest — and most grateful — guy on the planet.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/1CIcWrCAl_c
We celebrated Saturday and my mood spectrum that day symbolizes what she’s had to put up with quite accurately.
I was in a good enough mood in the morning and by afternoon I was in a funk. My planning for the day was scattered at best and I was overly defensive about what seemed like everything. It was the result of simply being tired, but my head has been in this space before.
We went to the Lowell Folk Festival and I was in a daze as we walked around. As she noted, I wasn’t present. I can’t remember what was in my head at the time but it had something to do with some selfish bullshit about what I wanted to do earlier in the day.
By dinner the mood started to brighten and at some point in the restaurant, I became present again. From there, we had a late night and it was a wonderful time.
That’s what happens when you’re able to make the bullshit in your head stop. Everything falls into place.
With all the years with OCD, my mood swings have been a constant presence, the dog that follows be everywhere, refusing to scram.
Fortunately, with a lot of treatment and help from God and the love of my life, the moods swing upward more than downward these days.
She could have thrown in the towel a long time ago and I wouldn’t have blamed her.
But she stayed and helped me, and I’m a better man for it.
The person she is makes me want to be better still.
No one can ever tell what the future holds, and that’s why it’s best to live life one day at a time. All I know right now is that I am blessed. Every day I thank God for the woman he sent into my life.
Someone asked me when I reached a point in my recovery where I stopped beingĀ self-absorbed. I told her I never stopped. But when you think about it, you’re not much different from me.
Mood music:
As I’ve said before, people with obsessive-compulsive tendencies are basket cases about being in control. Maybe itās simply control of oneās sanity. Usually, itāsĀ control of situations and peopleĀ you have no business trying to control.
Part of it, to be honest, includes an obsession with how people perceive you. All it takes is a couple of people telling you you’re “awesome” to send your narcissistic side swelling out of control.
My ego is a nasty beast. I do battle with him every day because I don’t want to be focused on me, myself and I. Many days I lose.
We all do, of course. Tell me you’re not carrying at least a little narcissism in you and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit.
Yesterday was an example of how my own tendencies can get the better of me.
I went looking for a definition and found this on Wikipedia:
NarcissismĀ is theĀ personality trait ofĀ egotism,Ā vanity,Ā conceit, or simpleĀ selfishness. Applied to aĀ social group, it is sometimes used to denoteĀ elitism or an indifference to the plight of others.Ā The name ānarcissismā was coined byĀ Freud afterĀ Narcissus who inĀ Greek myth was a pathologically self-absorbed young man who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool.
So, letās seeā¦
Iāve never fallen in love with my reflection. Usually, when I look in a mirror, itās to make sure I donāt look too fat, though that too is an act of vanity. I donāt get people who insist on having their bedroom or bathroom fitted with wall-to-wall mirror.Ā Iāve also gone through long periods of hating myself.
But I am guilty of thinking Iām better than the guy sitting next to me. I probably think Iām a better writer than I really am. There are days when I think a little too highly of myself.
And I care way too much about how many followers/friends/circles I have in the social media world. I don’t want to care. I’ll tell you I don’t care. But I do.
I have the highest friend count I’ve ever had on Facebook — 1654 — and I have nearly 2200 Twitter followers. But when I discovered a long-time Facebook friend had ditched me yesterday I started going through my list to see who else dropped me. Then, the inevitable wondering why.
If it sounds stupid, that’s because it is.
Despite my posts about how you shouldn’t friend me if you’re not finding my content useful, there I was, bumming that someone didn’t like what I was pushing.
That’s how I roll. It aint always pretty.
I know I shouldn’t be this way. Maybe I’ll figure out a way to stop.
In the meantime, I have the comfort you get in knowing you’re not alone — the “misery loves company” syndrome.
That’s right, I’m staring at you and suggesting that you have a bit of narcissism in you as well.
I don’t mean it as an insult. I’m simply making an observation.
How many of you put new pictures of yourself on Facebook daily, usually snaps you took of yourself while sitting in the car? Quite a few of you, from what I’ve seen on my homepage.
How many of you fill your status updates with quotes others have made, figuring that since your name is over it you’ll look super smart? I’ve done it. I’ve seen you do it, too.
To be fair, not everyone carries on like this. Some people despise themselves too much to be seen or heard, which is also unhealthy — and goes to show that sometimes you just can’t win. Ā Others hate themselves and tell the world about it on every social network they have access to. They do it to make themselves feel better. But since they obviously hope someone is reading and caring, they too are engaging in a little bit of narcissism. Somewhere there’s a balance. I haven’t found it yet.
It’s been said that the first step in tackling your problem is admitting you have the problem in the first place. Or, as the first of the 12 Steps says, “We admitted we were powerless over (insert addiction — Here’s mine), that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Then there’s the fact that “we’re all in this together.”
We can go down together, or we could help each other stand up. To be honest, I don’t know how we do the latter. Maybe, if we see a friend carrying on with a bloated ego, a good start is to nudge them in private and suggest a different approach. That person may be insulted, but chances are at least 50-50 that they’ll get over it.
Unfollowing can send a message too, though it’s better to back up the action by explaining to someone why they have become too much trouble to associate with.
Narcissism is an ugly word and an ugly truth. It might be the hardest challenge of all.
Let me tell you about the time I wanted to be perfect, how the urge nearly ruined me and how I learned to accept — if not embrace — my flaws.
One of the great delusions an OCD sufferer labors under is the notion that he/she can achieve absolute perfection. Maybe the goal is to be the perfect employee. Maybe it’s to be the perfect parent and spouse. In some cases, the goal can even be to be the perfect addict.
The suicide drive for perfection is closely tied into the OCD case’s compulsion to control as much of their environment as possible.
Why yes, everything youāve heard about OCD and control freakism is true. People like us crave control like a junkie craves a shot of smack to the arm. It grabs us by the nose and drags us down the road until our emotions are raw and bleeding.
Thatās why I used to be such an asshole at The Eagle-Tribune. Every story I edited then went through three more editors and then to the page designer. Along the way, everyone after me had to take a whack at it. Iād hover over the poor page designers because it was the closest thing I had to control. Ultimate control would have meant laying out the pages myself. That would have been a stupid thing to do, mind you. I couldnāt lay out a news page to save my life.
When I was the assistant news editor for the paperās New Hampshire editions, I was out a week when my son Sean was born. I came in one night to catch up on e-mail and saw the message where my boss, Jeff McMenemy, announced my sonās birth. In it, he joked that I probably stood over the doctor and told him how to deliver the baby.
I wanted to punch him.
I saw red.
Because I knew that was something I could easily be pictured doing. It hit too close to the truth.
All along, I just wanted to be perfect. The perfect editor, in the latter case.
I wanted to be the perfect family man and thought the way to be it was to do as many chores as I could. The problem was that I wasn’t there for my family emotionally. That still happens sometimes.
The drive for perfection always takes me to the brink of disaster.
But all the treatment I’ve received for OCD and addiction has cooled down that compulsion. It still surfaces from time to time, but it’s no longer a feeling that stalks me every minute of every day.
Sometimes my work gets sloppy, but most of the time I do a better job than I used to because I don’t try to get it perfect. As a result, I enjoy what I do more, even if it gets messy sometimes.
Erin has noted a few times that I’m more of a slob now that I’m better. I leave books, socks and gadgets lying around the house.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped being about perfection.
Now I just do the best I can and hope it’s enough most of the time.
I talk to myself all the time. Sometimes I get caught, and it embarrasses me. But over the years, the habit has served its purpose.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA
I know I look ridiculous when I do it. Maybe I even look a little crazy, though much less so since the invention of the Bluetooth ear device. One morning in New York City, I was walking down a street chuckling over all the people with Bluetooth devices in their ears, looking dead ahead while flapping their lips.
“I’m cooler than they are,” I thought to myself. “I don’t need a funny-looking thing in my ear to talk to myself.”
I’m the type who will talk to myself loudly while walking around in public. I’ve gotten stared at plenty of times for that. I’ve also been known to read news articles back aloud to myself, whether they’re articles I wrote or was editing.
What do I talk to myself about? Usually I’m planning all the things I have to do during the day ahead. Or, after work, I’ll list all the important tasks I took care of that day. Back when my OCD, fear, anxiety and depression burned out of control I would talk aloud to myself about all kinds of worries. Those conversations would go in endless circles and wipe me out.
I know I look like the crazy guy on the street when I do this. But I can’t help myself.
But it’s better than it used to be.
For one thing, I don’t read stories I’m writing or editing back to myself aloud anymore. I did that because I lacked confidence in my writing and editing abilities, and was terrified of turning in work that was less than perfect. I still turned in a lot of crap, so in hindsight I wasted a lot of time.
Now I read it back silently with metal music blaring in my headphones. It’s a lot more fun that way.
People who talk to themselves are usually considered crazy. I think of Crazy Mike of Haverhill and a lot of characters I used to know in Revere. But they are usually harmless. They’re so wrapped up in the conversations they have with themselves that they don’t notice the people around them. They’ve never bothered me. I do feel for them, because I’m sure some of it is loneliness. No one else will talk to them. It’s tragic, really.
I’ve always been more fortunate. Even when I’ve weirded people out, they still talk to me.
As annoying as it can be to others, I think talking to yourself is actually one of the sanest things you can do. It can be painful when taken to excess. I speak from experience. But it’s also a good way to clear the mind of cluttering thoughts.
It’s like everything else in my OCD-infested world. I’m forever trying to figure out how much is too much or just enough to keep my brain working.
If that means I’m still crazy, so be it. I’m in good company, at least.
