The OCD Diaries

June 6, 2016June 6, 2016

Living in the Precious Present (If You Can Find It)

One of the basic traits of someone with OCD is an inability to live in the moment. Learning to do so is one of my big projects at the moment.

I’m better at living in the precious present than I used to be. I can remember being a kid, always daydreaming about the future: what I’d look like and how cool my life would be if I were thinner, the clothes I would wear, the girls I would date and the music I would write.

As I sat in my basement pondering such greatness, I’d be binge eating, drinking and smoking and wasting the moment.

Wasting the moment will prevent the future dreams from coming true every time. And so it was with me for a long time. It’s ironic that I did that sort of thing, because I had a nasty fear of the future that was caused by a fear of current events. I was convinced the world wouldn’t make it past 1999. That being the case, I should have embraced the present.

For whatever reason, I didn’t.

Later on, I’d daydream about what life would be like if I got a better job than the one I had at the time. I would have been better off finding ways to make the job I had and myself better day to day.

Through intense therapy for OCD and a program to control the binge eating, I’m much more able to live in the moment.

But I still struggle to keep my head in the moment, especially lately. My wife once compared some of it to my inability to see food portions in the proper perspective. I have no concept of what too much food looks like, so I have to put everything on a scale.

When the OCD runs hot I get the same way about time. I lose perspective on how long something will take or what I should be doing with the moment. I’ll go on the tear around the house doing chores, for example, when more important things are right in front of me, like spending some time with the kids.

It’s a confusing mix and it may not make much sense to you. But it is something I’m working on.

There’s plenty of things to be hopeful of and worry about concerning the future. But in the end, we can only do so much about what’s going to happen.

Better to embrace the moment then, right?

I don’t know how I’ll perfect that one, if I ever do.

For now, I’ll just be grateful that I’m better at it than I used to be.

March 12, 2016

Patience: A Virtue I Don’t Have (But Should)

I’ve done some soul searching this week and have realized something unpleasant about myself: I have absolutely no patience, and it makes me an asshole sometimes.

Mood music:

That lack of patience tends to present itself a few times each year. Usually, it’s because I’m waiting for an important event to happen — travel to a security conference, for example.

Other times, it’s when a career opportunity presents itself and the waiting process feels like an eternity.

Lately, a lot of it is about getting work done on the old building that housed the family business, so we can lease out the spaces.

Whatever the trigger, it turns me into the kind of person I don’t like — a pushy bastard. A nag, in other words.

Which is kind of amusing, since I despise being nagged.

I’m sure that getting this way has actually caused things I wanted to not happen in the end. Push a process and the people behind it too far and the machinery breaks down. Or people simply decide you’re too much of a jerk to bother with.

When the impatience kicks in, my brain dissolves in flames. Waiting physically hurts. And 99 percent of the time, it’s not a life-or-death situation.

I know where it comes from: It’s one of the more insidious side effects of my OCD. First the delusions of grandeur build up and turn into a kind of high. Then it dissolves into panic and edginess.

The only remedy is for me to catch myself in the act, as I have this time.

If you’ve been one of my victims lately, I apologize and will try to do better.

"Persistence of Time," by Salvador Dali — “Persistence of Time,” by Salvador Dali

February 22, 2016February 23, 2016

Packing for #RSAC 2016: An OCD Case Study

At the end of the week, I’ll be packing for five days in San Francisco, where I’ll write about the goings-on at RSA Conference 2016. When you have OCD, packing a suitcase is as ritualistic as the compulsive hand washing you’ve heard about.

Mood music:

Before I had the OCD under control, packing was an all-day affair. I’d line up all my clothes and accessories in order of the days I planned to wear them. I would undergo a similar ritual when gathering toiletries. I’d pack extra for fear that I’d be without something on the second-to-last day of the trip.

Today I do things a lot differently. I still keep track of what I stuff into the suitcase to ensure I have enough for each day, but I only look over my cargo twice. It takes less time to do than when I used to look things over 5 to 10 times.

I save space in my suitcase because I don’t stuff it with cigars and cigarettes anymore. While I carry my vaping pipes, they take up less space. I also used to stuff books in to have something to read during downtime. I don’t do that anymore, because those books always sit unread. I’ll still have a supply of Starbucks Via packets in case I can’t find my preferred coffee in the airport.

Last year I walked around San Francisco in my big, heavy boots. This year I’m being smart about it and going with the sandals that slip on and off effortlessly.

One year I forgot to grab my Prozac bottle on the way out of the hotel and only realized my mistake after getting through the airport TSA line. Now I just pack the exact number of pills I need for the trip. The rest of the bottle stays home.

Packing the laptop bag has gotten easier, too. I used to cram five notebooks and a handful of pens in there. Now it’s one pen and no notebooks. At this stage of my career, I’m pretty good at storing notes in my head. I don’t let then sit in my head for too long, either. I usually write up the talks and demos within 10 minutes of seeing them. Some talks I write up while I’m watching.

I still worry about having enough power cords, though, so I pack every cord I own. But I don’t lay them all out on the table to count them multiple times. I just stuff everything into the bag.

I’ve also gotten bolder about when to go to the airport. I used to get to the airport three hours before the flight because I worried about unexpected problems and wanted time to fix them. I’ve scaled that back to two hours during recent travel. So far, it’s working out fine.

I may not travel the lightest I can, but when you have OCD and learn how to simplify packing, it’s a victory.

Safe travels, all!

Suitcases and Briefcase

August 22, 2015August 22, 2015

Skinny Like A Fool

At dinner with friends one night, a conversation about weight control got started. It reminded me of how hard I used to work to stay thin, and how dangerous some of my methods were.

Examples:

–In my late teens, I got the bright idea that I could party and drink all I wanted on the weekends with no danger of weight gain if I starved myself during the week, often living on one cheese sandwich a day. As a little treat to make it bearable, I chain smoked in the storage room next to my bedroom.

–My senior year in high school I wanted to drop a lot of weight fast. So for two weeks straight, I ate nothing but Raisin Bran from a mug two times a day and nothing else. I also ran laps around the basement for two hours a day. It worked so well that I adopted it as my post binge regimen every few weeks. It lasted into my early 20s.

–In my late 20s, after years of vicious binge eating sent my weight to nearly 300 pounds, I lost more than a hundred pounds through some healthy means and some fairly stupid tactics, like fasting for half of Tuesday and most of Wednesday. On Wednesdays, I would also triple my workout time on the elliptical cross-training machine at the gym. All this so I would be happy with the number on the scale come Thursday morning, my weekly weigh-in time. Thursday through Saturday, I would eat like a pig, then severely pull back on the eating by Sunday. Call it the 3-4 program (binge three days, starve four days, repeat).

–In my early-to-mid 30s, some of my most vicious binge eating happened. For a while, though, I kept the weight down my walking 3.5 miles every day, no matter the weather. I also never ate dinner, but would eat like a pig earlier in the day. This was while I was working a night job, which allowed me to get away with the dinner-skipping part. That worked great for a couple years, but then the dam broke and I binged my way to a 65-pound weight gain by the end.

Today I put almost everything I eat on a little scale and I avoid flour and sugar. I don’t exercise as much as I should, I’m not idle, either.

I don’t always get it perfect. I’m also nowhere close to skinny.

But I’m a lot healthier — and probably a little smarter — than I used to be.

March 2, 2015March 14, 2015

You Are Bigger Than Your Thoughts

A reader once sent me a question about destructive, overpowered thinking — a hallmark of all OCD cases. She described a recurring thought about jumping out a window.

Mood music:

“I tend to get pure OCD (thoughts),” she wrote. “At the moment it is about jumping out a high window. I try to sort out in my head mentally why I am having this thought. Is it my true desire? Can I stop it from happening? But there is also an OVERWHELMING URGE/THOUGHT to give into the thoughts, or NOT FIGHT THEM – LIKE MY MIND TELLS ME NOT TO HELP MYSELF. Why is this in your view? Is it because it is what I really want?”

Here’s my attempt at an answer:

Let me start with an admission: I have no idea if it’s what you really want, as I don’t really know you. But I certainly hope that’s not what you want.

I’ve watched friends end their lives because their thoughts overpowered them, and, while I never seriously considered suicide, my thoughts took me down a dark alley. I gave in fully to my addictions and deep down probably didn’t have much interest in being around for long.

Somewhere along the way, I found my way through it. This makes those suicides all the more tragic to me, because as a man who got to the other side, I know exactly what they denied themselves by choosing to end it.

As OCD cases, we lack an ability to move beyond our obsessive thinking. It spins in our brains like a scratched record (remember those?) and as the needle hits the scratch it tears at our sanity. Imagined desires and fears become the real thing. In our minds.

When that happens, I try to remember that I am bigger than my thoughts. It took a lot of hard work and ultimately some medication to get there, but I did get there.

That doesn’t mean I no longer have obsessive thoughts. Of course I do. But they are no longer little things that are blown up and distorted into a life-or-death crisis.

I go on with life, even when my thoughts suggest I do otherwise.

People like us, when we are recovering from addiction and an underlying mental disorder, rely on a set of tools to live better, more useful lives. For me, a food plan is one of them. Twelve-step meetings are another. Some people think thinking is a tool, but it’s really just another insidious bastard that robs us of sanity.

I was reminded of this once during a 12-Step meeting. During the part where everyone can get up and share, me and two others focused on this peculiarity of our condition.

One woman shared about how she thought her brother had been badly hurt all these years over an incident where she smeared blueberries across his face when they were kids. She’s worried about it all these years, and recently told him she was sorry. He chuckled and reminded her that he smeared something on her first. She didn’t remember that.

Another woman shared that on the night of her senior prom, she was so full of insecurity that she took off without even saying goodbye to her date. Surely, she thought all these years, the incident must have devastated the poor guy. She recently contacted him to apologize, and he didn’t remember being hurt. All he remembered was that the senior prom was one of the best nights of his life.

We have a very exaggerated perception of how people look at us. But, as this woman noted, “We’re just another bozo on the bus.”

In the final analysis, we are bigger than our thoughts.

Your thoughts tell you to jump out a high window, but the voices in your head are not real. They can suggest you do things. But you always have choices.

I hope you find the way past this. I did, so you can.

February 2, 2015

Heavy Metal Saved Me

I am your main man, if you’re looking for trouble. I’ll take no lip, no one’s tougher than me. I kicked your face you’d soon be seeing double. Hey little girl, keep your hands off of me…I’m a rocker.

“The Rocker,” by Thin Lizzy

A lot of people are amused to learn about my musical tastes. My work space at home and the office is cluttered with political and history-based trinkets, which would leave one to believe I listened to country or folk or maybe even some 1970s rock.

Heavy Metal music? It just doesn’t fit my image.

And yet, some 30 years ago, that music saved my life. And to this day, I listen to it faithfully. In fact, it’s become one of the main tools of my recovery from a life of mental disorder.

Let’s start from the beginning.

1984

This is the year my older brother died. But even without that, life was pretty miserable. I wasn’t exactly popular in school. I was overweight and the subject of ridicule. Emotions were understandably raw at home.

But that was also the year I began listening to heavy metal music.

It allowed me to escape the pain around me. The aggressiveness of the music gave me an outlet to process all the rage I was feeling. Without it, drugs and violence toward others might have been next.

My closest friend at the time, who lived two doors down, got me into the music — introducing me to the likes of Motley Crue and Thin Lizzy. When that friend died 12 years later, the music would again help me process my rage and keep me steady.

I’d be angry, hurt or scared, and I needed something to absorb my aggression. Heavy metal was the punching bag.

One of my favorite songs in 1984 was “Knock ‘Em Dead Kid” from Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” album. The lyrics go something like this:

Heard a star-spangled fight/A steel-belted scream

Now I’m black/I’m black/I’m black

Another sidewalk’s bloody dream

I heard the sirens wine/My blood turned to freeze

You’ll see the red in my eyes/as you take my disease

For me, it was excellent therapy.

Around 2003, as I was going through a rough patch at work (my own shortcomings at the time more than anything else), that therapy took the form of Metallica’s “St. Anger” album. The album itself is far from their best, but the opening song, “Frantic,” tore a path straight into my soul.

The song came out a year before I started to come to grips with the OCD, and the guy in the video WAS me. The lyrics were me. I was frantic. I just didn’t realize it at that point.

Today, I listen to the music more for simple enjoyment than as an anger-management device. The anger went away some time ago.

The nostalgia is a big attraction for me, too. It takes me back to a time when I was in pieces; to a time when the music literally saved me. It has become something of a security blanket.

A lot of it makes me laugh as well — no small thing when you’re struggling not to take life too seriously.

How can you not find a live Motley Crue clip funny? Vince Neil sings every fifth word of most songs live. It’s amusing to watch.

The spikes-and-leather dress code make me laugh, too.

It reminds me not to take myself too seriously. And once I’m brought down to Earth like that, sanity prevails.

January 28, 2015April 7, 2020

The Only Way Out Of The Fog Is Through It

We all go through it: Something upsets us so much that we go into a fog; unable to function when we’re still required to do so. It rises up like a brick wall.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/-9aPRQdidO4

We smash into it a few too many times and go through the rest of the day dazed and confused. It’s a natural reaction to life’s more stressful and traumatic moments.

If a loved one is sick or dead, or you get into a huge fight with your spouse, or you just discover you’ve been robbed, the feeling hits you.

But what do you do when that feeling clings to you every day like a wet, filthy rag?

I’ve been there many times. It used to cripple me every day. It’s no longer a daily thing, but it still gets me on occasion.

Monday was one of those days; let’s just say it was driven by guilt.

But here’s the difference between now and the old days:

It didn’t incapacitate me and leave me lying half dead on the couch like it used to. I didn’t check out of the hotel of reality. I may have wanted to, but I didn’t.

I felt every bad feeling and it did stick in my brain all day like a splinter. But somehow, I was able to make it through the day. I got my work done, I got chores done and I was even able to focus on the not-always-easy task of helping Duncan do his homework.

I can point to a lot of things that make the difference today:

—Medication to control my OCD, ADD and the depression that comes with it;

–Regular visits to the therapist to get things off my chest; and

–An eating program devoid of flour and sugar. When I’m not sinking under the weight of a food binge, my thinking is clearer.

I don’t think it’s possible to avoid the fog altogether. Life is too unpredictable and dramatic for that. Sometimes the stresses get the better of you and you lose sight of everything around you. It’s a very shitty place to be.

But there is a positive in this: If you never felt the fog, it would mean you didn’t care about anything or anyone.

You would see clearly and keep walking, but the destination would always be some selfish pursuit.

Some of this may sound a bit hyperbolic. I use some fancy language along the way to explain it.

But that’s how my brain rolls this morning.

“Heartsign,” by EddieTheYeti

December 3, 2014

Magic and Loss – A Conversation with ‘OCD Diaries’ Author Bill Brenner (Audio)

Matt Bieber, host of the The OCD Podcast, interviewed me a couple weeks ago about this blog and why I write it.

From his podcast site:

Bill Brenner writes The OCD Diaries, one of the most well-regarded OCD blogs on the web. In this episode of The OCD Podcast, Bill takes us on his journey through OCD, overeating, and a twelve-step recovery program. Also discussed: Traci Foust, Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, and finding the most interesting parts of ourselves within the pain.

Have a listen.

November 22, 2014

The Lost Generation of Revere, Mass.

An old friend from the Point of Pines, Revere, sent me a note some time ago. He came across my post on Zane Mead and another on the Bridge Rats gang. For him, they brought up more memories of kids from the neighborhood who died young.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jX-yuZFVm34

I’ll keep his name and certain details out to protect his privacy, but here’s some of what he wrote to me:

I came across your piece in your OCD Diaries about Zane Mead. It stirred up some old memories of growing up. I was actually friends with Zane until I left for the military in 1985. He was a sweet kid with a good heart most of the time. Occasionally he would be angry and self destructive. This was usually followed by an attempted suicide.

I had many talks with him about it. he never would say what was eating at him. Not sure why but I don’t think it was an issue at home. I feel like it was a personal daemon. As you stated, our life’s experiences at the time didn’t give us the ability to see the problem no less the wisdom to offer any real help. I often wonder if there was something more I could have done.

It seemed that I lost a lot of friends over the five years I was gone.

We lost your brother, Scott James, Mike McDonald. Kenny Page. It’s like we lost a generation. For years I thought I was a under achiever in my life. The more time moves on I think we may be lucky for just getting out of the city. Revere was just eating people up back then. Probably still is.

I also read you piece on bullies where you mention the Bridge Rats. I’m sincerely sorry for any part I may have caused in your distress.

Thanks for the memories. Good, Bad and Ugly. I guess they make us who we are.

Indeed they do, my friend.

I had forgotten about Mike McDonald and Kenny Page. As a teen I was so self-absorbed over my brother’s death that I didn’t realize how much loss our generation was suffering. After reading my friend’s note, I thought hard about his points about Revere eating people up. Was there some kind of curse hanging over the city in the 1980s? Were all my adolescent traumas part of that curse? Was my brother’s death and Sean Marley’s death part of it?

If you asked me that about six years ago, I’d have bought the theory straight away. Today I tend to doubt it.

It was a sad and unfortunate period, but it wasn’t a curse. We all had our share of childhood happiness in Revere in between the bad stuff. And I know now what I didn’t get back then: That we weren’t meant to live soft lives devoid of pain and struggle. These things are tossed in our path to mold us into what we can only hope to be: good people. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. But let’s face it: Has life ever been fair?

As for the Bridge Rats, my memories are fond ones.

The last post I wrote about this gang suggested they were a band of bullies. But if you read all the way through the post, you’ll see some nostalgic warmth in my memories. As I’ve said many times, I was a punk like everyone else. I got picked on, but I did my share of picking on other people. For the most part, the Bridge Rats were a collection of pretty good kids. Some grew into happy, productive lives. Some didn’t.

That’s life.

I recently wrote about the time the Brenners nearly left Revere. There’s no question that for a time, I hated that city and would have done anything to get out.

But I stayed, and good things happened in the years that followed. A lot of good things. Precious, joyful things. I look at my kid sister Shira and the amazing, beautiful woman she is today. Would she have been that way if not for the Revere in her? Perhaps. But living there certainly didn’t damage her.

I’ve said before that Revere is where I survived and my current city of Haverhill is where I healed. That was and still is the truth.

But make no mistake about it: Revere helped make me who I am today.

And I’ll admit it: I like who I am today.

July 16, 2014

The Blogger with the Self-Destruct Button

I’ve been an obsessively prolific writer over the years, and, frankly, I’ve had to take stock in what I’m doing. Overkill is an art for those of us with OCD, and it’s hard to say no when someone asks me to do something new.

I have two new ongoing projects. I’m doing a new podcast in addition to my Akamai Security Podcast.

I’ve also started blogging for the Liquidmatrix Security Digest.

But I’m still going to force some discipline upon myself.

Mood music:

I already reined in the frequency for this blog a couple years ago. Many days early on I wrote two or three posts a day, then went and wrote another couple posts a day in Salted Hash, the security blog I was writing for CSOonline. I’ve settled into a more sensible rhythm of four OCD Diaries posts a week, with a ban on posts when I’m traveling.

On the work side, I write in a group setting with The Akamai Blog, and I promised the blog’s managers I’d keep it to one post a day.

I do the Akamai Security Podcast once a week and the new Security Kahuna Podcast I’ll be doing with Akamai colleagues Dave Lewis and Martin McKeay will be monthly to start.

That brings me to Liquidmatrix. Founder Dave Lewis gave me the keys to his blogging platform and told me to write whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as I don’t get him sued.

That’s dangerous for me.

There’s a strong urge to go in there and start pumping out multiple posts a day. In our industry, there’s never a shortage of things to write about.

The danger is that I’ll get so into it that I’ll self-destruct, blowing myself to bits in the struggle to maintain my prolific reputation.

But I’m not going to do that.

Instead, I’ll write a Liquidmatrix post once a week, on Fridays, and I’ll drop my Akamai blogging from five posts a week to four.

I’m a lucky guy, having all these opportunities to be a voice in my industry and fighting for what I believe in on the side. It’s a gift. But in undisciplined hands, it’s a ticking box that threatens to blow off my hands.

Back in My Hell by Eddie the Yeti
Art: “Back in My Own Hell” by EddieTheYeti. See more of his work on DeviantArt.com.