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Hey, Kids! Here’s Something For ‘When Your Brain Gets Stuck’

I just got a book in the mail called “What To Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck: A Kid’s Guide To Overcoming OCD” by psychologist-author Dawn Huebner. I asked for a copy so I could review it, but it might warrant more than one simple review.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/HiYK8TDbPRQ

Someone I’m connected to on Facebook got a copy to help her OCD-suffering child. Since the upcoming relaunch of THE OCD DIARIES will have an expanded section for children’s mental health issues, reviewing this seemed natural.

The book, published by Magination Press with illustrations by Bonnie Matthews, guides kids and parents through cognitive-behavioral techniques used to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I’ve learned a lot of techniques in therapy over the years, but my first impression from this book is that a few more simple tools could have helped me nip this disorder in the bud BEFORE I reached adulthood.

From the synopsis:

Did you know that people have brain sorters that keep their brains from getting cluttered with unnecessary thoughts? Sometimes these brain sorters get mixed up, though, holding onto thoughts that frighten kids. If this has happened to you, if it’s hard for you to feel safe or sure of yourself because scary thoughts have gotten stuck, this book is for you.

Two-plus years into this blog, I’ve never been able to explain it that clearly. I came closest in a post comparing the brain to a car engine.

What To Do When Your Brain Gets Stuck guides children and their parents through the cognitive-behavioral techniques used to treat Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This interactive self-help book turns kids into super-sleuths, able to recognize and more appropriately respond to OCD’s tricks. Engaging examples, activities, and step-by-step instructions help children master the skills needed to break free from the sticky thoughts and urges of OCD, and live happier lives.

First impressions:

–The illustrations are terrific. Cheers to Bonnie Matthews. She managed to give OCD a face in the form of this little furry guy who resembles the tribbles from Star Trek — with legs. When you can put a face on your nemesis, it’s easier to fight him.

–Huebner scores points with me by setting the exploration of OCD up as a game. Right off the bat, if you can make something look like a game, dealing with it becomes less scary.

–She covers several coping techniques that deserve more attention than I could offer in one post.

I’m going to approach my study of this book from the perspective of a kid who lacked the right tools and allowed OCD to follow him into adulthood.

The author takes kids on an important journey, and it seems fitting to show their parents what happens when their little OCD cases miss out on that journey. I’m the guy who went through puberty and into adulthood with that insidious fur ball following me around. It grew up with me and got a lot uglier and menacing than the little guy in the book.

I’ll look at the different symptoms the author lays out and explain how they manifested themselves in the younger me. From there, I think I’ll be able to tell you how this book — though designed for kids — can be a life-saver for grownups, too.

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Breaking Up (The Day) Is So Very Hard To Do

When you have the OCD blinders on, you can do the work of three highly-motivated people. You can go for hours and hours, your ass sinking into the seat like an anvil. The problem is that your muscles and mind are a tangled wreck when you stand up many hours later.

Mood music:

Any doctor or therapist will tell you to get up every 25 minutes or so and walk around for a bit. Maybe go eat lunch outside on a nice day instead of at the desk. They call this breaking up the day.

I suck at it. Always have.

So when I was asked to participate in a program where I would read to a second-grader at a school near the office once a week, I groaned. I didn’t want to do it. It would mean I had to stop what I was doing and go, whether I felt ready or not.

But I try to be a team player. So I signed up.

Every week, it’s the same feeling. I’m hauling ass on a project, and 11 a.m. rolls around. Time to get up and go read. I tell myself there’s a few more minutes to work. It’s usually 11:45 before I get up.

With no traffic, that would be fine. But there’s always traffic on this route because of all the traffic lights and a busy mall. So I get to the school a few minutes late.

Then I go in and meet up with the second-grader I’ve been assigned. His name is Luis. He has spiky blond hair and dark skin. He’s a very cool-headed little guy. Nothing seems to get him excitable. He lunchbox is always packed with chips, tacos and cheese in a box and something for dessert. He always eats the desert first. While he eats, I read. They call this the Power Lunch.

He likes the lighthearted stuff: The “Magic Tree House” series, the “Ricky Ricotta and His Mighty Robot” books, “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “The Adventures of Captain Underpants.”

Occasionally, I get him to pick a biography. Always about a sports legend. I’d try to turn him on to bios about politicians and rock stars, but there are none in the bin.

When he can’t listen anymore, we’ll play a game or two of Tic Tac Toe.

I like the kid a lot. I always admire the people who don’t get rattled. There are other kids in the group that bounce off the walls. One of my co-workers — a young, geeky type of guy — has the rowdiest kid of the bunch, which amuses me to no end. The boy is also one of Luis’ best buddies, so he spends a lot of time looking at our table, contemplating ways to get out of his seat and come over.

The whole thing takes 30 minutes a week. It goes by fast. And I always walk out of there with a smile.

Then the next reading day rolls around, and I repeat the process.

Thing is, I’m glad I decided to do this. It’s rarely convenient, but that’s the OCD talking. As I said earlier, I don’t like having to get up when I’m engrossed in a task.

But I do it anyway. And I’m better for it.

I guess the doctors and therapists aren’t full of shit after all.

I got a reward for my efforts too. Luis made me a card thanking me for reading to him. It warms the heart.

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Such A Waste To Lose One’s Mind-Fulness

A combination of OCD and ADD has given me a bitch of a handicap: Living in the moment and being present has become tough as nails. Health experts call this elusive thing I search for “mindfulness.”

Mood music:

Here’s what happens:

When the OCD runs hot, I develop tunnel vision. I focus in on the task I’m either doing or thinking about. That’s good if you have a major work project to complete. It’s bad when someone is trying to talk to you and your brain is weaving a hundred schemes.

When the ADD picks up steam, I lose my focus. I’ll start thinking about a song I heard that day or how good it’ll feel to get into bed with a book. All while someone is talking to me.

I thought I stabbed this problem in the heart and killed it. On further reflection, I’m finding that the same problem has simply changed bodies like Dr. Who.

That in itself is still good, since the old persona was intense fear and anxiety that often incapacitated me. I broke out of that shell and life has been so much better as a result. But my current troubles are still painful.

Dealing with this issue has become the main focus of recent therapy sessions. I started bringing up the issue with my therapist because I’ve been realizing how unfair and hurtful zoning out can be at home. I don’t want to be that guy. And yet, for the moment, I am.

It’s not just a problem at home. Anywhere I go, when people are talking to me for anything longer than five minutes, I start to enter a fog. I still capture the main points of the conversation, but it requires heavy effort — effort that can be physically painful.

In recent weeks, I’ve considered what this handicap could cost me. My first reaction was to feel scared. That has settled into a low-grade anger.

Anger that I can’t just fix my brain and be done with it.

Anger that I have to do more therapy than usual.

Anger that the whole thing is exhausting me.

But that’s life. I have a problem, and I intend to beat it. And if I can’t beat it, I intend to figure out how to manage it.

At my age, I’m really not sure how much more I can fix. But even though I haven’t achieved perfection up to this point, the journey has been a beautiful one, full of experiences I never could have had a few years ago.

What lies ahead could be unpleasant. But as with past challenges, I may find gifts buried beneath the ugliness.

Art by Bill Fennell
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I’d Like To Blame My Parents, But…

I’ve been frustrated lately over my inability to balance how I express emotions. Forget balance — I suck at emotion, period.

Mood music:

With my kids I get too emotional at times, showering them with kisses and telling them I love them a lot more than they probably care to hear. Duncan’s refrain is usually, “I know already, Dad!”

With my wife I’m not emotional enough. When times get difficult — and even when they’re going well — I tend to clam up. I share my feelings in headline form or I don’t share at all. That’s pretty whacked considering all the opening up I do here.

I’ve been trying to solve this puzzle for years, but I’m no closer than where I started.

Sometimes I get really angry with my parents for this.

My mother was the smothering type. She wanted me close by at all times when I was a kid, and would get in my personal zone at the wrong times, hugging me when I wanted to be left alone. I don’t entirely blame her for this. She lost another child, and she was clinging to what she had left with everything she had. The effect was suffocating, and I ultimately rebelled.

My father, on the other hand, had no clue about expressing his feelings. Whenever I hit a milestone (in adulthood the milestones were promotions and raises at work), his response was always a detached, “That’s it?” If I expressed fatigue over life’s difficulties, the response — instead of relating his experiences and how he pulled through the tough stuff — was always, “It’s good for you.” My paternal grandmother was the same way. As the tired old saying says: The apple never falls far from the tree.

In the area of emotional balance, you could say I lacked role models — which is why I want to punch the walls a lot lately. I’m in my 40s and need to figure these things out with no prior experience. I think my trouble expressing emotions is why I started writing this blog. I can write my feelings and share just fine. But in face-to-face conversation, I flounder.

Some people would dismiss this as unimportant. No one is perfect at this, after all. Like everything else, this is life.

But I’m really starting to worry about doing to my wife what my parents did to each other. I’m worried that I’ll do to my kids what my parents did to me — ensuring that they grow up to start another generation of dysfunction.

But here’s the thing: I’m a grown man on the fast track to middle age. Too much time has passed since I left home for me to keep blaming everything on my parents. They did the best they could with the tools they had, but fucked up a lot. All parents do.

I’m a big boy now. It’s time to take ownership.

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The Job Performance Review

A confession that probably won’t shock you: I used to turn into a pile of jelly each year when it was time for the job performance review most employed people endure every 12 months.

Mood music:

I bring this up because my annual review is Monday. Today I’m supposed to turn in my self-evaluation. And I feel an absolute lack of drama about it.

Overconfidence? Perhaps.

Apathy? Definitely not.

It’s just another indication of where my head is today compared to a few years ago.

It all goes back to the habit I used to have of trying to please everyone. I wanted to be seen as the golden boy in any job I took on. I took constructive criticism as a stab to the gut — a sign that nobody liked me and I was good for nothing.

This feeling really took on monstrous proportions when I worked for TechTarget as senior news writer for SearchSecurity.com. TechTarget is very big on goal setting and having different teams compete with each other. That’s really not a bad thing, but for me — a complete mess of OCD, fear and anxiety at the time — it was like poison.

Every December, as review time drew closer, I’d become a nervous wreck, unable to think about anything but how I would do on the review. Juicing up my sorry state even further was that December was award-submission time. TechTarget gives out these awards called the Bull’s-Eye. I felt enormous pressure to win at least two a year. I wrote about this sorry phenomenon in an earlier post called “The Agony Of Awards.”

It would become just another bullet point on the long list of things I hated about the Christmas season.

Like many of the things that drove my fear and anxiety, the review-time breakdown stopped at some point. I can’t exactly remember the year. Like everything else, I chalk it up to years of therapy, medication and spiritual growth on the path to getting my OCD under control.

So now I sit here, ready to write up my self evaluation. I’m thinking of just writing “I am awesome. Give me more money.”

That might be a career-limiting thing to do, though, so I will play it straight.

I just got a promotion and a raise. Playing it straight is the least I could do.

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Me And My Facebook Unfriend Finder

Yesterday Mashable had an article about a new plug-in that alerts you when someone unfriends you, de-activates their page or ignores your friend request.

Mood music:

“That would be bad for my mental health,” I told myself, seconds before hitting the “install” button. I was reminded of the Black Flag song where Henry Rollins screams:

You say you don’t want it
You don’t want it
Say you don’t want it
Then you slip it on in

When I told Erin about the plug-in she scolded me with the very words that came to mind right before I installed it: “That would be sooooo bad for your mental health.”

So why did I install the thing, knowing what I know about my compulsive tendencies? To be honest, I was curious.

I’ve written before about Facebook Unfriend Syndrome: That nagging feeling you get when someone unfriends you. You wonder if you offended the person and want to ask them why they left. It’s a stupid state of mind, to be sure. But having OCD is partly about developing stupid compulsions.

Indeed, I have offended people over things I’ve written in this blog. A close friend got mad at me for something I wrote and ditched me, though she recently added me back. My own mother defriended me because she couldn’t handle my version of past events. I long ago accepted that I’m going to lose people along the way. That’s life, especially when you’re the outspoken type.

With all that in mind, any sane person would prefer not to know who unfriended them. I never claimed I was playing with a full deck.

An hour after I installed it, I got a message, just like any notification you get on Facebook, saying so-and-so deactivated their profile. An hour later, someone else deactivated theirs.

“Hmm,” I thought. “It is good to know when someone kills their account.”

Now I almost find myself wanting someone to unfriend me just so I can watch this new toy do its thing.

It’s crazy, I know.

There are arguments for having this kind of tool. Seeing the types of people who leave can give you an indication of who is more or less likely to want your content. If a relative does it, it’s good to know so you can try to fix whatever you did to bruise them. Of course, sometimes family members deserve to be bruised.

In the final analysis, though, I’ve decided to uninstall it because, as Erin said, it’s dangerous for my brand of OCD. I also realize people have a right to unfriend without telling people.

It’s a personal and private action.

Also, as I’ve noted before, sometimes unfriending is the right thing.

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Sometimes You Have To ‘Give Yourself To The Dark Side’

Guest column: An OCD sufferer finds that managing his demon is a lot like managing the dark side of The Force.

Mood music:

A few months ago I told you about my friend and former co-worker Steve Repsys and how, as two undiagnosed OCD sufferers, our working relationship was often the stuff of comedy. What follows is Steve in his own words, explaining how helpful it can be to open up about the disorder and “give in to the dark side.”

***

“You don’t know the power of the dark side.” Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker

For those of us suffering from OCD, this mental condition is our “dark side.” Often times we ignore or minimize this “dark side” because we are so embarrassed by it. When I don’t acknowledge this part of me, I find myself running into problems, like Luke Skywalker in the cantina. But when you “embrace the dark side,” there is a subtle but noticeable change.

I learned this the other day when I shared with my co-worker Kate that I suffer from OCD. Kate is one of the nicest people I work with and is extremely approachable. Somehow in one of our recent conversations, I felt confident enough in our friendship to divulge this “bombshell.”

When I described what I’ve experienced over the last few months – anger, frustration and humiliation –  that large part of me that I’ve often kept hidden from others grew a bit smaller. I was surprised how easy it was for me to talk about it. I was like C-3PO – you couldn’t get me to stop talking about it.

Conversing with Kate, she was attentive and asked questions so she could better comprehend what it is like to live with OCD.

It amazed me – like when Luke found out that Han wasn’t in it for the money – that she was so touched and flattered that I shared this important piece of personal information with her.

I don’t have to worry about her thinking of me any different. Instead, I gained her admiration because I had the courage to admit there is this “demon” inside of me that I can control.

Now I can add a new weapon – talking about it openly and freely to people I trust – to my arsenal of weapons to keep my OCD at bay (not Docking Bay 93).

As Ben told Luke when introducing him to the force, “You’ve taken your first step into a larger world.”

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The Wellbutrin Experiment: Day 8

As I mentioned earlier, I’m taking Wellbutrin to combat a tougher-than-usual bout of winter depression. Here’s where I stand eight days in.

Mood music:

I think I’m starting to feel it, though it’s hard to know for sure this soon. The nurse told me it could take several weeks before I’d feel the full effect, since Wellbutrin slowly accumulates. I have noticed a few things, though:

–I’m a little more focused than I’ve been in several weeks.

–I’m not feeling like I’m in a fog as much as I had been.

–I haven’t been feeling down like I was a week ago.

Whether it’s the Wellbutrin kicking in or not, I’m just glad to be feeling better.

Note: Four hours after writing the part you just read, I came down with vicious mood swings. As I write this, my skin doesn’t fit right, I’m itchy all over (yes, I showered today) and I’m agitated as hell. The good news is that I have gone through the same exact thing whenever my Prozac dose has been adjusted. It lasts a few hours, and then everything evens out. It’s usually the point I reach when the medication is about to kick in.

For those wondering what this experiment is all about, let’s review:

I started taking Wellbutrin because it’s supposed to shore up depleted brain chemistry that the Prozac isn’t designed to fix.

The Prozac increases the amount of serotonin, a natural substance in the brain that helps maintain mental balance. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a substance that helps transmit messages from one nerve cell to another. In other words, it keeps traffic in the brain moving normally.

It has served me well, but this winter the blue moods have been tougher to shake. Enter the Wellbutrin, a drug used to treat major depression and seasonal affective disorder. It’s also used to help people quit smoking because it squashes cravings.

While the Prozac raises Serotonin levels, Wellbutrin shores up another neurotransmitter called Dopamine.

If this all sounds confusing, think of the brain as a car engine. To run properly, the engine needs the right amount of fluids, including brake fluid, transmission fluid and oil. Run low on any one of these and you got problems.

It’s amusing for me considering my efforts to kick some addictions in recent years. Despite my sobriety and abstinence, here I am, finding that there’s better living through chemistry after all.

Cheers.

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OCD On My Left, ADD On My Right

It’s been an interesting month in mental disorder awareness. In taking steps to nip wintertime depression in the bud, I’ve learned that OCD isn’t my only mental defect.

Mood music:

It appears that as OCD messes with one side of my brain, Attention Deficit Disorder is toying with the other side. This little epiphany happened when I visited the nurse who helps me manage my regimen of medication.

She asked a lot of questions she usually doesn’t ask about my focus of late. I noted that while I still have frequent OCD moments — particularly if I’m knee-deep in a work project or tackling a list of chores at home — I also seem to be having trouble concentrating a lot. One recent day in work, for example, it took all the strength I had to focus on the work at hand.

That almost never happens. But this time, doing the work was painful. It gave me a migraine. If I hated what I do that would be normal. But I love what I do. Meanwhile, at home, I’d stand in the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that I was standing right where Erin was working on dinner. I would try to give her a hug or shoulder rub while she was in the middle of a task — almost as if I had one foot in this dimension and another foot in some other world.

There’s more to it, but those are a couple good examples.

Looking back on my life, it all makes sense. The OCD-ADD push and pull has always been there to some degree. As a kid I would go into OCD mode, organizing my Hot Wheels and Star Wars action figures just so. Then I’d go the other way and have a hell of a time trying to focus on simple homework assignments or chores around the house.

The Prozac nurse tells me it’s actually typical for someone to go back and forth with these disorders. OCD and ADD operate on the same mental plain. Both spark anxiety (I used to be crippled by anxiety, but that’s not an issue today) and mood swings. Both are effected by the time of year, amount of daylight vs. darkness, etc.

The image that comes to mind is two-face, that villain in Batman with the split personality.

So now I have Wellbutrin to go with the Prozac to balance things out.

Funny how life works. You learn something new about yourself, and then discover it’s not really new at all.

God clearly has a sense of humor.

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Traci Foust Talks OCD on NPR

Erin is playing me an NPR broadcast about OCD. I went looking for the link to include here and tripped over another good NPR segment. This one is an interview with Traci Foust, author of “Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD.”Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD

I recently connected with Traci on Facebook and she’s a great resource for understanding the disorder.

Do yourself a favor and listen to it HERE.

While we’re on the topic, it’s also worth checking out “A Life Lived Ridiculously” by Annabelle R. Charbit, about a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder who makes the mistake of falling in love with a sociopath.

Both writings work so well because of how the authors use humor. Of course, my humor falls on the dark side, so take that comment with a grain of salt.

Annabelle RcAs for that other OCD segment on NPR, here it is. It’s about how art can be used to raise a person’s understanding of the disorder.

Enjoy, and be better for it.