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When The Going Gets Tough, I Disconnect

I’m leaving my weekly therapy sessions with a headache these days, because I’m working through another deeply embedded flaw in my soul.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/louQ7s1ZkGU

It’s not nearly as bad as the therapy I had in 2004-2006, when I had to endlessly churn the sewage of my childhood memories in search of clues on what was wrong with me and how I got that way. Back then, I didn’t know myself very well. Now I do.

Knowing myself as I do, I’ve started to zero in on the ongoing flaws that hold me back and hurt loved ones. That apparently requires a few more trips to the sewer.

I’ll give you a fuller account further along in this process. For now, let’s just say I have a wall I tend to hide behind when the going gets tough. This wouldn’t be much of a problem if not for the fact that life is ALWAYS tough. Not just for me, but for everyone. We all have our Crosses to carry and difficulties to endure. In my case, it’s a lot harder with a wall in the way.

So here we are again. Back in the mental sewer. I know my way around now, but the stench can still be too much to take.

The first question from the therapist was if I had talked to my mother lately. No, I told him. I thought Mom and I were making progress in December, but she couldn’t handle this blog and went off the deep end. I won’t defend myself. She’s entitled to her point of view. But let’s just say I was hoping to be writing posts by now about how we were reconciling.

So no, I told him. We’re not talking.

Then he asked about how I handled my brother’s death when I was 13. I told him I pretty much disconnected from the world. Same thing after my best friend killed himself in 1996.

“You’re starting to see the pattern?” the therapist asked.

Yeah. When the going gets tough, I disconnect. The bigger events caused that self-defense mechanism to take root all those years ago. But it kicks in during life’s more routine challenges. And when the wall goes up, my anger level kicks up a few decibels. I don’t do what I did in my teens and 20s: Throwing furniture through walls and plotting endless ways to find those who hurt me so I could hurt them back.

I’m not THAT guy anymore. But I do still get angry. When I do, I turn in on myself and brood.

But I knew that already.

Now the question is, what to I do about it?

I love my life now, and I’m blessed beyond measure. But the better my life gets, the more of an eyesore the wall becomes. It’s got to go.

My therapist has seen this stuff before. He knows the wall is rooted in the memory sewer.

So I guess I’ll be here for awhile longer.

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Chain Smoking In Bickford’s Was The Best

Though I no longer smoke or eat the kind of food they served, I’m feeling nostalgic about the days of old when you could sit in any of the dim, dank coffee shops in the local Bickford’s chain for hours, hanging out, chain smoking and drinking those awful, bottomless cups of black coffee.

I blame The Doors for this trip down memory lane. I’ve been listening to their first album this morning and when “Soul Kitchen” came on, the lyrics transported me back.

Well, your fingers weave quick minarets 
Speak in secret alphabets 
I light another cigarette 
Learn to forget, learn to forget 
Learn to forget, learn to forget 

Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen 
Warm my mind near your gentle stove 
Turn me out and I’ll wander baby 
Stumblin’ in the neon groves 

Well the clock says it’s time to close now 
I know I have to go now 
I really want to stay here 
All night, all night, all night

It makes sense that I was going through the Jim Morrison phase in those days. I used to sit at the table for hours and hours, with friends or alone, tearing through a pack of Marlboro Reds and filling notebooks with song lyrics, bad poetry and, occasionally, an essay I had to write for school.

I had two favorites: A Bickford’s in Swampscott and another in Lynnfield, right off Route 1 North at the Peabody line. The latter location is now a pretty good Greek restaurant. The former is now an Uno’s Pizza restaurant.

The food at Bickford’s was pretty bad, too. But it always hit the spot for a 20-something kid who had just spent the night drinking, smoking marijuana or both. I would often end up at one of these places at 5 in the morning after a late night. We would order the junkiest breakfast food they had, drink the coffee, smoke and be generally obnoxious. But everyone else was usually there under the same circumstances, so we fit right in.

On Tuesday afternoons, me and a couple friends would sit in the Swampscott shop laughing at how we were the only people there under the age of 76. Tuesday afternoons was when they had the senior citizen dinner specials.

It always puzzled me that they would eat there, since the food quality was no better than what you would find in any given nursing home. I felt the same way about the old-timers who would flock to a place on Route 1, Saugus called the Hilltop Steakhouse. The food there was a little better than Bickford’s, but not too much better.

Here’s where we get to the big point of this post.

When we’re in our 30s, 40s and 50s, I think we go through a long phase of food snobbery where only the more sophisticated bistros will do. But when your very young or up there in age, all that really matters is the change of scenery and hanging out with friends and significant others.

Of course, we live in a much different world now. Smoking is almost universally banned. Restaurants kick you out if you don’t buy something.

True, you can sit in Starbucks for hours nursing the same coffee and not be bothered, but that’s different. Starbucks has a cleaner, more comfortable environment, and the food and drinks cost more than it used to cost at Bickford’s.

Meanwhile, the food is usually steeped in some “artisan” concept. The quality ain’t much better, but the packaging is a lot more slick than, say, Bickford’s corned beef hash.

I love that Starbucks has so many blends and roasts to choose from, though I sometimes laugh over how they over do it with their seasonal and holiday blends.

You have the Christmas Blend, Thanksgiving Blend, etc. They could go on with this shtick indefinitely, with a “Good Friday Blend” that has no taste or color, in keeping with the Christian obligation to fast. Or they could do a “Back To School Blend” with traces of speed in the mix to jolt students back into the studious frame of mind.

I’ll tell you what, though: It was far cheaper and efficient to get back into studying when you could make pennies for bottomless coffee and smoke your way through assignments.

Those are happy memories, but today’s scenario is a better fit for who I am.

I don’t smoke anymore. I’m sober. I don’t eat flour or sugar. I sleep at night and work by day.

It’s good to have the memories, though.

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Smarter People Drink, Which Makes Me Feel Stupid

I’m pissed off about an article in Psychology Today that suggests smarter people consume more alcohol. As someone who’s sober, the article is kind of insulting. After all, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent person.

Mood music:

Here’s a snippet from the article by Satoshi Kanazawa:

Drinking alcohol is evolutionarily novel, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent people drink more alcohol than less intelligent people.

Human consumption of alcohol, however, was unintentional, accidental, and haphazard until about 10,000 years ago.  The intentional fermentation of fruits and grain to yield ethanol arose only recently in human history.  The production of beer, which relies on a large amount of grain, and that of wine, which similarly requires a large amount of grapes, could not have taken place before the advent of agriculture around 8,000 BC and the consequent agricultural surplus.  Archeological evidence dates the production of beer and wine to Mesopotamia at about 6,000 BC.  The origin of distilled spirits is far more recent, and is traced to Middle East or China at about 700 AD.  The word alcohol – al kohl – is Arabic in origin, like many other words that begin with “al,” like algebra, algorithm, alchemy, and Al Gore.

Indicators of alcohol consumption in the Add Health data include the frequency of binge drinking (drinking five or more units of alcohol in one sitting) and the frequency of getting drunk.  That such behavior is detrimental to health and has few, if any, positive consequences, is irrelevant for the Hypothesis.  It does not predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in healthy and beneficial behavior.  Instead, it predicts that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in evolutionarily novel behavior.  Since the consumption of modern alcoholic beverages – including binge drinking and getting drunk – is evolutionarily novel, the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in it, and the empirical data from the UK and the US confirm it.

His hypothesis pisses me off because there are days when I hate being sober. I’d give anything for a few drops of wine, for that mellow feeling I get after a couple glasses.

It’s also been drilled into my head that addiction isn’t about being smart or stupid. The perfect description comes from this “West Wing” episode where Leo, the chief of staff, tries to explain what alcohol does to him:

As Leo says, his brain works differently. It has nothing to do with being smart or stupid.

Nevertheless, there are days where my addictions make me feel supremely stupid. It has certainly compelled me to do stupid things in the past.

To be fair, the article doesn’t really say that only smart people drink a lot. Reading it just pisses me off because I can’t drink anymore.

I can’t eat flour or sugar anymore. Lots of smart people love those two ingredients.

I can’t smoke anymore. Lots of smart people smoke.

I won’t lie: I used to think I looked very smart and sophisticated with a cigar hanging from my lips.

Some would call that stupid. Whatever.

The bottom line is that I can’t drink or do the other things anymore. It’s not because I lack intelligence. It’s because that intelligence is powerless against the mental impulse that screams out for a good feeling; for a break.

Mine is a particularly strange tale of addiction. My biggest problem was compulsive binge eating. My drinking accelerated after I put the flour and sugar down because I needed a crutch. Then I realized I needed the wine a little too much, so I put that down and started on the cigars for a crutch.

Now I don’t smoke anymore, and there are days where I struggle to find a good release. Yoga doesn’t do it for me. As Erin points out, yoga could do it for me, but I’m prejudiced against it. Fair enough.

Moderation doesn’t exist in my world. It’s all or nothing.

That doesn’t make me dumb. But it might mean I’m a victim of dumb luck.

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THE OCD DIARIES, Two Years Later

Two years ago today, in a moment of Christmas-induced depression, I started this blog. I meant for it to be a place where I could go and spill out the insanity in my head so I could carry on with life.

In short order, it snowballed into much more than that.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA

About a year into my recovery from serious mental illness and addiction — the most uncool, unglamorous addiction at that — I started thinking about sharing where I’ve been. My reasoning was simple: I’d listened to a lot of people toss around the OCD acronym to describe everything from being a type A personality to just being stressed. I also saw a lot of people who were traveling the road I’d been down and were hiding their true nature from the world for fear of a backlash at work and in social circles.

At some point, that bullshit became unacceptable to me.

I started getting sick of hiding. I decided the only way to beat my demons at their sick little game was to push them out into the light, so everyone could see how ugly they were and how bad they smelled. That would make them weaker, and me stronger. And so that’s how this started out, as a stigma-busting exercise.

Then, something happened. A lot of you started writing to me about your own struggles and asking questions about how I deal with specific challenges life hurls at me. The readership has steadily increased.

Truth be told, life with THE OCD DIARIES hasn’t been what I’d call pure bliss. There are many mornings where I’d rather be doing other things, but the blog calls to me. A new thought pops into my head and has to come out. It can also be tough on my wife, because sometimes she only learns about what’s going on in my head from what’s in the blog. I don’t mean to do that. It’s just that I often can’t form my thoughts clearly in discussion. I come here to do it, and when I’m done the whole world sees it.

More than once I’ve asked Erin if I should kill this blog. Despite the discomfort it can cause her at times, she always argues against shutting it down. It’s too important to my own recovery process, and others stand to learn from it or at least relate to it.

And so I push forward.

One difference: I run almost ever post I write by her before posting it. I’ve shelved several posts at her recommendation, and it’s probably for the best. Restraint has never been one of my strengths.

This blog has helped me repair relationships that were strained or broken. It has also damaged some friendships. When you write all your feelings down without a filter, you’re inevitably going to make someone angry.

One dear friend suggested I push buttons for a good story and don’t know how to let sleeping dogs lie. She’s right about the sleeping dogs part, but I don’t agree with the first suggestion. I am certainly a button pusher. But I don’t push to generate a good story. I don’t set out to do that, at least.

Life happens and I write about how I feel about it, and how I try to apply the lessons I’ve learned. It’s never my way or the highway. If you read this blog as an instruction manual for life, you’re doing it wrong. What works for me isn’t necessarily going to fit your own needs.

Over time, the subject matter of this blog has broadened. It started out primarily as a blog about OCD and addiction. Then it expanded to include my love of music and my commentary on current events as they relate to our mental state.

I recently rewrote the “about” section of the blog to better explain the whole package. Reiterating it is a pretty good way to end this entry. You can see it here.

Thanks for reading.

"Obsession," by Bill Fennell

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Slaying Old Fears In The Hollywood Hills

This week I’ve been in Los Angeles on business. But I’ve been slaying some old demons while here.

Mood music:

Let’s go back 20 years — July 1991 — when I came out here with Sean Marley on my first trip to the west coast. I didn’t really want to go because I was afraid of everything and everyone. But Sean was red hot about the idea, and back then I was always out to impress the man. So off we went, on a 10-day California trip that would take us as far north as Eureka and as far south as Los Angeles. We lived in the rental car the whole time except for L.A., where we stayed in a friend’s apartment.

In L.A., we hooked up with a guy who used to live in the Point of Pines in Revere. I didn’t remember him, but he and Sean were tight as kids. Michael was his name. Michael took us to visit a couple of his friends who were living the stereotypical Hollywood lifestyle. They had a band, but sat in their cramped bungalow all day, surrounded by towers of empty beer cans and cigarette boxes, watching all the bad daytime TV they could feast their eyes on.

One of them asked me where we were from. The Boston area, I told him.

“Dude,” he said through the cloud of cigarette smoke encircling his head. “That’s a pretty long way from here.”

The statement filled me with more terror.

A pretty long way from here. From my safe place in the basement apartment at 22 Lynnway, Revere, Mass.

Terror.

That’s pretty much what the trip was. Sean ate it all up and had the time of his life, despite me.

I didn’t know back then that I suffered from OCD-induced fear and anxiety. I was still many years away from the therapy, medication and spiritual conversion. I had no idea what the 12 steps were when I was 21. Too bad, because I SHOULD have had the time of my life on that trip, too.

But that’s what fear does. It robs you blind. Robs you of everything that should make life worthwhile.

Fast-forward to the present. I’m back in LA on business. But I decided I was going to do a few things I couldn’t do last time I was here because of the fear.

I rented a car and drove all over Los Angeles and went as far south as Orange County, using the same freeways that scared the daylights out of me back then.

Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills

I took walks all over the place and mingled freely with people — something else I was afraid to do before.

I went deep into the Hollywood Hills and drove to some old murder sites because as a kid these places left me obsessed and afraid. The Manson Murders was particularly scarring on my young mind. From the first time I saw the TV movie “Helter Skelter” in the late 1970s through the first time I read the book from beginning to end in the 1980s it’s been the stuff of nightmares. That has fed the obsessive part of me. I read that book two or three times a year and knew exactly where every murder scene was before setting foot on the plane.

So I traveled to Cielo Drive, where Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered, and Waverly Drive a half-hour away, where Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were murdered the following night.

Behind that gate, Sharon Tate and four others were murdered by minions of Charles Manson
Cielo Drive, as seen from across the canyon. The house at the far left replaced the house where Sharon Tate and friends were murdered
On the second night of terror, minions of Charles Manson went to this house and murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca

I also visited the scene of the Wonderland Murders.

Scene of the Wonderland Murders

Along the way, I visited the Sunset Strip, the cradle of Rock ‘N Roll History.

Every band that ever mattered played here
Motley Crue lived here for nine months in 1981-82. Parts of the Shout at the Devil album were written here

Driving in strange places scares me less and less the more I do it. This was a big step in slaying the old fears.

The scary glow of the Manson Murders was also dimmed considerably this trip. When you look across the canyon to where the Tate-Polanski house once stood, the scene is peaceful. Driving to the gate of where the murders happened killed the mystique for me.

I think I’ll put the old “Helter Skelter” book away now.

The lesson of this post is that facing fears is sometimes the only way to slay them. I did the hardest work on myself long before this trip. But the journey has been the icing on that cake.

When you learn to manage your fears, a whole new world is opened up before you.

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Is It Bad That Two Family Members Are In Therapy?

If more than one member of the same family is in therapy, is that a sign that the family is seriously screwed up?

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/iFAweWkqqjk

That’s the question we are asking ourselves these days. As the reader knows by now, I’ve been in therapy for OCD and related issues for seven years. Duncan sees a children’s therapist to help him work through his ADHD.

Is this family a basket case? In my opinion, it’s exactly the opposite.

I wouldn’t be enjoying the equilibrium I have today if not for the years of therapy.

Meanwhile, Duncan is learning a lot of helpful techniques to help him focus and control his anger.

I’m a staunch advocate of therapy as a tool for mental health. I think too many people are embarrassed when it’s suggested that therapy would do them some good. People who stay away from therapy because they feel it’s a mark of weakness have no idea what they are denying themselves. That makes me sad.

It’s a funny thing when I talk to people suffering from depression, addiction and other troubles of the mind. Folks seem more comfortable about the idea of pills than in seeing a therapist. After all, they’re just crazy “shrinks” in white coats  obsessed with how your childhood nightmares compromised your adult sex life, right?

I’ve been to many therapists in my life. I was sent to one at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a kid to talk through the emotions of being sick with Chron’s Disease all the time. That same therapist also tried to help me and my siblings process the bitter aftermath of our parents’ divorce in 1980.

As a teenager, I went to another therapist to discuss my brother’s death and my difficulty in getting along with my stepmother (a wonderful, wonderful woman who I love dearly, by the way. But as a kid I didn’t get along with her).

That guy was a piece of work. He had a thick French accent and wanted to know if I found my stepmother attractive. From the moment he asked that question, I was done with him, and spent the rest of the appointment being belligerent.

That put me off going to a therapist for a long time. I started going to one again in 2004, when I found I could no longer function in society without untangling the barbed wire in my head. But I hesitated for a couple years before pressing on.

The therapist I started going to specialized in dealing with disturbed children and teenagers. That was perfect, because in a lot of ways I was still a troubled kid.

She never told me what to do, never told me how I’m supposed to interpret my disorder against my past. She asked a lot of questions and had me do the work of sorting it out. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good therapist does. They ask questions to get your brain churning, dredging up experiences that sat at the back of the mind like mud on the ocean floor. That’s how you begin to deal with how you got to the point of dysfunction.

She moved to Florida a year in and I started going to a fellow who worked from his house. I would explain my binge eating habits to him, specifically how I would down $30 worth of McDonald’s between work and home.

“You should stock your car with healthy foods like fruit, so if you’re hungry you can eat those things instead,” he told me.

That was the end of that. He didn’t get it. When an addict craves the junk, the healthy food around you doesn’t stand a chance. The compulsion is specifically toward eating the junk. He should have understood. He didn’t. Game over, dumb ass.

The therapist I see now is a God-send. He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Yes, friends, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac.

That’s not to say I blindly obey his every suggestion. He specializes in stress reduction and is big on yoga and eliminating coffee from the daily diet. Those are two deal breakers for me. Yoga bores the dickens out of me. If you’ve been following this blog all along, I need not explain the coffee part.

I also find it fun to push his buttons once in awhile. I’ll show up at his office with a huge cup of Starbucks. “Oh, I see you’ve brought drugs with you,” he’ll say.

Our relationship has settled into this banter back and forth, and it continues to serve its purpose. We go over everything happening in my life at that given moment, and if he suspects I’m thinking in unproductive ways or lying to myself, he calls me on it.

I’m better for it.

All that is the long way of saying I think it’s absolutely healthy if multiple members of one family are in therapy at the same time.

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To The Guy Killing Himself With Food

There’s a guy I used to work with who was always a pleasure to be around. I loved his humor and work ethic, and, thanks to Facebook, I get to stay in touch with him. But I’m worried by what I see right now.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:7Foti4A082iVkY8Az1hvlX]

By now this guy has probably figured out that this will be about him. He need not worry. I’m not going to name him or the place where we worked together.

He’s gone through a rough patch in recent weeks and his depression is bleeding all over his Facebook page. That happens with most of us. But he keeps talking about losing himself in his food. I’ve been down that road, and need to do what I can to knock sense into him.

From this point on, I’ll be speaking directly to him:

My friend, you don’t want to hear any of this, but you need to. You’re slowly killing yourself because life has hit a rough spot. You’ve been through rough periods before and got past them. This will be no different.

You say food is your first great love, the one who doesn’t argue and gives you back everything you put in. I used to think that way. It’s a lie — the same lie alcoholics and heroin addicts fall for.

People have this stupid notion that you can’t call yourself an addict unless you drink too much or take drugs. But addiction covers anything we think we can’t live without. That includes relationships.

People like us walk around with a hole in our soul. We think we can fill it with things that give us a few moments of pleasure and solace. But it never works. The hole gets bigger, because the stuff we’re addicted to is really a corrosive agent, eating through the core of who we are.

Everyone struggles with something.

Everyone struggles with relationships. Everyone looks for comfort in certain behaviors: Eating, drinking, smoking, sex, spending, Web surfing, music, exercise, mountain climbing, gum-chewing, TV.

Just about everyone struggles with the difference between having enough of the items I just listed and not knowing when it’s enough. People eat too much all the time and casually make note of it. People get drunk and the headache they wake up with the next morning tells them they went too far.

There’s a tight parallel when it comes to mental illness, the main focus of this blog. Everyone struggles with times of depression, anxiety, mental fatigue, personality conflicts. Those very things are what usually drives a person to addictive behavior.

It’s all part of being human. That’s why the readership of this blog keeps growing. Everyone struggles and relates to the cause and effect.

But when does addictive behavior become the stuff of evil — a cancer that takes you over body and soul until satisfying the itch becomes the priority over all else?

That’s where we try to separate the so-called normal people from the crazies. I say try because one person’s crazy is another person’s normal.

We all think we know the difference between normal and crazy. But most of the time, we don’t know shit.

I can only tell you where my sense of normal crossed over into insanity. I’ve told you in a million different ways in this blog already.

To me, the key to recovery is partly about identifying when a behavior makes life unmanageable. Not the typical idea of unmanageable, where a person might always be scattered, nervous, hyper or lazy, thus becoming difficult to be around.

No, I’m talking unmanageable in the sense that your life is like a car speeding out of control, where one tire is flat, the engine has run out of oil and the back bumper is hanging off and causing sparks as it drags on the ground. The vehicle is ready to fall apart, and yet it keeps going faster and faster.

The addictive behavior that does that to your life is the insidious devil whose head must be ripped off if you’re going to make it.

For me, clinical OCD has always been a driver of my addictive behavior. I had to bring the OCD to heel before I could even begin to deal with the addictions. The 12 Steps of Recovery are key to my ability to manage both.

I’m not saying the 12 Steps is what you need. It works for me, but there’s more than one way to skin this beast.

I’ve broken my addictive behavior into categories that have more to do with what makes me insane than what is simply considered good or bad for you.

I love cigar smoke. Smoking is bad for you.

I love coffee. Some say that’s bad for you, though I don’t really believe it.

I love spending money on things. Who doesn’t? But spending too much can ruin you and those you love.

I love music. Some days I’d rather sit around listening to rock and roll than doing any number of other things I should be doing.

All of that can be considered addictive behavior. But binge eating, followed closely by alcohol and third by the prescription pills I used to take for back pain — those are the things I craved so badly that at one point I was willing to let everything else in life go to hell.

That is you with the food right now.

You are better than that. I’ve seen it.

It’s time to take control of your life again.

Thanks for listening.

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Learn From My Mistakes

In all my efforts to get sane a few years ago, I did a lot of stupid things. I’m sharing it with you here so you don’t make the same mistakes:

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/l4Xx_vjGnlo

–Don’t try to control your compulsive binge eating problem by fasting. You won’t make it through the morning, and then you’ll binge like you’ve never binged before.

–Don’t mix alcohol with pills that have the strength of four Advil tablets in an effort to kill your emotional pain as well as your physical pain. That sort of thing might kill you.

–Don’t hate the people in your life for the bad things they’ve done. Remember that they’re fucked up like you and that hating them will never make the pain go away. In fact, it’ll just make it worse.

–Avoid the late-night infomercials. Those things were designed for suckers, especially suckers who can’t sleep because they’re so overcome with fear and anxiety that they see knife-wielding ghosts around every corner. You might find yourself falling for it and spending stupid sums of money on fraudulent bullshit like this.

–Don’t spend every waking hour worrying about and rushing toward the future. You will miss all the beauty in the present that way, and that’s a damn shame.

–Don’t try to control everything. Doing so just makes you look like an asshole.

–Don’t put down others just so you’ll feel better about yourself. You’ll just ruin another life, and you will not feel better. You’ll feel worse.

–Don’t try to eradicate your mental disorder. Learn to work with it instead, because once your brain reaches adulthood, there’s no turning back.

–Don’t spend your life trying to please everyone. You never will, and they usually won’t deserve the effort.

—Don’t over-think things. Thinking doesn’t make you smarter.

—Don’t bitch about your job. You’ll just annoy people. Change yourself and your attitude first. Then, if you still don’t like the job, work on finding a new one and keep doing your best at the current job in the meantime.

—Don’t whine about how tough everything is. Life is supposed to be tough at times, and wallowing in it keeps you from moving on to the good stuff. To put it another way, stop seeing yourself as a victim.

Class dismissed.

OCD Diaries

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Eat This! How To Survive Sans Flour And Sugar

What exactly does a life without flour and sugar look like? Read on.

Someone in work heard me rattling off everything I was eating for the day on the phone and looked at me like I had six heads. I was doing what I do almost every morning: Tell my OA sponsor what my food plan is for the day.

Mood music:

It sounds extreme. But it’s what I have to do to stay well. Going over it with my sponsor keeps me on track.

I’m often asked how I can deal with life without those two ingredients, and my answer is that I couldn’t deal with life WITH those things. People think this eliminates any joy in eating, but that’s not the case for me.

When someone asks what’s left to eat when I skip those things, the answer is quite a lot. Here’s what my food plan looks like on a typical day:

BREAKFAST:

8 ounces of a protein, typically Greek yogurt or ricotta cheese

3 ounces of Grape Nuts or oatmeal

8 ounces of berries

LUNCH:

–12 ounces of vegetable

–2 ounces of potato or brown rice

–4 ounces of protein (meat)

DINNER: Same as lunch.

A few notes:

It’s pretty difficult to eliminate every last drop of flour and sugar from your diet. There’s natural sugar in fruit, for example, and there are trace amounts of flour in a lot of things, including the Grape Nuts I eat at breakfast.

For me, the key is to avoid the highly enriched stuff (the white flour and sugar).

For those who find this diet bland, I say it’s all in how you make it. I can take all the individual ingredients of lunch and dinner and stir fry it. I add a lot of spices like hot pepper sauce. I use a lot of olive oil.

I also drink all the coffee I want (cream, no sugar).

This plan also doesn’t mean I can’t eat out. I have to when I travel on business, for example. No flour or sugar actually makes eating out simpler: No flour and sugar automatically takes a lot on the menu off the table. That makes it easier for me to make the right choices. I usually go for salads with meat in it and rice or potato on the side. I don’t put the restaurant food on a scale. Breaking out the little scale in a restaurant would be anti-social, in my opinion. The key there is to keep eating out to a minimum.

Carrying on this way keeps me from binge eating. It’s not perfect, but it beats the alternative.

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Beauty And Gratitude In Every Bad Thing

In the battle to manage OCD and all its byproducts, I’ve learned something that’s helped me a lot: To always see the blessings hidden within the bad stuff.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/X0jHPRO98lM

–When I lose people close to me because of death or resentment, I try to remember the good stuff we got to share and how lucky I was to have known those who eventually left me.

–When I feel my addictions starting to creep up on me and I’m forced to start over, I try to remember that it’s still so much better than the days I binged at the drop of a hat.

–When I feel the depressive effect of shorter days that come with summer’s end, (I’m prone to depression from a lack of daylight) I try to remember that the longer days will eventually return and that there are still things to look forward to in the coming seasons.

–When my children get loud and their chaos invades my personal space, I easily remember that my life is so much fuller and beautiful with them in it. I also remember, when they start talking, that a lot of funny shit comes out of their mouths. Some examples here.

–When my three-year-old niece is here and she’s in a foul mood, I try to remember that she’s still so stinkin’ cute.

–When a day at work doesn’t go as I wanted it to, I remember that it’s still the best job I’ve ever had.

–When my obnoxious instincts kick in and I take the needling of others too far, I try to remember that most of those around me forgive me every time and give me another chance.

–If I’m stuck in bed with a migraine or the flu, I can take comfort in knowing it could be — and has been – so much worse.

–If I’m feeling depressed — and my OCD ensures that I will from time to time — I can take comfort in knowing it doesn’t cripple me like it used to and I can still get through the day, live my life and see the mood for what it is — part of a chronic condition.

–When I stare into the mirror and see all the scars and wrinkles, I try to remember that another year of aging is another year life didn’t beat me down.

–When I look in the mirror and see that I’m thick in the middle, I try to remember that I used to be HUGE in the middle and that the former is better than the latter.

–If I’m feeling down about relationships that are on ice, I can take joy in knowing that there’s never a point of no return, especially when you’re willing to make amends and accept forgiveness.

–When I come home fried from a few days of travel, I try to remember that I used to fear travel and now it feels routine. It’s a step in the right direction.

–When I think I’m having the shittiest year ever, I stop and remember that most years are a mix of good and bad and that gives me the perspective to cool off my emotions.

–When something really bad happens, I know that people are always going to show up to help, and that it’s an extension of God’s Grace in my life.

–When I’m angry about something, I can always put on headphones and let some ferocious metal music squeeze the aggression out of me.

–If I feel like people around me are acting like idiots, I can recognize that they may just be having a bad day themselves and that it’s always better to watch an idiot than be one.

Bad stuff happens every day. But if you squint into the darkness and stare a little longer, a little light always appears.

Photo by John Vantine. Check out more of his work here.

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