The OCD Diaries

October 28, 2014

Dissecting EddieTheYeti

A few months ago I told you about an artist from the security community named Eddie Mize, a.k.a. EddieTheYeti. I identified with his use of artistic expression as a way to cope with inner demons. Since then, we’ve gotten to know each other better.

Mood music:

I’ve used his art to illustrate several posts in this blog. At DEF CON in August, his art exhibit was one of the more popular attractions, and he kindly personalized my DEF CON badge with some OCD Diaries art.

The more I review his work, the more it stirs up feelings that have been deep inside me.

That’s especially true in recent weeks, as I’ve started fighting back against some resurgent personal demons.

So I put the question to Eddie: What if I did a series of posts where I took specific pieces of his work and wrote a narrative for it based on the emotions the work stirred within me?

Eddie is a gracious guy, so I wasn’t surprised when he said it “sounds like a plan!”

The posts will be an ongoing series. You won’t see me focus on it for several days in a row. I’ll probably settle into a post a week. His gallery on the DeviantArt site is more than 2,000 entries deep, so there’s a lot to sift through.

I have two goals with this series:

Help make EddieTheYeti a household name
Continue the scouring of my soul that is key to my own survival

I don’t expect total victory in either case. But I have high hopes that together, Eddie and I will move some people who badly need it.

Stay tuned.

October 27, 2014

The Good and Evil in Every Religion

Recent beheadings at the hands of ISIS have caused a spike in news-show rhetoric about the need to profile those who look like Muslims as a way to stop terrorists. My Facebook feed is frequently overrun with talk about how Islam is a savage and evil religion.

We’re doing what we do best when scared: painting entire groups and faiths with the same bigoted brush.

Mood music:

I understand the anger.

I absolutely loathe ISIS. Every time I see footage of innocents beheaded, I want to throw up. I felt the same way when watching the violence committed by insurgents in Iraq a decade ago. I have no stomach for murder. When it’s done in the name of religion, it makes me feel worse.

I won’t lie to you: When seeing this violence, my imagination has run wild with thoughts about how great it would be to wipe out these bastards with nuclear weapons. I’ve thought about how fitting it would be to see these guys getting their heads cut off. In that regard, I’m not much better than the people who litter my news feeds with hate and cries of vengeance.

But when I reflect some more, I always come back to a stubborn fact — evil exists in all religions.

I’m a Catholic whose faith was shaken by the news of widespread sexual abuse at the hands of priests. It’s also hard to understand the blood spilled in the name of Christianity in places like Northern Ireland. Christians have done terrible things in the name of Christianity since the beginning. The Crusades are but one example.

What I always come back to is this: Non-organized religions breed evil. So do individuals. Organized religion breeds evil, too.

I consider myself faithful in the belief that Jesus Christ is my savior — the guiding hand through the minefield set by my personal demons. If that makes you uncomfortable, so be it. I see it as a personal relationship. The problems begin when people make it about more than that and attach politics to the mix.

I don’t buy into the rhetoric of organized Christian denominations that invites hatred of gays and others who don’t follow doctrine to the letter. That malarky is the seed that leads to violence against homosexuals. As a Catholic, I do have high hopes that Pope Francis is going to move us away from that. This statement is especially telling.

Most people follow their faith, be it Islam, Christianity, Judaism, what have you, peacefully. They don’t turn it into a political vehicle or a militaristic recruitment drive. I’ve met a lot of people of different faiths in my travels. In talking with them, a shared distaste for religious extremism always comes to the surface.

If we stopped blaming entire faiths for the evil acts of a few, we might actually get somewhere as human beings.

Battle between Crusades and Mongols Source: SodaHead

October 23, 2014

A Terrible Chapter Closes in Blackstone

A few weeks ago I posted about the terrible story in Blackstone, Mass., where children where found to be living in a house of absolute squalor.

Police found four children, two of which were covered in feces and hidden from the world. A police search turned up the remains of three dead infants and dead animals. Those who went in the house said they will never forget the smell.

Tuesday, the town demolished the house.

May the children get the love and attention they need and deserve.

And may the mother, Erika Murray, get whatever help she needs for her sick mind.

Demolishment of Blackstone, Mass., house

October 22, 2014

Ebola and the Disease of Hyperbole

For weeks, the main cable news stations have been obsessed with Ebola. While the appearance of Ebola in the U.S. is certainly new, I think the bigger problem is a disease that has dogged us since the dawn of TV news.

Hyperbole.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/-oUAekdWSO4

There’s no disputing that Ebola is a fearsome disease. The symptoms are brutal and the death rate is high. It’s been a problem mainly for Africa until recently, when a couple of healthcare workers were infected and brought to the U.S. for treatment. Then an infected man flew from Liberia to the U.S. and became the first official diagnosis of Ebola in America. Two nurses who cared for the now-dead patient have been infected.

None of that is good. But now the news networks are covering it like it’s an impending Armageddon. Every time people fall ill on a plane it becomes national news, with panicked reports of people with “Ebola-like symptoms.” With every such report, Facebook feeds fill up with people making comments about how we’re doomed.

This is where responsible reporting gives way to recklessness. So let’s dispense with the hyperbole and look at reality:

Ebola remains a disease people get from exposure to the bodily fluids of another infected person, which is why the two nurses got it.
It is not an airborne contagion, which means it’s very difficult to catch. You should be more concerned about flu, which sickens and kills thousands in the U.S. each year. The only U.S. death from Ebola thus far is from the man who caught it before leaving Africa. Stop watching CNN and go get a flu shot.
All the reports of sick passengers on planes thus far have turned out to be for things other than Ebola.
If you have a fever or a cough and are worried that it may be Ebola, calm down. We get colds and flu every year, and we never worried about it being Ebola until this freight train of fear got rolling.

I understand how fear spreads in these situations. Back when I suffered from severe anxiety, I would see world-ending clouds in every epidemic report.

In 2005, I had a long panic streak over the bird flu in Asia, which was predicted to be the next great pandemic, deadlier than the one that killed off a significant segment of the population in 1918-1919.

I would read every magazine and every website that were tracking all these world events as if my personal safety depended on it. If a hurricane was spinning in the Atlantic, I would watch with deepening worry as it edged closer to the U.S.

It was all part of the larger doomsday fear sparked by a combination of my mental illness and sensational media coverage. So, no, I’m not criticizing people for fearing Ebola. I know what it’s like to get that way.

Ebola may yet morph into something more deadly, but we’re not there yet. Chances are we’ll never get there — at least in terms of this becoming an airborne contagion.

My suggestion: Let’s focus on this one day at a time and keep our focus on the facts.

And for Goodness sake, turn off the news.

Image of Ebola virus

October 21, 2014

On Being the Office Jerk

Every office environment has its challenges. There are always colleagues who see the world differently from you. There are always situations that require extra work hours to address. Nothing is ever perfect.

Knowing that, in recent years I’ve worked hard to be the cheerful guy in whatever office I work in, the one who always smiles, never talks badly about others and always keeps a can-do attitude.

But when my OCD runs hot, I become the guy I don’t want to be — the office jerk.

And so it has been lately. That’s how I feel, anyway.

Mood music:

I’ve been short tempered recently and my ideas don’t come out the way I intend them to. I sit by my laptop for 16 hours a day, hoping beyond hope that I can somehow control the world as long as I don’t step away. When critical feedback comes in, I take it personally. By not stepping away, I get exhausted, which makes me even more prickly.

In recent weeks at work we’ve had some big challenges to address. The challenges come with the job and in the end, we thrive on the challenges. The team has impressed the hell out of me, and that has made me want to contribute to the work all the harder.

So I did. I’d like to think I did some good. But I can’t help but think that I was a jerk in the process.

So I’m re-evaluating how I went about things.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that colleagues work hard to get it right and do well by their colleagues. No one sets out to be difficult, but in the heat of a deadline, it’s hard to avoid — especially when everyone cares so much about getting it right.

When I was an editor for a local daily newspaper, I saw enemies around every corner. From my perspective everyone was out to block my progress and throw me under the bus. But all the while, I was overbearing, standing over people who were trying to do their jobs and yelling across rooms. There’s a lot of that in newsrooms, so I got away with the behavior. But I know I made life miserable for other people and blamed everyone but myself when things went wrong.

When I started to get a grip on my OCD, I vowed never to be that guy again. For the most part, I think I’ve been successful. But in the last two months, I worry that I haven’t managed as well as I should. So it’s time for me to take stock and right myself.

I love what I do for work. I’m very fortunate to have this career. It’s been a huge blessing. I’ve made dear friends along the way and I’m constantly in awe of current colleagues.

I’ve forgotten the good parts in recent weeks because I stopped taking care of myself and started forgetting everything I’ve learned about being the blessing.

That brand of madness ends here.

If I’ve been difficult to colleagues of late, I apologize and thank them for their patience. The same goes for family who has to put up with my meltdowns at home.

My recalibration is under way.

Bill The Cat leaning on a lever

October 16, 2014June 5, 2020

Just Showing Up Is a Victory (Updated 6-5-20)

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

As anyone prone to mental disorder and depression knows, there are days when it’s all you can do to get out of bed in the morning. The pain in your emotional space travels to every muscle, every bone and everywhere on the skin. Why bother?

These moments used to give me cravings for dark, quiet rooms with a bed or couch, where I could binge eat, smoke, drink and sleep — in that order.

In the grip of depression, it can be hard not to go back there. But I can’t let depression do that to me anymore. So there’s only one thing left to do.

Show up.

Mood music:

Show up for my wife and kids.

Show up for work.

Show up for meetings and appointments.

No matter how dreadful I feel.

I need to show up for everything — the good and the bad.

I can stumble over my addictive impulses and overwork myself until I’m burnt to a crisp. But every time I show up, the demons lose.

Showing up is a road back to equilibrium, as crooked and unpredictable as that road might be.

Showing up means you can be a blessing to people without trying to blindly please everyone.

To sum it up:

Your demons will hate you for it.

Those who matter will love you for it.

October 15, 2014

A Vulnerable Soul, a Big Mountain and a Bigger Lesson

After weeks of feeling exhausted, depressed and out of control, I escaped to New Hampshire’s White Mountains with Erin for some rest, relaxation, romance, and hiking. We found all those things, but I also found myself humbled and shamed when hiking up the mountains.

Mood music:

After a back injury, job stresses and the breakdown of my food plan, I knew I was out of shape when we started up Mt. Willard in Crawford Notch. But we’ve hiked plenty of times before, and I’d done fine.

It didn’t take long before my heart started pounding through my rib cage and I lost my breath. Other hikers — many with children and dogs in tow — moved past us with what seemed like ease. Much older people blew past us like they were taking an easy stroll on the beach.

Erin noted more than once that the other hikers seemed to be struggling, too, that it wasn’t just me, but that’s not how I felt.

From my perspective, the mountain was taunting me, poking and shaming me into realizing just how badly I’ve deteriorated physically. I kept looking for the top of the mountain, but all I could see was a trail that kept shooting straight up.

The hike up the mountain: trail to Artist's Bluff

The mountain was showing me no mercy. It kicked me repeatedly when I was down. Then it rewarded me with a spectacular view that seemed to make the suffering worthwhile.

View from the top: Peak of Mt. Willard

It took us an hour to climb back down. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze.

We did an easier, shorter hike the next day, but it still wiped me out. Coming back down the second trail, I realized that the mountains were a metaphor for what I’ve been feeling.

As rotten as those feelings are, the mountains also taught me that I can overcome the demons, as I have so many times before.

I frequently doubted that I could make it to the top during the hikes. But I kept going, no matter how much pain I was in. And at the top, the world opened back up with endless possibilities.

I always keep going, and things always get better.

So it will be this time.

October 14, 2014

The Day the Devil Beat Me

I haven’t posted in a while for two reasons: One, I’ve been burned out. Two, I needed time to describe what it’s like to slide back into old habits.

Mood music:

It seems I’ve spent so much time writing about my recovery from binge eating and other addictive behaviors that I forgot what it was like to be back on the other side — where recovery gives way to failure and the fallen is left feeling like he’s been dragged back to square one.

It started in August, amid a series of pressures. First, I injured my back and was sidelined for two weeks. I was on the couch for a week soaking up the Vicodin my doctor prescribed me. He also prescribed Prednisone, a drug that always stirs my dark side.

The Prednisone made me want to eat a lot. I largely resisted, but while I didn’t binge, I got sloppy.

Then things got stressful at work. We had to deal with a huge security vulnerability called Shellshock, and I found myself working 16-hour days and forgetting to eat. Forgetting to eat is bad, because it ensures sloppy eating at the end of the day. And one day, that’s what happened.

On the day Shellshock was blowing up and I was diving into meetings on our communication strategy, I was also in the midst of getting four videos made. The video shoot was already a pressure point because I had to reschedule it once already due to the back injury.

It was as intense a day as I can remember having in many years, and on the way home I found myself in the Burger King drive-through. I picked foods that I can eat under my no-flour, no-sugar regimen. A lot of it.

I carried around the shame for a week, until I finally told Erin what happened. After she saw a $21 charge for Burger King on our bank statement, of course.

This is my fault. Nobody else is to blame. The work pressures were the same things we all endure in the normal course of our professions. In recent years I’ve had a pretty good set of tools to manage those pressures well. But for whatever reason, in the last month I forgot to use them.

This was a long time coming.

I had been disenchanted with the OA recovery program I was following, and I had been struggled to strike the right food balance for months.

Now I have to clean up and find my way again. The upside is that I don’t feel beaten. Human beings make mistakes frequently. The important thing is what one does with the mistake to learn and grow.

I haven’t slipped since that day in the Burger King drive-through, though the eating is still sloppy. I’m working my way out of it, but I’m still in that unsettled, raw place. Getting back on one’s feet is hard, but I’m going to get there.

I have no alternative.

Next: Feelings of lingering vulnerability catch up with the author during two hikes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Back in my hell by Eddie the Yeti

September 24, 2014

Forgiveness: Trash Removal for the Soul

Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential if you want to become a better person. But it’s hard and often seen as a green light for more abuse.

Mood music:

For you to understand what I’m about to get into, let’s review the AA 12 Steps of Recovery, which has been an important guide on my own flight from madness:

1. We admitted we were powerless over [insert addiction] — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to [insert type of addict], and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

There’s a recurring theme in almost every step: Forgiveness.

To truly heal and grow, you have to be able to ask others for forgiveness. People like me have to do that, because you hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways when your addictions and mental disorders get the better of you.

The haze of OCD and the related addictions exhausted the mind and body and incapacitated me for days and weeks at a time. I was useless to my wife and children. I let family relationships and friendships suffer because getting the binge and then collapsing under the weight of it was more appealing than being a good friend.

I lied to a lot of people about a lot of things and had the audacity to think I was above others, no matter how screwed up I was.

I’ve asked for and gotten a lot of forgiveness along the way. I’ve done my share of forgiving. I long ago forgave family members I clashed with because of dysfunction. It doesn’t always end estrangements.

But as a priest once told me, forgiving doesn’t mean you permit someone to flog you anew.

It’s hard. Damn hard.

Resentment weighs you down and makes you weaker. It’s like carrying a Dumpster full of trash on your shoulders.

To move on and be better, you have to take out the garbage.

Below: “Prayer” by EddieTheYeti

Prayer by EddieTheYeti

September 22, 2014

When Anger Was All The Rage

I had a vicious temper when I was younger.

To call it a byproduct of OCD, depression and addiction would be pushing it, because I think the temper would have been there even without the mental illness.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/A-nULlfJDvk

Examples of my temper include:

Hurling a fork or steak knife at my brother in a restaurant on New Years Eve 1979 because he made a joke I didn’t like. The more dramatic among my family members say it was a steak knife, though I’m pretty sure it was a fork. That the utensil could have embedded in my brother’s head and caused serious injury didn’t occur to me.
Lighting things on fire out of anger, including a collection of Star Wars action figures that would probably be worth a fortune today. I would pretend they were kids in school who were bullying me. I was a bully, too, but that didn’t matter.
Road rage. Tons of it. I was an angry driver. I would tailgate. I would speed. In the winters I would intentionally spin out my putrid-green 1983 Ford LTD station wagon in parking lots during snowstorms. While in college, I nearly hit another car and flipped off the other driver while my future in-laws sat in the back. Traffic jams would infuriate me. Getting lost would fill me with fear and, in turn, more anger.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

There were a lot of legitimate causes of rage for me. The drug I took for Chron’s Disease had a lot of nasty side effects, including violent mood swings. A brother and two close friends dying — one by suicide — gave me a lot of anger. Being stuck in the middle of turf wars and working late nights while at The Eagle-Tribune certainly made me a walking ball of fire.

I’m sure the fear and anxiety that came with my OCD contributed to more anger.

I’m even convinced the anger was useful in a way. Finding things to fixate my rage on had a perverse way of making me feel better, like I was somehow above the insanity because I could point my finger at it and call it names.

But somewhere along the way, it stopped working and started to suck the life from me.

That’s what anger does when you let it rule for too long. The burning feeling starts off as an energy that lifts you. But left unchecked, it becomes a parasite that takes everything and gives nothing.

Once that happened, I had to do something.

I kept going to church and a real faith took root. I found it could sustain me far better than rage could.

I went to therapy and started to face the demons that made me angry so much.

In time, the anger left. It comes back for a visit sometimes, but it no longer rules my life. It’s better that way.

Below: “Unleashed,” by EddieTheYeti

Unleashed Ink by EddieTheYeti