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You Call It Selfish, I Call It Survival

A friend once lamented that she tries to make everyone around her happy. She’s a self-described people pleaser, and it’s led to a world of hurt. She wanted to know how I got past it and was able to out myself. Here’s my attempt to answer the question.

Mood music:

I used to be a people pleaser. I probably still am to some extent. But nothing like how I used to be.

I wanted desperately to make every boss happy, and I did succeed for a while. But in doing so I damaged myself to the core and came within inches of an emotional breakdown.

It caused me to work 80 hours a week, waking up each morning scared to death that I would fall short or fail altogether.

No employee gets back 100 percent of what they put in to the corporate machine. Sure, you can make your direct bosses happy, but the folks many layers above them in the food chain still won’t know who you are or care that you work 80 hours a week.

I wanted to make every family member happy. It didn’t work, because you can never keep everyone happy when strong personalities clash. To this day, my relationship with some family members is on ice. Part of the problem is that I failed to keep them happy and take care of others I needed to be paying attention to. I reached a breaking point that has caused pain on all sides. I’m not happy about it, but it is what it is.

When did I reach the moment of truth? I don’t think there was one defining event. It was just a gradual realization that if I kept trying to please everyone, I wouldn’t be alive much longer. I would have had a complete breakdown and plunged into my addictions until they killed me with a heart attack or a blood clot to the brain.

It was a simple matter of survival.

If I’m trying to please every boss, friend or family member, I can’t be present for my wife and children. And I certainly can’t be present for God.

Of course, that realization doesn’t make it any easier to stop trying to please everyone. Even today, I’d much rather keep my bosses happy than piss them off. As for family, I’d still prefer we all get along.

Several things have made it easier not to try to please everyone:

  • Years of therapy have helped, because you’re forced to peel back every layer of every relationship by a trained professional who has no stake or relationship with the people in your life.
  • Prozac must have helped, because sometime in early 2007, when I first started taking the medicine, I stopped worrying about what my bosses would think of every move I made.
  • My former office mom, Anne Saita certainly taught me that it’s better to stand up to people then to live life on your knees.

I’ve found that the longer you go without being a people pleaser, the easier it gets. And then something else happens: Most of the people around you start liking you better when your nose isn’t cemented to their asses.

man's hands bound in chains

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Bad Customer Service Is a Mental Health Threat

There’s a reason the recorded call with a belligerent Comcast employee went viral. It wasn’t for sheer entertainment value, though some will undoubtedly find it amusing.

It’s because practically every Comcast customer has suffered one of those dreadful service calls. For Erin and me, the last such experience was a couple weeks ago, when we called for repairs to our Internet service.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/QZHtx3-75Rw

In the case making news, a customer service rep gave one couple hell because they wanted to drop their cable service. The rep belligerently asks the same questions over and over again, trying to wear down the couple in hopes that they’ll give up and stick with their service.

In our case, we called for the simple reason that our Internet was down (it turned out to be a fried modem). During the course of the conversation, the rep tried getting us to repurchase the cable we dropped a couple years ago. Erin had to say no more than once. We’re already a customer for Internet service, and the rep’s job is to help us with our existing service. She shouldn’t have been trying to sell us something on a tech support call.

We have thick skin and can repel the pressure well enough. But it’s still a stressful experience.

Picture someone who suffers from anxiety, depression and other mental maladies. A call like that isn’t merely stressful and annoying, it’s traumatic.

I know because it was hell for me in the years before I got my fear and anxiety under control.

Back then, I would be terrified every time I had to call a customer service rep for anything. The prospect of being put on hold for 20 minutes or more was a killer. When the service rep who eventually answered would start pushing the importance of buying additional services, my mind would melt. When you can’t control your emotions, you can’t tell when someone’s urgency is truly warranted. Sometimes I caved into purchases we didn’t need, just to shut the person up.

I know a lot of people who are customer service reps for a variety of companies. They care deeply about the customers and do everything to serve them well.

But without a doubt, some reps are predators. They prey on the weak and are a threat to the mental well-being of some of their customers.

I’m glad this particular rep from Comcast aimed at the wrong couple and got exposed.

Van with Comcast Sux on it

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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.

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Carter Center Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism

People love to pick on the presidency of Jimmy Carter. To be sure, there’s much to criticize. But Carter has done awesome deeds since leaving Washington 33 years ago.

One such deed: working to break the stigma around mental illness.

Mood music:

Being a journalist, I know how important it is for skilled writers to lift the veil off the scourge so the masses can understand. I never tackled such a beat as a reporter, but in my own subject areas I know how far training can go in helping the writer understand the stories in front of them. One of the cool things about the Carter Center’s effort is that training journalists is a program centerpiece.

To that end, the Carter Center has announced the recipients of the 2014-2015 Rosalynn Carter Fellowships for Mental Health Journalism.

Carter Center fellows receive intensive training from leading mental health and journalism experts and a $10,000 stipend (or a comparable amount for international fellows) to report on a mental health topic of their choice. As the Carter Center noted in its press release:

Previous fellows have produced more than 1,300 mental health-related stories, documentaries, books, and other works during and after their fellowship year. Their projects have garnered multiple Emmy awards, nominations for the Pulitzer Prize, a Peabody Award, an Edward R. Murrow award, and awards from Mental Health America, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Psychological Association, American Psychoanalytic Association, Amnesty International, and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Congratulations are in order for this year’s fellows:

U.S. Recipients

Katti Gray, independent journalist, Monticello, N.Y.
Topic: Examine special courts that keep veterans with mental illness out from behind prison bars as well as explore innovations for managing those who end up on lockdown.

Matthew Herper,senior editor, Forbes, New York, N.Y.
Topic: Explore what has caused the rise in diagnoses for ADHD and what has shaped the treatment of it.

Nadia Kounang, producer, Medical, Health, and Wellness Unit, CNN, Atlanta, Ga.
Topic: Investigate mental health issues and incarceration in a long-form television project.

Mary Annette Pember, independent journalist, Cincinnati, Ohio
Topic: Research the influence of intergenerational historical trauma on mental health in Native American communities in a series “Last Orphans at Holy Cross.”

Megan Thompson, producer and correspondent, PBS NewsHour Weekend, PBS, New York, N.Y.
Topic: Explore the connections between mental health and poverty, especially among children.

Misty Rae Williams, reporter, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta, Ga.
Topic: Report on the challenges facing Georgia’s mental health system as it approaches the end of a five-year settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Colombian Recipients

Natalia Gómez Carvajal,editor, El Tiempo, Colombia
Topic: Explore the life of Colombian refugees displaced by violence who live in urban settings in extreme poverty and suffer from mental illnesses through a photojournalistic project.

María Paula Laguna Trujillo and Laura María Ayala Rodríguez, Semana, Colombia
Topic: Combine print and Web to examine the mental health conditions of Colombian prisoners and their lack of access to psychiatric services through a multimedia project.

Go forth and be the change!

The Carter Center and reflecting pool

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Johnny Depp Visits Revere Beach

Filming for the movie based on the book Black Mass is taking place around Massachusetts. Last week, they did some scenes on the beach I walked daily as a kid.

I was young when Whitey Bulger was enjoying his reign of terror on Boston and the surrounding communities, and I don’t remember much about it other than a couple news reports from the 1980s. I was busy walking Revere Beach every day. It was often the only way I found peace during a childhood of illness, death and family difficulties.

But in the last year or so, I’ve read a bunch of books on the Bulger case, including Black Mass, and I’ve admittedly become a bit obsessed.

When I read that the movie crew had descended on Revere Beach, turning it into 1970s-era Miami Beach, complete with palm trees and a Cuban cafe, I was delighted.

It brought back a little nostalgia, reminding me of my beach walks. And it increased my appetite for the movie, which is scheduled for a September 2015 release.

Particularly awesome are these videos someone shot of Johnny Depp done up as Whitey. The footage captures extras taking their places and Depp walking around the set. The second video shows all the vintage cars used for the shoot.

The best part for me, though, are the regular folks in the background, bantering like the Revere Beach natives I remember and love.

Enjoy.

Johnny Depp as Whitey Bulger

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Tools to Fight Your Demons at #Defcon, #BlackHat and More

This isn’t a post about how I think you should behave at DEF CON. I’ve already said my bit about the drama aspect and shared my experiences being a sober guy at security cons. This isn’t an anti-drinking tirade or a lecture about the treatment of women at these events.

It IS a resource for those who have demons they’d like to control during our so-called Security Summer Camp.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/P2zgjIGaIo4

There’s been some talk about hackers holding Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meetings during DEF CON. One thing I’ve heard is that some folks have requested that a room be scheduled and set aside twice a day for an hour at a time — once in the morning and once later in the day — for sobriety meetings. I think it’s a great idea. But those looking for a meeting already have plenty of choices. AA meetings are everywhere, every day in just about every city. Check out this list of meeting days, times and locations along the Vegas Strip.

If you’re like me and compulsive binge eating is a problem, there are also plenty of Overeaters Anonymous (OA) meetings not far from where we’ll be. Las Vegas OA has a list.

A long-time conference issue is how women are treated. If you’re new to the event and are concerned about that, my good friend Erin Jacobs (@SecBarbie) has been running a buddy system for at least a couple years.

On her Security Socialility blog she writes:

If you are or you know someone, especially (but not only) female, who is new to the conferences or might need a friendly hand, give them this number:

+1-650-4-BACKUP

I have setup this to contact me via voice and text during the conference so I can help assist people who find themselves uncomfortable, need a friend to talk to about something that happened, are in a situation that is turning bad that need some assistance, or need some first-time attendee guidance. Anyone who reaches out will have their information kept confidential and not shared unless the individual wishes for me to speak on their behalf. If for some reason I can’t get to you personally, I will respond with a trusted helping hand to help you as much as possible.

If you’re new to all this, have no fear. The security community is a family. Drunk or sober, we look out for each other.

I’ve gotten nothing but support from the community as I’ve worked to manage my own addictions. But that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Ultimately, we have a responsibility to take care of ourselves.

Personal demons are not a product of the security community. They’re a product of being human. We all need help. But we have to help ourselves, too.

The weapons to fight your demons are all around you, no matter where you travel. You just have to use them.

DEFCON 22 Logo

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Sleep or Exercise: Which Matters More?

I’ve been trying hard of late to get my exercise regimen back on track. But I keep hitting the same wall: sleep. Specifically, I can’t get my ass out of bed at the appointed time so I keep missing my workout window.

Mood music:

For a guy who used to obsessively walk 3.5 miles a day no matter the weather or amount of rest, this is baffling. True, I am pushing my mid-40s. But really, this shit still seems harder than it should be.

I’m not a sedentary guy. I usually take the stairs instead of the elevator at work. I run up and down three flights of stairs in my house all day. Erin and I take regular walks. Hell, I climbed all the way to the top of the Bunker Hill Monument last week!

But it’s not enough.

I know what I have to do. But I have to get around this fairly new problem of sleep getting in the way. I’ve always been an early riser. But to work out first thing in the morning, I need to be up by 4 a.m., and that’s not happening. It’s as if my body is staging a sleep protest, refusing to budge before 5 a.m. The simple answer is to exercise later in the day, except that life has a habit of getting in the way.

About now the reader is saying, “For crying out loud, just do it!” I can hear one of my tough-guy friends saying, “This post is escapism and blame.” I can see all those “Your Excuse Is Invalid” memes on Facebook.

Yes, yes. I know.

I have plenty of fresh motivation to get over this hump. A lot of friends my age are engaged in some serious weight-lifting programs. I know a lot of dedicated runners and swimmers. They do it, and so can I.

What I need to figure out is how to break through that first, most stubborn wall — the urge to stay in bed.

Man asleep on barbells

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Impostor Syndrome, Part 2

I’ve been way off my game lately. My diet and exercise regimen is all over the place. I’m working my ass off at the job, but I feel like I’ve gotten little accomplished. I’m cranky a lot.

I’ve been here before. It’s a flare up of impostor syndrome.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yFAnn2j4iB0

I’ve always harbored the fear that someday people will discover I’m really not as smart and talented as they currently think I am.

I’ve had a lot of good luck in my career, surviving the rough patches, such as when I was floundering as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. Working nights wrung the editing skills out of this morning person.

I moved on to a job writing about cybersecurity and haven’t looked back. I’ve been on the board of directors for a security user group. I’ve been invited to give a lot of presentations. I’ve had a few promotions. People read my security blog and this blog and actually like what I do.

Along the way, I have moments of cold fear when I think about how far I’ve come, and I wonder when people are going to wake up and realize that I’m not even close to being as good as they say I am. True, I have my critics and they’re always happy to take me down a few pegs. I’m grateful for them, because they keep me honest. But those people who think my skills are so sharp that they invite me to speak and write and to share my work on the social networks? Surely they’ll wake up one morning to find that I’m just a fake.

I’m not alone. A lot of my friends in the security industry suffer from impostor syndrome.

I trace my current flare up to a few things:

  • My physical fitness regimen is off the rails, which effects the mental health. I could list a bunch of reasons for this, but the only thing that matters is that I have to get back on the horse and ride.
  • I’m well paid for what I do, and if I don’t get 10 projects delivered a week, I start feeling like I’m ripping off the people who put their faith in me.
  • Unlike the world of journalism, where quantity and page views are everything, my current job calls for a slower, more deliberate approach. I’m not used to that, even though it’s what I wanted. Now I have time to boost the quality but can’t seen to understand that it’s perfectly OK and even required now.
  • I just got back from vacation. Whenever I get back from a vacation, I always feel like I was gone just long enough to become irrelevant.

I’m not telling you this for pity. I’m simply taking inventory and seeing where I need to do better. It’s a skill I used to lack, and my descents were deeper and more bruising as a result.

I have a pretty good fix on what my problems are these day, and now I can address them.

Boy coming out from behind a mask

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Stripping the Drama from DEF CON

People in my industry love the word drama. The word is tossed out like Tootsie Rolls at a holiday parade. In my opinion, the word is used a bit too much, especially in the month or two before the DEF CON hacker conference in Las Vegas.

Mood music:

Each year, someone suggests there’s sexism at the conference, and someone responds by yelling “Drama!” Each year, someone complains about an overabundance of drunken debauchery and someone else cries “Drama!” This year, I saw the word floating around because some spouses have a group called H(a)ck3rWives, designed to help “spouses, kids, parents, supporters in general everywhere decode their hackers and come together.” In this case, the drama appears to be that some spouses feel a support network is needed in the first place.

Personally, I don’t see these things as drama.

If some people want to network and their common bond is that their loved ones are away at hacker conferences all the time, good for them. If it helps, more power to them. If someone sees sexism or drunken disturbances and wants them dealt with, have at it.

Most people can handle their booze at these events, and most treat the opposite sex with the appropriate respect. But there are usually one or three who cause trouble. In those cases, it’s reasonable if people complain and demand action.

Good people can and certainly will disagree with me on those points. That’s not drama, either. It’s part of a healthy discussion.

To be fair, ours is a community with many colorful personalities. When strong personalities debate and disagree, it’s easy to see the situation as dramatic, even if the issues they discuss aren’t dramatic in the true sense of the word.

I’m looking forward to DEF CON next month. I’ll network, spread the good word for my company, blog and podcast about the talks and hopefully walk away smarter than when I arrived.

Those aren’t dramatic things, but they’ll do just fine.

Comedy and Tragedy Masks on a Stage

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Gross Overreaction Still Haunts Kiera Wilmot

A year ago, I wrote about Kiera Wilmot, a student at Bartow (Florida) High School who was expelled and criminally charged for setting off an explosive after her science class volcano experiment backfired.

Mood music:

The trumped-up charges were eventually dropped, but Wilmot’s brush with the law continues to haunt her. According to civil liberties site Police State USA, the charges continue to taint Kiera’s record and impede her chances for success.

“All my charges have been dropped, but the lawyer says that it takes 5 years to clear each felony off the record,” Wilmot told the publication. She wants to be an engineer “building robots that can do tasks like surgeries or driving cars.” Here’s a young woman who was an honor student with no record of trouble. The principal described her as a “good kid” before expelling her anyway because he felt bound by the school’s zero-tolerance policy.

Suspending her might have been justified, but expelling her was over the top. The law slapping her with criminal charges for so obvious a mistake was shameful.

These are the incidents that make me lose faith in our institutions of education and law enforcement. The fear that has taken root in the aftermath of 9-11 and various school shootings has turned officials into overreactionary fools.

The year Wilmot has endured is tragic. Parties involved should atone for the injustice by helping the teen get back on her feet. I doubt they will, though. That would involve an admission of wrongdoing.

I suspect that Wilmot will achieve her dreams with hard work and determination, with no thanks to the society that should have supported her.

Kiera Wilmot