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8 Things You Should Know About This Blog

Many family members have recently started reading this blog. Given the semi-autobiographical nature of this beast, misunderstandings have caused friction with a couple people along the way. I’ve written what follows in hopes of clarifying a few things.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/wovx8GK3WDo

  • I don’t come here to complain about life. Parts of the blog are dark. Other parts are chock-full of my blunt opinions. Some misinterpret that as unhappiness on my part. That’s not the case. Everyone has ups and downs, and I’ve dealt with it in ways right and wrong. I went from being depressed and anxious all the time to confident and mostly happy, and I share both sides of the coin with readers for two reasons: to clarify things for myself and to tell readers that they’re never beyond repair and never alone.
  • If I seem depressed or angry in a post, it doesn’t mean that I am. Some of you see a post where I recount an episode of depression or a day where my addictive impulses got the better of me and assume that I’m in crisis. Some will read a post I wrote a year ago and think that’s my current state of mind. In reality, these posts are a snapshot in time. Maybe I’m blue at the time of writing, but I share the mood for the sake of a lesson I’ve learned about life along the way — that the bad moods pass and down periods make way for up periods. Usually when you read a post, I’ve long since moved on.
  • I don’t share darker aspects of family history to take shots at people. To share lessons I’ve learned in life, I have to go into detail about where I’ve been, how I got the way I was during the darker times and how I found a better place. If I tell the story of a painful period involving family, it’s not to hurt people. It’s simply to share how certain events shaped me.
  • I don’t claim to be 100 percent accurate 100 percent of the time. When sharing an experience, I never claim it’s gospel. I simply recall things to the best of my memory. But no two memories are the same, and if you ask four people to tell you what they remember, you’ll hear four slightly different versions of the same tale. That’s especially true when recalling childhood memories. If you see something that doesn’t ring true, tell me. In every case, I’m going for the truth.
  • I’m much harder on myself than I will ever be on anyone else. A lot of this blog is about the mistakes I’ve made in life and what I’ve learned from them. I’ve been told repeatedly that I’m too hard on myself, but I disagree. Part of the blog is about keeping myself honest and keeping myself on a positive trajectory. A merciless self-inventory from time to time is essential.
  • “Why is he doing this now?” One family member asked that question, and here’s my answer: I started the blog so that I could use writing to put my experiences in perspective. It’s been helpful to me, and in the process many people have told me it’s helped them as well. We all need a dose of perspective, so I try to do my part. It’s also not all about me. I accept guest posts, and that includes those from family members. I’ll run posts that fit this blog regardless of how I’m portrayed, because, as I said, everyone’s memory captures things a little differently. For a more complete picture of what this blog is about, read this.
  • I’m not here trying to pass myself off as an expert on life. For a better explanation of that, go here.
  • People don’t dissect the blog in search of faults the way you think they do. Whenever an author writes something autobiographical, someone claims they were inaccurately portrayed and that everyone will read about them and think the worst. The truth is that since everyone has dysfunction in their families, no one is going to read this sort of blog and pass judgement.

We’re all imperfect people with flaws. Most people are too wrapped up in their own problems to judge those mentioned here based on anything I write.

My hope is that they can read about a tough family situation and see how the lessons apply in their own lives.

If any of this bothers you, call me, email me or hit me up on Facebook.

With love,
Bill

family fight

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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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So You Wanna Blog About Your Demons

Quite a few people are starting to share stories about their mental health challenges and other demons. Some ponder if they should start blogging about it. Having written such a blog for almost five years now, here’s my take.

Mood music:

If you feel you have reached the right point in your journey to start sharing, then do it. If nothing else, it will help you keep things in perspective. I always feel better after I’ve torn a few skeletons from my closet and tossed them to the light.

Once you expose them, they seem a lot smaller. Chances are you will also touch a few people who need to know they’re not alone; that they’re dealing with the stuff that makes us all human. They need to see proof that they are not freaks.

If you are still at the beginning of figuring out your issues and you’re in that confused state where you don’t know up from down, it might be better to start writing just for yourself. Fill notebooks but don’t share yet. Wait until you reach a point in recovery where you’re ready to come out. Then you can take what you wrote when emotions were still raw and put them out there along with fresh perspective of where you’ve been since then.

When I started this blog, I wanted to break stigmas and make people more comfortable outing their own demons. Not many people were doing it back then. Today, many are taking the leap. Whether I’ve influenced any of it is for others to determine. All I know is that I’m happy to see it.

Whatever you decide to do, know that I admire you and gain extra strength from the experiences you already share.

Godspeed and good luck.

skeleton closet dance

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The Year That Will Be: 15 Goals

It turns out I have a lot of goals for 2014. Here’s a list.

  1. Wring all the sloppiness from my eating program.
  2. Find a cheap elliptical machine and use it for at least 30 minutes a day.
  3. Earn my way off the blood pressure pills.
  4. Get the first-ever security section of Akamai.com up and running.
  5. Learn how to play one new song a week on guitar.
  6. Start recording the original music I’ve been working on.
  7. Figure out a plan to make a book version of The OCD Diaries. Or, more accurately, a series of books.
  8. Spend less time looking at my phone and more time reading old-fashioned books.
  9. Maybe make another attempt at reconciling with estranged family members.
  10. Stop using the e-cigs that have been a crutch since I stopped smoking.
  11. Be more patient with people, especially my children.
  12. Get to more security conferences (it’s a job requirement, anyway) and find a way to sneak Erin to some of them. [I won’t fit in your suitcase! -Ed.]
  13. Drink less coffee and more green tea.
  14. Get closer to God (I drifted a bit in 2013).
  15. Walk Revere Beach at least once a month.

I seriously doubt I’ll end 2014 will all of these goals achieved. But if I make serious progress on some of them, I’ll declare victory.

Calendar 2014 Wallpaper

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You Can’t Fight Depression with Unicorns and Rainbows

In recent days I’ve watched an interesting online discussion about depression and bipolar disorder. One one side is author and speaker Natasha Tracy, whose writing pulls no punches about the dark side of such maladies. On the other side is a blogger named Sarah Ryan. She believes the approach to addressing the subject should be uplifting and sunny.

The truth is somewhere in between, in my opinion. But I must say that the sunshine part is useless if we don’t pick apart the darkness first.

Mood music:

Taking a shot at Tracy and her work, Sarah suggests a new voice is needed. Her beef: Tracy’s articles are dark to the point of ridiculous. She writes:

I am struck by the negativity that many major health-care websites are perpetuating, such as healthyplace.com, healthline.com, and answers.com. They are advertising Ms. Tracy as an expert on those sites, so if that is the case, I’m sure the vast majority of her readers will assume they can trust her message and treat it as fact-based. Here’s the rub: I find her message to be wrought with negativity, misinformation, and deeply internalized social stigma.

Sarah hopes to be a “much needed counter balance to this sort of negativity.” Sarah’s blogging is part of a larger project called “Find More Out There,” designed to explore the realities of bipolar disorder via film and other media.

As a long-time sufferer of depression and OCD, I appreciate what she’s doing. Sufferers do need hope, and in my own blogging I try to outline all the light I’ve found at the other side of the darkness.

But I also respect Tracy’s work. Sure she leans more toward the dark side. The titles she uses demonstrate that:

  • How Are You? – I’m Not Fine, I’m Bipolar
  • Can You Die From Bipolar Disorder? (*Saving you more time, the answer is yes)
  • More Ways to Die from Bipolar Disorder
  • Trying Bipolar Therapy You Don’t Believe In – Mindfulness Meditation
  • I’m Too Tired to Keep Fighting Bipolar Disorder

Sarah uses those titles as proof Tracy is too negative.

But here’s the thing: Depression and all the mental disorders that feed it are a nightmare. When you’re in the thick of it, all seems lost. It sucks. People need to say it sucks. My healing — an ongoing process with plenty of setbacks and advances — couldn’t begin until I peeled back every layer of my fear, anxiety and depression. That took years.

For the sufferer to find tools to get better, they have to know they’re not alone. The old cliché that misery loves company is true. When you realize you’re in good company, it becomes easier to stand up and do something about it.

But once the sufferer has that epiphany, they need guidance to start building the tools of recovery. Sarah’s project holds promise there.

I’d love to see these two voices collaborate on something. The fruits of such an effort could be powerful.

unicorn pooping a rainbow

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The OCD Diaries, Four Years Later

This weekend marks four years since I woke up in a funk and started this blog on a whim, figuring I’d at least feel better if I spilled my guts. It did the trick. But in the years since that day, it has become something far bigger than I could have imagined at the time.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/zQzNBTukO0w

I didn’t expect so many people to connect with the writing. I figured it would be no big deal to people, because we all have our stories — filled with happiness, sadness, love, heartbreak and other forms of adversity. I would just be one in a chorus of online voices sharing my emotions and experiences.

But people did connect, especially work colleagues and others in my profession. I thought my soul venting might raise eyebrows at work, but I got nothing but support. The reaction from the information security crowd was particularly stunning to me. People who intimidated me with their outward toughness started sharing back. They became more than just people I did business with. The friendships I’ve gained through the sharing is a huge gift this blog has given me.

The reaction from family and friends was shock, because I had succeeded in carrying on with a stoic, easy-going exterior. I couldn’t believe people saw me as easygoing. Apparently I could have found success as an actor.

The sharing has allowed me to repair some relationships that were broken. In other cases, it made matters worse. But there was no turning back.

My wife was often bewildered by what I wrote, because I was sharing past experiences I hadn’t shared with her up to that point. That led to us doing a lot of work on our relationship, and that’s the absolute greatest gift this blog has given me. As part of that, the blog has become one of the things we do together as a couple: I do the writing, Erin does the editing and bullshit detecting. When something I write doesn’t ring true, she pushes me in the proper direction.

Admittedly, I’ve expanded the subject matter a lot in the last year and a half. I didn’t originally plan to opine about current events here, but I realized a couple things after a while:

  • If I were to write about nothing but my own flaws, I’d risk being defined by them and nothing else.
  • This blog should be about more than just my own personal growth. Part of one’s growth comes from their dealings with the people and events taking place around them. By that measurement, current events became fair game.

In finding the path through adversity, there are many lessons to be had by exploring how we all talk to each other.

I’ve also focused more on the lighter side of life, because few things get us through the fog like humor. That has made this experiment a lot more fun for me. I hope it has worked for all of you, too.

Here’s to many more years of staring adversity in the face and making it blink — becoming better on our own and together.

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All I Want for Christmas Is to Get Through It

So here we are at that time of year when everyone is supposed to be happy and glowing with Christmas spirit. As for me? This time of year really fucks with me.

Mood music:

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This has traditionally been a time of year when bad things have happened to me. The suicide of a friend at the start of one holiday season. The death of sibling at the end of another. Several childhood hospitalizations in between. An emotional meltdown during the 2004 season.

For the definitive story on why the Christmas season throws me for a loop, read one of my first posts on this blog, “An OCD Christmas.”

The holidays have been far kinder to me in more recent years, though not without its occasional bumps. There’s the seasonal depression that throws me off balance every year and the struggle that comes with being a recovering binge eater at a time of year when my drug of choice is all around me.

My story isn’t special. It’s pretty typical, actually. I’ve talked to many people who struggle at the holidays for a variety of similar reasons.

All is not bleak, however. Over the years, I’ve worked hard on changing my Christmas attitude for the better. Some examples:

  • I work to keep my eye on the big picture, specifically the fact that this season is truly about celebrating the birth of Christ. Since I’m a believer, that one has kept me increasingly grounded.
  • Prozac and Wellbutrin go a long way in keeping my brain out of the dark, ice-encrusted gutter.
  • Family and friends have always been a crucial ingredient in seeing the joy of the season. It just took a long time for me to appreciate that.
  • If more bad things happen during the holidays, I know that family and friends are always there to soften the blow.
  • I have a thicker skin than I did back when holiday pressure was beating me into rubble.

And with that, I enter the 2013 holiday season full of hope that this year will be better than previous years.

Bad Santa

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The OCD Diaries in Book Form

Erin and I are making plans for 2013. One is to turn The OCD Diaries into book form.

Mood music:

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Almost since the beginning of this blog, readers have suggested that I do an OCD Diaries book. Flattering as that suggestion is, I sort of balked at the notion. This began as a memoir of sorts, and that might have been worth making a book out of. But the subject matter quickly evolved, and I’ve felt that wrapping the whole thing into one book would be cumbersome to the reader.

But Friday I got an idea: I could do a series of books &mdash smaller, bite-sized works we could make available in print and digital formats. I could set them up to have the feel and reading experience of the Devotionals you see offered in various religious communities. The print editions would be pocket-sized so you could pull ’em out as needed.

So far, we’re planning topics to include:

  • Dealing with OCD, depression and other disorders
  • Living through addiction
  • Dealing with grief
  • Spirituality
  • A survival guide for children and parents
  • A survival guide for relationships
  • Life with Crohn’s Disease and how the related coping tools apply to a multitude of health challenges
  • A book of humor, featuring selections from humor writers I admire

    • The common element tying it all together will be pieces of my back story, what I’ve experienced and how I’ve learned to manage the challenges.

    These will not be books telling you how you should live. I’m the last guy on Earth who should be advising you on that. They will simply be stories of what I’ve done and why, with lots of resource material so you can seek out the professional experts.

    Onward.

    Pile of Books

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THE OCD DIARIES, Three Years Later

Three 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:

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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 from it.

At some point, that bullshit became unacceptable to me.

I got sick of hiding. I decided that the only way to beat my demons was to push them out into the light, so everyone could see how ugly they were and how badly they smelled. That would make them weaker and me stronger. So I started this blog as a stigma-busting exercise.

Then 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 isn’t always pleasant. There are many mornings when 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. I’ve lost friends over things I’ve written. When you write all your feelings down without a filter, you’re inevitably going to make someone angry. But I’ve made many, many friends through this endeavor as well.

Earlier this year, I seriously considered killing the blog because of the strain it had put on some relationships. A lot of you told me to keep it going and I have. But Erin signed on to help, and together we made big changes.

We redesigned the blog and moved it from WordPress.com to its own domain. I expanded the subject matter beyond OCD and addiction to include commentary on current events as they relate to our mental state.

We built a Facebook page and broadened the discussion there. If you haven’t been there yet, please go and like it.

We started using Spotify and Soundcloud for the mood music I put atop most posts. We had our kick-ass designer, Andy Robinson, change up the banner to reflect the broadening subject matter. And we’ve built a resources section that continues to expand.

The biggest change for the blog this past year — making it into a partnership with my wife — has meant the world to me. I love that this is something we do together.

We’re starting to plan for 2013, and I’m pretty stoked about what’s on tap.

Thanks for reading.

OCD Banner

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A Tale of Two C-Words

I’ve always hated the C-word. I’m from Revere, Mass., and I can cuss with the best of ’em. But that word has always crossed a line for me. I don’t even like it when someone throws it out there with the “see you next Tuesday” innuendo. I also hate the other C-word: cancer. This is a post about both.

Mood music:
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The latter C-word is the one everyone fears. I’ve known many cancer patients, especially those with breast cancer. I know a lot of women who beat it. I know people who are battling it right now, including a family member. And I’ve known women who put up a good fight but lost in the end.

I have a ton of respect for people who talk openly about their diseases. There’s my friend Penny Richards, who wrote a book about her experience called My Breast Cancer Sally. There’s my father-in-law’s mom, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease today but beat uterine cancer decades ago. There’s an aunt who’s going through chemo right now.

And there’s Xeni Jardin, founding partner and co-editor of the award-winning blog Boing Boing. Jardin has been chronicling her cancer fight daily on as @xeni, and I’ve come to admire her for it.

Lately, some jackasses have been calling her names on Twitter, including that other C-word. It seems they don’t want to hear about every nasty detail of her breast cancer battle. Yesterday she called a few of them out, posting this:

Jardin Tweets

I don’t know what makes people like this spout off the way they do. Maybe they’re lonely, depressed and plagued by a variety of insecurities. Everyone has a story of pain that shapes the people they become.

Some tell their story with grace, unflinchingly sharing every embarrassing detail so that a few people might be educated in case they have to go through the same thing someday. That’s what my friend Penny did, and that’s what Jardin is doing now.

My aunt uses a lot of humor to share her experience on Facebook. She’s always been tough and strong, with a biting sense of humor. That’s what’s going to get her through this. And by sharing some of it online, a few people might learn something.

There’s courage in the face of adversity, as these women demonstrate. And then there are those assclowns who stare at adversity, get scared and try to make themselves feel better by tweeting obscenities at people who don’t deserve it.

In high school, I was bullied, and in turn, to make myself feel better, I bullied kids who were weaker than me. I’m still ashamed about that and have made amends with some of them. Experiencing bullying as the victim and abuser has given me a decent ability to spot weaklings. People who use Twitter to tear into other people are pretty fucking weak. I hope these guys see the light and become better people later on.

For now, I’ll just leave them with this message from Jardin:

Jardin's answer

Stay classy, folks.