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Courage in the Crosshairs

The author has been thinking a lot about courage lately. Some have told him it takes courage to write about his OCD battles. He thinks it’s more about being tired of running.

Over the weekend, I got this e-mail from an associate in the IT security industry I write about for a living:

“I’ve been reading your OCD diaries lately. This is perhaps one of the most courageous blogs on the planet and the work is stellar. Sometimes, insanity and the brilliance are intertwined. Your writing is meticulous and it’s a gift. That which the madman downs in, the mystic swims in. Same stuff. Keep swimming.”

A few people have told me it takes courage to write this blog. But I’m not so sure about that.

When I think of courage, I think of my grandfather. He was a career military man who propelled himself toward danger many times. He parachuted behind enemy lines in the hours leading up to the D-Day invasion of France in WW II. He was among those pinned down by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. He took a bullet in the leg during the Korean Conflict.

That’s courage: Putting your life on the line for the greater good when chances are better than average you’ll be coming home in a box.

I inherited a lot of things from my grandfather. I have his over-sized nose and ears. I wear a hat that was his. I like cigars. And on my desk at home I keep some of his service medals in a glass case, and I have the flag that was draped on his coffin when he died in 1996:

But I certainly am not risking my life to write this blog. I’ve never been in a firefight, and can’t be sure how I would handle myself under such circumstances. So it would be stupid for me to suggest I inherited courage from him.

When I really stop and think about it, I’d say this blog is less about courage and more about me being tired of running.

I got tired of keeping this disease to myself because of everything I’d been told about jeopardizing career and friendships by being too honest. I’ve seen too many good people go down in flames by keeping the affliction to themselves.

I just came around to realizing that when you rip your biggest skeletons from the closet and toss the bones into the sunlight, they turn to dust and you can then be free.

I’m not afraid of damaging friendships, because I’ve been open about my OCD to them all along. And it’s not like they couldn’t tell before that something was amiss.

I’m not afraid of this damaging me at work. The law protects me from discrimination. But what’s more is that I work with some great people.

Given that lack of fear, I’d have to say courage has nothing to do with it. Courage means pressing on in the face of fear.

I do think this is something God wants me to be doing. And I do see it as an act of service.

Service helps make me feel whole. And that’s reason enough to keep at it.

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The Politics of OCD Management

The author finds an unlikely tool for OCD management in politics. Specifically, watching liberal and conservative friends fight over the subject.

This isn’t a post about the politics of having OCD and getting folks at home and work to accept it. It’s about enjoyment of the political debate as a tool for sanity.

Sound odd? Well, it is. But hear me out:

I have a lot of friends who are bleeding-heart liberals. I have just as many friends who might qualify as nut-job conservatives. The common thread between them is that they are wonderful, caring people who work hard and cherish their children’s future. Their beliefs are based on what they think is right, not on selfish impulses.

I get into heated discussions with them all the time. And it’s very, very good for me. I get to focus on issues bigger than my own petty concerns. When my political beliefs are challenged, it’s great exercise for the mind.

I’m getting a lot of this kind of exercise of late, because a heated campaign is under way to fill the seat of the late Edward Kennedy.

I live in the bluest of states, and yet the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, is surging in the polls. Chances are better than average that the Democrat, Mass. Attorney General Martha Coakley, is going to lose.

She’s run an unbelievably inept campaign and it would serve her right. In fact, I’ve been undecided on who to vote for because of her. I like Brown as a person, but think his record as a state senator is overblown. I also believe the Democrats deserve more time to make their agenda work, because the Republican agenda of the last decade didn’t work out so well. That doesn’t mean I wholeheartedly embrace the Democrat agenda. I am a pro-life Catholic, after all. But I embrace the old saying of Franklin Roosevelt that what we need is action and bold experimentation. If an idea fails admit it frankly and try another.

If the Democrats fail, I’ll try another by voting for the other guy in the next election. But I’m not there yet.

On the other hand, Coakley offends my Catholic sensibilities, and that includes her handling of the priest sexual abuse crisis. As a district attorney for Middlesex County, she didn’t go nearly far enough in going after the abuse.

Who will I vote for? I’m not saying, because I don’t have to. And I can still change my mind between now and tomorrow’s election.

I consider myself a centrist. I believe the checks and balances built into the U.S. Constitution were meant to keep our policies and laws on the middle road instead of the extremes to the left and right.

I like my leaders to be pragmatic and act on reason — not ideological fever.

I vote for Democrats and Republicans, based on who I see as the strongest leader for all seasons, not just the season when their political party has the House-Senate majority. I’m a history buff with a fondness for Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan as well as Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton.

I have a saying: If you’re a liberal, conservatives can’t tell you anything. If you’re a conservative, liberals can’t tell you anything. If you’re a moderate, you can’t talk to either people. I think that when you delve too far to the left or the right, you’re on walking on the lunatic fringe.

So I tend to say things to get a political argument started between friends and family. Then I get out of the way and watch them go at it.

By listening to both sides, I get that mental exercise I crave.

Some of my best friends are right wingers. I love my father-in-law dearly, but find his brand of conservatism misguided. Some of my best friends are also liberal to the core and see Republican conspiracy everywhere. It’s fun to watch. My wife is far more liberal than I am at this point, though she’s one of the more sensible liberals :-).

The other thing I like to point out is that mental illness is a bipartisan thing. The pain strikes Democrats and Republicans. Faith is also bipartisan, though a lot of priests and ultra-conservatives will tell you otherwise.

So while we all have our disagreements, we are truly all in this together.

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Sarcasm or Gallows Humor?

It’s appropriate to start with Dilbert’s take on the topic at hand:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO1UWmRS7yc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

My wife just read my post on the Power of Sarcasm and decided to go digging for the actual definition. She’s an editor. That’s what she does.

Here’s what she found:

“Sarcasm” is “a keen or bitter taunt : a cutting gibe or rebuke often delivered in a tone of contempt or disgust” or “the use of caustic or stinging remarks or language often with inverted or ironical statement on occasion of an offense or shortcoming with intent to wound the feelings.”

She pointed out that I’m not really a bitter person, and that my jabs are playful. So why bring myself down in the gutter and suggest I’m a bad person when I’m not?

In the comments section of that post, she wrote:

Why you say the off-color remark is as important as what you say. If the intent is to show your contempt, to point out an offense, or to hurt someone, you are being sarcastic.

But if your intent is to make light of a tough situation as a release, not to wound, that seems to me to be more of a black humor: humor marked by the use of usually morbid, ironic, grotesquely comic episodes.” It may be something else altogether as well; I won’t pretend to be an expert on humor and all its vagaries. But I do sense different emotions and intents behind different humorous responses.

Sarcastic seems very mean to me (esp. in light of the definition above) and a very different thing from a gentle teasing, not meant to wound at all.

Fair point. I would definitely describe mine as a dark humor. Or Gallows humor. Sarcastic when I’m in a bad mood, perhaps.

As I said before, sarcasm is also a root of dysfunction in other parts of my family. Several of my family members are equally sarcastic, if not more so. But I sometimes get offended by it because I feel like people are laughing AT someone instead of laughing WITH them. This has produced a fair share of strain on that side of the family, and I have to claim fault on my end.

I described it as hypocrisy on my part in the last post. But if one is to take these definitions in their purest meaning, maybe I’m not being hypocritical after all.

Which means I’m now free to unleash even more sarcasm. Or dark humor.

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The Power of Sarcasm

The author explains why humor wrapped in sarcasm is one of his favorite coping tools — even though the edge of the knife can be too sharp at times.

“If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

The quote is from Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. She was 96 when she died in 1980, and I can’t help but believe that part of her longevity was her legendary sarcasm.

For me, sarcasm is a mental release that allows me to see the humor in some of life’s bigger challenges. Of course, the danger is that sarcasm can sometimes slide into outright rudeness, and I’m sure I’m guilty of that at times.

Here’s how it works:

If people in the family, office or church community are butting heads, you can easily get caught up in what one person is saying about the other. After awhile, you can grow bitter and that will compromise your ability to do your job or be the family member you should be. That’s the danger with me, anyway. But the sarcastic, gallows humor in me will instead look at those situations and find the lightheartedness of it all.

We’re all dysfunctional to some extent and we all screw up. And let’s face it: Sometimes it’s fun to watch. If you can laugh at someone’s quirks and, more importantly, laugh at your own, it’s easier to move on to other things. Easier for me, anyway.

The alternative would be for me to grow bitter to the point of incapacitation. It’s happened before, especially after I realized managing a daily newsroom at night wasn’t fun anymore. I took every criticism as a knife to the core and my workmanship slid steadily downhill. A healthier sarcastic perspective back then would have helped me through that.

I’m sarcastic toward a lot of my friends and family, especially the in-laws. The truth of the matter is that I’m almost always sarcastic toward the people I like. Most of them get it and give it back in equal measure, including my father-in-law and kid sister-in-law, who probably gets the heaviest, most ferocious dose of my brand of humor. Both brothers-in-law are regular targets as well.

I’m finding that the kid sister-in-law’s boyfriend is skilled in the art of sarcasm. At a family event this weekend, I joked to those eating a salad I made that I didn’t wash my hands first.

“You should write a blog post about why you don’t wash your hands,” he deadpanned. Avoiding hand-washing as an OCD coping tool. I like this guy.

When I’m not sarcastic, family and friends ask if I’m feeling ok. A lack of sarcasm becomes a warning sign. For normal people, this usually works in the opposite direction.

Of course, sarcasm can sometimes work against you.

If you don’t catch someone on a good day, hitting them with sarcasm does more to hurt than to lighten the mood.

Sarcasm is also a root of dysfunction in other parts of my family. Several of my family members are equally sarcastic, if not more so. But I sometimes get offended by it because I feel like people are laughing AT someone instead of laughing WITH them. This has produced a fair share of strain on that side of the family, and I have to claim fault on my end.

If you can direct sarcasm toward someone but get offended when it’s being sent in your direction, that’s hypocrisy. It’s a hypocrisy I’m sometimes guilty of.

I’m working to minimize that.

But don’t expect me to change too much. As I said, sarcasm is a release. It’s a tool that keeps me sane.

And isn’t it better for all of you if I’m  sane?

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6 Guys I Look To In Times of Trouble

This is the perfect time to write about why I’m such a history nut. I’m in a rotten mood because my office technology is on the blink, keeping me from getting things done.

People with OCD don’t just shrug off such things. We zero in on the problem like the proverbial laser beam, trying anything and everything to fix the problem until, exhausted and bewildered, we realize what we knew in the first place — that some things are beyond our control no matter how much we’d like to make it so.

Now that I’ve found my bearings and poured another cup of coffee, I’m ready to sit back and let the IT professionals do their thing.

What does all this have to do with history? Plenty.

Yesterday I wrote about all the pictures and statues of historical figures I have scattered across my desks at home and in the office. Today is about why these people are important to me.

Bottom line: The historical figures I revere all had to overcome disease, mental illness and personal tragedy through the course of their lives. I look up to them because they dealt with challenges greater than anything I will probably come across in my own lifetime. And they achieved what they achieved despite crippling personal setbacks.

I’ll stick with six examples, though there are many more:

Teddy Roosevelt was a sick kid who wasn’t expected to live a very long life. He had serious asthma and other ailments. His first wife died giving birth to his first child the same day his mother died in the same house. Yet he went on to fame as the Rough Rider and President of the United States. He wrote countless books throughout his life, went on a danger-filled journey to South America to map The River of Doubt after he was president and already in declining health.

FDR was a pampered child whose world view changed when he was crippled by polio in 1921. A lot of people would have given up right there, but he rebuilt his life, became a mentor to other polio victims and was the longest-serving president in history, dealing with war and economic calamity that could have broken the spirit of healthier leaders. Through it all, he carried on an outward cheeriness that put people at ease.

Abraham Lincoln has been covered at length in this blog. He suffered crippling depression his whole life and lost two of his four children, all in a time before anti-depressants were around.

JFK had plenty of flaws. But he achieved much for a guy who spent most of his life in bad health. He suffered searing back pain, intestinal ailments, frequent fever and he had to see two siblings die and another institutionalized before his own death.

Winston Churchill held his nation together and led it to victory over the Nazis despite a lifetime of suffering from crippling depression, which he often called his Black Dog. He also spent every waking moment in a constant buzz and smoked long cigars that I’ve tried but couldn’t handle.

Now for the most important example of all:

As mentioned before, I’m a convert to the Catholic Faith and would be nowhere today without it. Jesus appears sixth because I wanted to save the best for last.

The picture above speaks volumes to me. Here was a man who went through suffering of the most brutal kind. And he did it to give me and everyone else a second chance.

I don’t dare put myself in the same light as these individuals. I relate to what some of them went through in their lives, though, and here’s the point:

When work isn’t going the way I want or I’m going through an episode of depression or other compulsive behaviors, I can look up to the people tacked to my workspace walls and be reminded that my troubles are nothing compared to what the REALLY BIG ACHIEVERS went through.

And when my ego blows its banks, the sixth fellow on the list is there to take me down a few pegs and remind me of where I fit in the larger order of things.

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Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or less

The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a devoted fan of hard rock and metal music [See How Metal Saved Me]. I’ve found that the music helps me to release whatever negative thoughts I may have at the time. And so I thought I’d share some with a little help from Youtube.

Just don’t play ’em all at once, as the space-time continuum that binds the universe together might rupture, killing us all.

1. Cheap Trick: Woke Up With A Monster.

I love this band, and since we are often the monster we awake to, it’s entirely appropriate:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTgQ4cx5ik&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

2. Sixx A.M.: Girl With Golden Eyes

This entire album — a soundtrack to Nikki Sixx’s book “The Heroin Diaries,” is perfect for folks like us. I like this song because it’s the part of the story where the addict really starts to hit bottom. And as we all know, hitting bottom is the first step in recovery:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvcZcKNDjRo&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

3. Nine Inch Nails: Gave Up

This song speaks to the hopelessness we often feel. And in an unrelated but interesting aside, this video was shot at the residence of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, where Tate and four others were murdered by the Manson Family in 1969 (NIN’s “Broken” and “Downward Spiral” albums were recorded in the house, which Trent Reznor converted into a studio):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpw1SwJRBI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

4. Metallica: The Unnamed Feeling

The video is pretty self-explanatory:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lhZQ_4Pg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

5. Sixx A.M.: Life is Beautiful

As Sixx says at the end, “When you’ve lost it all, that’s when you realize that life is beautiful.”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJDDxHIaaVk&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

6. The Decemberists: Sons and Daughters

I love this song because it really nails the feeling you get when the black cloud finally lifts:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5H8DwJI0uA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

7. Avett Brothers: The Battle of Love and Hate

We all struggle internally with love and hate, and this song ends with Hate realizing that maybe — just maybe — he was being an idiot. Love, meanwhile, is patient and kind throughout:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7xUZkKd58c&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

8. P.O.D.: Alive

This song was big shortly after 9-11-01. It resonated with those who were starting to come out of the shock and despair of the attacks, at least in the sense that people came to appreciate their own lives a little more than before:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOESyEljmFE&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

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Scaring the People in Your Life

The author is hearing from a lot of old friends shocked to read about his past. Thing is, basket cases are good at hiding their craziness in public.

To most of my family, the stories I tell in previous posts aren’t all that surprising. They were there. My in-laws may not have known everything that was going on back in the day, but they saw my quirks.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:78iMIaSjeVlUoNa7rehPOU]

Even at work, my quirks were easy to see. It surfaced in the form of my over-intensity on deadline; my habit of hovering over page designers; my overbearing nature toward the reporters I managed on the night shift.

But I was much better at keeping it together — on the surface, at least — around most friends back then.

Which brings me to another truth about people with mental illness and addictions: We do most of our suffering and self destructing in private.

There’s a scene in a “West Wing” episode where Leo McGarry, recovering alcoholic and chief of staff to the fictional President Bartlet, tells someone: “I don’t get drunk in front of people, I get drunk alone.” I ate alone. And I ran through my darkest, most obsessive-compulsive thinking alone. Most of the time, the two went hand in hand.

But there were times in my life where I hid it well.

As a student at North Shore Community College and later at Salem State College, I was really coming into my own in terms of my look and attitude. I played up the long-hair and metal image, stayed thin through bouts of starvation and read a lot of books so I could talk about them and appear smart.

That’s not to say I was walking around with fake skin. I was who I was at the time. In many ways I’m still the same guy. It’s just that I waited till the door to my room was closed and locked before I let the Devil out.

Despite what I’ve written about being the crazy-ass guy in the newsroom, I’ve been pretty good a lot of the time at putting on a calm, cool face, especially in more recent years. As I was diving deeper and deeper into the food addiction to dull the unpleasantness of going through therapy, I was being prolific as hell at work, writing a ton of breaking news and doing so with a smile.

At one point, a boss at the time marveled that I was so relaxed and zen-like for a guy who had just spent 12 hours covering a big news event. I laughed hard at that. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but zen-like was a new one.

On the drive home that day, I ordered $35 worth of junk in a nearby fast-food drive-thru and downed the contents of the four bags by the time I got home.

I was also pretty good at hiding my depression. Part of that is because my brand of depression has never been the suicidal variety that essentially makes the sufferer close down. Mine was more of a brooding depression in which I internalized my feelings and withdrew as often as I could. But on the job, I pushed all those feelings into the proper compartment and went on with life.

There’s light at the end of this tale. The therapy, medication, Spiritual awakening and loss of fear have gone far in making me the calm, zen-like guy on the inside as well as outside. I still carry the restlessness of OCD, but I manage it all better and don’t let the condition get in the way of the precious present nearly as much as before.

To those who knew me in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Don’t worry. I’m basically the same guy you knew back then.

The difference is that the man inside has gotten a lot better at being the man on the surface.

But make no mistake: I still have my bad days. I am human, after all.

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Fear Factor

In this installment, the author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This morning I led a meeting of Over-eaters Anonymous, a task that included standing before a room of people for 30 minutes to tell my story of OCD, addiction and recovery.

It was my third time “qualifying” at an OA meeting this past year. Meanwhile, I did a fair amount of public speaking for my day job as senior editor of CSO Magazine. I sat on panels at security conferences and did solo presentations in front of various information security groups around the country.

Five or so years ago, the notion of me getting up to speak in front of people would have been laughable.

I was too busy hiding in my cage of fear to do such things. Fear will rob you blind, forcing you to avoid life and retreat into the sinister world of addiction.

Breaking free of it was a gift from God. But it took a long time to figure out how to unwrap it and realize my potential.

For me, fear was one of the many byproducts of OCD, something that went hand in hand with anxiety. It kept me away from parties. It scared me out of traveling. I turned down a lot of living in favor of lying in my bedroom watching TV. There are a couple examples in particular that I’m not proud of.

1991

One summer night I was hanging with two friends in front of Kelly’s Roast Beef, a popular eatery on Revere Beach. As we started walking the mile back to my house, we noticed we were being followed by some 15 punks. It was clear they were looking for trouble. I panicked and ran to a nearby bar. As I looked back, I couldn’t see my friends.

The punks had circled them and started kicking and punching their guts in. I called the police and the beatings ended quickly, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I ran away. Worse, it marked the end of my walking along the beach at night for many years to come.

It was a huge fear-inflicted injustice. I grew up on that beach and loved the place. I walked its entire length daily. It gave me peace and clarity. And I allowed some punks to scare me away.

2001

A week after the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

There are smaller examples in between and in the years after, but those are two of the more vivid memories.

Fear also fueled the binge eating and kept me from standing up for things that were right in the family and workplace. It was better to keep my trap shut, I thought. To do otherwise would put my job in danger or have me blackballed.

Then there was the fear of loss I wrote about a few blog posts back — fear that if I didn’t overprotect my kids I might lose them to some imagined beast; that if I spoke my mind during a spousal spat my wife might walk out on me. In hindsight, these were foolish ideas. But in the grip of fear, you think this way and act on it even though you really know better.

When I began getting treatment for the OCD the fear actually accelerated for a while. If a toe went a little numb I’d think I was suffering from a blood clot. A headache would leave me wondering if a tumor was growing inside my skull. A pain in the chest became fear of a heart attack.

I can’t remember when the fear finally began to lift. I think it was in early 2007, shortly after I began taking Prozac. Once the medicine untangled the chemical imbalances in the brain, situations I had feared suddenly seemed manageable. It was pretty weird, actually. I didn’t know what to do with this new feeling. Or maybe it was the year before, when I converted to the Catholic Faith and increasingly let God into my life. When you have God on your side, there’s really nothing to fear, right?

Then little milestones came along. There was a business trip to California that would have consumed me with worry a few years before. There was the first time giving a presentation in front of a room full of security people who were almost certainly smarter than me. The computer holding my PowerPoint presentation went on the fritz and I was forced to present sans slides. I told the audience that I was just going to wing it and that broke the ice.

Today, I look for opportunities to give talks in front of crowded rooms. I have work to do on my speaking skills, but I want more. The more I do, the more my confidence grows and the smoother and more organized the presentations get.

I look for opportunities to fly as well. And though I work hard on the business at hand, I ALWAYS make a point of building in a day to go out and explore, especially if there’s a piece of history to see up close. I want to see it all. Staring at the hotel room TV will no longer do.

Sometimes I worry that the fear will return and I’ll again retreat to my old cage. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though, for one simple reason — the world has been opened up to me. I’ve experienced too much joy these last couple years to go back to the way I was.

I couldn’t go back if I tried. Not that I would want to try.

To be clear, I still worry about things. But I don’t let it shut down the rest of my life. Instead of being engulfed, I can put the concern in its proper mental compartment and move along with my life.

There will be difficulties ahead, I’m sure. That’s life. But I feel more ready to deal with what may come than I’ve ever been before.

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Humor Is The Best Consolation Prize

“I’d rather be funny than happy.” — Henry Rollins

In his book, “Lincoln’s Melancholy,” author Joshua Wolf Shenk notes how Abraham Lincoln often kept himself going in the face of blistering mental depression through humor. The President enjoyed telling and hearing a good story, especially a funny story, and often a salty one at that.

Mood music:

Indeed, it’s no coincidence that some of the funniest people in history suffered from OCD, depression and other disorders of the mind, including the late Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald. Heck, Buchwald even announced his own passing in a pre-recorded obituary video with these words: “Hi. I’m Art Buchwald, and I just died.”

In my own fight against OCD, depression and a binge eating disorder, I have discovered what these great men understood: Sometimes, when you’re staring Hell in the face, it’s best to laugh and move on.

You’ve read my tales of childhood woe in past posts. Well, to remind myself that I’m not a special case, I keep in my office a tube of “Instant Happy Childhood Memories,” something a friend found in a joke shop five years ago. It reminds me that the wholesome picture of an idyllic childhood is a myth for most people. Just about everyone faces moments of adversity in their youth. It’s part of the natural flow of life. Nothing to see here. Move along.

I’ve found that there’s joy in sarcastic humor, as long as the person on the receiving end knows it’s all in jest and that I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t like them.

My father-in-law and sisters-in-law — especially the youngest, whom I long ago branded with the nickname “Blondie” — understand this, and give it back in good measure. Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, was a master at sarcasm. In her home off Dupont Circle in Washington DC, she kept a pillow on the couch with the following line sewn across it: “If you don’t have anything nice to say about anybody, come sit by me.”

Instead of taking myself too seriously, I’ve found it’s better to laugh at myself. After all, there’s a lot to laugh about: The oversized ears, feet and nose, the bald head, the bobbing walk, the hands that swirl like windmills when I get excitable about something I’m writing.

Noting that I used to be a skinny metal head with hair halfway down by back, I like to tell people that I’m now bald and all that hair is ON my back. But my wife doesn’t mind, so neither do I.

Other reasons worth laughing at myself: Even though the OCD makes me go batty whenever something on my desk is moved out of place, I still insist on cluttering the desk with historical, political and humorous trinkets. It’s pretty much impossible NOT to knock something out of place, and it’s usually done by my own hand. At home we keep all the living room quilts on a rack in the corner. Naturally they’ll keep getting pulled down by my 6-and-8 year-old boys. Yet there’s often the cyclical process of them pulling them down, me putting them back and them pulling them down again. Knowing their old man has some quirks of personality, I wouldn’t be surprised if they do it on purpose for a laugh. I wouldn’t blame them, either. I’d do the same thing.

I’ve also been known to engage in the time-honored OCD habit of taking my laptop in and out of my briefcase several times before leaving the office. If you don’t find that funny, there’s something wrong with you.

Then there’s the challenge of family dysfunction. I’ve mentioned that, too, in previous posts, but the truth is that we ALL have some family weirdness that keeps us off-balance. There’s always the crazy uncle, the drunk sibling, the hot-tempered and hyper-critical parent. I’ve been all of the above at various points in time, though over time I like to think I’ve become more easygoing with my kids. You’ll have to ask them.

A friend of mine once summed up the best way to handle difficult family dealings with this line: “Put the fun back in dysfunctional.” Good advice.

 

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Why Lincoln’s Melancholy Is A Must Read

I’ve always been something of a history nerd and am especially drawn to stories about those who have achieved greatness despite the crippling impact of mental illness. Winston Churchill was a sufferer (he called it his Black Dog). Theodore Roosevelt suffered from bipolar disorder. And Abraham Lincoln’s depression is well documented.

I just finished reading an excellent book on the latter: “Lincoln’s Melancholy” by Joshua Wolf Shenk. For anyone who has struggled with mental illness, it’s a must read because Shenk goes beyond simply detailing Lincoln’s episodes of depression and outlines the coping mechanisms he developed to get through the fog. In fact, the author argues, those very coping mechanisms fueled Lincoln’s greatness.

On the promotional website for the book, the author answers the question of how Lincoln was able to convert depression into greatness and how his coping tools came into play:

“First of all, in dealing with his depression head on — addressing it, staring it in the eye, grappling with it, and getting a hold of it within himself — Lincoln did work that turned out to be enormously character building and valuable to him. In one sense, the muscles he developed over a lifetime of suffering prepared him for the challenges that he faced in his presidency. Second, he had a tendency to see the dark truths of a situation, and he drew on this powerfully in his rhetoric and his actions. Experiments have shown that people who suffer from depression also exhibit something called “depressive realism” — and this applies to Lincoln. Finally, the depths of emotion that he explored as a result of his depression contributed to a deep creative capacity — as a writer and thinker. In his first inaugural address, he urged that the country would be well again when touched by “the better angels of our nature.” He didn’t say that that the worse angels would be killed or that they would go away. To the contrary, the image suggests that selves, and nations, are multi-faceted, capable of better and prone to worse, and locked in a struggle. It’s justifiably a famous phrase, and it reaches deep into the psyche because it reflects an experience that every human being knows intuitively, one of division and conflict, broken-ness and harmony, suffering and reward. These were ideas that Lincoln lived and struggled with much of his life.”

Check it out.