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Measuring Anxiety and Depression Through Color and Stages

As I work to keep my mind and body in check during the pandemic, two older tools have proven useful: the Anxiety Rainbow and the Five Stages of Depression. The idea is that by measuring what you’re going through, you can take steps to manage those feelings and stay in the game.*

This isn’t a scientific breakdown, of course. It’s simply how I’ve learned to process what I feel.

Mood Music:

The Five Colors of the Anxiety Rainbow

To get a better handle on anxiety, I try to label the different kinds of anxiousness based on the first five colors of Newton’s primary color system:

  • Red. This is the worst of the worst, the type of anxiety that makes you feel like you’re at death’s door. I used to suffer from this one all the time: a cold sweat breaking out on my forehead, my heart pounding so violently that I thought it would break bones, my feet tingling and a constant feeling of having to throw up. Fear is the trigger for this one, the kind of fear that made me not want to go places, take risks or live life in general.
    Remedies: For me, Prozac has been a very effective weapon against red anxiety, as has my faith and, more recently, meditation.
  • Orange. Fear plays a big role in this anxiety as well, but unlike red, orange is usually rooted in something stressful that is really happening in your life. You could be fighting a serious medical issue and worrying about losing the fight. You could be having financial trouble that results in routine stress but the anxiety magnifies it to monstrous proportions.
    Remedies: Medication has helped here, too, as has reconstituting my exercise regimen.
  • Yellow. This anxiety is usually triggered by a lot of sustained stress at work or home. Maybe your marriage has hit a rough patch or your job is riding on the success or failure of a huge project. To get through it, your body pumps more adrenaline than you need, and you get the overwhelmed feeling that keeps you from seeing the order of work items and their level of completion. The news business is a perfect place to experience this because you face daily deadlines and a tongue lashing from your bosses if a competitor gets a big story instead of you. I don’t experience that today, but when I worked for newspapers, yellow anxiety was always with me.
    Remedies: Therapy, medicine, a heart-to-heart talk with the boss and, if necessary, a job or even a career change have all helped me. I made the career change in 2004. The medicine and therapy followed.
  • Green. This anxiety appears when the less-frequent stresses spark up. I recall one day six years ago when I was already ramped up after spending an evening at the hospital holding vigil while my father faced emergency surgery that ultimately didn’t happen. The plumber was coming to install a new dishwasher and to pound my mind into submission, I went on a chore spree. Then my cell phone died for good, and I had to spend the afternoon replacing it. The latter two events are problems we’re lucky to have, since the alternative is being too broke to afford these things. But it sent the day on a trajectory I hadn’t anticipated.
    Remedies: The only cure for this one is to reach the end of the day and go to bed.
  • Blue. This is a small, sustained level of anxiety so slight that you usually don’t see it for what it is. It’s generally a byproduct of depression. In my case, blue anxiety shows itself in the winter, when a lack of daylight sends me into blue moods.
    Remedies: Activity helps me the most with blue anxiety. Writing helps a lot, as does work.

5 Stages of Depression: Like Grief, But Different

There are plenty of articles out there about the so-called five stages of grief. Based on my experiences in that department, I find the writings mostly accurate and valuable.

I also found that these stages convert nicely to describe the course of my depressions.

  1. Denial and isolation. Things start to go wrong, but you’re not immediately aware of them. Your short-term memory starts to slip, you become disorganized, and you protest when those who love and know you best suggest you may be heading for an episode. You respond by clamming up and ignoring friends when they ask you to have coffee. You spend a lot more time on the couch.
  2. Anger. After too many days in denial, you start to realize you’re slipping into depression. This makes you angry, and you start taking it out on those around you. Your self-worth begins to sink, and you start to feel like you can’t do anything right. This leads to more anger, self-loathing, and self-pity.
  3. Bargaining. During grief, this is the stage where a person repeatedly goes over the what-ifs: what if the loved one had gotten medical attention sooner, what if you’d recognized the problem for what is was, and so on. With depression, the bargaining works a bit differently: You play the blame game with the world around you. You’re depressed because of work. You’re depressed because of a disagreeable family member. If the depression is really bad, you blame anyone and anything but the disease within your own brain.
  4. Melancholy. With grief, the fourth stage is depression. Within depression itself, the fourth stage is melancholy, at least in my experience. A deep sadness and hopelessness take hold in your gut after too many successive days of feeling like shit. It becomes hard to do most basic daily tasks.
  5. Acceptance. After a while, you realize you have a few choices. The most extreme choice is suicide. I’ve never seriously considered it, but I know people who have and, sadly, gone through with it. Another choice is to start doing things to emerge from the depression. For me, that involves talking to people and writing to get the feelings off my chest. The other step is to re-embrace coping tools. It’s not like flipping a switch; it’s more like rebooting a computer. It takes time to start using your coping tools effectively again and more time for them to make a difference. But acceptance is a start.

With COVID-19, I’m at acceptance now and I’m grateful for it.

* While I’ve written about these tools before, they’re often used together so I’ve aggregated them into one post.

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Channeling Freddie Mercury’s Work Ethic

I liked the 2018 Queen biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody,” but one thing about it bothered me: It left out the part of Freddie Mercury’s life that inspires me as much as the music itself — his descent into illness and how, the weaker he got, the harder he worked.

In interviews, the surviving members of Queen recount how Freddie, barely able to stand up, continued to slave away on new music and videos. Guitarist Brian May tells of how he worried Freddie wouldn’t be able to handle the vocals for “The Show Must Go On” off the “Innuendo” album. Freddie, he explained, said “fuck it,” downed a vodka and nailed it:

The last video he did for that album was for “These Are the Days of Our Lives,” and you can see how frail and in pain he was:

The last song he ever recorded was “Mother Love.” The band has noted that in that period, Freddie was close to the end. During the recording he had to stop because he couldn’t do anymore. He planned to finish it but never did. That’s why May sang the final verses.

There have been times in my life where things have felt too hard, when staying in bed seemed the better option. Depression and anxiety makes you feel like that a lot.

But then I’d think of Freddie toiling away, getting out of bed and working. And I would get up and go to work.

We all experience diversity. We all have our deeply ingrained pain — scars of the past and present.

Many of us have grown fresh scars while dealing with life in a pandemic with a gut-wrenching dose of street violence thrown in.

I have plenty of role models who inspire my “stay the course” attitude: Lincoln, Winston Churchill, and FDR come to mind.

But lately, with a global health crisis fueling the things that make life toughest right now, it’s Freddie who is cheering me forward.

Two images of Queen front man Freddie Mercury: one with his cat and one of him in a blue suit
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Midlife Crisis in a Pandemic

Erin and I are big fans of the Netflix series “The Crown.” The other night we watched an episode called “Moondust” and it hit me where I currently live.

The episode is set during the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and shows Prince Philip (played by Tobias Menzies) grimly obsessed. The scale of human achievement has him in awe — and re-evaluating his life.

Mood Music:

The Duke of Edinburgh — as portrayed in this dramatization, anyway — is tortured throughout the series over the career he surrendered to be consort to Queen Elizabeth. He’s an adventurer who often must cast passions aside to carry out his royal function. Watching astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin pull off one of mankind’s ultimate achievements ignites a profound midlife crisis in him and he dives deep into his mind for meaning.

Prince Philip (played by Tobias Menzies)

Spoiler alert: Prince Philip ultimately realizes one of his greatest problems isn’t a lack of adventure and moonshot-level achievement but of faith.

I can’t say I’m having a midlife crisis in the conventional sense. I’m grateful for the career I’ve built and have had plenty of adventure along the way. Aging doesn’t bother me. As I push 50, I often marvel that I’ve gotten this far, given past health problems.

But like pretty much anyone reading this, I’m going on two months of pandemic lockdown and often feel like an aging dinosaur whose life is passing him by. There’s no rationale for it. Yet as I spend most days at home, I feel caged, grateful as I am to be with my family — kind of like Philip locked up in his palace.

During this time, as good as my career has been, I fixate a lot on missteps along the way, what I’ve failed to accomplish so far and where I’m headed. I’m reflecting on the man I am overall — how well or not so well I’ve practiced my faith, how I’ve conducted myself as a parent and spouse (not always so well) and what my kindness level toward others has been (not very high).

This is not a self-flaying exercise. It’s simply where I am right now. I intend to use the lessons to better myself, something we all need to do sometimes.

I turn 50 in three months, and the self-critique was probably going to happen anyway. Current circumstances forced the introspection early.

In “Moondust” Philip finds his way through the crisis.

I’ll keep pushing myself toward a more positive evolution.

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3 Chilling Books to Help Us Face COVID-19

In my cybersecurity career, I’ve learned it’s best to prepare for any scenario, no matter how scary or improbable. The current pandemic is certainly the former and was considered the latter by many people even a few short weeks ago.

I’m no fan of needless alarm and believe fear is an inconsistent teacher. But to truly prepare for whatever may come, one must peer into uncomfortable truths. Then we can adapt and, from there, thrive.

Recently I’ve read three books that present stark, sobering scenarios and offer lessons to help us face down COVID-19.

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry

This first book is all about the science and politics of a pandemic. Barry paints a terrifying picture of the 1918–1920 Spanish Flu pandemic. He digs into the history of medicine itself, explores the myriad ways governments and communities failed to take the proper steps to contain the contagion and, most importantly, explores the heroes and medical advancements that came about during and after the event.

I see us making a lot of the same mistakes amid COVID-19 — mixed messages from government officials, lack of preparedness and people who waited too long to take it seriously. But I also see us doing a lot of things better, particularly in the social distancing department.

Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes
by Richard A. Clarke  and R.P. Eddy

Warnings covers pandemics and other potentially unthinkable events involving terrorism, AI run afoul and cyber warfare.

As the authors write:

In Greek mythology Cassandra foresaw calamities, but was cursed by the gods to be ignored. Modern-day Cassandras clearly predicted the disasters of Katrina, Fukushima, the Great Recession, the rise of ISIS, and many more. Like the mythological Cassandra, they were ignored. There are others right now warning of impending disasters, but how do we know which warnings are likely to be right?

The book starts by outlining a method to separate the real Cassandras from tin-hat hyperbole. It then spotlights experts who, at the time the book was written, had warned of future disasters involving everything from artificial intelligence to bio-hacking and, yes, deadly contagions and crippling economic contractions.

None of the people in this book fit the crazy alarmist criteria. All were highly experienced in their fields with rational reputations. We ignore the Cassandras at our peril.

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age
by David E. Sanger

The Perfect Weapon covers cyber warfare, including the Stuxnet malware used to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, North Korea’s attack against Sony over a Seth Rogan movie and Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election. It’s a favorite because I remember writing about these events as a journalist; now they’re part of an epic history.

Since Sanger writes for The New York Times, its review of the book is pretty self-serving. But having read the book, I find it aligns with what’s delivered:

The great value of The Perfect Weapon is less in its specific policy prescriptions than in its being the most comprehensive, readable source of information and insight about the policy quandaries that modern information technology and its destructive potential have spawned.

One thing I can tell you from my day job: Some of the bad guys outlined in this book are currently taking advantage of COVID-19 — targeting the VPNs, videoconferencing platforms like Zoom and messaging applications companies now rely on.

Business leaders can ground themselves in facts to steer their companies with using the publicly available content my company has been producing on the subject.

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Zoom: Security Problem or Social Lifeline?

One thing I’ve learned from a career in the information security industry is that any big global event has security implications — elections, hurricanes, earthquakes, matters of war and peace, you name it.

The dots that connect infosec to COVID-19 were apparent from the beginning. I saw the virus becoming the main preoccupation among attendees at the RSA Conference — the last in-person event I attended before all hell broke loose.

Since then, it’s been the main concern among clients my company serves. (It bears repeating that I’m grateful to be doing work that matters during this crisis.)

As we all hunker down and work from home, videoconferencing has become a front-and-center security challenge. Malicious hackers have set their sights on these platforms to cause disruption and steal our personal data.

Amid this, Zoom has become the poster child for the technology’s security holes. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has addressed the problems — vulnerabilities that enable such things as “Zoombombing,” when intruders hijack video calls and post hate speech and pornography.

“‘If we mess up again, it’s done,’ I thought a lot last night,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

There has been a rising chorus of security professionals warning people not to use Zoom, especially for business meetings. There are many other, more secure options for videoconferencing, they say. There’s some validity in that. I’ve also seen reports of similar security holes in other video platforms. That’s a vulnerability management issue corporate security teams must stay on top of.

But for the larger population, I don’t see Zoom going away, nor should it. Yuan is right — his company needs to get a handle on this. But there will never be 100 percent security. There never is with anything.

I also don’t believe the security challenges should diminish our gratitude for what has become a critical lifeline during the pandemic.

Personally, Zoom has allowed me to stay connected to friends, family and industry peers. Without it, I can’t say for certain that I’d be managing my emotions as well as I have. I’ve even made new connections that I’ll be learning from long after this crisis passes.

I suspect many of you could say the same.

My takeaway: Keep using Zoom. Just be mindful of the security risks and take the necessary precautions. Some people I collaborate with in my day job have offered some useful advice.

It’s also worth noting that some of the smartest security minds on Earth continue to use Zoom for things like virtual happy hours. If they still feel safe using it, so do I.

I’ll end with some perspective from my friend Dave Kennedy, founder of Binary Defense and TrustedSec, along with Amit Serper, VP of security strategy and principal security researcher at Cybereason, and Russ Handorf, Ph.D., principal threat intelligence hacker at White Ops.

Together they have written about concrete security steps all users can take. I recommend you read it all. As they note in the article:

The Internet, and especially infosec twitter is full of hot takes and attempts to generate sensational headlines and alarmist news items. It’s important to remember that “not all that glitters is gold”. Vulnerabilities exist in many programs and no piece of code is immune to such issues. Not every vulnerability or exposure is critical and creates an unmitigated or dangerous risk. Knowing what your threat is and applying careful thought to threat modeling is a crucial part of understanding the problem and determining its true effects.

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Day 23: How I Try to Stay Sane

It has now been three solid weeks since I’ve been in my office. I miss:

  • Leaving the house every day to go somewhere before dawn
  • Walking Boston’s North End, wharves, markets and common
  • Having face-to-face interaction with colleagues

But I’m fighting the good fight. Here are some things getting me through the doldrums.

Mood Music (in memory of Adam Schlesinger, dead of COVID-19):

  • Keeping my health program going, maintaining weight loss and taking daily walks around the neighborhood and wooded hills behind our house.
  • Drinking lots of coffee to stay alert (the house is well stocked with my beloved Death Wish blend).
  • Reading print and audio books. In a possibly ill-advised move, I spent a free Audible credit on John Barry’s The Great Influenza. I’m trying to learn ways forward by studying our history.
  • Taking naps, which has become an important tool for breaking up the days, which can get intense between work and the claustrophobic feelings that come with distancing.
  • Keeping in touch with friends via video hangouts, including last weekend’s session with these nutjobs:
  • Being with my family. Though we frequently drive each other crazy, I’m grateful to be together with Erin and the kids and am amazed at how the boys have been able to keep up with their classwork by video.
  • Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and BritBox have been a godsend. We’re watching a lot of Star Trek, Battlestar Gallactica, Call the Midwife and Midsommer Murders.
  • Sleeping more. Though I continue to be an early riser, I’m taking advantage of the lack of commute to sleep an extra hour each night.

What are you doing to stave off the crazies?

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3 Thoughts for 30 Days

The past three weeks have been surreal, like existing inside Salvadore Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” painting. If the U.S. government’s plan holds, we’ll live in this world for another 30 days at least.

How do we get through it?

I have three thoughts on that.

Mood Music:

1. Leave Predictions to the Experts

Peruse Facebook and you’ll see a lot of people clutching straws, slicing and dicing numbers for signs that the COVID-19 death rate will be low, and sharing charts that predict when cases will peak and drop. I’ve done it, too. It’s not helpful.

All we can control is the present. All we can do is be there for family and friends, get some exercise and do our work (if we can). To do that, we have to…

2. Accept Reality and Adapt

The government estimates that 100,000–240,000 people will die. The lower number happens only if we do everything perfectly, but either way there will be many deaths. We don’t know who will die. We don’t know how long we’ll shelter in place. If we fixate on how unreal all this seems, our despair will build.

My approach is admittedly fatalistic on the surface: I’m just assuming we’ll be in this fight for a long time. I take nothing for granted — my job, my health, my ability to avoid episodes of depression. Losing ground in these areas is all within the realm of possibility.

That sounds bleak, but there is a positive: By accepting that things are and will remain bad for some time and that anything can happen, I can adapt and focus on what’s in front of me — and what’s in front of me is pretty good.

In the face of the current crisis, we are already seeing humanity’s ability to adapt: we’re keeping business and learning running remotely, repurposing plant operations to churn out medical gear and moving from lost hospitality jobs to those that are in demand — grocery stores and medical facilities, for example.

To adapt is to survive and thrive.

3. Learn from History

This is the craziest thing many of us have experienced in our lifetimes, and the memes telling us that we have it easy — that all we have to do is sit on the couch and watch TV — ring hollow. We have to keep our families, jobs and finances going, after all. But there are shreds of truth in those memes, particularly on two points:

  • Our parents and grandparents lived through The Great Depression and WWII. They emerged stronger.
  • People survived the Spanish Flu a hundred years ago, at a time when there were no antibiotics, no 24-hour news to keep us informed and none of the comforts we take for granted today.

History gives us perspective. In fact, we’re already drawing on what our elders did to get through the present.

As we stock our pantries with enough food to last a few months, it’s hard not to think about our grandparents and how they struggled to keep well stocked.

It’s hard to look around us and not think of black-and-white images from the Spanish Flu — people in masks, keeping their distance.

This will only get harder as the weeks pass. We’re going to hear a lot of bad news along the way.

What we do now can make us stronger and heal some older societal wounds. Call me a naive optimist, but I believe it because I’m a history buff who has studied the past.

I’ll end with this wisdom from CNBC’s Ron Insana:

It seems extremely important to remember that there are things that are truly unprecedented and new and those that are, however tragically, new to us.

Yes, of course, there are elements of this tragedy, now playing out, that are truly unprecedented. The speed of the economic shutdown, the emptiness of major cities and a few other realities with which we must come to terms.

Other aspects are just new to us. The 1918 flu required “social distancing”…. 

For our parents, or grandparents, World War II, by itself, raged on for four long years.

We haven’t yet sat still for four weeks.

We’re being asked to sit on a couch and watch TV. Come on America. We got this.

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When the Best OCD Management Tools Fail (and What to Do About It)

Admission: Despite all the training and tools I’ve accumulated to manage clinical OCD over the years, the demons still run over me in spectacular ways on occasion. Yesterday was one of those days.

Mood Music:

Things I’ve learned about OCD management:

  • Practice mindfulness through meditation
  • Push back thought distortions — the kind associated with something like impostor syndrome.
  • Take walks
  • Prayer (as part of that first one)

Sometimes, though, my passions run so hot that I flat-out forget to pick up those tools.

In recent weeks, my work has involved producing a lot of written guidance for businesses trying to maintain security as workforces go remote. I’ve taken the task close to heart because it’s one small way I can do my part to get society through this, aside from the physical distancing. Also: It’s my job.

But when my OCD runs hot, my patience grows threadbare. I want to get content out quickly. It’s the old newsman in me. Which can be at odds with another truth: When dealing with technological guidance, the more painfully rigorous the process, the better.

Yesterday, I realized that my obsessive-compulsive nature was trying to circumvent that process, and I suspect it made life difficult for a couple of my colleagues. To them, I apologize.

The good news: I caught myself, with gentle pushback from a couple people. Now I’m going to step back a little today and pick those tools back up.

This isn’t meant as a public self-flaying exercise. It’s a message for everyone working through these times with OCD, anxiety, depression and other mental disorders:

  • You’re not alone.
  • You’re not stupid or weak.
  • Health management of any kind is a titanic task in times like these.
  • Yes, past generations have weathered trying times (The Great Depression and WWII come to mind), but individuals who did great things along the way still failed from time to time.
  • Beating ourselves up — something I excel at — is worse than useless.

When we have bad moments, let’s take a breath, step back, dust off and get back to work.

That’s what I’m going to do.

But first, a nap. That’s a good OCD management tool, too.

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COVID-19 Gratitude 3: Seeing My InfoSec Friends Fight the Bad Guys

The pandemic has kept me and a lot of friends in the information security industry busy, as attackers try to cash in on the hysteria over COVID-19. Watching friends in the industry come together to do their part has been a powerful shot in the arm for me.

We are truly in this together.

Mood Music:

A couple quick examples.

The COVID-19 CTI League, for cyber threat intelligence. This group spans more than 40 countries and includes professionals in senior positions at such major companies as Microsoft and Amazon:

One of four initial managers of the effort, Marc Rogers, said the top priority would be working to combat hacks against medical facilities and other frontline responders to the pandemic. It is already working on hacks of health organizations.

Also key is the defense of communication networks and services that have become essential as more people work from home, said Rogers, head of security at the long-running hacking conference Def Con and a vice president at security company Okta Inc.

—Joseph Menn, writing for Reuters

Cyber Volunteers 19 (CV19). This group formed specifically to target threats to healthcare facilities:

Cybercriminals are doing all they can to exploit the fear and confusion that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought with it. This exploitation does not stop at the hospital, medical facility, or healthcare service entrance. Staying on top of their cybersecurity game might not be the highest priority within those organizations right now, but it is nonetheless vital. It only takes one successful ransomware attack to have a life and death impact on patient care potentially….

One newly formed group of information security professionals, including company CISOs, penetration testers, security researchers, and more, have vowed to do all they can to help provide cybersecurity support to healthcare services across the U.K. and Europe.

—Davey Winder, writing for Forbes

These efforts are additional examples of how the current crisis has brought out the best in humanity.

When my spirits dim and waves of anxiety wash over me in these difficult days, seeing things like this give me the strength to keep showing up.

Rock on, friends.

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Those Walls Closing In? You’re Not Crazy

For all my writing about being positive, throwing myself into work and taking care of myself, I’d be lying if I told you I had it together all day, every day. Being stuck inside — even when breaking it up with walks and hikes — is taking a toll. And we’re only a couple weeks into this.

Mood Music:

The last three days I’ve experienced frequent waves of crankiness. I get more impatient with my family, scowl whenever blue skies give way to overcast ones and feel like my skeleton is trying to rip itself out from beneath skin that doesn’t seem to fit quite right.

The waves pass and then I’m fine, but it makes me wonder what I’ll be like after another two, three or five weeks of this.

I’m not depressed. Depression is unmistakable to me, removing most of my motivation and filling my skull with fog that leaves me unable to connect the dots. Instead I remain focused and driven. That’s despite being on a much lower dosage of antidepressants than I’ve had in years.

No, in a world that’s now anything but normal, I think what I’m feeling is … normal.

I mention this because some of you may also feel the walls closing in. Surely some of you are feeling grim. All the Facebook memes about how our grandparents suffered worse in the Great Depression and WWII won’t change what we feel.

And that’s OK. When the unease overtakes you, allow it. Then keep showing up — for family and friends, for work, for community.

Even if much of that has to be on a video screen or chat window for now.