The OCD Diaries

January 29, 2013

When We Can’t Hibernate, We Become Bears

Erin recently noted that things tend to get ridiculously busy in January, during a period of winter when our bodies scream at us to slow down. On the work side we both have several big projects coming due. At school and in the Scouts, the kids’ schedules are crammed with one activity after the next.

Mood music:

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In winter, we’re not all that different from animals that hibernate. It’s hard to get out of bed when it’s frigid and dark outside. Because we humans must get up and get moving anyway, it causes us to get easily depressed, which leads to eating too much or too little. We tend to be more forgetful and we snap at each other more easily.

When you’re already given to depression, mental disorders like OCD and ADHD, and unbalanced eating, all that you suffer from gets amplified. Instead of mild depression, there’s deep depression. Things that aren’t really a big deal become huge calamities. Our responses to normal everyday pressures become exaggerated. Spouses tend to argue more. Kids tend to have more outbursts.

A friend who teaches kindergarten noted one day last week that three kids were put in timeouts and two others got sick, all at once. I chuckled, because I remember the same stuff happening when Sean and Duncan were kindergartners. Kids are simply brutal in the dead of winter. Why? Because the academics and special activities ramp up when their little brains are least able to take it.

We seem to experience similar behavior in the summer, but the difference is that activities slow down that time of year. Spring and fall are when we’re most productive and agreeable.

I don’t have any solutions to the problem. I don’t even know if what I and others have observed has any scientific research to back it up. But I do have a suggestion.

If those you work with and live with seem like jerks lately and you want to bite their heads off, take a breath and note that you’re just as bad. Then engage in small acts of kindness. Hold the doors open for people. Remember to say good morning. Smile even if you don’t feel like it.

When we do these things any time of year, we become better people. In winter, it may well be the key to our survival.

Roaring Bear

January 25, 2013

Lessons From the Hemingway Curse

I’ve always been drawn to Ernest Hemingway and his family, not because of his writings or his antics, but because of the deep stain mental illness has left on the Hemingway legacy.

Mood music:

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I remember an English teacher talking about Hemingway’s 1961 suicide. The teacher suggested Hemingway was an asshole, that he was too macho to accept that he was getting too old to seek out adventure and thus gave up. I accepted that answer for a long time, and when my best friend killed himself in 1996 the Hemingway perception colored how I dealt with my own loss.

Hemingway was an asshole for doing what he did, the teacher had suggested. Therefore, my friend was an asshole for doing what he did.

It’s too bad I saw it that way. If I knew the truth about mental illness back then, I would have had a healthier outlook on what had happened in my life. I still would have grieved, of course. But maybe I wouldn’t have been so haunted for so long. I’m not bitter about that. I ultimately learned my lessons and was able to make peace with the past. But my awareness has drawn me to other suicide cases, including those of the Hemingways.

Besides the famous author, actress Margaux Hemingway ended her life in 1996, the same year as my friend. All told, seven members of Ernest’s family have died by taking their own lives, according to CNN.

It makes sense. Depression runs in families and so can the coping tools for dealing with that depression.

Looking for resources to manage your depression? Check out our Coping with Depression, Fear and Anxiety page.

The CNN story mainly discusses the so-called Hemingway curse and how actress Mariel Hemingway, sister of Margaux and granddaughter of Ernest, has dealt with it. From the article:

Every family, even famous ones, have secrets. The Hemingways are no different. “We were, sort of, the other American family that had this horrible curse,” says Mariel Hemingway. She compared her family to the Kennedys — but the Hemingway curse, she said, is mental illness. Hemingway explores the troubled history of her family in “Running from Crazy,” a documentary that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. “Knowing that there’s so much suicide and so much mental illness in my family, I’ve always kind of been ‘running from crazy,’ worried that one day I’d wake up and be in the same position,” Mariel Hemingway, 51, said at a support group for families of suicide, as shown in the film.

Making the film must have been a liberating experience for her. By pulling all those family skeletons from the closet, she’s freed herself from some of the haunting and educated a lot of people in the process. That’s always been one of my main motivations in doing this blog.

If blogs like mine and documentaries like hers can bring a few people some peace of mind and detonate the stigmas around mental illness, it will have been worth it.

Ernest Hemingway

January 17, 2013May 10, 2020

Friends Of The Gifted Need To Learn Suicide Intervention Tactics

One thing I’ve learned over the years: Some super-smart, super-gifted, ahead-of-their-time people often battle with depression and eventually lose their war. So it was for my best friend who took his life 16 years ago. So it has been for far too many of my industry peers.

Mood music:

I’m thinking of them and for those who continue to struggle with depression daily. I’m grateful, particularly in my industry, for those who have stepped up to support those who need help.

A few years ago, one friend suggested creating a suicide intervention tactics workshop at security cons, focusing specifically on gifted tech folks who are particularly vulnerable. That idea has led to a lot of great content that has no doubt saved lives.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since starting this blog, it’s that depression and anxiety run high in the information security industry. I’ve had many discussions with people who have battled their own demons. All of them were brilliant, innovative and downright gifted.

They remind me of my long-dead friend. I often think about how his intelligence made him hyper-aware of the world around him. He had moments of extreme joy and extreme pain. You could say he knew too much to be happy.

If there’s one thing I wish I had back then, it would be the skills to see where he was headed and the tactics to help him back off the ledge.

To Amber’s point, friends and colleagues of the sufferers in our industry need to learn tactics to make a difference.

I don’t consider myself gifted, but in the last several years I’ve found tools to cope with my own depressed feelings. I’ve learned to use music, humor, writing and counseling as weapons against the dark. Medication alone is never enough. Sometimes, it makes things worse.

Those tools are essential, as are tactics we could all use to help those who can’t seem to help themselves. Putting those things on display at tech conferences (virtual and, eventually, in-person again) could be as important as the technology on display.

I’ll keep trying to do my part to make it happen.

January 14, 2013

Aaron Swartz and How to Deal With Suicide

I read many articles this weekend about the suicide of Internet prodigy and activist Aaron Swartz. Most were about how we should view his legacy in the face of charges that he used MIT’s computers to gain illegal access to millions of scholarly papers kept by JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals.

Mood music:

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Some call Swartz a hero who stood up for Internet freedoms. Others point out that he broke the law and had to be punished.

All that is beside today’s main point: The 26-year-old, co-creator of RSS and Reddit, was a tortured soul, the victim of a horrible illness many still fail to comprehend. It’s an illness I suffer from, and it claimed the life of my best friend 16-plus years ago.

Swartz, a man I never met, was open about his depression. Like other sufferers — like me — he wanted people to understand that it was a true illness, as dangerous to the body and the brain as cancer is when left unchecked.

Now he’s another tragic statistic, and those left behind have to come to terms with the nature of his death.

In the years since my friend’s death, I developed a code of conduct that allowed me to stop wallowing over that evil day in November 1996:

Don’t blame yourself; it’s pointless. No matter how many times you replay events in your mind, the fact is that it’s not your fault. For one thing, it’s impossible to get into the head of someone who is contemplating suicide. Sure, there are signs, but since we all get the blues sometimes, it’s very easy to dismiss the signs as a normal bout of depression. When someone loudly contemplates suicide, it’s usually a cry for help. When they say nothing and even appear OK, it’s usually because they’ve made their decision and are in the quiet, planning stages.
Don’t blame others; it’s equally pointless. Take it from me: Nerves in your circle of family and friends are so raw right now that it won’t take much for relationships to break apart. A week after my friend’s death I wrote a column about it, revealing what, in hindsight, was too much detail. His family was furious and most of them haven’t talked to me since. They feel I was exploiting his death to advance my writing career and get attention. What I’ve learned, and this is tough to admit, is that you’re going to have to let it go when the finger pointing starts. It’s better not to engage the other side. Nobody is in their right mind at this point, so go easy on each other. Give people space to make their errors in judgment and learn from them.
Don’t demonize the dead. When a friend takes their life, one thing that can gnaw at survivors is the notion that if they believe in Heaven and Hell, they believe those who kill themselves are doomed to the latter. I’m a devout Catholic, so you can bet your ass this one has gone through my mind. What I’ve learned, though, is that depression is a clinical disease. A person suffering from depression who then kills themselves isn’t in control of their actions, and Catholics, at least, don’t believe God punishes them for that.

Even if you don’t believe in an afterlife, you might feel angry at your loved one for intentionally leaving you just when they did. It comes to the same thing: that person was sick and couldn’t make good decisions. My practice today is to simply pray that those souls will be redeemed and that they will know peace. It’s really the best you can do.
Break the stigma. One of the friends Swartz left behind has already done something that honors him: She went on Facebook and directed people toward the American Association of Suicidology website, specifically the page on knowing the warning signs. That’s a great example of doing something to honor your friend’s memory instead of sitting around second-guessing yourself. The best thing to do now is to educate people on the disease so that sufferers can help themselves and friends and family can really be of service.
Get on with your life. Nobody will blame you for not being yourself for a while. You have, after all, just experienced one of the worst tragedies there is. But try not to let it paralyze you. Life must go on. You have to get on with your work and be there for those around you.

Life can be brutal. But it is a beautiful thing. Seize it.

Aaron Swartz

January 8, 2013

Stop Whining and Learn From Your Pain

In my early 20s, I adored the Pretty Hate Machine and Broken albums from Nine Inch Nails. I still listen to them on occasion, but for the most part I grew tired of them because all Trent Reznor’s screaming about pain, loneliness, depression and rage got old. He never told us how to go from hopelessness to wisdom and personal growth.

Mood music:

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That’s how Kerry Cohen, an author I’ve come to admire, feels about Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation. In her latest Huffington Post blog entry, Cohen explains how important that Wurtzel book was to her at a fragile time in her life:

Wurtzel named a truth for us that psychology wouldn’t touch. We were a generation of depressives, of borderlines, of personality disorders. We were Generation Empty. I loved Wurtzel for how she made me feel less alone, seen.

But Cohen reached an impasse with Wurtzel:

My editor for Loose Girl summed it up when she said, “America loves a redemption story.” We wouldn’t settle anymore for emptiness that goes nowhere. People wanted to know how to get better. … There are times I wish I could call Wurtzel on the phone and tell her how much her work meant to me. … But until she has something new to say, something that is still truly about our generation, I wish she would stop.

I’ve never read Prozac Nation. I haven’t read Cohen’s books in their entirety, either, though I’ve dug into parts of Loose Girl and Seeing Ezra. I’ve mostly become a fan of her work through her blog posts and what she shares on Facebook and Twitter. This latest post hits my core.

In my early 20s, I reveled in my depression. I filled notebooks full of poetry about my emptiness. I somehow thought it made me cool. I hit upon something that I felt “normal” people couldn’t experience. This somehow made me smarter, better. I was just stupid. I’ve searched everywhere for those notebooks. Not because I think I’ll find some brilliant spark from the past to feed my creativity today, but because I think I’d get some cheap laughs from it.

I remember going on a date in 1989 and spending the whole dinner telling the young lady about how bitter I was toward my parents and how dark I saw the world. That relationship didn’t survive the first date.

Eventually, I realized that the pain wasn’t going to send me anywhere in life unless I used it to gain a better understanding of who I was and what kind of good I was capable of. The ancient Greek scribe Aeschylus described the need to use suffering for personal growth this way:

In our sleep, pain which cannot forget

falls drop by drop upon the heart

until, in our own despair, against our will,

comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

Robert F. Kennedy, who recited that poem to a shocked and angry crowd the day MLK was assassinated, understood all too well. I’ve tried hard to take those words to heart. In this blog, I’ve tried to always explain how, in my personal experience, things get better. If all I did here was complain, this blog would go nowhere. I must always remember that.

Thanks for the reminder, Kerry.

ProzacNationBook

December 13, 2012

When Living in the Past Is Your Only Sanctuary

I had coffee with a friend and former coworker recently, and we reminisced about some of the colorful characters we’ve worked with. One person we particularly admired has suffered through a life of depression, fear and anxiety and is mostly a recluse these days.

Mood music:

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When this person does surface to talk to someone, the topic is always the old days. He carefully avoids the present because it’s so painful. Talking about the past is safer. We’ve been there. There are no strangers to deal with, no surprises. The past is etched in stone. It’s a safe cave you can hide in without worrying about the walls crashing in.

I understand why people with fear and anxiety hide in the past, because I used to do it all the time when my demons were getting the better of me.

I’ve always been a history buff, and I’ve read a ton of books on the subject, though lately I’ve been reading more music-related books. My interest is partly because I need lessons on how people in the past lived right and wrong. I want to read about the strengths someone used to make a mark on the ages and try incorporating some of that into my life.

But I’ll be honest: Those history books were a big, thick blanket I could hide under. Instead of trying to deal with the present, I’d loiter in FDR’s second-floor study in the White House (today’s Yellow Oval Room). I’d hang out in the smoke-filled rooms of Capitol Hill, enjoying a smoke of my own and watching the masters make grand bargains.

I did something similar by hiding in movies. By watching a Star Trek film, I could witness some adventure without getting shot or stabbed in the real world.

I think one of the reasons I don’t read quite as much history or watch as many science fiction films anymore is that I beat the fear and anxiety. I still have moments of anxiety, but not the fearful variety. With that fear gone, I’m more comfortable hanging out in the present and even participating in it. Good thing, too, because my work and family life leaves little time for the old ways.

True, reading a rock star biography deals with the past, too, but I also get a lot of information about how favorite songs I listen to today came about. Since I’m playing guitar again, I enjoy them even more.

I also go back to the history books on occasion. The difference is that I’m not afraid to leave the past when reading time is done. In fact, I’m usually eager to return to the present.

I’m praying hard that it’ll turn out that way for my old friend, because he deserves better.

December 10, 2012

‘Lincoln’ Captures Presidential Triumph Over Depression

Since Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln arrived in theaters, I’ve been asking myself: Is the depression issue adequately addressed?

The 16th president is a hero of mine because he showed depression sufferers how to rise above the despair and even turn it into a powerful ally. In fact, it was the subject of one of my first posts when I started this blog.

Mood music:

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Lincoln lived through horrific episodes of melancholy in an age where there were no meds to help take the edge off. Rather than succumbing to the scourge and taking his own life, though he did consider it more than once, according to Lincoln’s Melancholy by Joshua Wolf Shenk, he developed layers of coping tools that carried him through terrible periods of grief, which included the loss of two children (Willie Lincoln died in the White House barely a year into his father’s presidency) and the darkest days of the Civil War.

When I first saw previews for Lincoln, it was clear that the film would focus on the fight for the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which finally outlawed slavery. But it was unclear how much we’d see Lincoln dealing with the melancholy.

I’m happy to report that it tackled that part of Lincoln’s greatness to my satisfaction.

We see Lincoln’s difficult relationship with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. We see him putting his personal grief aside to comfort his youngest son, Tad, who still struggles with the loss of his brother. We see him standing firm in the face of heated opposition over the 13th Amendment, which many in his own circle consider a daft distraction from the business of ending the Civil War.

His coping mechanisms are on full display, especially his sense of humor and writing. We see him telling off-color stories during moments of high tension. We see him using the power of writing to rally himself and his countrymen through the obstacles ahead.

Daniel Day-Lewis really does an inspiring job capturing those strengths.

The movie isn’t perfect. Like most books and films dealing with Lincoln, the president is portrayed in an almost Christ-like manner, glossing over flaws the man certainly had.

The film shows Lincoln pushing to end slavery as a simple matter of morality when a deeper read of history shows that, at the beginning of the Civil War, he was perfectly willing to allow slavery to survive in the South under certain conditions. Keeping the Union together was his primary goal from the outset, not abolishing an evil institution. His parenting also left much to be desired, when you consider how he kept a certain distance from oldest son Robert and coddled Tad almost to the point of spoiling the boy. Meanwhile, certain civil liberties took a beating under Lincoln. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, paving the way for unlawful detentions, as one of my libertarian friends often points out.

But I can forgive Spielberg. Lincoln was an imperfect person, as we all are, but his evolution as a human being was profound and inspiring — especially his growth in tackling depression. The movie captures it well.

Go see it.

Lincoln Movie Poster

December 7, 2012

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

December 4, 2012

Five Inexpensive Christmas Gifts for the Depressed

It’s easy to find Christmas gifts that poke fun at a person’s OCD. I’ve captured some good ones and bad ones in previous posts. Less easy to find are gifts that are appropriate for a person in the grips of depression.

Why are these gifts so hard to find? One reason is that if you are suffering from depression, especially from the sad, suicidal variety, gag gifts can backfire, adding to the hurt because the recipient feels they are being mocked. All gag gifts mock, mind you, but it’s easier to see the humor when the world doesn’t look like it’s about to implode.

Another reason is that we can’t always tell a person is depressed. Sufferers can be masters at masking their feelings. It’s hard to get a gift to help a person if you don’t know they need help in the first place.

But the biggest reason is that the gifts a depressed person needs usually can’t be found in the mall or on Amazon. Sure, getting stuff can make you feel good for a short while. That’s why people run up their credit cards for retail therapy. But the good feelings won’t last long if there’s a gaping hole in your soul.

With all that in mind, I’m going to take a crack at gift suggestions that might really help the depressed soul. Despite what I said about material things, those included here can a positive, almost medicinal effect. These items are based on my personal experiences. It is not meant to be the definitive word on the subject, nor is it meant to be a one-size-fits-all list.

A HappyLight. If the root of a person’s depression is the darkness of winter, getting them a natural-spectrum light can give them a dose of springtime. The lamp blasts a room full of the kind of light you would normally get from the sun. In 30-minute intervals, the lamp has provided me with a boost.
Music. For any type of depression, few therapies are as powerful as music. In my case, massive doses of hard rock gives me immense strength and comfort. The key is to be sure of what the recipient likes, be it country, classical, jazz, etc. You can deliver this gift in multiple, inexpensive ways. One is to get some blank CDs and burn some songs on to them. If you know a person’s tastes, chances are better than average that you share those tastes and have music in your collection that can be passed on.
Homemade treats. Find out the recipient’s favorite foods and, if you have the cooking skills, make it. Homemade will always make a more personal statement than buying something from a grocery store. My wife gets that, and if someone is having a birthday, she insists on making the cake herself. Buying from a bakery is unthinkable to her except for certain situations. But be aware that a gift like this could backfire. In my case, depression has compelled me to binge eat in the past. You don’t want to enable a person’s addictive impulses. Make sure food isn’t the problem for your recipient.
Your time and attention. When a person is badly depressed, the biggest source of pain is isolation and loneliness. Visit this person often, call them and, if they’re on Facebook, check in with them daily. Don’t lecture them on how blessed they really are or what kinds of vitamins they should be taking. One of my personal peeves is when someone tries to tell me about self-help books I should read. Trust me: When you’re depressed, the only reading you crave is material to help you escape. Just show up and talk about whatever. Or, better yet, just sit there and listen to them. Let them vent without trying to make judgments.
Space. Sometimes, a depressed person just needs space. Their depression can be made worse when people bug them with suggestions on what they should do about their problems. Just as human contact can be a powerful gift, so can solitude.

The trick with give someone who is depressed a worthwhile gift is knowing what they really need. While asking them directly may be out of the question — they’re not likely to know or be willing to ask for it — pay attention to them and you’ll find inspiration.

Charlie Brown Christmas

November 8, 2012

To a Friend: Your Pride Is Killing You

A longtime friend is letting a bout of depression hold him back. He needs a helping hand but won’t ask for it because he’s too proud. This post is for him and anyone else living under the delusion that not getting help is a sign of strength.

Mood music:

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I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there many times myself. I’ve had bouts of depression that made me lose interest in everything except my addictions. In fact, in those moments the fix of a food binge, the bottle or the prescription pain pills I used to get for a bad back was all I was really interested in.

The biggest things in life — my family, friends and work — remained important to be sure, but giving my full devotion to them was just too much work. I wanted to dull the pain and then hide under a rock. I usually settled for the couch in front of the TV. I lost interest in my own hygiene, forgetting to shower for days at a time, especially in my early 20s. You were around back then and remember how my part of the house stunk to high heaven. Gross Bastard, you called me. And the label fit.

I let it kill relationships. I thought I could cure it by putting all my self worth into work, but that made me sicker and my workmanship eventually suffered.

The difference between you and me is that I didn’t quite grasp that I had depression, OCD and anxiety. I felt it all, but I didn’t see them as legitimate medical conditions. You’ve known about your condition for years but won’t do anything about it.

Why?

Because of pride.

You have this notion that getting help is a weakness and you’re too good for that. Not just help from friends. Help from doctors.

I get it. In your state of depression, motivation and interest go in the toilet. It hurts to think about getting out of your chair and retrieving them.

I just wish you could understand what I’ve learned: that you can regain control of your life and that it’s OK to accept help. You’re not taking from someone when they want to give you a hand up, you’re actually giving. When someone is able to help another person, they feel higher and happier themselves. And down the road, when they are in need, you have the chance to pay it back.

Everyone smacks into times of need. Everyone.

Of course, none of that will happen unless you get your ass off the chair and turn off your video games.

There is nothing brave, romantic or glamorous about being trapped in your miserable head. Cut the pride bullshit and do something.

I’m always here to help.

Your friend,

Bill

Chained Skeleton