Posted on

To the Anxious This Election Day

Many of you fear what will happen in the days, weeks and months following this election. You’ve already been in a long depression, fed by dread about civil unrest and a million political and policy implications.

There are Biden and Trump voters among you — sick inside over what might happen if the winner is the guy you opposed.

You feel unhinged about all the yelling back and forth on Facebook and Twitter — a lot of people on there say some crazy shit — and what you see in the media. It seems like every newspaper and TV news show is yelling at you with opinions over facts. Some of you get that reaction from CNN, MSN and the New York Times; others from Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and New York Post.

Whichever political side you’re on, you fear violence in your cities and neighborhoods.

As you nurture these worries, the continuing depressive effect of the pandemic hangs over you like a blanket that rapidly alternates between being soaked and on fire.

I feel it, too — the anxiety, the depression, the anger, the uncertainly.

But I still feel hope. The overreaching part of that hope is the possibility that the worst won’t happen and November 3 will pass us by the way Y2K did at midnight in 2000.

The realistic side of that hope is the knowledge that we’ve fallen into the abyss many times and many of us managed to crawl out of it each time. We’ve seen darkness but the daylight has always followed.

I can’t predict what the coming period will bring. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let it push me into a corner.

And I will continue to show up.

I trust many of you are of the same mindset. I’ll keep praying for those who aren’t so sure and believe they won’t be able to hang on.

Be well and be safe.

Mood Music:







	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Gripped by COVID-19 Fear? Look to Cancer Survivors’ Coping Tools
	


			

			
				"The Scream" by Edvard Munch			
		

	
	

		

I’ve spent a lot of time here chronicling efforts to keep fear from rendering myself and others inert. This morning, an article in The New York Times captured it from the vantage point of people living with cancer. 





There’s much to unpack in this narrative by Susan Gubar, distinguished emerita professor of English at Indiana University who has battled ovarian cancer since 2008.





Her storytelling and personal reflections are not to be missed. Read it all. But for the sake of some quick takeaways, I’ve distilled it into the bullets below.





Mood Music:













Gubar sets the stage by describing things cancer patients have to worry about daily in a world teeming with contagions and how steps that are standard operating procedure for them are the very things that still seem weird for the rest of us who now must do these things:





Having survived months or years of living intimately with the mortal threat of cancer, the members of my cancer support group — who now connect via email — manage to carry on while keeping as calm as possible during the current health crisis. Not fully resistant to bouts of contagious terror, we nevertheless find coping mechanisms.





We know that fear can be debilitating, but it can also be self-preserving. The chronic patients in my support group cultivate vigilant fear: They use their trepidation to do everything they can to extend their survival without being capsized into despair, hysteria or paralysis. One of us picks up her shopping wearing Nitrile gloves, just as she did when in chemotherapy. Upon returning home, she swabs what she has bought with a disinfecting wipe.





Gubar describes the usefulness of fear as the trigger to make people take the necessary safety precautions while acknowledging that fear unchecked will grind people to rubble. To combat that and maintain a degree of mental health, she describes some of what cancer patients have put in their toolboxes. 





The ultimate value is that these tools help distract people from their fears, even if only for a little while. Routines and challenges allow them something they can exert control over. These are not new by any stretch, but the the solace they bring illustrates their continued value. They include:





  • Breathing or stretching
  • An intriguing task to accomplish
  • Baking/cooking
  • Nature walks
  • Knitting
  • Volunteering for a cause or organization: food banks, for example
  • Practicing a musical instrument
  • Painting





There are many more I could add to the list, and it’s important to acknowledge that if fear has pushed someone into depression, the motivation to do any of these things can ebb.





But when confronted with disease and other threats, it’s good to have these lists lying around.





Wishing you all peace and strength, amid cancer, COVID-19 and everything else that threatens our well-being.





Painting by Jon Han based on Edvard Munch's "The Scream" 
Image by Jon Han






	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Finding Meaning in a COVID-19 War Footing
	


			

			
							
		

	
	

		

Each morning, as part of my job, I scan the big daily papers for cybersecurity news so we can put them into a digest to help chief security officers (CISOs) communicate the important stuff to top executives. This includes reading DealBook, a business-oriented newsletter from The New York Times. Reading it this morning brought out something I didn’t expect.





Mood Music:













This morning’s digest led with “What a ‘Wartime’ Economy Looks Like,” a rundown of all the actions the government and private sector are taking to approach the COVID-19 pandemic like a war. Said Kenneth Rogoff, Harvard economist and former Chief Economist for the International Monetary Fund:





The whole point of having a sound government balance sheet is to be able to go all out in situations like this, which is tantamount to a war.
Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Public Policy and Economics, Harvard University





Reading this energized me. 





My reaction seemed odd at first, since the write-up was anything but a call to arms. It was just an emotionless rundown of information.





But this morning I awoke feeling grim. Right before bed the night before I had made the colossal mistake of ignoring my own advice of limiting news and social media intake. Erin chided me about it and I got snippy. Once you get sucked into a mounting pile of doom on the internet, pulling away is like  trying to rip out a nail that’s gone through your foot.





So I met the dawn feeling that things were as bad as they could get, or that they were certainly headed that way.





Then I saw the DealBook article. 





It didn’t convert my gloom into sunshine, but it reminded me of the larger purpose and how, to use the very old but still applicable cliché, we’re all in this together. This is indeed war, and we all have an opportunity to save lives and turn the tide of battle, even against a virus that couldn’t care less about borders, culture, creed, skin color or economic standing.





Social distancing sucks after a while. The damage to the global economy is going to suck in a multitude of ways. But all is not lost. We have much to gain, even if we have no clue what that is yet.





Rock on, fellow soldiers.

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Of Fear and Duct Tape
	


	
	

		
I was anxious, jumpy, and panicky when I was younger, fear making me do the damnedest things. My sister loves to repeat the story of one of my more embarrassing freak-outs. It used to piss me off, but now I can sit back and laugh with everyone else.


To that end, let’s review the morning a hurricane was coming and I completely lost it.


Mood music:


https://youtu.be/sxdmw4tJJ1Y


First, some history.


Before I got my OCD under control, I was always full of fear and anxiety. It robbed me of a life that could have been better lived. I hid indoors a lot. I favored the fantasy of TV over the real world. And when the weather got hairy, I overreacted in ways that are more amusing in hindsight.


I blame the Blizzard of 1978 for my overreaction. When you’re eight years old and you watch the Atlantic Ocean rip apart a beach wall and head straight for your house, bad things go through your mind and they tend to stay there. Those things are helped along when the media compares every new storm to come along with that blizzard.


In August 1991, the news was full of reports about a military coup in Russia, which was scary because that meant the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev. He would be back in power before the week was out, but take the early hours of that crisis and mix it with reports that a hurricane called Bob was coming straight at us, and here’s what you get:


Me running around the house with duct tape, slathering reams of it on every window I could find.


I ran into my sister’s basement bedroom and proceeded to tape her window. One of her friends was sleeping over and got to see me in all my crazy glory.


“Get up, a hurricane is coming!” I bellowed. Stacey and her friend remained in the bed, not a care in the world.


“Come on, you idiots!” I yelled. “This ain’t no fucking Hurricane Gloria.”


Hurricane Gloria hit Massachusetts in 1985. It was supposed to be a devastating event, but it passed over us with more of a whimper than a bang. Hurricane Bob was going to be much worse, the weather people were telling us. And, of course, they started comparing the expected storm surge with that of the Blizzard of 1978.


Panic engulfed me.


Hurricane Bob turned out to be almost as anti-climactic as Gloria, but that Halloween a much more devastating storm hit and flooded out the neighborhood almost as badly as in 1978. Ironically, ours was one of the only houses not to get flooded.


Man's face covered in duct tape

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Turning Mental Disorder into a Superpower
	


			

			
							
		

	
	

		
Instead of fighting some mental disorders, such as OCD or ADHD, picture yourself accepting and even embracing them. Then learn to use your disorder to your advantage.


It’s kind of like Luke Skywalker learning to use and control the Force instead of it controlling him, or Superman learning to control his super-senses.


Mood music:


http://youtu.be/KFr3ih6Xu_8?list=PLsa4SxpfFe_q8QcwjC3kru7fW9y8U0Rm1


This won’t work for every disorder, of course. Some are more serious than others, like PTSD and schizophrenia. But Edward (Ned) Hallowell, psychiatrist and co-author of Driven to Distraction and Delivered from Distraction, has advocated for years that some disorders can be an advantage, if approached correctly.


In my battle with my own demons, it’s an approach that works.


I’m not the only one. A few years back a friend told me,  “Dr. Hallowell shaped a lot of my perceptions about ADHD and how to live with it rather than fighting it.”


Hallowell has written about mental disorder being the stuff legends are made of. The thinking is that you have to be a bit crazy or off-balance to do the things that change who we are and how we live. He often uses ADHD as an example, but it’s also true of people with OCD, like Harrison Ford, Howie Mandel, and the late Joey Ramone.


Early on in my efforts to get control of my life, one of my biggest struggles was that I didn’t want to completely rid myself of the OCD. I knew that I owed some of my career successes to the disorder. It drove me hard to be better than average. I needed that kick in the ass because being smart didn’t come naturally to me. I had to work at it and do my homework.


There was a destructive dark side, of course. When stuck in overdrive, the OCD would leave me with anxiety attacks that raised my fear level and drove me deep into my addictive pursuits. That in turn left me on the couch all the time, a pile of waste.


My challenge became learning to develop what Hallowell calls a set of brakes to slow down my disorder when I needed to.


My deepening faith has helped considerably, along with the 12 Steps of Recovery, therapy, changes in diet and, finally, medication.


You could say those are the things my brakes are made of.


I still need a lot of work and the dark side of my OCD still fights constantly with the light, but I’ve come to see the OCD as a close friend. Like a lot of close friends, there are days I want to hug it and days I want to launch my boot between its legs.


But I am in a happier place than I used to be, so it’s a trade-off I’m willing to accept, even if gets me into trouble sometimes.


BiPolar by EddieTheYeti


“Bipolar” by EddieTheYeti

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
It’s Not How Far You Have to Go, It’s How Far You’ve Come
	


	
	

		
No matter how much we’ve grown, no matter how far we’ve come, we insist on beating ourselves over the strides we have yet to achieve.


When it comes to self-loathing over one’s vulnerabilities, I’m about the best there is. But I’ve worked hard to break myself of that, because the truth is that I have come a long way since the days when I was owned by my OCD, anxiety, fears and dark impulses.


Do those things still get the better of me? Absolutely. But I’ve found that the more I dwell on it, the longer it takes me to grow into something better.


Mood music:




I used to let myself plunge into days of depression and self-hating every time I made a mistake at work. I binge-ate my way to 280 pounds, and I would let my brain spin for weeks over every possible worst-case scenario for the same reason.


As a kid, I bullied other kids even as I was getting bullied, because finding kids that were seemingly weaker made me feel better about myself.


Thankfully, I’m in better control of myself and my actions than I used to be, though the darker impulses still get the better of me occasionally. I still beat myself over mistakes, which makes the step forward slower. I still give in to laziness when life seems too hard. I still judge other people when I don’t really know them.


But I keep those impulses in check a lot more often than not. When I’m feeling down, I try to celebrate that fact.


Efforts at personal evolution are a life-long thing. The work doesn’t end until we’re dead.


Best to focus on living the best way we can.


baby elephant climbing a steep hill

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Account Theft: The Worst That Could Happen Wasn’t Much
	


	
	

		
Because I’m a security writer by profession, one of my biggest fears is that online thieves will suck my bank account dry. I’ve seen it happen to friends and family, and I know how violated they felt. I’ve written too many articles about people I don’t know being victimized.


So when it finally happened to me, I was surprised by my muted, almost calm response.


Mood music:


http://youtu.be/iJ3aVCvM0JY


When I signed in to the family account, I was perplexed to find a few hundred dollars less than I had budgeted. The second I called up the account activity, I knew.


Six transactions in a row, all from the same morning, for $50 apiece, going to Steampowered.com, a well-known entertainment and gaming site. No one in this house uses it, so it instantly raised my suspicion. A few years ago, before learning to cope with my demons, my response would have been panic and rage. I would have visions of the family living on the streets, destitute, with nowhere to go. I would entertain the idea of hunting down the thief and plunging a knife into their chest a few hundred times, and I’d be unable to focus on anything else.


Of course, I’d never actually attack someone that way, and family and friends would keep us off the streets if it really came to that, which it wouldn’t have.


But when the obsessed mind spins beyond control, the victim views all the worst-case scenarios as reality.


Here’s what actually happened:


    

  1. When I saw the suspicious activity, I called the bank.
    2. 

  2. The bank immediately canceled my card and arranged to send me a new one.
    3. 

  3. I went to the bank and went over the last month’s transactions with them in an effort to trace the point when someone successfully penetrated the account. I signed paperwork to get my stolen funds restored.
    4. 



Within 20 minutes, I had done what was needed and went on with life.


I’m not perfect, by any means. I still entertained the idea of finding the thief and turning the tables. I still cussed up a storm for being inconvenienced.


But I’m grateful for the ability not to go over the rails as my younger self would have.


In recent years, particularly in moments like this, I’ve developed a game called “What’s the worst that can happen?” I’ll picture a bad scenario and play out the absolute worst things that could happen from there. In the end, the answer is usually not much. For this incident, the worst-case scenario was that the account would run dry and all the scheduled bill payments would fail. Then I would have been running up the credit card for handle current expenses.


Those thoughts fizzled pretty quickly, though. I knew the bank would replace the missing funds and I knew I was fortunate to have the resources to keep paying for expenses.


I also knew that I wasn’t a special snowflake. People are robbed this way every day. It’s become a fact of life and banking protocols have changed in response.


The worst that could happen? Nothing really, save for the inconvenience of a trip to the bank.


Before online banking, we all had to do that anyway.


Computer keyboard with a shadowed hand hovering over it

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
An Anxiety Attack
	


	
	

		
Friday afternoon I didn’t feel right. It was as if an anvil had been strapped to my chest. Breathing was labored. My face had that pins-and-needles sensation. I had to use the bathroom a couple times in short sequence. I’m pretty sure it was an anxiety attack.


Mood music:




I used to get them all the time, and overcoming them has been a central theme of this blog. I’ve largely controlled the attacks with Prozac and Wellbutrin.


Truth is, before Friday I can’t remember the last time I experienced one. That it came on with such force was more than a little distressing.


I don’t have to think too hard to figure out where it came from. I’ve been under a lot of stress. I’ve been doing a lot of driving the kids around. There are appointments everywhere on the calendar I look. My sleep is erratic. As great as work is going, I’m managing the endgame for a huge project I’ve been working on since early June and much is at stake.


All good things, but stressful nonetheless.


Friday the attack started while Erin and I were sitting in the accountant’s office, where we were getting our taxes done. The appointment was taking longer than expected, and we had to pick the kids up from school. I worried about the traffic and then fretted about having to go right back out to pick up trophies for a Cub Scout awards ceremony. I was thinking about things I wanted to do Saturday night, worrying about all the different ways those plans could be derailed.


It’s also February, when I start worrying about bad weather and family crises getting in the way of the biggest security conference of the year. Last year I was driven to distraction by that very worry, though that was more low-level anxiety, not an outright attack.


I have some work to do, untangling the various emotions and putting my coping tools to effective use. Back when these attacks were a twice-weekly problem I didn’t have the tools I have now. I’m also much better aware of the symptoms and at zeroing in on the triggers.


That’s something to be thankful for, and I am.


Like the rest of my demons, this is a life-long adversary to be kept in check. And so it will be.


punch

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Downworthy: The Answer to All Those Stupid Headlines
	


	
	

		
I loathe the link-bait bullshit that’s taken over my Facebook newsfeed. Upworthy. Opposing Views. Even The Huffington Post. They’re all guilty to varying degrees.


Call me a snob, if you will. I was a journalist for 20 years, and I like my headlines straightforward and to the point. All I see these days is shit that goes something like, “Michael asked his mom for a Pepsi. What came next will blow your mind.”


Mood music:




My friend Alison Gianotto, chief technology officer at Noise, hates it too. Instead of merely rolling her eyes as I do, she built a free, highly amusing browser plug-in called Downworthy that’s currently available for Google Chrome. When you add it to your browser, a little icon of poop makes itself at home in your toolbar.


Turn it on and it’ll take all those hyperbolic headlines and replace them with something snarky that people like me consider more realistic. For example, “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make it Stop” is translated to “Be Overused So Much That You’ll Silently Pray for the Sweet Release of Death to Make It Stop.”


A couple examples of the end result:


winter phenom


glacier lake


When you’re having a hard day and Upworthy throws all that annoying garbage your way, this plug-in will make you feel better.


Life is hard. Some days the challenges threaten to drown us. You certainly can’t blame the publishers of Upworthy for that. It’s simply how life is sometimes.


But if a toy like this can distract us from the darkness, if only for a few minutes, it will help us live to fight the next battle.

	


	





		

		
Posted on 
Fear of Déjà Vu
	


	
	

		
Déjà vu, literally “already seen,” is the strong sensation that a current event has been experienced in the past, whether it has actually happened or not.


When my OCD, anxiety and depression were at their worst, I used to constantly have bad thoughts. It usually involved people close to me dying. I forgot about it until it started happening again recently.


Mood music:




My mind used to spin so fast with worry that I would barely recognize the wonderful things in front of me, including my kids.


In fact, I was often looking at the miracle in front of me and, instead of enjoying it, would work myself into an anxiety attack. Because there was always the chance I could lose it all.


As the dark thoughts whirled around, I’d start to worry about the possibility that something bad would happen and that when it did, it would come at me as a déjà vu. My mind would start flashing images of accidents and disease involving my kids, and I would repeatedly beg God to not let it become a déjà vu.


The absurd thing about fear and anxiety is that you get thoughts that have no basis in reality. Yet when the images come, it feels as real as the ground beneath you. For the victim of OCD, it becomes a living beast of flesh, bone, teeth and overall terror.


Last week, after several nights of poor sleep and a particularly stressful afternoon, I had one of those moments — the first in several years. I saw it for what it was this time, and the fear dissipated pretty quickly.


But it served as an important reminder: You can learn to manage your demons, but you’re never fully free of them. You always have to be on guard.


That’s not a terrible thing. It’s a simple fact of life really, and I’m grateful that today I can put those moments in the proper perspective.


Depression 1