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I Was Lost But Now I’m Found

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

There are plenty of reasons I haven’t written in this blog in a long time. The easy reasons are that my career has been busy and I’ve been managing a family building on the side. I also decided awhile back that I shouldn’t write unless I had something to say. To be honest, I just didn’t feel like opening up like I used to.

But lately my willingness has returned.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/Uia2EzrZMTE

The last year has included some of the best and worst times of my life. My wife and kids continue to make me proud with all they do, and I absolutely adore my still-new job. Though I never wanted responsibility for the family real estate, I found ways to make the best of it, and I’ve certainly learned a lot. I’ve also always been a sucker for trying to fix things that are broken, and in that building I found no greater challenge.

But somewhere along the way, I lost myself.

I started trying to be my father and do things the way I thought he would have. For a while, I was paying more attention to that than my real job. Sometimes I had no choice, because the property has a huge environmental cleanup attached to it.

My mental and physical health deteriorated. The frequency of migraines shot up, I gained weight and started slipping into my habit of being a people pleaser.

I grew obsessed with saving my father’s dream of selling the building and leaving his kids a financial cushion. I desperately tried to make everyone proud, especially my sisters, who co-own the building with me.

As I worked to put the property back on its feet and rent out the spaces, I found myself trying to put my trust in the various contractors who came along, when I should have been eyeing everyone skeptically and asking tougher questions. When a property needs work, it’s stunning how the sharks smell blood and start circling.

By year’s end, I was bitter and resentful, angry with my father for dumping this mess on me. I resented being left on my own without the necessary business experience. Most importantly, I started to realize I wasn’t being myself.

In mid-2016, I left one job to go to another. The role turned out to be different from what was discussed early on. I found myself with little to do, so I took that as a reason to focus on the building even more.

That didn’t last long, because I’ve never been one to phone it in with work, and the fact that I was doing so was eating at me.

Then I found another job, and in the process found I myself again — remembering what I did for a living and why I was on this planet. The person I was began fighting the person I had become.

As I fell back in love with my real work, my resentment of the family responsibility grew. Some questioned how I was doing things, which made me angrier, since I felt everyone was happy to leave it all on me in the beginning. I started to get sicker.

At the bottom of that pit, things started getting clear again.

I remembered some important things:

  • My first responsibility is to God, and, by extension, my immediate family — specifically my wife and children.
  • My life’s work is in information security, not real estate.

A few months ago I took all my confusion into the confession booth. The priest suggested I practice prudence — using reason to govern myself. In my case, prudence meant putting the added responsibilities in their proper place, behind the things that are more important.

That’s what I’ve been doing.

I asked my sisters to start taking on some of the building responsibilities, which they have. I began limiting the days at the family building to once a week and spending most of the time each week at my company’s office. It’s made things better.

There’s still a lot of turmoil right now. I can’t fully escape the building. I still have to do better at doing right by my family. But my life has come into clearer focus, and I’m grateful for that.

The time for people pleasing is over. If my father is watching, I hope he understands that I can’t be him and that I never should have tried.

Some will be taken aback by the choices I make going forward, but they’ll have to deal with it. If something doesn’t fit into my top priorities, I won’t spend any more time on it than I have to.

If that makes them angry, so be it. It’s time I got back to being me.

Fire storm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

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When Your Kid Asks About Anti-Depressants

My 12-year-old has a few things in common with his dad. Both of us have mental disorders (his is ADHD, mine is OCD with wintertime undercurrents of ADHD). Both of us take medication to help manage our ills. But until last weekend, he had never asked the big question:

“What do these pills do, anyway?”

Mood music:

To answer the question, I dusted off an analogy I had used some years ago to explain it to others. Essentially, I told him, the brain is an engine. When one part gets worn out, the whole the engine can fail. An engine needs the right amount of oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid, and so forth to function properly.

If the oil runs out, for example, the engine seizes up. If the brake fluid runs dry, the breaks fail. Too much of these fluids can harm the engine, as well.

Car owners and auto mechanics use many different techniques to keep engines healthy or fix them when they break. It could be something simple, like topping off the oil, to something more complex, like realigning or replacing faulty parts.

The brain works much the same way.

Heat map of brain activity, normal state versus depressed state

Think of a psychotherapist as the auto mechanic who is well versed in how to regulate the different engine fluids and pinpoint specific fixes for specific problems.

The different drugs are tools the mechanic uses to deal with specific problems in the engine. In the brain, when certain fluids are running low, the result is depression and a host of other mental disorders.

Antidepressants

In my case, Prozac addresses the very specific fluid deficiencies that spark OCD behavior. Since OCD is essentially the brain pumping and spinning out of control, I like to think of my specific problem as a lack of brake fluid.

When I explained it this way, I think he got it.

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When Life Changes, So Do Your Coping Tools

I used to post in this blog at least once a day. Now I struggle to write a couple times a week. What’s going on?

Mood music:

When I started this blog, I was writing one or more posts a day, almost every day. Then it was four times a week. Then it was three. Lately, I have a hard time finding the motivation to write.

It’s odd, because writing has long been my most important coping tool for navigating life.

It’s not writer’s block or a lack of ideas. I have a backlog of topics I wrote down some time ago. I’m realizing that the problem — if it can be considered a problem — is that the contours of my life have changed, requiring me to rethink my coping tools and how best to use them.

I’ve experienced big changes in my life these last few months. Three people who were each a major force in my life passed on, and I found myself responsible for cleaning up and selling the family business. And in the last two years, the nature of my work has changed.

As a result, all my tools — the guitar playing, writing, breathing exercises, prayer, and so on — are in flux. I still use them, but the amount of each is changing.

Especially the writing.

My love for writing is as strong as it’s ever been. But as the busyness of my days has crowded out the time for it, I’ve realized that the world isn’t going to end when I don’t produce for this space. I don’t need to type a post every day for writing to be a critical tool.

It’s also true that a lot of my writing time has shifted to work projects. I’m working on the kind of research, intelligence gathering and report writing I’ve long wanted to do. But it’s a more demanding kind of writing, so I’ve shifted a lot of my strength and discipline there.

The family business stuff is something else entirely. It sucks up a lot of time and there are many moving parts. I’ve been learning a lot about the law, real estate, environmental remediation and insurance.

I also need to do my best for the family, and it’s become necessary to cut some of the writing time I used to have.

I don’t have a plan yet outlining the new order of things. My breathing exercises and praying is pretty much unchanged, I still see the therapist every other week and I take my meds on schedule. The guitar playing and personal blogging are moving targets. Some weeks I play a lot, other weeks hardly at all.
The writing has been even less predictable. For now, I’m scheduling posts for Monday, Wednesday and Friday each week.

All this will sort itself out and before long I’ll have a new tool-using structure that works for this new world I find myself in.

In the meantime, if you don’t see me posting, don’t worry. I’m fine — even better than fine.

I’m just busy living.

Spectre of the Past by EddieTheYeti

“Spectre of the Past” by EddieTheYeti
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Life Doesn’t Suck, We Just Need Our Life Jackets

Lately, I’ve been going through a tough period and been documenting it here because it’s another journey and I like to document all my journeys.

One thing I’m re-learning on this trek is that it’s important to find life jackets that keep you from drowning when the floods come. Put on the life jacket for a couple hours or a couple of days pockets to keep your head above water.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/EkPy18xW1j8

Last weekend while the kids camped with their Boy Scout troop, Erin and I enjoyed a full day of quality time, walking around Newburyport, watching TV and having a romantic dinner. This weekend, as I type this, we’re having the first family camping trip in the new camper we were fortunate to have. We’ve been taking sunny walks, reading by the fire and taking life slowly.

Yesterday I went to the gun range with my father-in-law. I picked a target with a big, ugly mosquito on it. Like most people I hate mosquitoes, and I blew off a lot of steam shooting at it, trading off between a gun and a rifle.

The troubles of life aren’t far away. My father is still in hospice, and managing his real-estate business for him is a full job atop my real job. But I’m visiting Dad a lot and talking about old times. I call him every day. It’s a blessing to have that time with him. The business stuff is hard, but I’m figuring it out and it will be fine.

I can deal with the stressful side of those things because I’m also taking time for myself. It’s easy to forget to do that when life gets chaotic. It’s easy to let the harder things eat you alive. I’m grateful that through the grace of God and a lot of support from family, friends and work colleagues that I can find the pockets of solace.

Life’s journey is full of peril. Remember to bring along your life jackets, and everything will be fine.

The author, taking aim at a giant mosquitoPhoto by Robert Corthell

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Through The Storm

Work is crazy busy. I’m visiting my father in hospice a lot. Helping Dad tie up some loose ends on his real-estate interests has become a full-time job in itself.

It would be easy, in this crazy time of life, to skip doctor appointments, binge-eat or climb into a bottle.

Mood music:

Admittedly, my eating has been less than stellar. It’s the opposite of binging at this point; my appetite cuts out a lot and I skip meals. But I haven’t binged and I haven’t had a drink. How I’ve gotten this far without those things happening is anyone’s guess. Call it luck. Call it will. Maybe a little of both.

I have been making an effort to keep it all under control.

For two Thursdays in a row I had two medical appointments on the calendar. This past Thursday, for example, I had a chiropractic appointment and a psychotherapy appointment. Work was busy and I wanted that time to keep working, but I kept my appointments.

That may be why I haven’t crashed and burned, even though my head feels like it’s on fire when I know there’s a lot of work to do.

It’s been said that people like me need to take things a day at a time. When you have OCD, one day at a time is an alien concept. But I’m trying it out.

In the day-at-a-time spirit, I’m doing fine today. Tomorrow? I only know that I’ll do my best when I get there.

"Savage Namaste" by EddieTheYeti
“Savage Namaste” by EddieTheYeti
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The Burden of Being Upright, Part 2

I’ve written a lot about the frustrations that come with trying to be a good man when you carry so much baggage. The burden of being upright is something we all carry, but it’s really been weighing on me of late.

Mood music:

https://youtu.be/KNcvGwaJ-lI

This isn’t a pity party. But I’ve learned over the years that listing my issues and what I’m doing about them can help put them into perspective for me and can encourage others to do the same. The stressers in my life are not unique to me; it’s the kind of stuff every human being must deal with.

So what’s going on lately?

My father is bedridden and in a home, and my aunt — his sister — suffered a stroke and was unresponsive in the hospital for a couple of weeks. She’s responding a little now, but still. I’m not dealing with either of these things on my own, however. My sisters have been particularly awesome about communicating with my aunt’s doctors, and my stepmom has tirelessly seen to my father’s needs.

My frustration stems from the fact that I can’t do more. Living an hour away, traveling frequently for work and raising two young sons means I can’t drive to my father or aunt at the drop of a hat. This makes me feel guilty and failed as a son and nephew. Does my frustration square with reality? Probably not, but I feel it all the same.

Meanwhile, my depression was particularly brutal this past winter. And since the cold air and piles of snow are still here in April, I’m struggling more to come out of it.

I worry about not doing enough to keep the connection with my wife and kids going as strongly as it needs to be. As a result, some hang-ups have taken hold, the kind of stuff that comes from insecurity and is too personal to get into even here.

What am I doing about all of this?

I’m doing everything I can to move forward. I’ve played my guitar every day. I’m even taking walks most days — not yet consistently but more so than I have in a long time. And since I have a charity walk to prepare for, I’m going to keep walking.

My diet could be better, but I’ve managed to stabilize more than it has been in recent months.

I’ll keep plugging along with that stuff, and it’ll work. But it’s going to take longer than I want. That’s OK, though, because as long as I’m moving forward, I’m moving in the right direction.

face being punched by a boxing glove

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Cut Toxic People Loose

We all have dysfunctional friends and family. In some respects, they add color and fun to our lives. But sometimes you find yourself up against that special someone who constantly complains about others and puts you down. We want to accept the latter as much as we accept the former. But there’s a problem.

Mood music:

The latter group — we’ll call them the toxic people — rub off on you. Their toxic tirades seep into your pores until you either (a) get sick with worry because of all the rumors you’ve been fed or (b) end up as a toxic complainer yourself. When you get this way, you will surely bring other people down.

As a Catholic, I’ve been taught that we have to love and accept everyone, regardless of their flaws. Unless, of course, they are a pro-choice Democrat.

Political jokes aside, the line about acceptance makes perfect sense. Love is supposed to win out against hate. I badly want to believe it. But I’ve also learned from experience that it simply can’t always work that way. If someone insists on vomiting verbal toxins every time you have a chance to converse, you have to cut them lose before they poison your soul.

That’s the inconvenient truth about toxic people. You want to love them because you know that, deep down, there’s a good heart beating away. But if you stand too close, you’ll adopt the very qualities in them that you despise.

Don’t let it happen.

If you have a toxic person in your life, cut them lose. Not because you’re selfish and you can’t handle the pressure, but because you have to stay strong for yourself and many others.

Life is too hard and too short to be dealing with negative souls. Pray for them because you want them to be happy and more pleasant to be around. But do so from a distance.

lighting-a-row-matches-510

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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

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5 Things I’ve Done That Scare Me

A while back I wrote a post celebrating Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to “do something every day that scares you.” Rereading that post recently, I realized I forgot something important.

Mood music:

I forgot to mention how I’m living that advice and not simply parroting it to be cool. If this blog is to mean anything, I have to lead by example, though not in the ways you may be thinking of.

I’m not about to skydive from an airplane, though some day I just might. I’m not going to ride a wild horse, though that might be a neat exercise in facing fear. But not today.

Instead, I’ve been doing the more mundane things that scare me all the same. To some people they may seem like trivial accomplishments. But to me they’re significant, because I faced down fear.

  1. During DEF CON last month, I waited in big lines and walked with big crowds despite both being major OCD triggers. I managed just fine.
  2. Despite swearing I’d never take Prednisone again, I took a leap of faith and accepted the prescription to cool a battered back.
  3. Despite that back pain, I managed to drive a hitched trailer home from an already painful camping trip. I’m always nervous driving the truck when the camper is attached. Doing it in pain was a rougher deal. But I couldn’t think of a reason not to. I was going to be in pain anyway.
  4. Despite huge fears of not measuring up at work, I postponed an important video shoot so I could put my health back in order. That was scary as hell, because I had thrown a lot of time and energy into meeting a deadline.
  5. I agreed to be a trustee for my father’s realty trust, opening me up to financial tasks and decision making that are way outside my comfort zone.

Again, seemingly small actions. But these are the things that scare me, and I didn’t run away.

Tarantula walking in man's hands

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Trying to Make Peace with Prednisone

I’ve been on Prednisone for five days now, and the side effects are kicking in. My appetite has gone from zero to 100, and my moodiness is considerable.

Mood music:

But the drug is doing its work, easing my back pain from shooting, piercing spasms to a more manageable dull ache. Now I remember why they used to put me on this shit for Crohn’s Disease.

When it comes to putting the freeze on inflamed muscles and bone, it gets the job done.

Still, I wonder if the inflammation could have been dealt with using a different medication — something that won’t inflame my mood and puff up my face.

When the doctor said he was prescribing Prednisone, I let out a groan.

“What?” he asked, annoyed that I might be questioning his almighty judgement.

“Prednisone and I have a history,” I told him. “During the Crohn’s attacks …”

“But this is a low dosage, and it’s only for 14 days,” he said, using a tone one uses when addressing idiots.

This doctor is an arrogant bastard. I hope he knows what he’s doing. He’s a new doctor, so I won’t give up on him yet.

This back injury has been hard. I have to lie down and watch the world pass by, which isn’t how I prefer to operate. It’s been so bad that I’m willing to take my chances with a drug I said I’d never take again.

For now, I’m focusing on the positives:

  • It’s not the maximum dosage I used to take — eight pills a day in all.
  • It is only for another week or so. It used to take weeks just to be weaned off of it.
  • I’m hungry, but I haven’t fallen into any titanic binges yet.
  • I can sit up, lie down and stand up again, which I couldn’t do a week ago.

But still I worry. I will until this prescription’s time is up.

Stay tuned.

Red skull and crossbones on a patch of white pills