Posted on

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

Posted on

Starting Over

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’ve been starting everything over this past week. Not in big, drastic ways, but in little ways that will hopefully add up to something good.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3IRovqSVYx3CNtDWRebsET]

There’s the afternoon tea I’ve been drinking instead of Red Bull and more coffee. There’s the meditation and yoga. And there’s the significant tightening of my food plan.

What’s the reason for all this?

I attribute some of it to the mindfulness-based stress reduction course I’m taking. I’m not sure it’s gotten me to the point of a sharper attention span and ability to live every minute in the moment, but the tools I’m learning are designed to get me there eventually.

The food clean-up is more about getting back on the horse after months adrift in the Overeater’s Anonymous wilderness. I never slipped back into the pattern of binge eating, but I was certainly getting sloppy. I was using way too much cheese for protein. On the last shopping trip I stocked up on salmon to use instead. Erin asked if this was my latest obsession. It’s really just me getting back to basics. I still haven’t returned to the OA meetings or gotten a sponsor, but one thing at a time.

My return to guitar playing has definitely been a factor. When I play I’m right in the moment, where I should be. I realized I play better when drinking tea than when drinking coffee. The chords are steadier and cleaner when I’m not on coffee overload. Another example of one good habit leading to another.

It’s fitting that all this is happening in the autumn. It’s usually the time of year when my mood and grip on life start to slip. Making changes this time of the year is turning out to be a powerful thing.

It’s also fitting because autumn four years ago was when I first decided my worst addictions had to stop owning me. That’s when I kicked flour and sugar and started weighing out my food. A year later I was done with alcohol.

Temptations still come and go. But the key is to take it a day at a time and get back on the horse when you fall off.

That’s what I’m learning, anyway. Hopefully, all of this will continue.

Reset Button

Posted on

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:

[spotify:track:2FEfAIvMfp24ZBRVCZIiBZ]

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

Posted on

Halloween Ho-Hum

Some of my friends go bonkers for Halloween. They run an endless torrent of zombie apocalypse memes on Facebook. They revere the holiday above Christmas and Easter. Good for them. It’s more of a ho-hum holiday for me.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3iuftv60t76f8Lps5TZPXl]

It would be easy to tell you I’m down on Halloween this year because so many people are suffering this day from the damage Hurricane Sandy left them with. But the truth is that this has never been one of my favorites. For a compulsive binge eater, this holiday and the days that follow tend to be a real nightmare.

I stopped eating Halloween candy four years and one month ago, but when the kids come home with trick-or-treat bags bulging, the temptation remains powerful. If you were a cocaine addict and your kitchen was surrounded by massive mounts of blow, you might feel the way I’m feeling about now.

I do have much to be thankful for. I used to binge on my kids’ candy for days and weeks after Halloween. By the end of November I’d be a pile of waste, bloated and depressed. That hasn’t happened for the last few years, even though my program isn’t quite where it should be.

I guess past memories are hard to shake, though.

Oh, well.

I’m still happy to see my kids and friends taking joy in Halloween. More power to them.

As for me, I just might go back to bed.

Rotten Pumpkin

Posted on

Another ‘Crazy Mike’ Facebook Page? Jerks.

Last year, I found a disgusting Facebook page making fun of someone with a serious mental illness. The site was taken down, but now there’s a new page dedicated to the man locals call Crazy Mike.

I want the creator and those who like the page to know something. By embracing such a page, you are making a much broader statement: either that you don’t understand the suffering a person experiences from mental illness or that you do understand but think it’s perfectly fine to tear down a human being who is seemingly weaker than you are.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:55OkffR8hBBf3QnqJAU2gY]

A couple weeks ago, I got an email from someone calling me a scumbag for defending Mike. He scares women and children and should be off the street, the writer told me. What really disgusted him, though, was the idea that Mike is a Vietnam veteran who is sick because of what he experienced there.

More recently, I heard from someone claiming to me Mike’s brother. I have no reason to disbelieve him, but since I haven’t been able to verify it yet, I’ll keep him anonymous. He actually alerted me to the new Facebook page and verified that Mike is a vet.

“Mike is indeed a Vietnam War Vet, serving as a field medic during his tour,” the man wrote. “He was born in May 1950, putting him squarely in that unfortunate group that was drafted or enlisted during the height of the war.”

Now that I’ve captured two different sides, I’ll say this:

  • Whatever his past, the fact is that he’s a human being who suffers from severe mental illness. I tend to believe that he was in Vietnam based on information I’ve received over time from multiple sources. But the reason for his illness isn’t what matters to me. It’s that he is sick and suffering and that people find it OK to make fun of him. It’s not OK.
  • Many people have chimed in about their own run-ins with the man, and I have noticed that some folks feel genuine affection for him. As stupid and sad as it was for people to latch on to a page that simply made fun of Mike (some of the comments on the page are nasty and pathetic), I think most people are decent, have good hearts and mean no harm.
  • I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rearview mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

We can do better than this.

True, to those who don’t know him, it can be disconcerting to walk into a store with Mike hanging around outside the door yelling at people. Sometimes, fear is justified. Part of my motivation for this post is to make more of you aware that he’s harmless.

To those who want to haggle over whether Mike was in Vietnam, I’d suggest you stop getting sidetracked and remember that no matter what makes a person sick, they deserve compassion and help, not this bullshit.

The jackass who created the new Facebook page should shut it down. And the hundreds of people who liked it should feel some shame.

Crazy Mike

This post is an update of an early post, “A Final Word on Crazy Mike.”

Posted on

I Was Tricked Into Yoga

I’ve long balked at the idea of doing yoga. Frankly, it always looked boring to me. It didn’t fit the tough-guy image I have of myself, either. Tough guys don’t do a bunch of poses. They lift heavy things. Yet here I am, doing yoga.

Thing is, I’m starting to appreciate and respect it.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3b04Qs9AoBRBIFu9aDQfqI]

How did I reach this strange place? My therapist tricked me.

For years, he’s been trying to push yoga on me as a tool to reduce stress and get out of my head. For years, my response has been “no fucking way.”

I recently signed up for my therapist’s Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction class because for a guy trying to manage clinical OCD, you need as many tools as you can gather. I’ve gotten the upper hand over the more insidious byproducts of my OCD in recent years, particularly the fear, anxiety and inability to go about my day because of the worry spinning in my brain. Now I enjoy many of the things I once feared, including travel, and I’m able to truly live. But I still get stuck in my head, which is bad when someone’s trying to talk to you. So I signed up for the class.

My therapist didn’t mention there’d be yoga involved. The bastard.

I knew I’d been duped when I walked into the first class and saw yoga mats carefully placed in a circle. He finally sprung it on us at last week’s class, and last night we really got into it.

My first thought was that the beginner’s positions were a lot like the exercises I used to do for a bad back. My second thought was that the poses were a pretty strenuous workout. I didn’t expect to break a sweat, but I did. There was something satisfying about it.

I’m supposed to do this once a day as part of my homework. That’s going to be tough, given my schedule. But I’m sure there’s a way.

Erin has done a lot of yoga in the past but not much lately. Maybe I can get her to do it with me.

If someone told me a year ago that I’d be pondering this stuff now, I’d have laughed in their face. Actually, I did just that to my therapist.

You won’t find me wearing yoga pants, though. That would be gross.

Crazy Yoga Pose

Ouch.
Posted on

The Winter Bill Blues

This is a typically a shitty time of year for me, when I come off the high of summer and crash hard onto the cold pavement. When the days grow shorter and the air colder, I become easy prey for seasonal depression.

And when that state of mind sets in, I usually do something very stupid.

Winter 2011: By February, I was forgetting things all the time, including Valentine’s Day. I was traveling on this day of romantic feelings, and I forgot to sign my wife’s card and leave it where she could find it. I left it in my storage drawer in the garage, but I got embarrassed and lied to her, saying I got to San Francisco to find her card still in my laptop bag. At some point during my time away, she went to put a stray pair of gloves in my drawer and found the card.

Winter 2012: It was nearly a year to the day since that last big fuck up, and I was sitting at the airport waiting for another flight to California. Erin called and asked me if I told Duncan he could stop taking medicine we were trying out for his ADHD. The day before he had been freaking out about the potential side effects he heard the doctor mention, and in a moment of weakness I caved. I promptly forgot, and now, while I was at the airport, Erin was dealing with Duncan and what I did the day before. The worst part wasn’t that she had to deal with a difficult child. It was that in a moment of not thinking things through, I arbitrarily made a decision Erin and I should have made together.

A very stupid chap, that Winter Bill is. A hurtful, stupid chap.

The real kick in the ass is that I do deal with winter better than I used to. The last couple winters, the depression came and went. In previous winters, the depression was constant.

And so the challenge is to get through an entire winter both less depressed and more mindful, which will prevent me from doing the really dumb things.

In recent days, signs of the Winter Bill have emerged. I forgot to deposit a check that needed to get into the savings account. I had an episode of crankiness yesterday that came out of nowhere. And yet I’m not dreading the coming winter and shorter days as I have in the past. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that I’m taking a mindfullness course that should give me new skills for getting out of my self-absorbed head.

Another is that I have picked the guitar back up and am looking forward to the joy it’s going to bring me as my skills grow. Nothing gets you out of your head like making music.

In past winters the feeling was all dread. I was annoyed that I’d have to deal with these feelings, that I couldn’t hang on to the good feelings I got from the endless summer sun.

This time, I think I’m eager for the challenge. I want to learn to enjoy life despite the darkness. Oh, I won’t go through it with zero depression. That’s just not realistic. But I think that maybe I can do this without the big annual stumble. I’m ready to try.

I have my eye on you, Winter Bill. You don’t scare me.

 

Posted on

I’m Stressed About My Stress-Reduction Class

Tonight is the first of eight weekly stress-reduction and mindfulness classes I’m taking. I have to admit the whole thing stresses me out a bit.

It’s not that the description is bad. In fact, it sounds delightful. I’m going to learn how to use yoga and other techniques to keep my thoughts in the present, where they belong. Here’s a little background from the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction website:

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Since its inception, MBSR has evolved into a common form of complementary medicine addressing a variety of health problems … MBSR is an 8-week intensive training in mindfulness meditation, based on ancient healing practices, which meets on a weekly basis. Mindfulness practice is ideal for cultivating greater awareness of the unity of mind and body, as well as of the ways the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors can undermine emotional, physical, and spiritual health.

I certainly qualify for such a program. I have a history of stress-induced maladies — Crohn’s Disease, OCD, ADD, depression, fear and anxiety, migraines — and I’m still in the process of making peace with a lot of what happened in my past.

For my back story, check out “An OCD Diaries Primer“.

I’ve gotten pretty good control over the anxiety and OCD in recent years. Heavy therapy, medication and spiritual growth have all played a role. And work, once the biggest source of stress in my life, no longer rattles me. Having a job I absolutely love helps on that score.  I’m also much healthier in my 40s than I was in my 20s and 30s. Crippling back pain is years into the past, and I’ve maintained a significant weight loss. I don’t eat flour or sugar and weigh just about everything I eat. I no longer drink, and cigars and cigarettes have been replaced with e-cigs. I’m also playing guitar again. Making music has been more appealing to me of late than staring at the Internet for hours, which is another addictive behavior I’ve struggled with.

But I still experience stress. There’s a lot of family drama, including a long estrangement from some parts of the family and an erosion of patience that intensified when my father had a stroke last year and we really began the work of helping our younger child manage his ADHD.

No surprises there. That’s the garden-variety stress everyone experiences. Only the names, dates and circumstances change.

While these things no longer incapacitate me, they still make it difficult for me to keep my mind in the present. When your mind is in the past or the future, it makes it very difficult to listen when people are talking to you in the present. The result is that you don’t retain important information like dates, appointments and the like. Worse — much worse — is that you’re robbing the people you love of your undivided attention.

My therapist once told me that there’s no better gift you can give a person than your time and attention. A lot of what he says annoys me. But on this I think he’s right.

That comment from the therapist is what compels me to take this class. I want to be a better listener and less scatterbrained when the house chores stack up.

So why the stress?

It’s yet another appointment to keep every week, shoehorned into the schedule between all my kids’ Boy Scouts activities and various family check-ups, school activities and an awesome but demanding job.

Of course, that’s me thinking in the future instead of the present, which just makes me more comfortable with the notion that this is the right thing to do.

I’ll report back to you on all this tomorrow.

Posted on

Which Is Worse? You Decide.

I woke up pissed at the world yesterday. Part of it is that people in my life are acting like idiots, and part of it is my realization that thinking this way makes me a Grade-A hypocrite.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1GnCH2KszUkpUjXuDP2G3N]

I’m sick of all the ass-hat political posts friends and relatives are putting on Facebook lately. Rather than sticking with issues like our economic well-being and the best way to achieve national security, people are content to post a bunch of memes littered with half truths and outright lies. Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty.

But then I’ve been blogging a lot about how futile these elections have become and how the outcome will have absolutely zero impact on the things that really matter in our lives.

Which is worse? You decide.

I’m sick of people who go on Facebook and complain about everything. They hate their job. They hate their significant others or the lack thereof. They make cryptic statements so someone out there will bite, asking what’s wrong or telling you how fucking special you are.

But then I do something similar in this blog. I never complain about my job or make cryptic statements, but I sure do complain a lot. I’m doing it right now.

Which is worse? You decide.

I’m sick of people who tell you how you should behave, how often you should call your parents and how self-absorbed you are when they can’t get their own shit together.

But then I turn around and do the same things. And I just blog about it afterwards.

Which is worse? You decide.

When I lose patience with people, I can get pretty self-righteous. I take someone down a few pegs, even though I’d make the same stupid decisions and say the same stupid things.

I’ll admit it sometimes, and then go do the same stupid things all over again.

Which is worse? You decide.

Before long I’ll return to my sunnier disposition. But I wanted to take this moment of moodiness and use it as an opportunity to keep it real.

Cinderblock Balloon

Posted on

Is Humor Reinforcing the OCD Stigma?

I got an interesting response to some older posts about OCD gag gifts — particularly one about OCD hand sanitizer. The reader was worried these gifts and other brands of OCD humor would only reinforce the stigma monster that keeps people like us in the shadows.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2TJRQj7XJvGBY4ZzIue2ei]

Here’s the comment, from Arthur Lawrence:

I can laugh at it, and so can you. We both have OCD. And laughing at the OCD “monster” does indeed weaken it. This is a therapeutic application. What bothers me are the millions who have no idea what OCD really is.

For them, products like this continue to trivialize OCD and help keep those millions uninformed about this disease.

Should we now have “Tourette itch powder”? It would be about as appropriate as this product. Again, I don’t dispute what you say about laughing at one’s own “mental defects.” But I do know that OCD research and treatment are still in the dark ages, relatively speaking. And products like this, out in the general public, aren’t going to get people to believe that OCD can be as debilitating as cancer. It needs to be taken as seriously as cancer.

Mocking it will almost certainly not help that to happen.

Arthur makes an important point.

I still firmly believe that humor is an important coping tool for someone learning to manage depressive mental disorders. Abraham Lincoln, a chronically depressed man for much of his adult life, relied on it during the darkest days of the Civil War. He reveled in telling jokes and amusing stories. It helped get him through the pain, long before antidepressants were created.

But the stigma around OCD is still alive and well. I see people all the time talking about “their OCD” when they’re really talking about their Type-A personalities. That doesn’t bother me much, but I know other OCD cases that get wounded by such talk. OCD behavior is still the stuff of ridicule and belittling. People will still make fun of a person’s quirks, which embarrasses and hurts that person when they inevitably find out they’re being made fun of.

Would people find the gags funny if they were about cancer or Tourettes? The truth is that we think differently about physical diseases than mental diseases. We understand the ramifications of physical diseases better and they’re more socially acceptable in that regard. And when a physical disease is a lethal one, we have much less tolerance for jokes about it. Yet people will make jokes about all manner of things for all kinds of reasons.

In the final analysis, I think most health issues need to be addressed with a combination of sober education and humor. People need to know the suffering real OCD brings about, just as people need to know the anguish a cancer patient experiences.

But we need to laugh at our conditions once in a while, too, because the laughter makes the disease appear smaller, even if it’s only for a few moments.

THE OCD CHEF