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Teething Trouble

I’ve just started the new job and am happy as hell to be here. I’m finding I’ll fit right in. But when a person is a couple days into a new job, there’s usually an unsettled feeling. In my case, the challenge is not to be an asshole about it.

Mood music:

I’m not sure I’m having much success there, particularly at home, where I’m told I’ve been cranky and snippy and in OCD overdrive. I know the latter is true, because I know my trigger behavior when it surfaces. I get anxious to set up the new laptop, get work email on the phone and get access to all my various online portals. Most of that went fine &emdash; until I tried to access the dashboard for this blog. My username and password wouldn’t work. When I got home, I became obsessed with fixing the problem.

Erin and I tried all kinds of things to get me in and I dug in deeper every time we failed. It turns out I was simply using the wrong admin link. How stupid do I feel right now? Pretty stupid.

It’s been a long season of feeling unsettled as I went through the process of getting the new gig. I stayed a month at the old job before starting here so I could finish my various projects instead of dumping them on someone else’s lap. The result was that I pushed myself hard to the bitter end, leaving myself no time to detach and enjoy being a lame duck. Friends said I should have taken a vacation before starting the new job, and they’re probably right. But what’s done is done.

I have to right myself and pull it together, which means:

  • Being more disciplined about meditation. I’ve been doing it, but I can’t seem to sustain the balanced feeling for more than a few minutes after doing the exercise.
  • Getting a new therapist. Though my last therapist told me I didn’t need it anymore, I’m realizing that I still do. I don’t need weekly sessions or even bi-weekly. Once a month might do it (or not). But I need an objective voice to keep sounding the siren when I go barking up the wrong tree.
  • Making the kids pull their weight. My kids have chores they’re supposed to do. But I have no patience right now, so if they don’t move fast enough I do it for them. Being children, they’re happy to let me do that, but in trying to do everything on the chore side I become a scattered mess. I need to pull back.
  • Praying. Checking in with the man upstairs is always helpful to me — when I remember to do it.

I know I’ll get through this, and the truth is that there are nothing but good things happening in my life right now. I’ll keep you all posted.

Cracked Glass
Photo Credit: W J (Bill) Harrison via Compfight cc
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The Burden of Being Upright

A couple facts about the last few months: I made it through the winter more mentally intact than I have in a long time. I also went through a lot of uncertainty over the future of my career, which exhausted me enough to behave in spring as I normally do in winter: scattered, aloof and depressed.

Things have actually turned out well. I got the job I coveted the most after fielding a couple other opportunities. It feels good knowing the opportunities found me when I wasn’t actively looking for a change. And I’d like to think that of late I’ve carried on with good humor.

But this weekend it became apparent to me that I’m having trouble connecting all the dots. It almost exclusively manifests itself at home, where I push around trying to do so many things at once that I create bigger messes than what I started with. I get overwhelmed, which makes me irritable and unable to listen to people as closely as I should.

It leads to me making stupid mistakes with the family finances and screwing up carefully made schedules because I forget certain details.

It pisses me off, because the realization usually smacks me in the face out of nowhere, usually after a period of time where I think I’ve been doing pretty good managing life.

You think you’re fixed. But you never really are. The good and bad come in cycles. I’m fine with that. I just wish I had an early-warning system in my brain that could go off before things go too far.

This isn’t a post about self-loathing. In the big picture, I like who I am. It’s not a post about feeling sorry for myself, either. When I see myself sliding off track, saying so here forces me to right the ship.

Sometime, I admit, I get tired of revisiting that challenge. Trouble is, it’s a challenge that’s always going to be there.

You don’t become a good person and stay that way. It takes constant work.

So off I go, fixing things again.

Chess boards
Art by Bill Fennell
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The Worst Abuse of All

I’m taking a lot of abuse lately, the kind that leaves me mentally tired and physically aching. It’s not abuse from family, work colleagues or law enforcement, however. I’m doing it to myself.

Mood music:

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In the past, I’d binge myself sick in times of uncertainty, but these days the abuse takes other forms: I allow myself to get lost in the deep weeds of worry. The kicker is that I’m not worried about anything bad. No medical scares or fresh family strife in my world. Deep-fried worry over those things would be more understandable.

In this case, I’m worrying about potentially awesome changes in my life. Someone with a more balanced mind would enjoy the potential for good things and take it a day at a time. But when you have OCD, anticipation is the spiked club you use to repeatedly club yourself. We crave control like a newborn craves mother’s milk. In reality, however, there are few things an individual can control.

So here I am, walking around in a daze, waking up in the middle of the night and having trouble going back to sleep, checking my computer way too often for some sign that answers will come.

I keep repeating a phrase that I learned in a recent course I took on mindfulness-based stress reduction: “The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and the present is a gift.” I know these words to be true. Knowing them and living them isn’t necessarily the same thing in my world.

Eventually all this will pass; it always does.

I’ve been praying a lot. Some of you scowl at the idea of praying, but it really helps me. If nothing else, it calms me down and reminds me that I’m not a soul adrift or alone. I have all the support I could ever ask for, and that’ll see me through.

I did a lot of house cleaning this weekend. Ironically, this activity, often conducted in OCD overdrive, helped me wring out some of the anxiety. I guess I needed the exercise that comes with running up and down three flights of stairs all day.

I played a lot of guitar, too. Few things have been better at helping me stay in the moment. And I feel younger when my kids tell me to turn it down.

I used to be a mental mess most of the time, so I’m grateful that these worry binges only come in waves now. The trick is to take them from frequent or even infrequent events to absolutely rare moments.

Out of control

Art by Bill Fennell
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Control Freak-Out

OCD sometimes makes me feel adrift even when things are going well. I’m feeling it a lot these days and this post, originally written in 2010, captures the malady well.

Mood music:

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There’s another byproduct of OCD that I’ve described indirectly before, but never head on. A byproduct for my own special blend of dysfunction, that is.

Sometimes, no matter how well things are going — and no matter how good my mood is when I wake up — I’ll sit at my desk and suddenly feel awash in melancholy.

It comes over me suddenly, and it can be even more frustrating than the black moods that hit me when there are visible troubles to spark it. When a wave of melancholy hits for no good reason, I sit here feeling like an idiot.

I start to contemplate doing things that are bad for me, like going and binging on $30 of junk food. It used to be that less than 10 minutes after a thought like that entered my head, I’d be doing just that. (See “The Most Uncool Addiction” for a better explanation of why this used to happen)

Things are going very well for me these days. Yet the blues persist. 

As I sit here analyzing my head, an answer is emerging. What I’m feeling is adrift. Not in the sense that my life is adrift, because it’s never been more full of purpose. The adrift feeling is over things I can’t control.

Why yes, everything you’ve heard about OCD and control freakism is true. People like us crave control like a junkie craves a shot of smack to the arm. It grabs us by the nose and drags us down the road until our emotions are raw and bleeding.

That’s why I used to be such an asshole at The Eagle-Tribune. Every story I edited then went through three more editors and then to the page designer. Along the way, everyone after me had to take a whack at it. I’d hover over the poor page designers because it was the closest thing I had to control. Ultimate control would have meant laying out the pages myself. That would have been a stupid thing to do, mind you. I couldn’t lay out a news page to save my life.

When I was the assistant news editor for the paper’s New Hampshire editions, I was out a week when my son Sean was born. I came in one night to catch up on e-mail and saw the message where my boss announced my son’s birth. In it, he joked that I probably stood over the doctor and told him how to deliver the baby.

I wanted to punch him.

I saw red.

Because I knew that was something I could easily be pictured doing. It hit too close to the truth.

The control freak has emerged in a variety of other ways over the years. Getting stuck in traffic would send me into a rage because all I could do is sit and wait. Getting on a plane filled me with dread because I could only sit there and wait. There was the fear that the plane might crash. But the bigger problem for me was that I was at the mercy of the pilots, the air traffic and the weather. I had no control over the schedule, and that incensed me. Today, I love flying.

So what’s my problem now?

I think it’s that all the cool things going on right now are still in play. The various projects are set in motion, but now I have to sit and wait on others to work through their processes. A more normal person would just take these things as they come and just live in the moment. But I’m not normal.

I have to wait my turn. I don’t like that.

But then it’s appropriate that I should be made to feel uncomfortable about it, since I really have no business trying to control any of these things. Other people have their jobs to do, and I should trust them.

I’m working on it.

I handle it better than I used to.

And this particular strain of melancholy is like New England weather:

If I wait an hour, it’ll change.

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This Time, Anxiety Won

A confession: This past week, I’ve done a miserable job using my many coping tools to manage OCD and anxiety. What makes this particularly sinister is that I’ve just finished a week of vacation with the kids.

Mood music:

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Everything I’ve told you in past posts about learning to enjoy the precious present and not let worry take over is true. Weeks like this simply drive home the reality that I can never be fully free of my demons. I can only manage them and keep them from overtaking me most of the time. I’m fine with that. We all have our special challenges that dog us for life. It produces a pain we gain wisdom from. And from that wisdom comes joy.

So what set me off this week? Travel plans.

Tonight I fly to San Francisco for a few days of covering RSA and Security B-Sides. I was supposed to leave tomorrow morning, but was forced to leave a day sooner because of another impending winter storm in the Northeast. That made me resentful right off the bat. I was expecting a nice day with my wife and kids before leaving, and this was a big monkey wrench in the plan.

It also stoked my anxiety. Not the fear part, but the part where I worry to the point where I can’t see two feet in front of me. I watched the weather like a hawk. I downloaded no fewer than three weather apps on my Android and followed them all throughout the days. I checked all the weather sites every time I opened the laptop or switched on the TV.

If the predicted snow count went up, I grew depressed. If the projected amounts went down, I became unreasonably euphoric.

That kind of mood swinging does terrible things to the human body. Hormones go nuts, muscles tense into headaches and you sleep terribly.

I have no one to blame. I did this to myself. I sometimes get so cocky about my ability to manage the demons that I’m thrown for a bigger loop than I otherwise would be when things don’t go as planned.

As for the anxiety, it didn’t have to be that way, because it really was a good vacation otherwise. I got in a lot of quality time with the kids. Erin had to work most of the time, unfortunately, but Wednesday we had a nice dinner out and Friday we had a family day with a visit to the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center in Concord, N.H. After that, Erin and I did groceries together for what was probably the first time since the kids came along. That was pretty cool.

But I let my worry overshadow it all, and for that I’m a little pissed with myself.

It’s time for me to regain my control.

Def Leppard Hysteria album cover

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My ADD Ran Over My OCD

As I struggle to get through all the stuff to be done at work and home before Christmas, something is occurring to me: My ADD runs over my OCD this time of year.

Mood music:

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I guess I’ve understood what happens for a while now. It’s all part of the seasonal depression that whacks me upside the head come Christmastime. For most of the year my challenge is to control my OCD, to keep it from overtaking my mind and sending me into physical overdrive. But earlier this year, I learned from my doctors that I also have ADD. It feeds into the winter pattern where I’m much more easily tired and forgetful.

Unfortunately for me, December isn’t a time where I can kick back, enjoy my December-itis and let the world float by on pretty clouds. At work, we’re busy finishing up some big projects we’re using to kick off January. At home, there are appointments and Scouting activities to drive the boys to. There are gifts to wrap, laundry to fold, groceries to buy, homework for the kids to finish up and a house to clean.

I’m like Luke Skywalker after he escapes the wampa cave on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, flailing around and stumbling in the snow.

So what am I sitting here thinking about? I’m feeling whiny because the damn OCD doesn’t surface when I really need it. As insidious as the disorder can be, it’s pretty damn handy when there’s a lot to do. It gives you a drive other people don’t have.

In recent years I’ve had a lot more success harnessing that piece of it while keeping the darker traits locked away. But when winter roles through, the ADD kicks in and spoils everything.

Funny how this works. It’s like the person who longs for summer heat waves in the dead of winter, then pines for winter’s icy grip when he’s sweating through July and August. In the summer I want to be a little more mellow; in December I need the overdrive to get everything done.

What to do?

Fight it, of course.

Erin’s worried I’m not going to get done everything I have on my plate. I’m out to prove I can get it all done.

What could possibly go wrong?

ESBWampaCave

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Me, Duncan and December-itis

I’ve had a lot to say lately about my own efforts to manage winter’s depressive effect on my brain, but this is also a challenging month for my younger son, Duncan.

Mood music:

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I’ve written at length about Duncan and my struggle to help him when his ADHD comes crashing into my OCD. I’m proud of who he’s becoming. But no matter how much progress father and son make on our mental health, December may well remain the month that throws us for a loop.

I feel like I’m having an easier time of it this year. I have depression, but it’s just the tired, memory-challenged kind. So far I’ve mostly escaped the feelings of sadness and outward crankiness of past years. Yesterday I visited the nurse who manages my medication and she doubled my Wellbutrin intake for the winter.

Now it appears to be Duncan’s turn for such an adjustment. His teacher has been praising his behavior all fall but, like clockwork, he started experiencing difficulty in class as the calendar switched to December. We’re hearing about the usual winter outbursts. He’ll argue with classmates, his temper comes to a boil easily and so on.

It kills me every year when this happens, because I know he inherited his mental health challenges from me and my side of the family. It’s not his fault.

The good news is that we’re getting better at anticipating his behavioral changes and responding faster. This afternoon I’m taking him to an appointment where his medication might be adjusted. We’ve also been blessed with some outstanding, nurturing teachers. I was particularly fond of his first-grade teacher, who was there when Duncan first got his ADHD diagnosis. She worked closely with us to make adjustments in the classroom that helped immensely.

His teacher this year is another gem. She meets with us whenever we ask and keeps us informed of Duncan’s progress by email. When he started acting up a couple of weeks ago, she invited us to call her at home in the evening. Few teachers do that these days, and we’re grateful for it. Duncan also has terrific classmates who cheerfully help him stay organized. And when he has a mood swing, they’re patient with him. Impressive, when you consider they are all under the age 10.

I chalk it up to the loving environment of the school. The place is far from perfect, as I’ve noted before. But as time goes on, I’m more convinced he’s exactly where he should be.

The trick now is to get him — and his teacher and classmates — to the other side of winter in one piece.

Duncan and Bill

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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

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Another Christmas Season, Another Depression Diagnosis

Though I’ve made peace with the demons that left me hating Christmas for many years, I’m still easy prey for winter depression. Last week, after asking me lots of questions and taking lots of notes, my shrink told me what I already knew: I’m once again clinically depressed.

Mood music:

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When most people hear the word depression, they immediately think of someone who is sad, anguished and afraid to leave the house. In the more extreme cases, death becomes an appealing option for ending the pain. I’ve never been suicidal, but I have experienced the other things in my day.

This depression isn’t like that at all, however.

I’m not sad. I’m not anguished. I’m not even in a bad mood (as I write this, anyway). I feel incredibly blessed every day. I’m in love with my wife, kids and extended family. I immensely enjoyed decorating the Christmas tree yesterday. I recently described this state of mind as happy depression.

In my case, being clinically depressed means three things:

  • I’m tired a lot.
  • I’m forgetful to the point where my wife wants to club me at least once a day.
  • I’m experiencing fluctuations in appetite. That used to result in days and weeks of binge eating. This time it’s a lack of appetite. Frequently at meal time, I’m simply not interested.

For some species, seasonal depression isn’t even considered depression. If you’re a bear, for example, it’s simply time to hibernate for the winter. I guess that makes me part bear, because that’s essentially how I am these days. My body says it’s time to hibernate. But humans don’t get to curl up in a warm cave until spring.

I still have parenting to do, a job to do, family to attend to. And so I do. I just do it in a messy, disorganized fashion this time of year.

To some extent, this is something I have to accept. My family has to accept it to. It’s a medical condition, and you can’t just flip a switch and turn the light back on. I can, however, minimize it. I’m going to get my meds adjusted now instead of halfway through winter. I’m also going to build a routine to use all the new present-awareness tools I acquired during my recent mindfulness-based stress-reduction class.

I meditated this morning for the first time in a couple weeks, and it did make a difference. At the least I started the work day in a calm enough mental state to plow ahead with work.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

Christmas Lights