Posted on

COVID-19 Gratitude 2: Getting My Health Back

There are many things I’m grateful for amid this pandemic. My health is one of them. A year ago, I would have been at much higher risk of catching COVID-19.

Mood Music:

I’m certainly not bulletproof. No one is, based on the limited science we have on COVID-19 at the moment. But mentally and physically, I have much more fight in me.

This time last year, I was hovering around 290 pounds. I was on blood pressure medication, the CPAP was struggling to punch through airways under pressure from a fatty throat and I was getting migraines constantly. Weight-control measures that had worked in the past didn’t cut it anymore, especially the food plan and 12-step program I was following via Overeaters Anonymous (OA), which I wrote a lot about earlier in the history of this blog.

My experience is not a condemnation of OA or anything else that works for others. Many people need a 12-step program when addictive behavior is the root of their pain. It simply didn’t work for me. OA felt too much like a cult. I don’t like answering to people on a good day (except my wife), so calling a sponsor every day to report on everything I’d be eating didn’t work. I abandoned the program but kept the food plan and didn’t replace it with something better suited to my needs.

My health slid down and my weight shot up. It took me seven years to find something that worked better. My body paid a price in the meantime, as did everyone around me.

I had less energy, less patience, and a lot less clarity of mind. I fell into more frequent bouts of deep depression.

By May 2019, I hit bottom. My wife had found success using the Noom app and tracking her daily steps with a Fitbit, so I decided to give those things a try.

The combination has worked out because it’s allowed me to use data to manage my behavior. The numbers on the Fitbit tell me when I’m not moving around enough and compels me to get up and take walks. Noom allows me to track my calorie intake throughout the day to stay in check and has helped me make better food choices though its green-yellow-red classification system.

Using that simple combination, I’m down to 213 pounds — my lowest weight in more than a decade. I can’t remember the last time I suffered a migraine. I fit in airplane seats comfortably again (not that it matters at the moment), and I’m not getting winded every time I walk a few steps uphill. I’m at the point where I can maintain my weight and be in fighting form. I’m going to 210 just for the hell of it.

I had to turn things around under normal circumstances. That I have maintained it amid this unprecedented global crisis makes me feel grateful and lucky.

Life is always hard. Better to have more strength for the fight.

That may be obvious, but it’s not always easy to follow. Times like these show us that we must try harder.

Posted on

It’s a Long Road Through Self-Hatred

Given my normally upbeat persona, this might surprise you: Once upon a time, I hated myself. I hated a lot of people, but none more so than myself. The worst of that hatred came after I started facing my demons.

Mood Music:

http://youtu.be/TP06kxW_M3I

I disliked myself before I started to tackle the demons with therapy. A couple years into that therapy, the self-loathing deepened. I had learned much about who I was and how I got that way, but I hadn’t yet figured out how to change. That made me angry, and I turned in on myself.

I intensified my addictive behavior to cope, burying my sorrows in food, alcohol and the pain pills doctors prescribed for chronic back pain.

When I cut flour and sugar from my diet and started putting my meals on a scale to bring the binge eating to heel, I felt worse before I started to feel better. I felt edgy in my skin and hated myself for not being stronger. To cope with that I started drinking a lot of wine. When I quit that, I no longer knew how to act in big social crowds. I hated myself for that, too.

When you start to fight your demons head-on, you become super-aware of your own vulnerabilities. For a while, I became paralyzed by mine.

I’m not a special case.

In his book, Symptoms of Withdrawal, Christopher Kennedy Lawford writes that after he kicked drugs in 1986, it took him awhile to actually become a good person.

Those around him weren’t always happy he was sober, especially since that meant he couldn’t make the cocktails at family gatherings like he used to.

He writes about having to learn how to be a decent human being and be clean at the same time. You would think it’s easy. It’s not.

In the book, Lawford writes:

There is another great fiction of recovery — that is, once you stop using your life becomes a bed of roses. Anybody who has stayed sober for any length of time knows that living sober is about learning to live life on life’s terms and a good part of life is painful. When I got sober someone said to me that I would get to realize all my greatest fears in sobriety … You know what? He was right, and it’s not half as bad as I imagined.

There’s a lot of truth there. I had a lot to learn, and I’m still learning, a full decade after I first started the work.

While the work goes on — and will continue to go on — there’s an important point to be made. Somewhere along the way, I learned to like myself.

Today, I can honestly say I’m happy with the man I’ve become, even if I’m still far from perfect.

But, then, perfect people don’t exist. If they did, they’d be boring.

self hatred II by ~xiaoD

Posted on

Coming Soon: The OCD Diaries Book Series

For years, people have told me to write a book based on this blog. And for years I’ve resisted because life was busy enough between work, family and writing for three blogs. But after some brainstorming with Erin last weekend, the decision is made: I’m diving in. The time is right.

Mood music:

In 2016 I’ll still write fresh posts here, but my main focus as far as The OCD Diaries goes will be on book writing. Not one book, but a series. There are several recurring themes in the blog and instead of jumping from one to the other in one book, the best approach is several small volumes that zero in on specific themes. The idea is for these to be relatively short essay collections. Instead of merely cobbling together old posts, there will be a lot of fresh writing to fuse things together.

I also want to use a lot of art. Some will be my own. But I have many friends who are artists and I want to use these to give them some more exposure.

We’ll be shopping around for a publisher, but if we can’t find a suitable one we’re going to self publish. One of the great things about the Internet is that it’s easier to go it alone, whether it’s book publishing or music recording. I have one big advantage going in: a lot of experience with publishing and plenty of connections in the business.

These will not be self-help books. I’m too flawed to be telling you how you should deal with life. These are just my experiences and observations. The reader can do what they will with it.

Here’s my early thinking on the different volumes. Any and all feedback is appreciated:

  • Lessons from an Imperfect Childhood: Don’t expect this to be a laundry list of grievances from childhood. I have no grievances. Life happens, and we all go through tough times. I also believe that most of us have imperfect childhoods and that we even need it to be that way. This volume is where I’ll write about the lessons my experiences produced.
  • Turning Mental Disorder into a Superpower: This volume will be a chronological narrative of my struggle with OCD and the magic that happened once I realized the goal wasn’t to beat the disorder but to manage it in ways that turn weakness into strength.
  • Grief Management 3.0: Here, I’ll collect my essays about loss, with a focus on how one gets through it.
  •  The EddieTheYeti Collection: I’ve written a lot of posts based on the work of friend and fellow infosec practitioner Eddie Mize, who has done a lot of remarkable art under the name EddieTheYeti. This book will feature my writing and his art.
  • Living with Depression, Fear and Anxiety: My experiences and lessons from all three will be collected here.
  • The Rebellious Catholic: This volume will have essays from my ongoing spiritual journey.
  • What InfoSec Taught Me About Dealing with Life: My work in the security industry has produced critical lessons on how I need to live my life. Expect an emphasis on the many mistakes I’ve made and why they were ultimately for the good.

Will I get through this whole list in 2016? I doubt it. But the new year will be my starting point. Titles and the number of volumes are also likely to change.

Let the games begin.

Uncle Fester reading a self-help book while lying in bed

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

Just Showing Up Is a Victory (Updated 6-5-20)

Firestorm in the shape of a fist and the middle finger

As anyone prone to mental disorder and depression knows, there are days when it’s all you can do to get out of bed in the morning. The pain in your emotional space travels to every muscle, every bone and everywhere on the skin. Why bother?

These moments used to give me cravings for dark, quiet rooms with a bed or couch, where I could binge eat, smoke, drink and sleep — in that order.

In the grip of depression, it can be hard not to go back there. But I can’t let depression do that to me anymore. So there’s only one thing left to do.

Show up.

Mood music:

Show up for my wife and kids.

Show up for work.

Show up for meetings and appointments.

No matter how dreadful I feel.

I need to show up for everything — the good and the bad.

I can stumble over my addictive impulses and overwork myself until I’m burnt to a crisp. But every time I show up, the demons lose.

Showing up is a road back to equilibrium, as crooked and unpredictable as that road might be.

Showing up means you can be a blessing to people without trying to blindly please everyone.

To sum it up:

Get Out of Bed and Show Up for Life

Your demons will hate you for it.

Those who matter will love you for it.

Middle Finger Mushroom Cloud

Posted on

A Vulnerable Soul, a Big Mountain and a Bigger Lesson

After weeks of feeling exhausted, depressed and out of control, I escaped to New Hampshire’s White Mountains with Erin for some rest, relaxation, romance, and hiking. We found all those things, but I also found myself humbled and shamed when hiking up the mountains.

Mood music:

After a back injury, job stresses and the breakdown of my food plan, I knew I was out of shape when we started up Mt. Willard in Crawford Notch. But we’ve hiked plenty of times before, and I’d done fine.

It didn’t take long before my heart started pounding through my rib cage and I lost my breath. Other hikers — many with children and dogs in tow — moved past us with what seemed like ease. Much older people blew past us like they were taking an easy stroll on the beach.

Erin noted more than once that the other hikers seemed to be struggling, too, that it wasn’t just me, but that’s not how I felt.

From my perspective, the mountain was taunting me, poking and shaming me into realizing just how badly I’ve deteriorated physically. I kept looking for the top of the mountain, but all I could see was a trail that kept shooting straight up.

The hike up the mountain: trail to Artist's Bluff

The mountain was showing me no mercy. It kicked me repeatedly when I was down. Then it rewarded me with a spectacular view that seemed to make the suffering worthwhile.

View from the top: Peak of Mt. Willard

It took us an hour to climb back down. I spent the rest of the afternoon in a haze.

We did an easier, shorter hike the next day, but it still wiped me out. Coming back down the second trail, I realized that the mountains were a metaphor for what I’ve been feeling.

As rotten as those feelings are, the mountains also taught me that I can overcome the demons, as I have so many times before.

I frequently doubted that I could make it to the top during the hikes. But I kept going, no matter how much pain I was in. And at the top, the world opened back up with endless possibilities.

I always keep going, and things always get better.

So it will be this time.

Posted on

The Day the Devil Beat Me

I haven’t posted in a while for two reasons: One, I’ve been burned out. Two, I needed time to describe what it’s like to slide back into old habits.

Mood music:

It seems I’ve spent so much time writing about my recovery from binge eating and other addictive behaviors that I forgot what it was like to be back on the other side — where recovery gives way to failure and the fallen is left feeling like he’s been dragged back to square one.

It started in August, amid a series of pressures. First, I injured my back and was sidelined for two weeks. I was on the couch for a week soaking up the Vicodin my doctor prescribed me. He also prescribed Prednisone, a drug that always stirs my dark side.

The Prednisone made me want to eat a lot. I largely resisted, but while I didn’t binge, I got sloppy.

Then things got stressful at work. We had to deal with a huge security vulnerability called Shellshock, and I found myself working 16-hour days and forgetting to eat. Forgetting to eat is bad, because it ensures sloppy eating at the end of the day. And one day, that’s what happened.

On the day Shellshock was blowing up and I was diving into meetings on our communication strategy, I was also in the midst of getting four videos made. The video shoot was already a pressure point because I had to reschedule it once already due to the back injury.

It was as intense a day as I can remember having in many years, and on the way home I found myself in the Burger King drive-through. I picked foods that I can eat under my no-flour, no-sugar regimen. A lot of it.

I carried around the shame for a week, until I finally told Erin what happened. After she saw a $21 charge for Burger King on our bank statement, of course.

This is my fault. Nobody else is to blame. The work pressures were the same things we all endure in the normal course of our professions. In recent years I’ve had a pretty good set of tools to manage those pressures well. But for whatever reason, in the last month I forgot to use them.

This was a long time coming.

I had been disenchanted with the OA recovery program I was following, and I had been struggled to strike the right food balance for months.

Now I have to clean up and find my way again. The upside is that I don’t feel beaten. Human beings make mistakes frequently. The important thing is what one does with the mistake to learn and grow.

I haven’t slipped since that day in the Burger King drive-through, though the eating is still sloppy. I’m working my way out of it, but I’m still in that unsettled, raw place. Getting back on one’s feet is hard, but I’m going to get there.

I have no alternative.

Next: Feelings of lingering vulnerability catch up with the author during two hikes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Back in my hell by Eddie the Yeti

Posted on

So You Wanna Blog About Your Demons

Quite a few people are starting to share stories about their mental health challenges and other demons. Some ponder if they should start blogging about it. Having written such a blog for almost five years now, here’s my take.

Mood music:

If you feel you have reached the right point in your journey to start sharing, then do it. If nothing else, it will help you keep things in perspective. I always feel better after I’ve torn a few skeletons from my closet and tossed them to the light.

Once you expose them, they seem a lot smaller. Chances are you will also touch a few people who need to know they’re not alone; that they’re dealing with the stuff that makes us all human. They need to see proof that they are not freaks.

If you are still at the beginning of figuring out your issues and you’re in that confused state where you don’t know up from down, it might be better to start writing just for yourself. Fill notebooks but don’t share yet. Wait until you reach a point in recovery where you’re ready to come out. Then you can take what you wrote when emotions were still raw and put them out there along with fresh perspective of where you’ve been since then.

When I started this blog, I wanted to break stigmas and make people more comfortable outing their own demons. Not many people were doing it back then. Today, many are taking the leap. Whether I’ve influenced any of it is for others to determine. All I know is that I’m happy to see it.

Whatever you decide to do, know that I admire you and gain extra strength from the experiences you already share.

Godspeed and good luck.

skeleton closet dance

Posted on

Your Excuse Is Invalid

Like everyone else, I find it hard to motivate myself some days. Then I read tales and see photos of people doing big things despite big disadvantages. My own problems then seem microscopic, and I can move on.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3G6Pmvb6lsEu7dFkW0bpQc]

Today I’d like to thank three people for giving me a much-needed kick in the ass.  Whenever I’m feeling overwhelmed and sorry for myself, I can look to them and see my excuses for personal adversity are invalid.

My aunt Robin, who is fighting breast cancer with grace and good humor:

Aunt Robin

Amandita Sullivan, one of my Facebook connections. I don’t know her personally, but I connected with her because she uses the social network to inspire people daily with her story of recovery after getting hit by two different cars inside of a week. She also devotes a lot of space to others who have bounced back from adversity:

Amandita Sullivan

And this guy, a friend of Amandita’s who lost two legs but not his lust for life:

Climbing mountains

Rock on, folks.

Posted on

Lost in the Overeaters Anonymous Wilderness

I’ve explained how food is my addiction — an uncool addiction at that. I’ve written about how Overeaters Anonymous (OA) was my salvation from that addiction. And I’ve told you I’ve been living the 12 Steps of Recovery.

Now it’s time to tell you about my summer of going astray, and how I don’t completely regret it.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:63kyrMgKo0M0qvrDVtD4yN]

I’ve kept my eating clean most of the time, though I’ve gotten sloppy in spots. I’ve eaten many meals outside the home and away from the little scale I use to weigh out my portions. I’m sure some of those meals have exceeded the limit I’m supposed to be living by. Meanwhile, all the vegetables in my diet have left my Crohn’s Disease–scarred insides irritable.

My bigger failure, though, is that I haven’t gone to an OA meeting or spoken to my sponsor in months. For all I know, he decided he was no longer my sponsor a long time ago.

This turn of events isn’t about laziness and a broken will. It’s about discontent.

A while ago, I started to get annoyed by parts of the program. I didn’t feel like I was getting much use from calling a sponsor every day at the same time. That’s probably because I wasn’t being honest about the number of meetings I was attending or what I was eating. I was eating cleanly, but not according to the exact menu I gave the sponsor each morning. That’s technically a no-no.

I got sick of the meetings because it would be the same people saying the same things, over and over.

It started to feel like a cult to me. So I rebelled.

I’ve thought about calling my sponsor and asking for another chance, but I never get around to it. Part of me doesn’t want the second chance. Sponsorship is an important tool of recovery, a guide to coach you along and get you past moments of weakness. But some sponsors seem to let their role go to their heads and demand a lot more control over your life than they should be entitled to. Or so I’ve told myself.

And OA has its fiefdoms, just like any other group. There are the newbies, the people who can’t get it together, and the gurus who seem to have figured it all out. Or so I’ve told myself.

You know how it is when you’re frustrated with something: You zero in on all the negative elements and develop memory loss when it comes to all the things that worked.

So here I am, frustrated. But I’m also making excuses not to do the things I really need to be doing for real recovery. Maybe that’s really what this post is about — coming clean about my sins and resolving to get over myself and get my program back on track.

I don’t totally regret any of this. Four years after attending my first OA meeting and trying to do the program exactly as instructed by others, I’m still in a much better place than when I was sneaking around every day binging on everything in sight. Life is good. I’ve simply reached a point where my program needs a big overhaul.

Maybe I’ll call the sponsor today.

Food Coma