Cold Returns

            There were tracks in the snow, tracks of boots and shoes and cycles and most likely a dog.  He had a bicycle, but the snow was treacherous with narrow tires and a heavy load, so he walked.  The snow still fell, finer, sharper, but he was near shelter and he walked on.

            It was cold, and damp, and he was not dressed for such weather, but he did not mind.  He thought of the great vat of wine waiting for him, and his mouth twitched in the bare suggestion of a smile.  Glühwein tonight, so he walked on.

The snow squeaked under his shoes and rattled on his cap, and he could see the bend in the tracks that signaled he was close.  He thought of home, how it, too, might be seeing snow.  But which home, the place he was born or the place where he first lived alone, first learned friendship?  Quite likely both.

He walked on.  The snow fell into the gap between pant cuff and shoe and he felt the cold in his ankle and his fingers and his eyes.  He recalled his friends and family from home, some more than others; and his chest tightened at the memory of the one whom he had hoped would be more than friend.  Enough, he told himself: that choice has been made, that ship has sailed.  Ah, but if you heard it might return to port, you’d run to it.  Aye, but there’s no knowing if or when that ship will return, so dwelling on it serves no purpose.

            He walked on.  He had reached the turn in the tracks and he gripped the bicycle to mount the curb.  The bushes were stark and bare under their coat of snow and he thought them beautiful.  Why it was beautiful he could not say, but it was and he loved it and he wondered why.

            He walked on.

            Cold and tired and alone, he walked on.

On OCD: March 2014

I had an obsessive-compulsive episode one week ago tonight, on March 6th, C.E. 2014.

I didn’t recognize it at first; I thought it was just another day of modest self-disappointment caused by lack of focus and over-scheduling.  Those days happen, and usually an hour or two of good focused exercise is enough to bring me back to my senses.

Not that day.  That day, I couldn’t get my failure to finish the day’s self-imposed job training assignment out of my mind.  It kept buzzing in my head through the late afternoon; it kept muttering during taekwondo class; it sent my brain spinning after practice.  It felt like my brain was going round and round and round and round, racing down a spiral stair, chasing after that one detail that I had failed, I had not done my job, and now I was risking the loss of a place to live and work—all this despite the fact that my deadline was almost entirely self-imposed.  It was so bad, I left my taekwondo studio nearly half an hour early despite having my black belt test two days later.

It wasn’t until I was leaving Yong Studios, around 19:55 at night, that I realized: I know this feeling.  I experienced it on a regular basis between the ages of four and ten.  This is the feeling of an obsession, and it was driving me toward a compulsion: namely, the compulsion to complete some part of the work I had failed to do earlier.  In a very real sense, once I got home, I would be obsessively-compulsively working.

It’s hard to explain this to one who hasn’t experienced it.  The running torture is a good analogy; it is a torture where the accused is made to run around a track without food, water, or rest until he or she either confesses or collapses.  It is an insidious thing, because it does not seem like torture; there is no rack, no whip, no thumbscrew, only the repetitive, exhausting pounding.

An obsessive attack is like that: the brain runs itself in the same circle, around and around that focus point, over and over and over and over and over and over and over until the afflicted either surrenders to the compulsion or collapses from the effort of fighting.  It makes no difference that the victim knows his obsession is unrealistic; the brain has its track, and the mind runs its course.

Terror.

That’s the best description I can give for my reaction.  I’ve known my whole life that I suffered from OCD and that I am a high-strung person, but for years I believed that I finally had the demon beaten.  For some of them, perhaps I did.  Now I face the very real possibility that, rather than defeat the demon, I have simply redirected it; and that is a terrifying thought.

There are some advantages, I suppose.  If nothing else, it provides a powerful motivation to meet my responsibilities.  My brain, quite literally, will not allow me to escape those tasks I (it?) deems important.  My job, hobbies, and friends need never fear neglect.

Yet there is a danger, and a very real one at that.  To begin, my motivation is almost all negative; I work because I flog myself, not because I seek the result.  More important, this represents a loss of autonomy.  I cannot change my path at will, nor can I escape my past plans, even when those plans prove impossible.  Flexibility is almost impossible, for how can I be flexible when my mind flagellates itself for even the slightest deviation from my plans?

The only solution I’ve found, thus far, is to categorize.  Only when I dissect and outline and factualize, apart from any and all emotional baggage, do I feel able to grasp the issue without panic.  Yet it seems I must go through the panic before undergoing the divorce, and any deviation requires some excuse.

It works.  I can survive this way.  But I do not want to spend the next ten years at war, dissecting all details, excusing each deviation, analyzing every choice.  It is a stiff life that leaves, inflexible, cold.  It would make Kant proud, I suppose: he and I would have got along splendidly.  But that is not the life I want.  I want to live, to laugh, to love, to cry, to grieve.  I want to skip my workout without feeling an urge to skip bread at dinner, I want to leave work early when the doctor calls, I want to take the time to meet a friend or colleague or lover in the cafe without analyzing how it might affect my night.  I want to live, not plan to live.  I have made great strides towards that goal in the past four years, yet this last episode, and the week following it, showed how far I have yet to go.

Walking a Wire: Mental Health & Employment Edition

Hey, all.
    As many of you know, I have spent much of the past few months looking for neuroscience and psychiatric research work, both through assistantships and graduate school.  I’m currently waiting to hear from a number of places and emailing PIs in these fields.
    In explaining why I wish to pursue neuroscience, personal history invariably arises.  And thus arises the tricky part, because I can’t explain why I want to pursue neuroscience without bringing family into the problem.
    I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have anxiety issues.  As a young child—six or so—I suffered obsessive-compulsive disorder so severe that my parents had to take me out of school.  I still remember those little white SSRI pills, and the compulsion to clean.  My problems are less OCD now, and more social anxiety; I constantly feel a need to prove that I am “good enough,” and measure myself against the people I respect most (who, inevitably, are the people who are most productive or most successful while still remaining satisfied with their lives).  Nor am I the only one in my family: my uncle has OCD (he won’t see a psychiatrist, but the entire family knows he has it), at least two cousins have suffered anorexia, my brother had mild OCD, and my sister had anorexia nervosa so severe that, for three months, the sight of a full plate caused panic attacks.  With the exception of my uncle (who, as I said, refuses to seek treatment), all have recovered; still, my experience, and the experience of my family, is what sparked and continues to motivate my interest in psychiatry.

    Almost all employers and schools want to know why its interviewees want a position.  When looking at psychiatric research, I need to mention this history if I am to answer honestly.  Yet, mentioning a familial or personal history of anxiety is usually the kiss of death in an interview; so I must dissemble or obfuscate if I wish to answer at all.
    I understand why employers and schools do this.  Taking on a student or employee with a health history, particularly one as unpredictable and poorly understood as a neuropsychiatric problem, is a tremendous risk.  Yet, from my perspective, it feels like I must hide my motives in order to even have a chance of pursuing my goals.
    Personally, I see my anxiety as a mixed bag.  Certainly, it means that I build a shell in social environments and have a very difficult time opening to others; certainly, it means that I’m sensitive to insult and hostility; certainly, it affects my ability to multitask, since I feel a need to finish one task before starting another (or at least meet benchmarks in it); certainly, it’s caused tunnel vision in the past (I’m trying to avoid that in future); and, beyond doubt, it causes suffering and health problems in the afflicted (me).  Yet, it has benefits as well.  I may have difficulty multitasking, but when I set my mind to a project, I focus laser-like on the problem.  The fact that I need to “prove myself” makes me seek constant improvement, and drives me to produce high-quality work.  That I can focus on a task to the exclusion of all else means that the task gets done, and fear of being caught flat-footed means I don’t half-ass work or bullshit my way through meetings; I don’t speak unless I have something to say.  The need for benchmarks keeps me scheduled, keeps me moving, and keeps me motivated.  And the drive to improve, to prove myself capable, to, in the words of Darwin Smith, “never stop trying to be qualified for the job,” means that I reflect on my actions and think about how to avoid repeating past mistakes.  I wish all this didn’t come with anxiety and shyness, but that is part of the package.

    You can’t understand me without knowing that I am anxious.  It’s part and parcel of who I am.  I want to be honest about it.  I don’t want to hide it; I don’t want to be judged by it.  I want to show that it can be controlled, it can be tamed, and it can be used.

From the Outside Looking In

Yo.

When I write on this blog, I tend to write on issues that concern me.  That usually means that a lot of people have strong opinions on the subject.  Further, the issues are often rather thorny, so that raises its own dangers.

Something to remember when reading is, I claim no monopoly on truth or knowledge.  When I write on Islam (I’ve finished A Dream of Red Mansions, and the Qu’ran is next), I will be writing as a lapsed Catholic/not-quite-agnostic with an interest in the subject and a few Muslim friends, not as someone with years of cultural and intellectual immersion.  When I write on feminist issues or gender roles, I write as a young man from a fairly WASPy background (I was raised Catholic, but still), not as a person with a gender studies or heavily feminist background.  When I write on science or engineering or history, I write with an eye more aimed at science than at political correctness.

The inevitable result of this is that I will express some opinions that they may be inaccurate, that may be objectionable, that may be naive or blunt.  Sometimes, this is deliberate; there is value in prodding the sacred cows every so often.  Sometimes it’s unavoidable; many of the subjects that interest me are contentious at best.  Often, however, it’s the simple ignorance of an outsider.  The best cure for ignorance is education, so before jumping all over that ignorance, we should try to correct it.  This applies to opinions everywhere, not just me (although, if the person displays stupidity and bigotry as well as ignorance, that's a different story).

The point I’m trying to make is, these posts are as much for my education as for my self-expression.  I’m still learning.  If something bothers you, let me know; if I’ve made an inaccurate claim, please correct me; just don’t treat it as a manifesto.  At this stage of my life, my views are hardly set in stone.

Fat-Shaming vs. Health

Hi, all.

Now that application season #1 is (finally) over, I can return to the blog, my taekwondo studio, and hilarious things on the interwebs.  Here, I relate thoughts on a (rather inebriated) conversation at the Thanksgiving table.

Fat-shaming has been getting a lot of attention in the past few years, thanks to a disturbing prevalence of eating disorders and the pejorative use of the word “fat.”  Here, I relate my feelings on the subject.  Bear in mind that it applies to men and women equally.

It seems that in many circles, discussing one’s body shape has become an utterly taboo subject.  There are reasons for this, of course; eating disorders are an all-too-real concern, and despite what advertising would have us believe, healthy body types come in many shapes and sizes.  Fitness should be a personal decision, and we cannot fit all body types into a single mold.

Nonetheless, the rendering of fitness as a completely taboo subject worries me.  The simple fact is that, as a society, we are overweight.  I use the royal we, of course; I suspect that most of the people reading this are perfectly healthy.  However, my social circle is very much an intellectual elite; we went to college, most of us will go to graduate school, we pay attention to events in the wider world, and we have been raised to consider our health and fitness.  But, despite the jokes, statistics don’t lie: some 67% of the United States population is clinically overweight, and around 30% is obese.

Now, it’s popular to blame large corporations, poverty, lack of education, metabolic differences, the loss of time, and any of a dozen other things for this.  Those are all factors, and they should be addressed.  Nonetheless, in many (not all, but many) cases it is a lifestyle choice.  Options for healthy living are available, particularly in urban areas; the spread of healthy food and active lifestyles has been slow but real.  It’s a question of using them.

Now, here’s the bit that concerns me.  In the United States—and, I can only assume, many other Western nations as well—discussing personal fitness is something of a taboo subject.  We’re afraid of offending someone by noting an extra few pounds, and we’re afraid of triggering an eating disorder in “fragile” people.  Some have gone so far as to make overweight “normal,” or beautify it, or make it positive.  That concerns me.  It’s one thing to oppose using “fat” as an insult; it’s quite another thing to make it positive.  The science linking weight with a host of health problems is long, detailed, and damn near ironclad.  When we have a 60% overweight population, “fat” should not be positive; it should be a description of a solvable problem.

I feel that I’m trying to pull off a rather delicate balancing act here.  It’s vital to note that there’s a huge range of healthy body types; I’ve met attractive people who were stick-thin, voluptuous, and everything in between.  Anyone within the “normal” BMI range is almost certainly healthy and has nothing to worry about (yes, I know that BMI is imperfect, but it’s a start).  We can’t all look like supermodels; frankly, many supermodels shouldn’t look like supermodels.  And, as many people note, there are more important things than having a perfect body; a career path, healthy friendships, and a social life come to mind.  

I think an honest discussion of the problem, along with supportive suggestions, might be a good start.  It might help address the obesity epidemic if the sufferers were told of their affliction.  Aristotle once said that ignorance is the worst disease, because the afflicted does not know of the affliction.  To get to that point, however, will require some delicate maneuvers.

First of all, I don’t like the use of “fat” as an insult.  It’s a physical problem, not a mental one.  Like most problems, it can be fixed with dedication and hard work, and there are no shortcuts.  So one step would be to stop the use of “fat” as an insult, and use it instead more like a diagnosis.  If you think that’s impossible, well, cancer and AIDS used to carry stigmas.

This might might help the other end of the spectrum as well.  The use of “fat” as an insult has led to the assumption that “non-fat” is a good; saying “You’re looking skinny” is automatically considered a complement.  This is not always the case; I’ve seen a number of people where my immediate reaction was, “Someone needs to tell them to put on a pound or ten.”  Frankly, I think we should be more willing to say “You’re skinny; are you eating enough?”

I should clarify that, to my mind, thin is a body type: the flesh is sparse, but proportionally distributed on the frame and, well, healthy-looking.  Several boys and girls I know have been thin as long as I’ve known them, and they’re all healthy individuals.  Skinny, on the other hand, suggests that there’s not enough flesh to cover the frame.  I’ve seen people like that as well, and being ten pounds shy is at least as unattractive as being ten pounds generous.

I guess what I’m saying is to have an honest discussion about weight and healthy eating.  Being overweight is not something to be proud of or to glorify, but neither is being unnaturally thin.  Too many calories are bad, but so is too few, and so is the wrong kind.  Personally, my extended family comes in all shapes and sizes, but the healthiest tend to follow the Michael Pollan food rules: Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.

Final note: I understand why billboard supermodels are taken as “standards of beauty.”  They’re perfect.  So perfect, in fact, that I can’t find anything to like in them.

That last sentence may sound strange, but the fact is I do not find advertising models attractive.  They look like statues or gods, not humans; they radiate haughty detachment, not welcome.  I have no desire to befriend or love a statue.  Imperfections, to me, are a door; they make a person approachable.  Flaws make character, and character counts for more than perfection.  I wonder how many others feel the same.

On Doing Nothing

Sometimes we need to do nothing at all.

Sometimes we need to stop and think for a time.

Sometimes we need to reexamine our road.

And that’s okay.

Because sometimes, the only way to find yourself is to stop looking so hard.

It’s been a while since I my last post.  That’s largely because I’ve been driving myself to drink with job applications, master’s applications, doctoral applications, and wondering how I’ll buy Christmas gifts (or anything else) when I’m unemployed and broke.  It’s about as miserable as you’d expect…I loathe applications.

That said, I have had free time for the first time in a very long time.  For the first time in my memory, there’s no homework, there’s no social pull, there’s no responsibility after 21:00.  For the first time in my life, I can spend time researching and considering future options full-time, rather than feeling the push of the rat race again.  For the first time in memory, I can stop and think for a while.

As part of that research and reflection, I’ve reexamined my future path.  I assumed that I would hurtle down the doctoral path at full speed, looking for a neuroscience Ph.D with the shortest possible lag time, so that I could start my research career as soon as possible.  Since starting full-time graduate school research, however, I’ve been plagued by doubts.  Basically, it came to the following: how much do I love physics and engineering?  To what extent, if any, am I willing to leave physics behind?  Do I want to jump straight into neuroscience, or take a longer but more mathematical and physics-based route?

The answer, somewhat to my surprise, was that no, I am not willing to sacrifice physics as completely as I believed.  Strange and slightly masochistic though it may be, I liked physics.  I like the surety of it, the sense of accomplishment in solving problems, the mathematical certainty of equations and manipulations.  Yes, there was pain and struggle involved, and I certainly wasn’t the best in my class (on a related note, anyone who says girls are bad at math or physics is either living the 1950s or has their head inserted up a particularly unpleasant part of their anatomy).  But, despite all that and some spectacularly bad instructors, I liked my physics education, and I want to make use of it.

As a direct result of this conclusion, I’ve revamped my job hunt, reexamined my educational plans, and rebooted my plans for the next couple of years.  My initial assumption was a year or two of work, followed by neuroscience doctoral research.  Now, I may delay the doctoral work in favor of a M.Sc. in biophysics or biomedical engineering, to be followed by a Ph.D.  I’m still not sure where that Ph.D will go; although neuroscience remains the most likely suspect, I like the clarity of mathematics and physics much more than the wetwork of biological dissections and chemistry.

This seems like a minor change, and in the long term it is, but it’s one that I was certain would never happen a month ago.   A month ago, I had not questioned the swift, certain road to neuroscience, and I was ready to fly towards it.  I would not have questioned this approach, had I not had the time to think it through.

Here comes the point: I never thought about this before.  Or, more accurately, I never thought deeply about it.  I had assumed I would follow the neuroscience route directly, never considering what that might entail or whether it was the best fit for me.  I only considered the consequences and what best suited my needs and skills when I was forced to stop and think for a while.

You’ll notice that I used the word “forced.”  This is because, well, I was forced.  Given my druthers, I would have jumped straight into the work environment and never thought twice about my path ahead.  I hated, and still hate, having nothing to do.  Yet sometimes, that is what we need.

This is a largely anecdotal piece, obviously.  Yet I don’t think I’m the only one who feels that this time to decompress is not only valuable, but absolutely and vitally necessary.  In fact, The Economist ran this piece on this very subject; modern businesses encouraging their workers to stop and think for a while.

In today’s world, we feel a constant pressure to work longer, harder, and faster.  Increased competition means that, to land a job or a studentship, we must be far more qualified than our parents were.  The miracle of modern communication means we are connected to employers and friends 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no respite.  This has its advantages, one of which is that you can read this, yet the pressure to be always on can make us forget how much it matters to unplug.

Deep insight, personal or otherwise, seldom comes in the midst of constant bombardment.  It requires time, and thought, and quiet.  I never fully appreciated how necessary that time is until I found it again.

The Reason I Write

The following touches on a dark spot in my mental and emotional history.  It is my considered opinion that I have addressed the situation since then, and I continue to do so.  I am no longer depressed, I am no longer silent, and I am not alone.  The first, I was; the second, I almost was; the third, I have never been.

Hi, all.

My thoughts have been aflutter for the couple of weeks, with the result that I've been writing a lot.  Hopefully some of it will be publishable soon.  At some point, however, I had to question; why do I write so much, at such length?  I used to loathe writing, yet now I barely go a day without it.  What changed to draw me to it?  I'm not completely sure, but here are some suspicions:

• I have more free time.  This is a no-brainer; I'm (still) unemployed, and I can only spend so much time a day studying for the GRE or chasing applications.
• I have been catching up on some topics that I previously neglected.  A lot of these thoughts occurred during the school year, but I didn't have time to write then.
• I am reading about issues that strike a chord.   In particular, I have found a trove of mental illness blogs and comics, and have blazed through them.  It's a subject that troubles me.
• I find it easier to express involved thoughts in writing; there's less chance of interruption, and I have more time to order my thoughts.
• It's therapy.

The first three topics seem rather self-evident, but the last two require some more explanation.  Let's start with the first of those.

I've always found verbal communication a challenge.  It's not that I can't speak to others--obviously I can--but doing so requires a stupendous amount of energy.  The amount of energy necessary increases with the rapidity and degrees of freedom of the conversation (degrees of freedom being the number of people involved).  With so many sensory inputs coming in, my brain diverts the energy necessary for output to processing; as such, I often fail to respond quickly when faced with unexpected inputs.

The topic of the conversation matters as well, of course, as does the company.  I can discuss politics, philosophy, science, or literature with relative ease, and among my close friends I can discourse with great comfort.  When discussing personal or emotional topics, the energy requirements go up a hundredfold; the same is true when in a less well-known audience.  Perhaps it's a culturally instilled aversion to some topics, perhaps it's concern of giving offense, perhaps it's fear of making myself vulnerable, perhaps it is a mixture of the above, but sometimes simply speaking requires breaching a wall of hesitation and fear.

Finally, there is the question of forming understanding.  Arguably, the whole purpose of language is to bridge the gaps in understanding and viewpoints between two people.  That's certainly what I believe, and as such, I believe that honesty is the best policy, always.  I believe that we, as a society, need to be franker and more willing to communicate, if we are to bridge the gaps in comprehension that plague us.

Yet even with small gaps, it is not an easy thing to do.  So, sometimes I fail to explain myself, not because it is impossible, but because I feel like the effort required to confer understanding in the other party is not worth the energy necessary to instill it.  At times like that, I can see a (to me) simple topic dragging into a long and draining argument, with no guarantee of perception from either side.  It's simply easier to gloss it over with a "nothing much" or "it doesn't matter" than to build the bridge necessary to cross that canyon.

At other times, I want to build the bridge but I lack the materials necessary.  The message I want to convey simply dwarfs the words that I can use to convey it; to put it in words would mean abandoning the largest part of what I wish to say.  Sometimes I can't even unpick the knot myself at that moment, much less explain it to someone else.

As for the therapy part…well, sometimes it's simply that I want to be heard and express myself clearly.  Other times, it's more than that.

Disclosure: I experienced a bout of depression over winter and spring quarters of the past school year (2013).  There was a reason for it, a reason that I have absolutely no desire to discuss, and I was fortunate enough to recognize and address the situation.  However, the fact remains that I was depressed and that I cut off contact with much of my social circle, because I could not endure the strain of socialization on top of everything else, and I could not express what I was feeling to my friends without causing pain.

Around this time, I discovered writing.  I discovered it because, although I could not bounce my thoughts off my friends, I could bounce them off myself.  I could use the written word to analyze my thoughts, my actions, and my emotions.  Perhaps, by writing, I could exorcise some of the demons I felt.  Perhaps, by writing, I could communicate some part of what I felt, even if only with myself.  Perhaps, by writing and choosing what to reveal, I could begin to heal myself.

So I wrote.  I wrote, to express the helplessness and disillusionment that I felt.  I wrote, because not to write was to keep a tempest in a teacup, and the tempest had grown larger than its container.  I wrote, in order to trace the path I had taken from the mountaintop to the valley.  I wrote, to cast light on the demons hiding in plain view.  I wrote, because writing let me be a part of something; it was a line to throw; it pulled me to earth when I felt myself letting go.

That last may seem odd, but it's strange what can ground you, when you feel yourself being swept away.  I have three main methods to recover myself; strenuous exercise, walking, and writing.  The first forces an endorphin flood; the second helps me think; the third lets me express those thoughts.  That expression is a powerful therapeutic tool, when mere speech seems unable to carry you.  Perhaps more important, that expression reminds us that we can communicate with others, and thus, that we are not alone.

So I write.  I write because I cannot speak, but words must be said.  I write, because writing gives me the time to think, to untie the knot, to build the bridge I need.  Yet, in the end, that bridge must reach from my side to another.  The three methods I mention above ground me in an emergency; for the long term, sanity lies in belonging.  It lies in friendship.  It lies in a mission.

In short my friends—you—are my best anchors.

Here are a couple of links I found that sparked this.  The common thread I see is a need to speak, and a sense that speech cannot do so adequately.

• Just be honest for now • I DO NOT HAVE AN EATING DISORDER
• A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words
• depression comix