I Hate the 21st Century Continued, in Which I Reject the Internet and Discuss an Article from The New York Times Concerning An Intriguing Academic Program
February 9, 2010 at 4:29 am | In In the News, Philosophical Problems, Productivity, Sociability, Work Life | Leave a CommentLet me begin with bile and end, for once, on a hopeful note.
So. Lately computers in general and the Internet in particular have been driving me nuts. Several times a day I reflect gloomily on how much of my adult life I’ve wasted staring at screens small and large while pages load. I’ve definitely been either hypomanic or unusually irritable while entertaining this train of thought. Nonetheless, I think there’s genuine insight to be had here. Most days, between work and this space, I log a minimum of 10 hours online. Throw in an evening email check, a quick trip to, say, Amazon.com, and time squandered reading The Times on my iPod at lunch and in waiting rooms, and we’re looking at 12 or 13 hours. No wonder I’m still creeping through Victor David Hanson’s remarkable A War Like No Other.
(Digression that makes me wish for footnotes: When I searched Hanson’s book on Amazon, I was intrigued to note that he’s the author of Carnage and Culture, which I’ve long dismissed as a right-wing tract that blindly and possibly ahistorically that argues that a democratic tradition allowed the West to conquer and enslave New World indigenous cultures. Hanson’s book on the Peloponnesian war demonstrates the subtlety and reach of his scholarship; I’ll have to revisit Carnage and Culture.)
Back to the 21st Century, against which I hold a whole variety of grudges. My shoulders are perpetually sore from hunching over screens. Despite the hardware’s laughably superior processing power, the bloated software on my PC at work runs more slowly than the crude programs I installed on the Commodore 64 I had in high school.
To my endless irritation, the Internet has taken over my life. I date, buy books and clothes, correspond with friends, and work exclusively online. I text or email the gentlemen of my acquaintance to the exclusion of phone conversations (I’ll address the evils of cell phones presently). I’ve initiated, consummated, and ended key romantic partnerships via email (though never by text or instant message). This is crazy, and it has to stop.
Before you all begin to bristle at my Luddite ways, I will note that I reap benefits from it, too. Before online shopping no brick-and-mortar store carried my absurd clothing sizes (a 00 in jeans and a 30DD in bras). I’ve met some lovely people online. I adore Skype’s largely free VOIP service. So what’s the problem? Shouldn’t I brim with gratitude and plunge into every technology developed?
Overall, I think we’ve suffered more than we’re willing to admit. I’ve often joked that the Internet and smartphones are Gen X TV — that is, they destroy relationships and culture with their inexorable spread. Every now and then, I remind my office mate that Kierkegaard wrote Either/Or in its entirety in eight months using quill and ink. I’m here to tell you that hand-written 19th Century German philosophy beats the hell out of even the most learned contemporary discourse.
A few more examples:
1. Cell phones substantially reduce the quality of communication. Digital sound quality invariably muddies conversation. Everyone has a cell phone glued to their ear, yet complains about everyone else’s poor manners (phones ringing during sermons and seminars) and reckless behavior (talking and texting while driving).
2. Constant availability sucks. It also inspires complete submission. My life illustrates this neatly, since I carry two cell phones (company and personal) and a pager, and answer to a work landline, personal and business email, VOIP services like Skype, and instant messaging, which I loathe. Oh, and I text on both of my phones.
I hate, hate, hate this way of living, and I’ve resisted the innovations that irritate me most. It’s a radical step even to cut back on one medium, though. My coworkers, for example, rise indignant when I limit my emailing to two hours in the morning and afternoon; the evil minions of Mission Planning pestered me to get IM, and I gave in. Ever since, I’ve been subject to trivial and distracting interruptions throughout my work day.
3. As availability grows, so does the downpour of trivial requests. In their excellent book Send, David Shipley and Will Schwalby astutely point out that email and other forms of instant communication encourage people to ask for things that they could easily find for themselves. I’m as bad as anyone, demanding documents and contact information that’s easily searched out on our company intranet. This phenomenon causes everyone to fritter away precious work hours hunting down each others’ silly stuff and emailing it back and forth. Worse yet, we expect to get it now, and condemn people who fall behind in this insane environment. (I haven’t, but I’d like to.)
4. The data managers in offices adjacent to mine text me rather than sticking their heads around the door. Forget walking several blocks to the closed area to find me. When I get back, they whine that they needed me immediately. To which I say, then trot over to the next building and stop complaining about your expanding desk ass. They know perfectly well that cell phones aren’t permitted in labs and closed areas.
5. Sure, there’s Google. But that’s created three problems. First, it’s eliminated other sources of information, at least in my life. I don’t go to university libraries, and I have no phone book. I haven’t opened an atlas in years. This isn’t just nostalgia on my part. Each of these information sources carries distinct advantages over its online counterpart.
This trend becomes pernicious when writers argue, as Nick Bilton does in this New York Times article, that Twitter — Twitter! — is now mandatory. His arguments? Without Twitter, you might miss out on a coupon. Never mind that those very coupons will cause you to spend more money overall. Besides, everyone else is doing it, and you might fall behind. Being less available and connected than others is, in his world, perverse, irresponsible, and self-destructive.
This is idiotic. I hate Twitter, if only because it encourages illiteracy (as do texting, instant messaging, and email). For many people, it may be an excellent medium. I hold it in contempt, though, and I will not send or receive tweets.
Finally — and this sickens me — corporations sell Internet connectivity on the basis that it will allow you to find out anything, anytime, anywhere. You may ask, what’s wrong with that? I’m beginning to suspect that this has become a universal excuse for ignorance. Why know that capital of Peru when you can Google it with your smartphone? Why learn Japanese when their are translation programs? I’m serious about this — I think it contributes to our general contempt for education.
6. For all that people are connected, they’re no more available. It’s impossible to know which medium prompts the fastest response from any given person, so in a genuine emergency you have to take the time to page them, leave a voice mail on cell and landlines, send an email, and even tap out an instant message. I’ve done this in a pinch, and it’s an irritating time-waster to both sender and recipient.
So there.
But seriously, we’ve gotten to the point where we regard technology not as helpful, but as mandatory. Rather than scrutinizing and selecting among the various available media, we’ve created a regime under which we adopt everything on pain of being left behind.
There are holdouts. For instance, a couple of prominent bloggers have decided that email doesn’t serve their needs, and they’ve given it up. Others take a more passive-aggressive route, slacking off on their email in-boxes until they’re forced to declare electronic bankruptcy. (Two coworkers are near this point, and I’m annoyed that they never answer my plaintive emails.)
On the whole, though, we’re screwed. That’s why I’m launching an offensive to stay offline.
Starting tomorrow.
Moving along, I can’t stifle my ongoing interest in higher education. As a result, I’d like to share this article from The New York Times about programs that send at-risk high school students to community college early, allowing them to begin earning a two-year degree before graduating from high school.
I regarded the whole thing with skepticism when I first read the headline. Oh, Lord, I thought. Just what every college needs: A further surge of unprepared students. The article impressed me, however. The students go to community colleges (that’s not clear from the headline), which are much better prepared than four-year universities to tutor them in basic academic and study skills.
The numbers show that high expectations work. Not one participant in the North Carolina has dropped out; compare this to a 62 percent graduation rate at its feeder school. The students were far from being overachievers, but they still manage to outperform their older college counterparts. This interests me because community college students are often highly motivated. Two of the best students I know began their careers at a community college — my mom, who earned straight As through her college career, and a former colleague who earned a doctorate at the world-class graduate school where I got my graduate degree. The latter absolutely shames me with his erudition; he reads Homeric Greek and recently mastered Italian. He has a smattering of French, German and Russian (in which he was once reasonably fluent), and is studying contemporary Greek. Not to mention having one edited volume published and another in press. My teaching experience suggests that this applies to community college students in general — by the time they reach a four-year university, they are often well-prepared, and certainly mature.
So, yeah, on the whole community college students can be a force to be reckoned with. They’re often much more hungry for their degrees than the average student at a four-year university, and though many are less prepared when they begin (admittedly, my two examples were not), they can go on to whip more privileged students who go straight into a four-year program. The fact that troubled high school students can outperform an older, ambitious population speaks well for the North Carolina program.
It sounds, then, like solid academics and high expectations can do a lot to counter even a poor K-12 education. That gives me some hope for the future.
I’m finally signing off now after two and a half hours spent writing. I still have to answer my personal email, read my blogs, and look at the newspaper. Then I”l go to work.
Heaven help me.
Is It OK Not to Tell Some People That I’m Manic-Depressive?
February 8, 2010 at 5:19 am | In Fighting Prejudice, Sociability | 1 Comment
Will opening that door illuminate your relationship, or will it simply blind others?
(Those of you who know me are thinking, Wait, back up — since when is a mouse like you going to parties? It was a very small party, and it’s the first one I’ve been to since grad school. And I have been hypomanic, which makes social situations effortless, even fun.)
The night we met, I didn’t mention that I’m bipolar; it didn’t come up. After the party, once I’d made plans to get together with this couple, I thought, Hm, I suppose I should come clean. I found myself resisting, however. Eventually I decided not to tell them, and went so far as to remove any books about bipolar disorder from my bookshelves before having them over. As I was stowing the books in one of the upstairs closets, I thought, well, I’ve crossed the line from omission into deception. After some consideration, I concluded that that’s acceptable, even that it serves a higher good.
Most bipolar people do struggle with the issue of coming out. Many people who aren’t bipolar have conditions that affect their relationships and identity, and that involve a coming-out process. It might be interesting, therefore, to review my reasoning.
1. Some things really are private. It’s important that I tell everyone to whom I’m close, because whether I like it or not, my being bipolar has a huge impact on my friends, family, and partners (something to investigate in these pages eventually). I certainly wouldn’t try to hide it indefinitely. If the friendship deepens, I may rely on them to watch and judge my symptoms. Like anyone, I need the people around me to tell me when I’m exercising poor judgment or mistaking being an overbearing blowhard for charm and wit. It’s not reasonable to expect this from relative strangers, and I have the same need of privacy and right to it that anyone would claim.
When you tell someone about a deeply personal problem, you deepen intimacy with them. That cuts two ways. It’s often a relief to peel off the facade, and it can be a genuine pleasure simply to get to know people better. Without a doubt, there’s a point in every relationship where concealing certain facts requires a series of omissions that limit intimacy sharply. At the same time, anyone who’s been the recipient of creepy TMI (too much information) will testify that there’s a stage in any relationship when this constitutes a violation.
Here’s an extreme (though funny) example. Once, during a first date, a gentleman not only told me that he’d been sexually abused by his older brother, but detailed his prostate problems and a distressing digestive issue. All of this came out in two hours, primarily over dinner.
Now, my family is in the habit of sharing even very private medical problems, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that. There’s no point in being mysterious about such things, and sometimes it’s helpful to get advice. But the prostates of strangers fail the “breakfast test” that The New York Times adheres to in its crossword puzzle. That is, since many people work puzzles at breakfast, the editors refrain from relying on nauseating or improper words and allusions.
In fact, TMI is unattractive for several reasons. Among other things, when someone lets you in on such secrets, it becomes clear that he is indiscreet, to put it mildly; he must also need an audience desperately, which is unattractive.
I think we avoid people who raise red flags, not just because we’re worried that they’ll be high-maintenance, but because we think, “Christ, if she’ll parade that out on the first date, then what sort of horrors is she saving up for later?” Everyone struggles, and every relationship is high-maintenance at times. That’s OK. It’s not OK to demand extensive support and sympathy where intimacy cannot reasonably exist.
2. I am tired of people, including myself, constantly seeing me through the lens of my disease. I admit that this drove me more than any other reason. It seems like everyone knows that I’m bipolar, since I am open about it even at work. This is for the best, but certainly there are days when it grates on me to have every person I run across ask, “How are you?” in that special tone that people trot out when they’re walking on eggshells. We preserve social facades, not just for others’ comfort, but because doing so allows us to experiment with different roles and behavior. That’s an enjoyable aspect of social interaction, and I believe that it’s natural and healthy.
3. It’s important to fight stigma, but I don’t have a responsibility to do it everywhere and all the time. In addition, one powerful way to fight it is to present my charming self for several months, then spring my secret on people. That way they have a chance to get to know me without pathologizing my every move and utterance.
That’s what I did with my last boyfriend — a first for me — and I think it’s part of what made the relationship possible. And I almost lost an important and ongoing connection by saying too much too soon. By now the gentleman knows that I’m responsible, even stable, but early on my illness gave him the heebie-jeebies. He later told me that he wished I’d saved that fact for later, since his negative but reasonable reaction nearly ended a relationship that’s become important to both of us.
4. Typically people experiment with different sorts of honesty during different phases of their lives, depending, among other things, on how much their identity is tied up in an issue. In my 20s I felt compelled to to tell every serious boyfriend that I’d been raped, since it would certainly affect our sex life. Now that it doesn’t, I often don’t think to mention it. It has simply lost relevance. (For which I say, Hip-hip hooray! People can overcome trauma!)
That’s my reasoning. Close relationships can’t reach maturity without absolute honesty, but in the absence of discretion they can’t germinate. In a like regard, I don’t have a moral responsibility to educate people every time I draw breath to speak, and eventually a fact may reach its expiration date.
I’d be interested to know what others think, and what sort of experiences they’ve had with omissions and TMI. Please do comment.
Love to all.
On the Sin of Self-Consciousness
February 6, 2010 at 7:33 am | In Goal Progress, Philosophical Problems, Sociability, Spirituality and Religion | Leave a Comment
For me, self-absorption is the most destructive sin springing from a mood disorder.
Perhaps not. The following reasons persuade me that such sensitivity is actually another form of self-absorption.
First, my motive for knowing others’ opinions of me is entirely selfish. I don’t actually care how others feel; I’m not even certain that I attribute much agency or emotion to them. Certainly I don’t imagine that they might have drives and sorrows that I can only guess at. Nope, when I want to know what people think, my interest is limited to what they think about me. I’m overstating the case here — I am not a psychopath, and thus feel compassion for friends, family, and lovers. But even though I’ve figured out that I am not the heroine of a Georgette Heyer novel (not even the willful and mannish Lady Serena Carlow of Bath Tangle), I still place myself firmly at the center of the known world.
Specifically, in conversation I act as if people desperately need to find me bewitching, when they’d probably much prefer that I be drawn to them. I have to make a conscious effort to put people at ease, for example, and I’m reluctant to give them the satisfaction of knowing that I dote upon them.
As if that weren’t enough, when I’m ostensibly concerned about others, I’m paying little attention to them. Instead, I’m busily monitoring my reactions to them. I don’t ask questions — my yardstick for others’ inner lives is what I think about them.
Finally, there’s this piece of indirect evidence: In Christianity (or, at least, in the Catholic and Episcopalian traditions) self-reliance is a sin. To the extent that rely on your own perceptions and impulses, you have turned away from God. Christianity doesn’t place a Buddhist-style emphasis on compassion; instead, you should aim to know God’s will. This isn’t easy, since it entails communicating with someone who is by definition not perceptible though the senses. (My friend Al once saw an application for a tenure-track job that asked in all seriousness, “When did you last walk with God?” St. Augustine frowns from heaven upon that search committee.) Much of the paradoxical duty of Christianity rests in finding that “still, small voice,” which is neither internal nor located in the material world.
I’m familiar with the old philosophical argument that we are radically isolated from the natural world, let alone from others. I wonder if that’s really true, though. I’m not prepared to provide evidence to support my position, but I am intuitively inclined to think that we can commune profoundly with others, and that it’s not just a duty, but a relief.
I’m not sure what all of this means, but I have been thinking about it during recent social interactions. I try to devote myself to the other person by understanding that I comprise only a small part of their inner lives, and that they need more than to be charmed and entertained by me.
So, thought of the day.
While we’re on the subject of Me, Glorious Me, I should mention that though I’m making decent progress towards becoming The Perfect Mental Patient, I am still tormented by my many shortcomings and tempted to make dozens of resolutions for improvement. I know that if I take on several more projects I will end up discouraged, but I find it hard to resign myself to such slow improvement. My faults seem so urgent, you see. Nonetheless, I have been walking, praying, and socializing dutifully, and all three are contributing to my happiness.
When It Comes to Mood, Is It Better to Fake Happiness?
February 5, 2010 at 2:42 am | In Dealing with Depression, My Fascinating Mood, Philosophical Problems | 2 Comments
I may prefer tragedy, but in the business world, people like a feel-good family look.
I began by thinking, no, if only because I’m a lousy actor. Even people who know me only casually can tell immediately whether or not I’m depressed. Some people lack perception, or have an investment in ignoring my mood, but overall even when I’d rather not talk about it or would like to hide it out of pride, most people can easily tell how I feel. (The sad fact is, a coworker who sometimes stops by my office to chat recently asked me if I’d had a death in the family — he couldn’t think of any other explanation for my very apparent misery. Oh my.) If this is the case, why should I even try to hide it?
There are two excellent reasons, I think. First, evidence exists that faking good feelings can boost your mood. Simply smiling, for example, will tend to lift your spirits even if your grin feels like a terrifying rictus.
What’s more, constant moping can threaten your professional standing. Your friends may tolerate it, but it’s reasonable for your colleagues to expect that you be cheerful and willing to help out. Perhaps in a perfect world everyone would bleed with tender compassion for everyone they meet, but they don’t, and expecting them to is just another instance of “I shouldn’t have to…” thinking.
Let me define that train of argument. I’ve heard friends say, “I shouldn’t have to dress up to see clients! I work in a casual industry!” or “I shouldn’t have to cover my tattoos!” Well, sure. People should see beyond appearances and judge you on your behavior and professional ability. But they don’t. So why create ill-will out of some perverse sense of entitlement?
Further, I admit that I judge people unfairly every day. When people are consistently even five minutes late for meetings — not to mention 20 minutes late to work in the morning — I feel that they’re showing disrespect for me and the company. When people make incessant personal phone calls, I take it as evidence that their lives are out of control, and I question their professionalism. I think these conclusions are reasonable. But a woman who wears tight clothes or too much perfume is just as evil a menace. So, yeah, I don’t resent demands that I demonstrate a positive, can-do attitude. (Though I refuse to multitask.)
And I’ve realized recently that my grim demeanor may affect my professional life more than I know. Let me offer a couple of illustrative instances.
1. One of the engineers in my aisle never smiles or meets my eyes when we pass each other. On some level, I feel that he doesn’t like me. But, um, I never smile or look at him either. So who’s the unfriendly one?
2. Even worse, my office mate has taken to squatting one door down with our tech lead. This, despite the fact that I’m scheduled to move to another building entirely in a couple of weeks. She’s a veritable model of unprofessional leakage of the personal into work hours, but I still feel hurt. True, when her friends visit I keep my eyes glued to my screen and click away. And I have been seething generally lately. But I never wear intrusive perfume or play annoying music, and since these are my pet peeves, I feel that refraining makes me the model office mate.
When I’m honest with myself, though, I know that I have been a little black rain cloud for months now, and that I’ve probably huffed and flounced during her endless socializing. I may well look pointedly at my watch when she walks in late from 20 to 45 minutes late every day. So by her standards, I’m unpleasantly arrogant. If she were to complain to our section head, it would pose a real problem. Our boss calls us “The DM Team,” and upper management carries on a non-stop propaganda campaign to encourage fairness, respect, diversity, and team play. I can sneer and mock all I want, but by doing so I risk my reputation as a can-do team player, and in our line of work that reads as poor customer service.
In short, I will defend to the death my right to snarl and snap in my personal life, but I don’t think it’s especially defensible at work.
All of that leads me to conclude that it would be to my advantage to make more of an effort, even if that means setting quotas for smiles and conversations struck up.
The good news is, I find myself smiling spontaneously around the test and software engineers. My obdurate hatred of Mission Planning is even beginning to melt. So perhaps I’ll feel less need to fake it once I move in with them permanently.
Love to all.
Easing the Nonstop Arguments in My Mind
February 2, 2010 at 4:01 am | In Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
Sloth or industry? Why, let me stand still for moments at a time while I decide...
“Damn it, why not just do it?”
“Yes, but right now I’m about to start the laundry, and if I get diverted, I’ll forget what I’m doing.”
“You’ve thought about that pollen for days now. Don’t be so lazy. Just wipe it up. It will only take a minute.”
“I don’t want to right now.”
And so on, until I notice yet again that I haven’t switched the bulb in my burned-out porch light.
This drives me nuts. It’s dull, for one thing. I hate it when my thoughts bore me. It also takes up hard drive space that could be devoted to a more productive train of thought. Finally, and perhaps most obviously, the debate consumes more time than prompt action would. So yesterday morning I set out to quell the whole dialog.
It seemed to me that there were four possible ways to do this:
1. Immediately turn my mind to a subject that I set in advance and pursue all day long. This seemed unlikely, though, because I’m perfectly capable of having a nagging debate and, say, praying, simultaneously. Also, unless I wrote it down and carried it with me, I would almost certainly forget the target thought.
2. Do everything the minute I notice it. Of course, this would be tiring, and would send me ricocheting around the house from task to task.
3. Refuse to do any of them. This would lead to a melancholy outcome, however, as trivial tasks gradually snowed me in.
4. Alternate doing and not doing. I eventually settled on this one, risking the high likelihood that I would forget from moment to moment whether I was on a yes or a no. I would finish every task because I was sure to notice it multiple times, and I would only be diverted half the time.
I’m happy to report that this worked charmingly. I got quite a bit done, but didn’t feel overloaded. I also managed not to agonize endlessly about whether I was noing when I should yes or yessing when I should no. Finally — and this was the most important part — it did free up a good deal of thought-space.
It’s possible that no one else out there is being pecked to death by trivial internal nagging, but I would be surprised if I’m the only one. And it would be funny rather than tragic if this turns out to be the one area in which I am repulsively abnormal. Violent fantasies? The human condition. A boring inner life? Freakish and disgusting.
In other news, I started the next phase of my journey into perfection. After some hesitation, I decided stick to one improvement — praying for 15 minutes a day — for the next two weeks. In a couple of days, I will add reinvigorating my yoga practice to the mix. I’ve been backsliding on the caffeine thing; I’d fallen back into my four-cup-a-day habit, so I am going to have to start over, beginning with a switch to black tea. I’ve discovered a huge incentive for success. When I cut out coffee — how to put this delicately? — I am gratifyingly regular. That is to say, the mail comes on time every morning. As with cognitive problems, I can’t believe I suffered with such a burdensome side effect for so long, and ridding myself of it provides a huge motivator.
Ridding myself of painful symptoms may turn out to be my most powerful motivation for change. I can preach all day long and into the night about something is the right thing to do, but until I see the hope of eliminating even trivial discomfort, I’m unwilling to stick to a program.
I hope this helps. I invite you to bathe in the usual love.
This and That
January 29, 2010 at 4:35 am | In Cognitive Problems, Goal Progress, My Fascinating Mood | Leave a Comment
Here I am, as busy as a weasel.
1. I am so clever!
2. Work is so fun and absorbing!
3. How I love test and software engineers! (This is particularly nutty — when I am in my right mind, I would like nothing more than to strangle the entire Mission Planning group because their work is invariably late and shoddy.)
4. How fun it is to think!
I’m betting this is connected to going off of my antianxiolytic. Ever since, I have the great pleasure of thinking much more clearly. Why, just yesterday I performed a minor but sweet mental feat without thinking: I looked up Alcibiades’ mother’s family name in a book I’m reading about the Peloponnesian war. Years and years ago, my mind effortlessly retained the general layout of most texts that I read. While I didn’t have the entire text of Middlemarch neatly arranged in my head (a trick of the late literary critic Northrup Frye), if I needed to find a particular passage, I could always recall its location on the page. I lost this capacity years ago, but apparently have regained it entirely.
This is big. For years I’d been mourning — mourning, I tell you! — the loss of a whole series of Stupid Brain Tricks, and even if others don’t notice or care, it’s distressing to shed brain functions wholesale. My moods are have been volatile, but it’s more than worth it. Strangely, I’m much less anxious, and am less prone to disappear into what I think of as my Dark Tunnel of Misery, a mental state that renders me unable to hear or see others.
In other Fascinating Mood News, I have been slacking on walking and meeting my social obligations. This weekend I intend to restore those habits, since the next phase of my quest to become The Perfect Mental Patient begins Monday.
Lately my mood has settled into a weekly cycle that I can’t shake. Sunday and Monday I am positively crippled by depression. My spirits begin to lift on Tuesday, and by Thursday I am as brisk as a bee in a bottle. On the bad days I struggle mightily to shift laundry from the washer to the dryer, and there seems to be no hope of folding it once dry. I spend Thursday mornings bustling around the house knocking out even the most repulsive tasks, and at work I crank widgets briskly.
I’m not sure how to handle the down times. A part of me refuses to accept periods of low productivity, so I castigate myself early in the week. Three days later, I am positively smug with accomplishment, resting secure in the knowledge that I am busy and therefore good. I’d like to treat myself with compassion, but my Inner Protestant can’t stop carping. I’ll have to devise a solution and share it.
One last thing. On If You’re Going Through Hell Keep Going, the author shares a list of things she’d like to do someday. Imagining future self visiting London, for example, helps her to survive brutal lows. I will have to try this on Sunday, provided I can move my hands.
Love to all.
A Couple of Political Notes, and the Virtue of Underreacting
January 28, 2010 at 3:41 am | In In the News, Links, The Heath Care System | 1 Comment
A crowd shot from President Obama's inauguration. He called us to action on that day; let's unite to answer his call.
Every day, Americans meet their responsibilities to their families and their employers. Time and again, they lend a hand to their neighbors and give back to their country. They take pride in their labor, and are generous in spirit. These aren’t Republican values or Democratic values that they’re living by; business values or labor values. They’re American values.
Yup. I’ve talked about the importance of a work ethic in this space before. So often, genuine. pressing work needs call me out my self-absorbed misery and into a common enterprise. I was pleased to see President Obama (how I love those words!) reaffirm those crucial American values.
Here’s another crucial point: “I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone.” At every campaign stop, Obama the candidate drove home the point that citizens can’t just vote and sit back. I admit, I’ve been guilty of this approach. It’s been a tremendous relief to go to bed at night knowing that I won’t wake up to be deprived of another civil right, or shocked by the news that our economy is teetering on the brink of total destruction.
But I need to get on the stick. You need to get on the stick. No matter what our ideological beliefs, we all share a belief in decency and hard work. So let’s get to it. We need to insure health care for all Americans, whether by the government or by private efforts. So I challenge each and every one of you to work for the reform you support, and may the better man win.
Along those lines, kudos to the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele, who has the sense to oppose an ideological test that would determine whether the Republican Party could support a candidate financially. The mean-spirited side of me cheers at anything that would weaken the Republican Party, and believe me, this proposal would. But let’s face it: at this moment in history, we don’t need another divisive battle about ideological purity.
Back to bipolar news. Apropos of a post on Mentally Interesting, No Spam writes, “Lack of control sucks to cuz even when I’m doing it I know I’m gonna regret it.. yeah I have that insight but it does me no good, it just makes me feel more guilty.” I know exactly what he means. Most people do. It sucks to know that you’re exercising poor judgment, and unfortunately mental illness often leaves the bipolar among us in that position.
I really like how Gretchen Rubin on The Happiness Project urges us to Underreact to a Problem, which, as you might expect, is the opposite of overreacting. Underreacting — that is, not throwing a fit to which you are perfectly entitled to — allows you to evaluate a situation calmly and and assign tasks instead of blame. I highly recommend this approach when others have made a mistake and gotten you into a fix.
Here’s an example: I used to see a gentleman who was as intrepid a hiker and climber as I am. On one particularly ridiculous occasion, we got his truck stuck in the mud in an isolated spot. We had, of course, been off-roading, although his truck did not have four-wheel drive.
Now, there was plenty of blame to go around. I had navigated us down a series of unpaved roads. He had accepted my suggestions. Neither of us had thought to turn back when it started raining, or to load boards and shovels into the bed of his truck (something we remembered to do roughly half of the time when rain threatened). As usual, one or both of us had behaved in a foolhardy fashion or forgotten some key element of preparation. This raised alluring opportunities for tears and recriminations of the “You never,” “You always,” and “You promised” variety. Neither of us indulged. Instead, we deliberately underreacted, treating each absurdity as an adventure, evaluating our resources, devising a plan, and implementing it briskly. I’m still proud of having taking that approach in that particular relationship, and I intend to behave similarly in the future.
One last thing: A series in The New York Times on errors in radiation therapy demonstrates two things. First, you absolutely must take responsibility for and control of your own medical treatment. At the same time, medical technology has become so complicated that even doctors and technicians can make life-threatening errors. I hate living with this sort of bind, but I’m not sure there’s any way to put an end to it.
Love to all.
One Simple Piece of Advice About Rage
January 23, 2010 at 6:28 am | In Dealing with Mania, My Fascinating Mood | 1 Comment
Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt. When Acteon accidentally caught a glimpse of her in her bath, she turned him into a stag and his own dogs ripped him limb from limb. Lately, that's been me.
This unsettles me. I have been a peaceable, easygoing creature for years. When I think back, I realize that I’ve been calm and sweet … since I started an antianxiolytic. Before then, when my rage-bomb went off, it was thermonuclear. Now it looks like I may have been drugged into sweetness for all these years. Uh-oh.
I did have one piece of advice: Do whatever it takes to restrain yourself from throwing a carpet-chewing fit. If you do, people will lose respect for you and busy themselves trying to thwart you. As usual, though, I can’t follow my own advice. Allow me to give an example.
In order to get to the office at 6:30 a.m., I have to leave home more or less in the middle of the night. Two days ago, as I was pulling out of the parking lot outside my condo, I saw a guy in a hoodie standing on the corner. I don’t know about you, but when I see a guy standing around idle, I figure he’s up to no good.
As I rounded the corner, I saw that this dude had his dick out and was yanking on it while glaring at me intently. “Well, there goes the neighborhood,” I thought. And as I drove off, the new Dr. RandR began to spin up into a hissy fit. I wasn’t shocked — while it didn’t impress me, it hardly struck fear into my heart. Rather, I felt boiling impatience. Great, now I have to worry about this stupid dickweed jumping me. I couldn’t remember if flashers are suppose to be dangerous or not. Damn it, I thought, this is a matter of property value. A lot of single women live here, and we don’t need random guys hanging around jerking their willies. I decided to go back and give him what-for.
I felt no fear. I knew that confronting this guy wasn’t sensible, but I persuaded myself that it was The Right Thing To Do. I wasn’t planning to get out of the car, but I was ready to give him the rough side of my tongue. I have a gift for invective, and I can reduce a roomful of rowdy 18-year-old guys to shocked silence by reeling off slang terms for acts they’ve never even seen on the Internet. Heck, I’ve drawn a carving knife on a woman-beater. (“Are you going to stab me?” he jeered, puffing out his chest. “Yeah,” I said flatly. And he ran like the coward he was.) So I was ready to rout this guy like the Romans at Cannae.
Of course, he was gone when I got there. I drove around, but was left impotently grumbling, “If I ever see that [adjective describing an obscure and terrible act][insulting noun] again, he’s going to be sorry he was born.”
I knew this was stupid as I was doing it, but white-hot outrage made me reckless. As I took off again for work I thought, whoa, I am dangerously pissed. I’m going to have to learn some anger management techniques. And irritability can be a symptom of hypomania. So is reckless driving, another sport I’ve taken up recently. So, off to my shrink. I’ll let you know when I’ve figured out constructive ways to defuse anger. As always, feel free to suggest things in the comments.
Love to all.
Mind Freedom International Distributes the National Council on Disability’s Provocative Report on Civil Rights for People with Mental Illnesses
January 21, 2010 at 5:10 am | In Fighting Prejudice, Philosophical Problems, Uncategorized | 1 CommentI found this report, From Privileges to Rights: People Labeled with with Psychiatric Disabilities Speak for Themselves, both valuable and troubling. The NCD held hearings in which they specifically listened to consumers of mental health services, and drew the following 10 conclusions, discussed below.
My initial reaction, I admit, was impatience. I’m inherently suspicious of activist language such as “people labeled with with psychiatric disabilities,” partly because I come from a profession that displays a naive faith in the power of such phrases to erase stigma. I spent much of my 20s playing language police — insisting that people who have been raped be called “survivors” and not “victims,” for example, or that we use the inelegant phrase “people with disabilities” instead of “disabled people” — and experience teaches me that such insistence needlessly intimidates people with no direct experience of rape or a given disability. Instead of asking direct questions and learning about mental illnesses, people tend to lapse into tongue-tied silence out of fear of transgressing some linguistic boundary. I’d rather create an atmosphere that encourages people to ask questions, even if their phrasing is flawed.
I’m also uncomfortable with the notion that I’ve simply been “labeled.” Of course, diseases are partly socially constructed. The treatment offered varies wildly from culture to culture, and these treatments are unquestionably more or less effective. In fact, I agree with the recent article in The New York Times that suggested that American ways of understanding and treating mental illness may create more stigma and suffering than they erase.
At the same time, the most disabling mental illnesses — schizophrenia, manic-depression and major depression — have been observed in most extant cultures since before the birth of Christ. I don’t think that these sicknesses are simply biological, but neither are they mere labels that would disappear if we stopped applying them. The very title of the NCD report riled me, then.
Next, I read the Executive Summary and core recommendations. Again, I found myself in immediate disagreement. The first recommendation begins, “Laws that allow the use of involuntary treatments such as forced drugging and inpatient and outpatient commitment should be viewed as inherently suspect, because they are incompatible with the principle of self-determination.” That’s a nice sentiment, I thought, but serious mental illnesses prey on judgment, will, and the ability to perceive reality. As I’ve said before in this space, the concept of self-determination may well not apply to us at all times.
Also, I worry that this insistence on self-determination feeds into the worst tendencies of American culture to offload citizens’ illnesses onto an already-weak family structure. David Karp’s The Burden of Sympathy, which I reviewed in this space, eloquently addresses the tragic consequences of this approach. We have, as a culture, abdicated responsibility for people who are ill, most notably by depriving them of quality, accessible medical care. This follows directly from our insistence on total independence and self-determination.
So, yeah, I found myself struggling with this report from the outset. Here’s the funny thing, though: When I read the actual testimony, I began to waver. Here are the words of one former patient:
The unit structure is based on privileges and punishments, which are referred to as consequences, since they maintain these are not punitive. [The structure] will not allow any kind of privacy whatsoever, and everything is a potential treatment issue, including nail-biting and not making one’s bed. They maintain control through humiliation and fear of humiliation.
Too true. These aspects of psychiatric hospitalization are undeniable, maddening and unnecessary. I’ve never been restrained or forcibly medicated, but I’ve often seen it happen in totally inappropriate circumstances, both in the snake pit of a public hospital and in exclusive private settings. Nurses and aides pathologize perfectly natural and even healthy behavior. A trivial example: a nurse once recorded the following in my chart: “Patient engaged in writing behavior.” God forbid you should express healthy, righteous anger. A less trivial example: When I refused to eat meat (I was a vegetarian), a nurse threatened to “ram a feeding tube up [my] nose.” In fact, when I’ve been subjected to forced treatment, it has never benefited me, and has often done significant harm.
Even so, a part of me thinks, “Yes, but some people refuse treatments that they need, and they are in no condition to give informed consent.” For instance, I remember a young woman in a public hospital who became floridly psychotic and posed a danger to other patients. I was grateful when they restrained and medicated her, and I think it was necessary.
Along these lines, I’ve noticed that no one who lands in a mental hospital thinks they belong there. Absurdly, each patient thinks that her case is an outrageous mistake, and that she doesn’t belong in the company of this pack of nuts. In other words, we can see each others’ pathology clearly, but we typically have very little insight into our own.
In the end, though, I return to the core of my own experience. Coerced treatment has never helped me, and I’m not sure that it benefits anyone else, either. I think back on my first hospitalization, which was at a swanky clinic for women with addictions and eating disorders. I had neither, but my shrink persuaded me that “they know how to feed people.” You could say that. The young anorexic who shared my room was very, very ill — she envied my weight, which was an unenviable 92 lbs at 5′6″. The staff’s approach? At each meal, a nurse was assigned to watch us and record what we ate. Patients were then forced to wait in public for two hours so that they wouldn’t purge. Can anyone seriously argue that someone with an eating disorder would benefit from this treatment? If anything, it was fiendishly designed to drive her deeper into rebellious self-starvation, and to reinforce her fear of food.
These musings lead me to the following conclusion: Forced treatment can be a good idea in principle, but in fact it rarely works as intended. Instead, it encourages nurses and aides to abuse the absolute power they enjoy over patients. Psych aides, in particular, are poorly paid and usually receive no special training. They act out of prejudice, fear, and, yes, a perfectly human desire to punish and control “bad” patients. Restraints, forced medication, and solitary confinement make their jobs easier, and prejudice allows then to justify mistreatment of patients.
(Incidentally, I do feel sympathy for psych aides — their working conditions suck, and despite this, some treat patients with genuinely healing compassion.)
Well, it’s time to get ready for work, and I’m still on the first recommendation. I’ll return to this report later.
Love to all.
News Flash: Life Is Hard and No One Gets Out Alive
January 20, 2010 at 4:07 am | In Philosophical Problems | Leave a CommentIn other news, it has recently come to my attention that life is hard and the human condition is no picnic.
I realized this over the Christmas break. Recently, a friend remarked, “You make it sound as if you’ve cornered the market on depression, when a lot of what you talk about in your blog is normal.” I was genuinely surprised. My feelings are normal? I was absurdly disappointed.
Of course, the more I thought about this, the more it made sense. Recent events have brought it to my attention that even the people that I admire most struggle. They are often lonely and sad, and find it difficult to communicate with their fellow creatures. Humbling, that.
It’s also strangely reassuring. I am not alone; I’m not even especially unique. When I first began this blog, it puzzled me that so many non-bipolar people identify with the emotions I describe. Lately I’ve been thinking that anyone in my circumstances would feel unhappy, lonely and sad. (Well, ungrateful wretches like me, in any case.) My behavior is sometimes strange — for instance, I have a morbid fear of smiling and meeting people’s eyes — but the emotions that drive that behavior are standard-issue human feelings.
I’ve always maintained that bipolar disorder is best understood as an intensification of normal life. Depression and mania may be quantitatively different from normal ups and downs, but they aren’t qualitatively different. I find this strangely reassuring. I often tend to think of myself as a tragic, hopeless case. In fact, the normal life I long for may be both closer and more difficult than I’m willing to admit.
That’s all for now. I also banged out the long post below, and I’m getting tired of staring at a computer screen. Without a doubt, the Internet is the television of my generation.
Love to all.
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