Excited to head out of the snow and slush in Salt Lake City, and join Shawn Blanc and team for the Accelerator Live mini conference. Looking forward to focusing on how I can better serve the people in my life that matter most to me. 🧠 💪

It has been so long since I have written a weekly update that I almost don’t know where to start.

🧠 #106: Building people again

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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In this update, I share some good news about turning the page and starting a new chapter, and the therapy session that helped me do it. 🧠 #105: Back to work

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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This week’s update shares my therapist and me being symptomatic together, giving my wife a gift of flexibility, and a realization about feeling like I’m always being tested. 🧠 #104: Distress tolerance homework

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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After another challenging week, I share a positive spike, taking my kids and winning the organ, and the return of sudoku. 🧠 #103: Pipes and puzzles

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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In this update, I share about a rescue med that works, ups and downs, and leveraging caffeine. 🧠 #102: Xanax & Dr Pepper

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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This update shares the effects of changing medication (not good!), an uplifting chance for sketchnotes, and continuing a couple helpful practices. 🧠 #101: Tapering off everything

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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In this momentous update, I share a low point forgetting a commitment, a reminder that I really do have OCD, and reflections on these weekly updates. 🧠 #100: Hitting a milestone

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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This update shares a vacation win, a vacation struggle, and a new sharing practice. 🧠 #99: Can’t get in

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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In a quick vacation update, I share a lesson learned from running into my daughter while walking on the beach. #98: Walks on the beach

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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This week included a reprise in my role as a limited-time stay-at-home dad, a chilly discovery, and allowing a known trigger into my life. #95: Experimenting with discomfort

These weekly mental health updates show life with OCD.

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This week’s update shares my experience with yet another psychiatrist and noticing my recent increase in OCD symptoms. #94: Finding monkeys.

These weeky mental health updates show life with OCD.

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These clips are a fascinating take on hoarding by Malcolm Gladwell and Randy Frost.

The first describes perfectly people I know.

The second is a beautiful way to look at it as a gift with a curse. I think that applies just as well to OCD, and nearly all mental illnesses.

🎧 Listen to full episode in Overcast

I’ve been on a roll lately publishing mental health-related content at mentalworkhealth.org.

If that is important or interesting to you, consider joining us. 💮☺️

Feeling pretty happy with the newsletter I set up for the latest articles on MentalWorkHealth.org. Sign up and let me know your thoughts on the format or the process at mwh.is/subscribe. 🧠

I felt so lucky to present with our wellness leader to over a hundred manufacturing employees at my company today on mental health. I was introduced as the “company mental health mascot” and have never been prouder of a title before. Really touched by the response. 🧠

The traditional holiday season can be full of joy, but also sorrow and heartache. Even for those who do not struggle with mental illnesses, there are many reasons that could cause this time of year to be difficult.

As I mentioned last week, we had the opportunity to spend some time with our IT department on mental health and wellness. A number of people asked for the slides, and I sent a PDF out right before Thanksgiving. I had the thought that this was a perfect chance to remind everyone about some of the struggles that the holidays can bring.

I discussed with my therapist this week some anxiety around the family time. She told me that this is a common time for everyone to have an increase in anxiety, especially those who struggle with their mental health. It is important to plan ahead and have some strategies for self-care.

As I drafted my email, I found a great article on the NAMI.org blog:

Many people can experience feelings of anxiety or depression during the holiday season. People who already live with a mental health condition should take extra care to tend to their overall health and wellness during this time.

Extra stress, unrealistic expectations or even sentimental memories that accompany the season can be a catalyst for the holiday blues. Some can be at risk for feelings of loneliness, sadness, fatigue, tension and a sense of loss.

Whatever your mental state, or that of those around you, this time of year is a great time for extra compassion and sensitivity. Not everyone loves to celebrate the holidays, but we all could use someone who cares for us.

One of my most satisfying accomplishments lately was participating in a department meeting yesterday where we were able to spend half an hour discussing mental health. I wanted to pause and reflect on the journey to make that happen.

As I have written about before, the last year and a half has been significant in my own mental health journey. As I returned back to to work full-time at the beginning of this summer, following intensive treatment for my OCD, I found myself having many conversations around mental health. At the beginning of September, I sent the following email to my manager and our CIO:

As I have been more open with my mental health struggles, I have had a number of interesting conversations with people in IT about OCD and other mental health challenges. I wanted to suggest to you that we do something of an overview of mental health and related issues for all of IT. It would be great for people to know about some of the more common disorders and challenges, and what they mean, and how to support people who are working with those. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about things like bipolar, or OCD, or even ADD/ADHD.

I’m not trying to tell you what needs to be done, or how to do it, but I wanted to share the suggestion and see what you think. Thanks.

Ben

This email prompted a series of meetings, which resulted in my collaborating with our company wellness leader at O.C. Tanner, along with our newly-on-site behavioral therapist. In our September monthly IT meeting, we shared a primer on mental health and gave a teaser for a longer segment we planned the next month. Because I had initiated the conversations, I was invited to come up to the front of the room, but we ran out of time for me to say anything. A couple people commented after the meeting that they appreciated me being up there as the mental health mascot for IT.

As we prepared for the October meeting, we discovered that we had given our therapist the wrong date, and she had a conflict. So our wellness leader and I planned to take a few minutes to share our individual stories around mental health, and again provide a teaser for more to come in November. Ironically, we ran out of time for me to share again, so reprised my role as the IT mental health mascot.

Finally, in our November meeting, everything aligned. We were able to take half of the hour-long meeting with all of IT. I shared a short version of my story with mental health, and the bulk of the time was our behavioral therapist sharing about mental wellness. The content appeared to be extremely well received. You could have heard a pin drop while our therapist was sharing. After the meeting, I received messages from a number of people expressing gratitude for us making this subject more prominent and accessible.

One of the best side effects of this process for me has been the relationships that I have developed by being open. I have become close friends with our wellness leader, as well as our behavior therapist and have enjoyed working closely with them. The kinds of conversations that occur in the context of mental health lead to much deeper connections with people than most topics. So as I talk with people, I become close to them in a remarkably short time.

I have learned that all of us are affected by mental illnesses, whether directly or indirectly. The more we can do to increase awareness and decrease stigma around mental health, the more people will be able to get the help that they need.

💮 Had the chance to share about mental health awareness in an IT department meeting today; the culmination of three months of work. It was wonderful to have the conversation be more open and decrease the stigma around discussing it at work. 🎉

I have long nursed a secret desire to do stand-up comedy, although I have allowed my fears to hold me back from trying. I finally made the attempt as part of my OCD recovery, and enjoyed the experience.

As I got close to the end of my treatment at the OCD & Anxiety Treatment Center, I was pushing myself to do more activities in which I risked something. I have long wished that I was funny, but I have come to grips with my lack of natural humor. As I wrote earlier this year, I am not destined to become a stand-up comedian. And that’s ok. I decided that I should try stand-up comedy and risk not being the best. Since I was nearly guaranteed to not be the best, it seemed like a productive thing to risk.

At first, I just suggested to one of my co-workers that I could do my routine for him. He asked who else I was inviting, and I realized that inviting more people would definitely increase the risk level, which was the whole point. So I ended up inviting our entire I.T. department to come over lunch, but only about 20 people came. So the next week, I volunteered to do it again for a full department meeting. That meeting was recorded, so I have a record of my attempt. It went better than I feared, and I decided I would share the video.

💮 I’m really excited about my newest project: mentalworkhealth.org. It’s all about helping people create a safe space at work to talk about mental health. I don’t know exactly what shape the project will take, but didn’t want to wait any longer to get started.

As I have had my own experience with mental health over the last year or so, I have found that looking at my own health in a more holistic way to be extremely helpful.

I have always loved public speaking. For a long time, I have wanted to start speaking at conferences more often, but I could never figure out exactly the right topic. Finally, I know.

Last summer, I had my first personal experience with mental health, and through that process have come to learn much more about myself and people around me. Nearly all of us are affected by mental illnesses of some kind, whether directly or through someone close to us.

A few principles and approaches have helped me tremendously in considering my own health, and I shared my first presentation about them at a local Cocoaheads meet up.

We had some technical issues, so the recording of the video is in two parts, and missed a small chunk of the presentation where I describe health meters and what they are. Hopefully what’s here is still useful, and I hope to improve and deliver this talk many more times.

💮 I had a hard time sleeping last night, and kept thinking about what mark I want to leave on the world. After my family, I feel like the best thing I can do right now is to increase awareness and decrease stigma of mental health, especially in the workplace.

💮 The key to recovery is progress. Ask yourself every day, “What can I do that is hard today?” Keep working towards your goals.

This is something I want to write more about soon that has been on my mind lately.

A month of intense reading led to rediscovered relationships with a number of old friends.

At the beginning of August, I decided to pick up a series that I started when I was a teenager: The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. I have often enjoyed fantasy as a genre, and wanted to read something purely enjoyable instead of informative and educational. More than with most books, the characters of this series draw me in, and I wanted to read more to spend more time with friends that I have not seen for years.

One interesting phenomenon that I noticed as I got back in to these books is my tendency to lose myself. I have always loved to read, and can often get lost in a book. Stopping to eat, or sleep, or work can feel like a chore. Previously, I had never understood this part of myself. But now that I have gone through my journey of discovery and recovery with OCD, I recognized exactly what it was. In addition to the character friends I spent time with, this last month has been a close time with my old friend of OCD.

Now that I know how OCD feels in my life, it is easier to recognize his presence when he shows up. One of his defining characteristics is a total domination of my mind. That manifests in the cracks of my life. In every spare minute, my mind immediately jumped to my books, and in many of my spare minutes, my eyes jumped to my Kindle, or the app on my phone.

When I finished the first book, there was a definite sense of familiarity, as if I was returning to a comfortable state in which I had lived much of my life. As the month drew on, I realized that I was not happy with the effects this state was having on the rest of my life. I wrote recently about changing my toilet time to reading instead of playing a game, but now that I was compulsively reading my books, I was just as absent from the family.

As I wrapped up the series, it provided a natural moment to pause and evaluate. There is a delicate balance to be struck here. On the one hand, I love reading, and enjoy losing myself in a story, completely inhabiting another world, and making new friends. On the other hand, I do not want to feed the OCD side of my brain, and want to make sure that I remain in control of deciding how to spend my time. The month of August was not a complete loss—I was able to engage in a number of important events and activities. The most monumental of those was the birth of a new baby girl in our family, which was a magical experience.

I feel good about where things are at right now, and hope to remember to regularly introspect and maintain balance. Living with OCD is a constant exercise in managing tension, and I expect this to continue moving forward. The more I learn about myself, the better equipped I am to make informed choices about my life.