OCD- THE BRUTAL TRUTH

1. EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION

2. INVENTORY INTRODUCTION

3. CHILDHOOD

4. ADOLESCENTS

5. THE MISSION-OCD & PSYCHOTIC DEPRESSION

6. COLLEGE

7. POST COLLEGE, WORK FORCE, AUTHORITY ANXIETY SWITCH

8. EPISODE 2-EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT LOOPS & AKATHISIA (THE WORST!)

9. AFTERMATH, TIME, GOOD ENOUGH, MARRIAGE?, CAREER?, WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?, WHAT IS TRUTH?
   

*Each section gradually becomes more unsettling and difficult to read, because that is the nature of mental illness, it spirals down. I share my experiences in their brutal detail. If its triggering or hits too close to home, do what I do, leave the movie, stop reading, etc. and go do something else :)

I wrote this from the perspective of being inside the storm of OCD, Psychotic Depression, Akathisia, Anxiety, and Depression, for those unfamiliar with this territory. I share these awful experiences so people can realize how awful OCD really is, the stress it causes, and the hell that stress can take you to. I share a brutal truth.

That being said, though cases of OCD have similarities, it is unique and different to each person, as environment and upbringing obviously play a role. I simply share my story. But people need to realize you can not make blanket statements and assumptions about OCD or any mental disorder, so offer compassion over criticism to people.

EXPLANATORY INTRODUCTION

(WRITTEN PRESENT-2024)

Much of this blog (In the "OCD- The Brutal Truth" Category), will come from an inventory/diatribe I wrote in 2020, when life became so infuriating, partly because I could find no understanding from anyone, that I just wrote, and wrote, and wrote, until I wrote out all that I had bottled up for so long, and it felt really really good.

Initially this blog will basically be the diatribe I wrote, but presented in a more organized way. It will go into great detail about all my hardships. There will be some unexpected rants I go on, a lot of venting. In order to stay honest and true to the narrative that has yelled in my head much of my life, even if the present has offered some resolve to those issues, I feel it's important to include them in their honest and true form. Sometimes I repeat these rants like I’m a broken record. Sometimes I’m spiritual, and then I’m angry again in the next paragraph. I would add to my diatribe when getting frustrated wherever it seemed appropriate, beginning, middle or end, so that’s probably why it won’t always flow perfectly. OCD, church, and authority, they don’t play well together in my head. Also there might be some typos. My diatribe from a few years ago, and this blog, they're therapeutic, not something for an English teacher.

I'm basically angry, and vent, and provide great detail about my life experiences in the scope of OCD in the first half of my diatribe, and then the second half was written a few months after the first half, inspired by a church talk, therapy, and some realizations I had, so what I wrote was positive and hopeful. But even since then, since I finished my "diatribe vent" both bad and good (I think thats a good name for it), there have been some really hard times, stupid choices made while in despair, and some really hard days. But there has also over the past year been a true realization of who Christ is and what his gospel really is.

I think for my entire life, I was a member of The Church of Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ, and all that frustrated, even infuriated me, stemmed from not feeling like I measured up to those around me, to the culture, to the academia, to the professionalism, to the status quo, to the leaders, to the image, to the brand, to my peers, etc. I have thought for so long, that if the said leaders of my faith are "the noble and great ones" the "foreordained ones", than what am I if nothing in my life has resembled their lives, from marriage, to career, to church service, to etc. Oh how this has eaten at me. I have since realized this was 1/2 a truth mixed with 1/2 a lie, with a result that was 100 percent bad. I've realized there are souls scattered throughout time and place, that are noble and great, foreordained to do amazing things, often in capacities, locations, and situations that go unnoticed, but are equally important in building god's kingdom.

Unfortunately, my negative thinking all started after a painful return home from my LDS mission to Santiago, Chile as a 20 year old kid, when finally I had a birds eye of all that had troubled me growing up. I realized the severity of the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder I had been oblivious to, how dangerously depressed I was my first two years of high school, and really how commonplace depression was growing up. I resented the condescending attitudes towards me, be it from family, friends, or church members. Inside I was very very angry, and I felt like I never had a fair chance, that the attitudes toward me were both completely inaccurate and incredibly unfair. But what infuriated me is that I believed all those attitudes. If I could go back and talk to that kid, I would tell him, "Drum a lot more, and pay no attention to the condescending attitudes and remarks from those around you, because they're completely false. God loves you, love yourself, love others, you have some real challenging handicaps, but you have friends and family around you that really know you, and want the best for you, lean into your strengths."

So, here it is-

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

MORNING GLORIES

An inventory, A venting, A diatribe, A realization, A life story

INVENTORY INTRODUCTION

In my youth, I would chop cotton every summer. The farmer was the father of a good childhood friend of mine, and a member of my ward/church congregation. It was back breaking labor, under the intense heat of the sun. There was a noxious weed that made our chopping ever so difficult. It was called a morning glory. Morning glories are a weed made up of vines. They entangle the cotton plant, from top to bottom. It robs the cotton plant of essential water and nutrients at its roots, and chokes it up to its top, making growth incredibly difficult. These weeds would severely diminish the yield of a cotton plant. The plant could exert so much effort, and try so hard, but if left entangled by a morning glory, it was left handicap. As is the case with OCD. It is quite literally a morning glory that has entangled my mind throughout all of life. It has diminished my life academically, socially, romantically, professionally, financially, physically, mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually. It has choked every aspect of my self.

Reading this inventory/life diatribe, it will become evident how insecure, frustrated, and angry I am. I feel like a cotton plant that has exerted so much effort, has had such resolve, to yield the few cotton buds that it has, yet is judged, labeled, and passed over by all the other cotton plants because of its lack of performance, the diminished harvest it offers. I feel surrounded by a field of robust tall cotton plants that yield twice the cotton I do with half the effort. I see these other plants as Prophets, Apostles, GAs, Stake Presidents, Bishops, peers from college, kids I grew up with, those “judgmental upper middle class professional kids at church”, that at one time were the “judgmental well to do kids at BYU”, and even siblings and parents. In my hurt, struggle, failure, and pride, I resent these other cotton plants. I resent them labeling me, I even resent them giving me counsel often, because when I look at their position in life, their timeline in life, it’s obvious a morning glory hasn’t been entangling their minds since the day they were born. I find myself resenting successful members of the church, be it professional athletes to business men. It’s pride, pride that planted a seed in failure and rejection, and has been growing for almost 20 years.

I wonder, “Why can’t I have their life?” I actually find myself asking why quite often. Asking, “why God, why am I a struggling cotton plant entangled by a morning glory?” Yet here is the irony. That same cotton field, with those same noxious morning glories, provided the means to purchase my first drum set, and drumming seems to be one of the few things I can actually do well. Through the drums I have discovered the avenues of concert promotion and

also teaching drums. I hope and pray, music can be an avenue where I can escape the vines of a morning glory, even OCD, and hopefully, hopefully, gain some semblance of independence and success in my life, and even by a miracle marry some organized, attractive, fun girl. But even in music, OCD creates a smaller box than those around me I’m able to build a career in. Life is hard.

This is a summation of my life up to this point. It goes into great detail about all my hardships. There are some unexpected rants I go on, a lot of venting. Sometimes I repeat these rants, like I’m a broken record. Sometimes I’m spiritual, and then I’m angry again in

the next paragraph. I would add to this diatribe when getting frustrated wherever it seemed appropriate, beginning middle or end, so that’s probably why it doesn’t flow perfectly.

OCD, Church, and authority, they don’t play well together in my head. There might be some typos. This was a therapy exercise, not a paper I wrote for my English teacher. There is an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other. I teeter back and forth depending how life is going. When it’s hard, and it seems like it’ll never get any better, I brood, the little devil I listen to. When I have hope, or a little success in life, I listen to the wisdom of the angel on my other shoulder. I’m trying to listen to the angel on my shoulder, whether life is good or bad, in the midst of failure or success.

Right now, I feel my life, my future, and my salvation is 50/50. There are weeks I feel exaltation bound, and then there are weeks when I feel I will in no way make it, and am going to spend some time in hell. There are weeks I want to try, and then there are weeks I feel my efforts are futile, that the emotional, psychiatric, and dubious financial currents are too strong for me to swim against, so I think of church inactivity, having casual sex with women, and working as like a door guy at a Vegas club, fair pay and chill work. Being a gatekeeper for the great and spacious building in a sense, looking at all those pressing forward along the iron rod toward the tree of life, not pointing and mocking them like others, but looking at them in sadness and resentment, because I never felt talented or good enough among them, though I wanted to be.

I feel like a leper, a marginalized special case member of the church. I know that’s sad, but I often feel that way. I find myself asking, “God, those leper’s in the scriptures, what was the point of their life? When God was giving out mission calls for mortality, some unlucky spirit was called to the “outcast leper mortal mission,” while others were called to the

white picket fences, healthy body, healthy mind, all the opportunity in the world mortal mission. Why?” Your prophets and apostles, they weren’t ever lepers. Just because they have led the most exemplary lives, doesn't mean each had to lead the most difficult lives. Some spirits are called to be beat, abandoned, abused, trafficked in the sex trade, with little semblance of hope. Why? When people are wealthy, with all the means in the world, it really behooves them to use those means to provide hope and support to the downtrodden. Having been downtrodden myself, I know I would.

I know it’s obvious life doesn’t offer equal opportunity to everybody. It’s obvious life is incredibly unfair. My life has been that way. Some soul has to be born into the body of a Tyrant's son, or into a situation with a father in jail for life and a mother strung out on drugs. Then there are others, born into bliss. Why? It is almost certain people born into

situations surrounded by substances, crime, sex, and jailed parents will grow up to be substance abusers and criminals.

When a tyrant's son grows up to be a tyrant, is anybody surprised? When a child is born into bliss, responsible loving parents and a balanced brain and healthy body, and they grow up to be honest and successful, is anybody surprised?

Life isn’t fair, but is exaltation fair? Do all souls have an equal chance at exaltation, as judgement for the child born into bliss, and judgement for the child born to a tyrant have to be completely different. I know we all have the light of Christ, but it becomes fuzzy when every single influence in an individual's life goes against that light. I remember as a child, my

parents were law. I just accepted their views and behavior as law, be it good or bad, they were my moral compass. Now that I’m older I possess greater knowledge and agency. I just see a pattern. Bad creates bad, good creates good, and so on. I just don’t want to think there is luck associated with exaltation. I would like to believe, a tyrants son, and a

preachers son, both have an equal chance at exaltation.

I went off on a tangent. This will happen repeatedly in this life story. Obviously I want to find peace somehow, overcome my problems, and through a miracle get married. Ideally I would find a woman who can read this, and have an understanding about my life, and a desire to work with me despite this debilitating cross I’ve carried my entire life called OCD, and will continue to carry. Ideally I’ll think she’s fun, attractive, and compatible. But I look at my life, my past, my

finances, and my debilitating weaknesses, and wonder, “What girl would want me, what girl would actually want to work and have patience with a guy like me, that has struggled so severely with such debilitating problems?” I am not a sure thing, anything but a solid bet on a girls part. What father in law would find any peace in their daughter marrying

me. Depression, anxiety, psychotic depression, scarce finances, and all too often trips to the bishops office, that’s what a father in law would be looking at.

I look at my maternal uncles, one is a single schizophrenic, and the other was neurotic, separated from his wife, and died at an early age because of stress and conflict. I myself carry a lot of stress and conflict. My maternal grandfather (the genetic line that gave me my mental and emotional problems), drank, smoked, and had morality issues. He had a rather tenuous relationship with my grandmother, and from what I know, not what I would consider a healthy strong marriage. I seriously wonder if I could ever actually handle marriage and a couple kids, as I have the same genes and issues of all the men in the maternal side of my family. I wonder if I could have a career with all my problems. It scares me to think about marriage with my issues. I see the stress involved in marriage, with my parents, sisters, and

brothers, and I seriously doubt my ability to handle that stress, to handle the stress of having a kid or two.

But it also scares me to think about a life alone. I feel caught between a rock and a hard place, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Faith in the midst of pain and uncertainty, that is what I need, and that’s when people actually exercise faith. When life is easy, faith isn’t exercising, it’s taking a break. Only semblance I take, and can take, is knowing God loves me, knows my desires, and knows my

struggles perfectly.

(WRITTEN PRESENT-2024)

After I read this, I realized I've come a long way, with still a ways to go, but I can honestly say, the angst, and anger, they are leaving, very much so.

CHILDHOOD

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

It's interesting how my father and I process religion differently. My father grew up in a household without gospel teaching, with parents that were unfaithful, verbally and physically abusive to each other, but did the best they could considering the little support and training life had provided them. The Church to my father as he explained it, was like a breath of fresh air, a security, a scaffolding surrounding his life that gave him the direction and boundaries he never grew up with. My experience was the complete opposite unfortunately. But it wasn't truth, it was mental illness.

My first recollection of OCD came at a very young age, 5 years old or earlier. I remember having intrusive thoughts of me getting cuts on my chest, so I would run my hand over the areas I was getting cut, like I was brushing off this thought from my body. I remember scrupulosity (Religious Rigidity, Religious Rituals, Basically OCD having a hay day with religion) having a debilitating effect on me as a child (which has been a struggle into adulthood too). Unfortunately, whenever we would have family scripture reading as many LDS families do (LDS=Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), the only thing I would focus on were all the verses about hell and damnation. I thought that was scary, and I worried if I might end up there one day. I obsessed about my worthiness before God, even as a young child, I always felt unworthy, INADEQUATE.

Unfortunately, with OCD, emotionally it takes what was an inch, and makes it

a mile. It’s not only a disorder of doubt, but also one of exaggeration. My parents had no idea their son was mentally ill, and obviously I didn’t know. My mind ran with sin, worry of hell and damnation, a fear of God, and a fear of my father, to an extent only a mentally ill child would have.

I know for a fact scrupulosity was a catalyst for my issues with authority. The one OCD symptom that is still debilitating to this day, is the anxiety that stems from authority. If I have a boss, a co-worker, really anybody in any environment, and I perceive them as above me, a "vertical", and they put pressure on me to perform, I immediately have a fight or flight response, and anxiety pounds inside me, like fire, and it won't shut off. If I can't leave the situation, then I fight, and I become the most difficult, confrontational, unruly employee imaginable. Oh the stories of post college, I'll share those in a different post about young adulthood, but this issue has sidelined my career, its made it very difficult, though I have tried time after time after time after time....after time. Once the "vertical anxiety" switch is turned on, the only way to turn it off, is to leave my place of employment. In times past, when I have stayed and tried to stick it out, the anxiety worsens, and worsens, and worsens. Obviously, my performance becomes a mess, because I'm a mess, and I eventually blow up at the authority figures. If I stay this way too long, then I fall into dark scary places I never want to return to, in the psychiatric realm. It's beyond awful there, its literal hell.

In a nutshell, I can't have a boss. I don't like rules, I don't like being told what to do, I don't like being pushed, and I don't like being confronted. If these come from a someone I perceive to be a "vertical", it makes me very anxious. If they come from a "lateral", I become annoyed, and eventually get mad. All of those things make me feel trapped. As you read on in this blog, you'll see why.

My maternal Uncle portrayed similar behaviors when he was alive. He would throw up before PPI’s (Personal Priesthood Interviews) with his Bishop (LDS Clergy) when he was an elder’s quorum president (position in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints), so bizarre. I guess he felt an incredible amount of pressure to perform.

My authority/boss/vertical anxiety issues have been such a detriment to a career, and it has created angst, because I think religion by and large was a catalyst in creating this anxiety, in creating this authority complex. But it was religion through the lens of scrupulosity, it was not truth, it was not the gospel.

I digress. So childhood was interwoven with lots of guilt, fear, and anxiety, all stemming from an OCD understanding of the scriptures. I remember going to my mother as a little child, and telling her that I needed to confess my sins. She said I had no sins, she was worried about me.

School wasn’t a friendly place for me either. As a child I really struggled. Kindergarten was rough, so I was placed in the dumb Kindergarten with an older lady everybody thought was mean (she was probably a sweet kind old lady), or at least I remember her that way. I also remember this deaf kid in the class who always had this blank look on his face, and his hearing aid would ring incessantly. I realized, yea, these are my people, lol. In reality, that deaf kid probably grew up to be an engineer.

My previous kindergarten class was with what I considered the normal kids, and probably other kids would too, lol. I had a younger teacher, who I thought was very attractive. Years later I would ask my mom if she was indeed an attractive lady, and my mother said she was. I distinctly remember her dressed up as a giant crayon for Halloween, I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life, lol. She was a burnette I remember, and to this day I prefer burnette's over blondes, go figure.

But I was stressed as a little kid at school, I struggled reading, I was always in the dumb reading class, and it was a bit overwhelming. My mother says one day I came home from kindergarten and said that I wanted to kill my teacher and bomb the school, disconcerting to a mother. This was in the 80s, so, no bomb squad was called. Today, yea, the next day I would be escorted to school with the SWAT team, and thats actually not an exaggeration anymore I think, things have REALLY changed.

I remember once while my mother was trying to help me get ready for school, I said “Don’t you trick me!” She knew something was wrong, this coupled with me saying I would have weird thoughts about the devil, sin, and so on, was enough for her to set me up with a child psychologist. In reality I was overwhelmed, I was stressed, I was only 6 years old though.

My child psychologist diagnosed me as depressed, at 6 years old. She was correct in that I was depressed, but the real problem, OCD, a diagnosis wouldn’t come until much much later while on my LDS mission in Chile. These early negative experiences with school, ingrained in me that I was stupid, and I already often felt dirty and unworthy, sinful, vexed with shame as a child because of a distorted idea of who God was. I never had a high self-esteem.

When I was 12 years old, I started playing Pop Warner Football. I would throw up before all my football games. I was so incredibly worried about messing up and having the coach yell at me. It was my authority issues. It was fight or flight, and I wasn't about to quit football, never in a million years. I was a very intense aggressive player, I was quite good. I blew out a kids knee and dislocated a kid’s shoulder in my first football season, and I wasn't even 100 pounds yet. Kids in practice didn't like facing me in drills, they were scared. There were other fellow teammates that scared the majority of the team as well, and kids would want to trade places in line with me so they didn't have to face them, and I would gladly take their place. I would run at the kid during drills like a bat out of hell, and hit him as hard, and with all the angst my anxious 12 year old body could muster.

My football coaches thought I was a Pop Warner Football gift from heaven. My pre game vomiting became the norm, and my coaches would ask where I was. Someone would respond, "He's throwing up". "Well tell him to get over here, the games about to start." I hated how anxious I was before games, but the elation that came with doing so well, getting the game ball after almost every game (they stopped giving me the game ball because I kept on forgetting to bring it to the following practice. But I would have received the game ball literally after every game, lol.). The respect from coaches and players, it was a high, I felt elated. I still love intense aggressive sports to this day, but not coaches, lol. I now know this was odd behavior, because I never had a fellow team mate who did the same in all the years I played football, ESPECIALLY in Pop Warner football, among a bunch of 12 year olds! It would be a Saturday morning, hundreds of elementary kids running around, 4 pee wee football games going on at once at a park, and I never, not even once, saw anyone one else throwing up, and that never registered with me. It was an over the top intensity. People do throw up before competitions or intense endeavors, but as a 12 year old boy? Yes, there are other 12 year olds like I was, but it is the exception, and it's a sign of mental illness.

I also felt this anxiety on my mission, towards my mission president, which I'll dive into later on. This anxiety has manifested itself in so many different environments, especially in my jobs post college. I digress.

Despite scrupulosity, anxiety, and depression running a muck with fear and guilt, I still experienced good times. I had neighborhood friends, the summer time, the rec center pool, camo fatigues and spying on "Lloyd" the big kid, lol, climbing "the big tree", playing in irrigation ditches, etc., it was all there. Luckily, I was never sexually or physically abused, I can only imagine the trauma with my mind. It's so sad, because I know there are kids out there who are suffering from the same issues I did, who are being abused.

All I can say, is there is accountability, there is a God, I know that. But there is agency in this life, and it's at the center of life. Humans have free will, and honestly, that's why I believe in God.

 The balance of the universe and everything I observe in it, in nature, it's a physical metaphor for morality, and the accountability we as people are subject to. The physical balance in the universe points to a moral balance in the universe. There is accountability, there is truth, and not in a scrupulous sense.

People don't die and just get off the hook, it's the biggest lie ever told, and some might say God is the biggest lie ever told. I honestly see why many would say that. How many wars and deaths were in the name of God? How much abuse and distorted shame has been caused in the the name of God? But again, it wasn't truth, just like OCD isn't truth, it's a distorted sense of truth, so in reality not truth at all.

Forgiveness and repentance are also very real, but predators don't simply die and get off the hook if there wasn't an immense continual effort to make restitution, by paying their debt to society, coupled with a consistent continual effort to change their heart.

The reality is, God abides by and in truth, real truth, and what is true always has been, always will be, and is today. Its eternal and never changing, it's a circle, with no start, and no end, it just is. Truth is a calm, a peace, free of anger, resentment, grudges or revenge, it is a "true" peace. Truth forgives, but that doesn't mean it's unwise, and willing to trust the forgiven right away. Truth isn't exhausting, its empowering. Truth doesn't create distance, but it does understand boundaries. Truth is full of love, but also protects what it loves. Above all, and this one has always been a struggle for me, truth isn't fear, its faith. The fruits of truth are all the attributes emulated by Christ. If you could truly walk on the path of truth all the time, no matter what ensues around you, or even to you, you would have peace, even calm. So yea, I have a ways to go.

 How do you gain world peace? Let real truth abide in the heart of every person, and world peace would become a reality.

But the reality is, not truth, there is a peace that comes from a rationalization of wrong doing, or a twisting of morality, that frees one mentally of accountability, with the resulting rush of dopamine, elation, and absence of guilt in tow. I believe this is what the "peace as the world giveth" is as referenced by the scriptures. But like the distorted sense of guilt OCD creates, a distorted sense of freedom from guilt pride creates.

I went on a tangent there. Despite scrupulosity, I still have some good memories of church, of feeling the spirit in Sunday school, of mutual (weekly LDS youth gatherings), Boy Scouts, etc. 

It was a paradox, church indeed made me feel safe when I felt the spirit, but the doctrine of hell really scared me throughout all my youth, I obsessed about it. I also recall the anxiety of being a 12 year old deacon, and passing the sacrament. There was a special "skip" method used to pass sacrament to the middle rows at church, and I would always mess it up, probably because I was so anxious about messing up. Every Sunday I would dread being assigned the middle rows, and I would dry heave before church I was so anxious.

There was also excessive guilt about confession. I remember in Jr. High, talking to the bishop, which happened to be my Dad, that really sucked, it wasn’t enough that I told him something, if after our interview I realized I left out some minuscule detail, or messed up the time period by a week, I would be inundated with guilt, “I’m going to hell,” that mind set all over again, and then I would need to tell him those extra details. This I remember being quite prevalent during middle school and JR. High. I wasn't even a bad kid, just your standard boy problems, lol, but it was ridiculous the guilt, the shame, and the worry, and it was all chemical. Again, it wasn't the gospel, it wasn't truth, it was mental illness.

(WRITTEN PRESENT-2024)

There is so much more I could share about my childhood in the scope of OCD. I intentionally left out some experiences and details because the general populous doesn't understand this disorder, and if the time and effort isn't put forth to really understand it, often people will make assumptions that are far from true. Sometimes less is more.

As you continue reading, it will become evident my OCD gradually became more and more severe. Adolescents was a foreshadow of what was to come, and I had no idea. The worst of everything occurred during my young adulthood, especially my early 20s and early 30s, that's where the trauma happened, and it permanently changed me unfortunately. You learn to appreciate "good enough" after severe trauma. All I can say, is thank the lord for music, thank the lord for my drum set, and thank the lord for inspiring so many artists to write so many great songs. Give me sunshine, a destination to drive to, and good tunes, and I can turn a bad day good.

ADOLESCENTS

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

Over the years I have tried to block out the bad, and try to pretend it didn't happen. But the older I’ve become, the more I realize and accept how difficult it really was. It was especially difficult from the ages of 14 to 16, and is it any surprise OCD played a role in this.

It was a tough time as an adolescent. I felt pressure from my older siblings as a teen, pressure from my father, and pressure from religion stemming from the stifling nature of scrupulosity (Scrupulosity is an unhealthy extreme religious rigidity that stems from OCD). It was coming at me at all angles, I was continually in conflict, and thought little of myself. It was so hard to just be me, I felt so much pressure. I especially felt peer pressure.

Like all boys growing up, I had a best friend. He lived down the street. We would do

everything together throughout middle school and Jr. High. He was also in my ward (lds word for church congregation) at church. He was a lot bigger than me, but so was everybody else. Socially being the smaller hyper kid, I was at the bottom of the social hierarchy among my friends, they were all bigger and cooler than me, and girls paid attention to them, not me. Yet, I was incredibly social and gregarious. I did eventually grow into man hood though, and excelled in the weight room the final years of high school. My senior year I was one of the strongest guys on the football team.

I digress. Unfortunately, I could tell this friend was going to have a real struggle with church life, with peer pressure, with partying, with morality, with experimenting with substances, ya know, the adolescent norm, nothing new under the sun.

I would feel so anxious when there was peer pressure at that age, as do all kids. I felt like an island, that no one had my back. I knew it would be a hard road with my buddy, and being all of 14 years old in the 8th grade, I didn’t really know what to do. 14-year-old boys don’t talk about their feelings with their friends, and I wasn’t about to do that. But everything was magnified, made intense, because my chemistry was off, way off, and it was only going get worse unbeknown to me.

The school bus would pick us up and drop us off every day at the “Big Tree,” that was our bus stop. Almost everyday, I would walk home after school with my buddy and we would hang out at his house. One day, I just walked the other direction and walked home. I remember him turning and watching me wondering what I was doing. I was ending our friendship, because I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to be a good church going kid, and I knew he didn’t, and high school was right around the corner, with pot, alcohol, sex, etc., and the thought of all that peer pressure, hell, damnation, and my fathers disapproval gave me insane anxiety, I was on fire. I couldn't of rebelled even if I wanted to back then, because the anxiety was so horrific, it was that bad, for better or for worse. But again, balance is the key, the truth doesn't lie in the extremes, it's balanced.

We literally took two different roads that day. I was so sad, I was so incredibly sad, and I was so embarrassed for anyone to find out I had no friends. I was in a social circle, and my buddy was a main part of that circle, and when I lost him as a friend I lost all my friends.

To make matters worse, between the ages of 14 to 16, Freshman and Sophomore year of High School, my OCD was constant, severe, never ending, its all I did. Severe depression, OCD, anxiety, and a profound loneliness were those two years. That period of my life was so bad it still stings to this day when I think about it. I was a gregarious extrovert with no friends, at an age when friends are your world.

The symptoms that bothered me all stemmed from scrupulosity. First and foremost, was how it affected my ability to make friends. I was so deathly afraid of making friends, and being pressured to do something wrong. OCD grabbed on to my religion, to sin, to peer pressure, to hell and damnation, and an absurd fear of my fathers disappointment, to the point that I was paralyzed with anxiety to make friends, I simply didn’t, because I thought it would just end up like the friendship with my buddy, a pressure cooker of peer pressure, an avenue for sinning and disappointing God and my father, and inevitably burning in hell. It

always goes back to hellfire and damnation, my greatest fear since my earliest recollections. I was paralyzed socially. It was me and OCD, day after day after day after day. It's all I did.

Even with all the standard pot, drinking, and sex, I had plenty of schoolmates who were good kids, doing their best to make it through adolescents. Yet I was so enveloped in OCD, in religious scrupulosity, in fear and anxiety, I remained a lonely island. In my mind, loneliness was better than my father's disapproval, then God's disapproval, then burning in hell. It was extreme, and again, it wasn't truth, it was mental illness. So I was alone, very very alone, and very sad.

For two entire years this would play out-

Wake up for seminary (LDS Youth Scripture Study For Teens) in the early morning, sit at my desk in seminary incredibly depressed, obsess about things like if the strap on my backpack is in the right position on the floor, because I didn’t want anybody to trip on it and get hurt, because if they did, it would be my fault, and God would be disappointed with me, and send me to hell. Thats a scrupulosity loop.

Get done with seminary, and feel the extreme anxiety of having to face a day at school being a loner. Go to school, go to the bathroom, stall as much as I could, so in a sense I could hide I was alone. Go to class, stare at the floor in deep depression, I had no energy. Stare out into the front of class, not listening to a thing being said.

Go to lunch, the worst time of the day, sit at the end of the table with the friends I had in Jr. High, but say nothing, they’re wondering what is wrong with me. Here was a kid they knew, that completely changed from the previous year. I became a shell of the person I used to be, of who I really was. During lunch, I go to the library, sit and stare in my math book like I’m studying, I’m not, I just don’t want it to look like I was alone and had no friends.

Get done with lunch, repeat the depressed staring into nothingness routine. Go to Biology class, have this kid sitting behind me wanting to slap box, he’d slap me from behind at my desk, playfully, but I would get so pissed off. I was so mad, I wanted to deck the kid, but I thought, “If I bring attention to myself, if I get in a fight, everybody will talk, word will get around, people will notice me, realize I was alone, or it will present the opportunity for more social interactions and people wanting to be my friend, which will be an avenue for peer pressure and doing bad things, which will lead to disappointment from my father and from God, and ultimately I will go to hell”, that was the thought process. Thats called mental illness, and this is an example of scrupulous OCD thinking, it gets intense.

Go home, go to the bathroom, do my germ cleaning ritual. Germ cleaning ritual- I went to the bathroom, my hands and arms have germs on them, if I bump anything I need to

clean it, because then I’ll put my germs on that spot, and if my little brother comes and bumps it (for whatever reason I always thought of my little brother), he’ll get those germs on him, and then he’ll eat like a sandwich, and then he’ll get sick and die, and then God will be angry with me because its my fault, and then I’ll go to hell.

Scattered throughout the day was also checking the window ritual, make sure its locked, air breathing rituals, intrusive violent thought rituals (mom gets stabbed, I pull out the knife and throw it to the side in my mind, head ticks to the left, and then I sew up the wound with stitches, head ticks upward. OCD floods your head with disturbing thoughts that often compel the sufferer to ticks or other rituals.

Chopping Cotton Ritual- I chopped cotton on a friends farm that summer. I distinctly remember occurrences of having doubt I missed a weed. I would turn around, walk back, and there would be no weed to chop. I would walk forward, and then the doubt came back again, the voice of OCD whispering, “I think you missed a weed.” This wasn’t a perpetual issue, but I remember it happening. I distinctly remember it being the end of the day once, and my buddies older brother was yelling for us to get into his truck, it was time to go home. It took me an extra 5 minutes because of this stupid missing a weed doubt. They

were yelling, “C’MON!!” I think around the 5th double check I did, I finally just said, “screw it, there is no weed behind me!”

Sophomore year-

Sit alone at lunch, or with acquaintances I know from class, who wonder why I’m sitting with them, and think, this guy has no friends. I have the same peer pressure, sin, God, hell, father intimidation, don’t make friends issues running a muck in my head. I remember this kid I would talk to in class, and one day while walking somewhere on campus, he just asked “Who are your friends?” I couldn’t really answer his question. I had friends, a social life, everything once upon a time. But it all came crumbling down because of OCD scrupulosity which caused an intense fear of God inside me, a fear of my father, of hell, pressure to be good, anxiety, and depression. It beat me down so incredibly bad. That is not truth. That is not the gospel. That is mental illness.

Math Class-

Expo Marker Ritual- I was very sensitive to the scent of the expo marker my math teacher would use. If I breathed in the scent, that would be inhaling the marker smell, like I was getting high off of it, and that would be a sin, against the word of wisdom, and God would hold me accountable and send me to hell. So if I breathed in the smell, I would breath out

until my lungs were flat, and slightly turn my head to a direction away from the marker smell, and then inhale deeply because my lungs were flat out of air. But if I caught whiff of the market smell again, I would repeat the ritual. I was glad when the teacher put the cap back on the marker. I really wish we would have had a chalkboard.

Plus Sign Ritual-

I was obsessed with how to cross my plus signs. If I crossed them too high, that is a cross, and being LDS we don’t have crosses on our chapels. If I crossed it too low, that's an upside down cross, a satanic symbol, and obviously the church is opposed to that. I would erase and re-erase until I crossed my plus sign right down the middle. My plus signs

had to meet LDS standards, lol. My tests are a whirlwind of erasing. My teacher looked at my paper one time I remember, and asked, “what happened?” Really, what am I going to say. I get a D in Algebra.

Crotch Adjustment Ritual-

A teenagers penis has a mind of its own. Being a sexual organ, of course it is hyper sensitive, and I was overly aware of this. As such, I was constantly readjusting my crotch. Sometimes my penis would be against my leg while walking, if I noticed any type of sensation, that would be considered masturbation and a sin. I remember doing drills in track practice, and some girl noticed, and made a joke about it, again, what are you going to say. I just shrugged it off. It really sucked.

All the Freshman year rituals are also occurring. I become ineligible for football, I start flunking classes.

Homophobic-

I’m phobic of becoming gay. If I nonchalantly looked at a guys shoes or pants, all of a sudden my OCD starts saying, "I think, you’re gay." I freak out in my mind and say, "no way, no I am not, but then the OCD comes in and says, yes you are, then I fight back, "NO I'M NOT." back and forth, back and forth.

There were many other rituals. I hid everything very well, and all people could really notice is I twitched sometimes. But the Obsessive Compulsive storm that raged inside, it was a Hurricane, and nobody knew.

I HAVE NO REAL MEMORIES OF FRESHMAN AND SOPHOMORE YEAR. It was a depressive void, literally. I remember my rituals, my depression, fear of God, fear of my father if I deviate from church standards, and severe loneliness, that's it. It was a depressed blur. Those two years, OCD was literally running my life, and ruining my life. Hours upon hours upon hours upon hours upon hours. It was 8+ hours a day, day after day after day....week after week....until one year became two years, of dealing with severe untreated undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's all I did for two horrible depressed years. It's bleak. It's torturous. It's exhausting. It's dark. It's agony. It's awful. Suicidal ideation became the norm, it was daily. That is what untreated OCD is really like. Like a morning glory that grows, and grows, and grows, and engulfs and entangles everything in its path, OCD is the same way. That is what mental illness is really like, it's that bad.

I was so embarrassed and ashamed to tell anybody, to open up to my parents, I just bottled it in and pushed through. All these weird things I was doing, though I thought they were off, they made sense to me, in a religiously distorted way, and I felt compelled to do them, that they were all necessary. Also the anxiety I felt not doing them was overwhelming. I have no recollection of learning anything those two years of school.

I remember in adolescence my father could tell something was wrong. I was failing classes and I was ineligible for football, I believe it was Sophomore year of High School. He asked me bluntly at the dinner table once, his tone was rather annoyed, “Are you on drugs?” I replied no, because of course I wasn’t. But I didn’t have it in me to share all that

was going on, partly because I really had no idea I was mentally ill. He probably doesn’t remember that.

As a child, I felt our household had a religious intensity, but not necessarily in a healthy way. There was tenseness in general in the household, and it was coupled with a scrupulous OCD brain. It created an enormous amount of pressure in me. My perception of God, my perception of my father, my fear of hell, pressure was coming from all angles. My OCD and environment were like gas and fire when high school started. It was a very lonely and difficult time.

Junior Year-

I started to make friends again. I became buddies with some on the football team. I also became better friends with some kids in my ward. For the first time since 8th grade, I’m being social again, having fun, being a kid. I can trust a lot of my friends to pull pranks and have fun, but not go so far as get into sex, drugs, or alcohol, the line drawn is the same. I actually have a place to sit at lunch.

In a way, lunch time was the deciding factor of how depressed I was, the fact that I had somewhere to belong, someone to trust, changed my entire life. But through those associations I find that so many kids were like that too. And what's interesting, is all growing up in elementary school, middle school and Jr. High, most of my neighborhood and school friends were a wide variety of kids from LDS, to other faiths, non religious, etc., it didn't even matter. It wasn’t even a concern. Something happened when I hit puberty. The combination of losing my buddy, the OCD, hormones, depression, kids are growing up not as innocent, God, damnation, my father, it was all a scrupulous depressive cocktail. IT SUCKED! IT SUCKED REALLY REALLY BAD!

As far as football, OCD intrusive thoughts are like rapid fire during football games, you can see me twitching on film sometimes. The intensity of the game, the adrenaline in my body that got me up for games, they made me a good player, but unfortunately they also triggered OCD. Sometimes I would have ticks and make funny faces because of the

disturbing thoughts, and my teammates would be like “what the hell was that?” I just shrug it off, what I’m goin to say, “I’m having violent thoughts of my mom getting stabbed, and I don't know why, and I don't know why I can't make it stop, so I have to throw out the knife from my mom, that's one head tick, and then stitch her up, and that's another head tick, and it just repeats." I couldn’t say that. I can now, because I know it was OCD.

The OCD that was occurring all day every day, shrank to bothering me maybe 1 hour a day, except during football games, then it was constant. But I still felt the heavy hand of anxiety pressing on me during the football season, it was tough. But again, I felt so much elation from the acceptance and the approval of team mates and coaches, even if the coaches intimidated me, and I dry heaved before my football games.

At the end of the year, I was awarded the most improved player award. I was an undersized Jr., coming off the heels of a horrible 2 year struggle with OCD, anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts on the daily. I ended up starting on a team that placed second in state, that had at least half a dozen D-1 recruits. It was easily one of the most talented teams in the 40 or 50 years since the High School was established, definitely one of the top 3.

Senior Year-

I’m relieved we’re moving to Utah. The onslaught of social and peer pressures of being captain on the football team, coupled with the relationship to my father, to the church, to God, with the history of all that happened my freshman and sophomore year, that my parents didn’t know about, I feel like it would have been way too much to handle.

Sometimes I think our move to Utah was the hand of God looking out for me. Maybe he knew I was going to break, but he needed me in the mission field to do it, because there were people there he needed me to teach, I don’t know, just a thought I’ve always had.

It's unfortunate OCD was so socially debilitating in my youth. I’m a gregarious fun loving person. I was well liked up until I fell into a fear based scrupulous religious void. High School was very tough.

Utah was different. But like any place in the world, there were positives coupled with negatives. The line drawn of drugs, sex, and alcohol is more prevalent, though kids are doing it. I never felt peer pressure that entire year. Many kids are dealing with sex, alcohol, and pot, and unfortunately even harder drugs, but there was no pressure I felt to take part. I didn't get push back for just simply trying to be good, not like I had in times past growing up.

Kids are definitely rather prejudice, but they were like that where I used to live, especially members in my ward, maybe even worse honestly. I dealt with quite of few daggers from peers and adults growing up. Sometimes just teasing, but sometimes actually malicious. I was an ethnically mixed LDS kid, and if you met me it would be hard to tell. Mixing it up ethnically and racially is not something very common in my faith. It's changing, and it should, but it's never has been like that, and unfortunately there are many members of my faith, and really all faiths, and really in all of humanity, that struggle with this.

My final year in Utah I noticed how “preppy” and “cliquish” kids could be, I felt like the social lines were as stereotypical as an 80s teen movie. My prior high school had a large mix of race and socio economic levels, unfortunately all brought together by alcohol, pot, and sex, those were such unifying avenues for everybody, lol. But there weren’t such defined social lines of who could hang out with who, at least that's how I perceived it. If you asked somebody else, they might have felt the complete opposite was true.

The reality is I actually would have fit in quite well in High School. If I could have gotten some help, some medication, I think I could have normalized, and been more of my true self. But 1- I didn't know I was mentally ill and 2-The embarrassment and fear to open up to anybody was stifling, I just couldn't, the thought of doing that was overwhelming. I just pushed through unfortunately. I think about that time period now, and I wish I would have reached out for help, and I wonder how much better my life would have been now, had I done that. Hind sight is 20/20, and all you can do is move forward, focus on the future.

What’s most important though, is in Utah I didn’t feel any peer pressure from kids, at all, that was a relief, it was easier, much easier, it really was. It was a much less stressful adolescent environment, at least for me. I can't speak for others though, because again, their experience might have been polar opposite than my own, I can only share what my individual experience was. Religion, religious father figure pressure, depression, anxiety, and the exacerbating influence of scrupulosity and OCD, really made High School difficult. Non the less, growing up isn't easy, it never has been, and it never will be, but for some it is much more difficult than for others.

After High School I score poorly on my standardized college test, and that further cemented how stupid I was. Why did I even take that test? It served me no purpose. I graduated with a 2.7 GPA I think, and even that was inflated because my senior year of High School I had two weight training classes, art class, a P.E. class, a drum class, random other bs classes, and an English class. So that year cushioned the fall my GPA suffered through High School. But I needed my senior year to be easy, I had been through so much. I was just trying to survive. But that stupid test really shook my confidence and self esteem, the last thing I needed. I didn't learn much in High School. All of my energy, time, brain power, and focus, went to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and all the agony it put me through.

I believe there is a high natural intelligence that resides within me, that has constantly competed with OCD, anxiety, and depression. I’m incredibly introspective, observant, and creative. I'm hyper, and struggle with mundane tasks. I'm not sure those thats necessarily a sign of intelligence though, lol. I'm absent minded, I misplace things constantly, because my mind is constantly thinking, sprinting, pondering, contemplating. I also hyper focus, but become distracted easily, and then I hyper focus on that distraction, and sometimes forget what I was originally doing in the first place. My mind can scare me, it can go too deep, it can obsess, and to this day it's difficult to turn off.

I feel my true academic and intellectual potential was never given a fair chance. I firmly believe I could have taken AP classes and scored high on tests, those same tests that gave me an uppercut to my self esteem after it had endured one hay maker after another during High School. But I was severely depressed, suicidal, mentally overworked, overwhelmed, and incredibly distracted by OCD. Such is life, it's unfair, and sometimes so unfair it's infuriating.

Unbeknown to me, there was a metaphorical morning glory entangling my brain, OCD. It was a severe hindrance in my development. It still entangles my brain today, but at least now I know that it’s there. So I push forward, implement cognitive therapy, talk with my therapist when I start seeing red flags, take my medication daily, and rely on those around me who both respect and love me. One thing that really annoys me is how Hollywood depicts OCD. The Movie “As Good As It Gets” or the TV show “Monk,” it’s portrayed as so light hearted and even comical. It’s DARK, it’s EXHAUSTING, it’s HORRIBLE. It drives severe depression, anxiety, and even suicide. It can drive one to the darkest psychiatric reaches of the mind, which I’ll explain later, as I went to that place. I wish there were movies that depicted it as it really is.

Here comes a rant I wrote-

All I can say, is to all those who thought little of me growing up, or do today, to all those who labeled me dumb, to the peers who label me unsuccessful, to the past friends and schoolmates in college who scratch their heads at my situation and make an assumption that I’m irresponsible or lazy, to the girls who reject me as a potential candidate to date or marry because a career is a real struggle, to family and friends that may wonder about me, to those that were condescending to me on the regular, that labeled me, to coworkers in all my low paying jobs who scratch their head and wonder why a college grad with a business degree works where he does, I wish to all of them I could point to that cotton plant being choked by that morning glory, giving all it has to produce the few cotton buds it has, that they could realize the immense resolve and effort and determination that cotton plant must put forth to yield the little cotton it does, despite the morning glory that chokes it, that my life is no different. That they could realize that cotton plant is me, and that morning glory has been my lifelong battle with OCD.

I sometimes try to imagine where I would be today, what I could have accomplished by now, if it weren’t for that morning glory, that OCD entangling my brain. I imagine how much easier childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood would have been if it wasn’t for this debilitating disorder. I imagine what it would have been like to be a normal Elder on the mission, and serve a 24 month mission and have a standard welcome home. What would it be like to live an average LDS life, of marriage in your twenties, a college degree, and actual success in a career, and kids? I guess my path in life wasn’t meant to be average, or easy, because it hasn’t been.

If I could actually find a woman, a woman I actually like, I’m attracted to, someone pretty and fun and compassionate, and compatible (and I'm really trying to be more compatible these days, I'm easily irked, I know that), who could actually see my potential despite this morning glory that I've had to untangle from my brain, and will continue to untangle the rest of my life. A person that could work with me, and build success with me, a true "help mate", that would be a miracle, that would be amazing.

My heart, my engine, it's big. Seriously, I have a racing engine. My resolve, determination, and work ethic is like a 429 big block. But it's hard to pace my self, it's hard to prioritize tasks, and it's hard to just stop sometimes. I need some brakes and someone to help steer, again, even a "help mate". This disorder is so incredibly debilitating when it goes untreated, and it was untreated and undiagnosed for the first 20 years of my life, the most formidable years of my life. I've dealt with so many labels, so little understanding, and such little compassion from anybody but a very very small circle of people.

-Rant Done

(WRITTEN PRESENT-2024)

The dating world, the business world, the LDS cultural world, it can be harsh, but it's not truth. Maybe even just this year 2024 I have realized that. Anybody can be a critic, anybody can make assumptions, anybody can give labels, but very few seem to recognize and walk in truth, even in the light of Jesus Christ. I'm trying to do that, and rid myself of grudges, and so much resentment towards life, the world, people, women, peers, friends, family, etc. I'm learning I can't forgive, I can't love, until fear is replaced by faith, and I listen to the TRUE identity of who I really am, that God whispers to my heart. When I listen to that voice, I appreciate, and love myself more. I feel in my heart a sense of my true self, not what the world or critics say I am, not the influence of OCD, but who I really am. This realization helps me to start loving others more, no matter what they might think of me.

The biggest hinderance to finding success, peace, and happiness in my life, has been becoming angry, sad, or frustrated, and misbehaving. Sin doesn't make anything better, at all, its a lie. I've learned this, and my current Bishop has helped me realize this. So I recognize Christ is as real as the sun that rises each morning, and God is equally as real, and knows the TRUE me. I'm trying to stop the bad behaviors, driven by frustration, anger, and sadness, and just listen to him more, to be still and know that he's God, he's my father, he made my spirit, that abides in this really imperfect imbalanced brain. But my brain chemistry is not my identity.

I am not OCD, I am a child of God. That is truth.

THE MISSION-OCD & Psychotic Depression

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

I saw the mission as a new slate. I saw it as a way to leave my old self behind, and create an amazing new self. In my mind I thought, "This is a time to make up for high school, for everything, this is it, you make the rest of your life right now."

I really bought into the mantra "the mission is a mirror of the rest of your life". I bought into it obsessively. Now is that completely true? There are by the book missionaries who have left the church since coming home, or are completely inactive. There are missionaries that really struggled, but come home serve and remain active. There is also everything in between.

Mission OCD Symptoms-

-I’m obsessed with time, if we are in a house for too long, I feel like people we were supposed to meet in the streets we are going to miss, and they’ll lose their chance to hear the gospel, and then it will be my fault, and then I’ll go to hell.  A 20 minute Charla/discussion rule is implemented by the Mission President. It made me beyond incredibly anxious during discussions, all I could think about was that rule, investigator doubts, etc., nothing else mattered, all that mattered was the rule, I had to follow the 20 minute discussion rule. As soon as 20 minutes was up, my chest would flood with anxiety, it was like I was on fire, we had to leave, and so we did. Obviously, my companions were perplexed, and annoyed, you can imagine, lol.

. 

-I was incredibly organized, had a street contact book color coded in conjunction with a color coded map., and I would rank all my street contacts with stars. Whenever an appointment fell through, which was often, I would hit up the list. It became a discussion teaching machine. 

-Pres. Ballard said (Past LDS Apostle)-“If you guys do 10 street contacts a day, your baptisms will double.” I go completely insane with that, I do waaaay more, lol. I talk to lots of people, and annoy my companions, obviously. Again, this coupled with my color coded street contacting book and map, we end up teaching insane amounts of discussions, all in peoples homes, it blows most people away in the mission, they’re like “How are you doing that, it's so hard to get in homes and teach.” Unfortunately, as soon as I get inside to teach, my heart races and all I can think about is the 20 minute discussion rule. Of course it affects my teaching ability. Without OCD obsessing about the 20 minute rule, I probably could have baptized so so many people. I taught, tons, but investigators doubts and conversion had to fit in a 20 minute discussion box, reinforced by OCD . I’ll just say this, every time I taught, I made it a point to recognize the spirit, and point it out to the people we were teaching, and say, "that’s the spirit you are feeling right now."  I was very forward and blunt about that, that was the one good thing I did during my OCD discussions, and I always made sure to do that. But I'm sure many thought, "That kid is rather intense."

-This one is kind of comical, and Alberto was such a good guy, a strong faith. We teach a gay guy named Alberto Escobar. My OCD goes nuts. It’s hard teaching him, I feel like being around him will make me gay. I have to baptize him, its rough, I feel like me baptizing him is going to make me gay, lol. I push through and do it anyway, and am really glad when it's all over.  After each discussion, I had to constantly assure myself I wasn’t gay, that I didn’t magically become gay when leaving our discussions.

So these are a few examples of what I was dealing with. Undiagnosed untreated OCD in the mission, is like pouring racing fuel on a fire. Unfortunately, the human body, mind, emotions, and psyche, can only take so much. When intense emotional depression coupled with intense stress are sustained for a long period, you break i.e. Psychotic Depression ensues. If I could describe Psychotic Depression, I would say its terrifying and agony walking hand in hand pulling you down to hell.

Psychotic Depression on the mission: 

Phase 1-Depersonalization (I can't put an exact time frame, but it lasted multiple months)

I’m fighting with my comps, constantly, I’m incredibly fatigued from the OCD unknowingly. I wake up one day, and I look around the room, and everything is glazed over, I can’t feel my surroundings, they have no depth, my physical vision, the way things look, is literally altered and distorted, its difficult to put into words, its like describing the color green to a blind person, it really just has to be experienced to fully understand. It is as scary as it sounds. It’s the most bizarre and scary thing I have ever experienced up to that point in my life. I think I’m possessed by an evil spirit because I’ve been fighting with my comps so much (understandable missionary thinking).  Nonetheless, I don’t tell anybody, and am determined to beat Satan, he isn’t going to send me home. I work like a dog that entire time. My color coated street contact map system is like a machine. I’m in the midst of being terrified and depressed, yet I’m still teaching tons of people. This is mental illness, this isn't truth. I should have been in the hospital at this time. I remember looking out the window during a discussion, I look at a tree, I can’t feel it, its glazed over, I’m like, “what is going on?” Depersonalization is so scary, it's agony. Add to that, you don't know what's happening, or why, or if it will every go away, and you're on the other side of the world, a 20 year old kid. Maybe to survive, my mind labeled it Satan, so it could pin the awfulness onto something, and that something I could recognize and fight against.

I call it a tender mercy, but a memory comes to my mind. I remember my dad in the front yard after he broke when he was a bishop, saying he couldn’t feel anything, like a floppy disc had been inserted into his head that made him detached and not able to feel his surroundings. It clicks, I had a nervous breakdown, or a better explanation, I’m in the midst of psychotic depression. I just remember DAD as a bishop, described something so similar to what I was experiencing.

I remember playing football on P Day with the Zone. I can’t react fast, I can’t run as fast. They throw a football at me, my reaction time is horrible, I’m moving like molasses. I can’t catch anything, my arms and hands all come up slow and sluggish. It was so weird and bizarre.

Phase 2-Delusions (separate occurrences)

I feel like I’m in a dimension, have a state of mind, or that my mind has been able to work in a place outside the knowledge of God my entire life. It's hard to explain this delusion. I’m sitting at a members house before lunch, looking at a picture of Joseph Smith, and I think “God doesn’t know what I know, he doesn’t know the place or state of mind I’ve always been able to be in my whole life (I’m talking crazy here obviously. I entered the mission chemically imbalanced. At this point, I would say I was chemically obliterated). My heart starts to race, to the point that I think it's going to burst out of my chest. I eat my soup at the kitchen table and try to keep it together. 

I start to open up to my greenie about what is going on (yea, I was training when I was at my worst, lol). I’m sure he’s like, “You’re supposed to be my trainer!”. But in all seriousness, the quiet calm nature of my greenie is what I needed at that time. My greenie comp, My Younger Brother, a few bandmates over the years, these are people that have been so helpful to me, their temperament and personality puts me at peace.

I go in and out of sobbing during the day. Forget teaching my greenie about teaching or Spanish. His training is to just let me vent and talk all day. I am in a very bad place. It's safe to say his training was to be on suicide watch of his trainer.

Phase 3-Fight or Flight (2 weeks, this was the worst!)

The Delusions ended, and a new phase of my psychotic depression took its place. I feel scared to death. Again, it's hard to explain, it's something that is experienced, not explained. But a floating scared terror feeling rests inside me. Its torture. It doesn’t ever go away, it's on the entire day.  I’m not scared of anything, I just have a terror feeling inside me, a fight or flight feeling if you will, it's 100 percent chemical. It's agonizing. It lasts all day long, and gets worse indoors. I’m literally enduring moment to moment, second to second the entire day. 

I tell the DL (district leader) we live with that I’m feeling scared all day, and he says “Well, I get scared of things too, and some spiel about being scared of the future or inadequacy or something” LOL, he has no clue. I open up to my greenie, he is on red alert, we just walk around all day, at this point, it's so bad, even as an OCD missionary, I’m like “Screw Working” we just need to be chill and walk around during the day. I want to rip my skin off its so bad.

The District Leader and his comp, they realize something is way off with me. I kneel down to pray with the DL. As soon as I try to speak, I fall backward and start hyperventilating, the room is like it's spinning, a fuzzy tingling feeling starts at my feet and moves its way all the way up my body. I’m paralyzed, I can’t move. The DL picks me up and puts me on his bed. Lying on the bed it finally stops. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just endured a very severe anxiety attack.

I sit in a chair in the middle of the room and start talking to him. I’m shaking and trembling uncontrollably; my entire body is shaking. Everybody is like “Whooooooa, we need to get on the phone with the President.” The don't say that, but that’s the reaction. We call the mission president, I tell him what’s been going on (about a week prior to my episode with depersonalization, we had interviews, and my President asks how I’m doing, and I remember I just fell apart and started sobbing, he consoled me and we talked, he let me know I was doing fine, little did either of us know I was right on the edge of psychotic depression).

Phase 4- Stale Plain Toast (about a month)

After the fight or flight stage, I feel like stale plain toast, I have no feeling, like I literally can’t express emotion, I’m completely blunted. My parents could die, and I wouldn’t feel anything. I could find a cure for cancer, I wouldn’t feel anything. I remember staring at a girl's butt walking in front of me and my greenie, and I feel no arousal, my penis doesn’t even move. 

My mission president really didn’t know how bad off I was, he had no idea what was going on, nor did I. Again, I kept saying I had a nervous breakdown, which I did, at least I assume I had, but in reality, I was in the midst of what I now know is psychotic depression. 

I sit with the mission presidents wife and relate my experience about my childhood buddy. We do a test for OCD (When I opened up to my greenie, I remember telling him the weird things I would do in High School. In my mind, I was in a state of complete weirdness, that I honestly thought I was making up or doing to myself somehow, because I didn't know what was going on, why, or if it would ever stop. But I made a connection with the only other weird stuff in my life, all the OCD symptoms growing up, so I thought, there has to be a link).

I answer yes to almost every single symptom question. I talk with the mission psychologist on the phone, it’s a blur. I’m prescribed Wellbutrin, and my Mission President says the medicine will allow me to push, but hold me back just enough to keep me from being OCD.

This is completely inaccurate, and to no fault of his own, it stems from complete ignorance about my situation and mental illness in general. He had no clue what he was talking about, and I had no clue either. It was the blind leading the blind. Do I have resentment about this, sure I do, but again, he had no idea.

Anyway, I was in the midst of psychotic depression. I didn’t need Wellbutrin, I needed an incredibly strong anti psychotic. I needed cognitive therapy. I needed 3 times the Wellbutrin dose I was given. I needed a tranquilizer. I needed to be on a close suicide watch. Also, a pill doesn't cure OCD!!! That is asinine!  Medicine is an aid in overcoming OCD. Often a productive life can be achieved, if the medication is coupled with cognitive therapy. But it also depends on the individual, and it also depends on the severity of the OCD, each case is different.  My mission president had no training or understanding of mental illness at all! I suffered so incredibly much on the mission. I do hold some resentment toward  my mission president, but, he had no idea what had happened to me, nor did I.

I stay a week in the mission home, and then he puts me back in the field. He says, I let you stay here a week because you had a nervous breakdown. Again, he doesn’t have a clue, but I don’t either. I go back out into the mission field. I have no cognitive ability. I introduce myself and my greenie multiple times to the same person and have no idea. I’m crying uncontrollably during the day. After a week, my mission president realizes how bad off I am, and sends me home.

On the plane ride home, I remember looking out the window, and not feeling anything. The plane is taking off, and I see the lights of the city below me, it's beautiful, and should be a very emotional moment, I’m going home from my mission. I don’t feel anything. I have the emotion of waiting in line at the DMV. I’m thinking, “what is wrong with me?”

There are hard feelings about the mission. Most of them are gone, but I still harbor some resentment towards my mission president, and authority in general. Authority, Religion, and OCD don’t get along well in my head, and my President was indeed an authoritative religious figure I had to answer to and perform under. I’ve always felt like my president really doesn’t know me well. I was in a tiny box called the mission and my OCD had no room to breath. I was incredibly stressed. Yes, I was very hardworking, but also fanatically OCD rule oriented. I was incredibly intense in the mission. I wasn’t healthy at all. The gregarious extrovert that I truly am, was completely buried under OCD scrupulosity in the mission field. I was a ticking time bomb.

Honestly, I'm pretty irreverent, I’m loud, I can be too vulgar, I’m aggressive, I’m blunt, I’m gregarious, I’m extroverted, and I’m a jokester. I’m a spectrum of good and bad behavior, character strengths and character weaknesses, like everyone. But socially at least, I lean toward "loud extrovert". Some might even call it "hyperactivity".

My president knew me as Elder OCD, that's who I was on the mission. The week I stayed at the mission home, I learned about my mission president. He was the son of a school superintendent. I could tell. He was very rule oriented, very by the book. He was 100 percent in the box, and I think he really struggles with any individual who lives outside the box, or whose life is rather unorthodox, he can’t understand it, he can’t relate to it. He is all administrator, rules, policies, and hierarchy, 100 percent.

Here I am, with this mental affliction, and I can’t work in that box in any way. The box my mission president and so many other men in the church work in, ESPECIALLY the leaders. I’ve tried. A standard career, the mission, etc., anything with structure, rules, and authority, completely wrecks me. 

So here I am, a drummer, working and performing in a scene and environment, that in no way my mission president could understand, and who I’m sure wouldn’t approve of. I want to be in a successful rock band and promote concerts, and be an active member of the church. I’m a drummer. This is literally, the complete opposite of anything my president would do or even encourage. 

Life is hard, and my struggles are real, and it’s been such a battle to remain active all these years. Through it all I have stayed active, not obedient, hardly, but active, open with my bishops.

My mission president has no real understanding of what happened to me on the mission. He has no idea what has happened after the mission, and he doesn’t really know the details before my mission. He makes me uncomfortable, even to this day. But I know he knows how hard I tried, and how sorely I wanted to be a good Elder. Unfortunately, all the hardships, failures, and rejections after the mission, have really jaded me.

I honestly think most GA’s and Apostles are similar to my mission president. I would be happy if I never met any of them, it would make me quite uncomfortable. OCD and scrupulosity, it just can’t handle authorities on that level. It’s too intimidating, and whether it’s accurate or not, my experiences have created a notion of what I think they are like.

Which brings me to God. Growing up, because of OCD, he always seemed ready to punish and send me to hell. I wonder what he’s like. Is he the pound on the pulpit type? Is he the calm gentle type? Is he the incredibly disciplined no funny business personality type? Is he the fun loving lenient type like my bishop in Orange County? I don’t know.

I go home after 17 months in the mission field.

Phase 5- Home, recovery, heavy meds and I can’t tell if they're doing anything

I’ve spent the last 6 months in an agonizing hell, and all I had was a dose of Wellbutrin the last 2 weeks of my mission. I feel like my leg was blown off by a grenade and I was given a band aid.

I just endured the most terrifying and agonizing trial of my life. I had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know if it was ever going to end. I was obviously terrified. I endured all of it without any hospitalization or medication. I felt like I went through open heart surgery, without anesthesia. Am I angry about this, sure I am, but again, it was the blind leading the blind in my circumstance. My mission president had no idea what I was going through, and probably still doesn’t understand what happened today. I do hold some resentment toward him. But he was in complete ignorance to my situation, had no training or personal experience with my issues.

And what's crazy, I was working and teaching during this hell, tons of people we were teaching. That’s how effective my street contacting/color coded map system was. I was so OCD about being a good Elder, nothing was going to keep me from not finishing and being successful.

And why? Because I wanted to have a good life when I got home. I wanted to be blessed. There was a terrifying demonic psychiatric hell storming inside me, and really up until the fight or flight stage of my craziness, I didn’t say anything to anybody. 

People could look at me from the outside and think I was fine. I was in the midst of depersonalization, my visual perception of everything was completely glazed over and flat, so weird, and SCARY! Is it ever going to end?!!! I was suffocating in it, in this awfulness I couldn’t escape, this detached dark surrealness, a blanket over my reality that I couldn’t do anything about, I couldn’t escape it. 

Yet there I was picking up my greenie cracking a smile in a photo. People think you’re fine, because they can’t “SEE” that there is anything wrong with you, they have no clue!! People make HORRIBLE judges, because all their judgement is based on personal experience and knowledge, which is so incredibly LIMITED.

I thought Satan was possessing me, trying to end my mission, and I was hell bent on beating him and continuing my mission, working hard, hitting numbers, he was not going to beat me, that’s what I was thinking, I was not going home! 

I had this mindset because I wanted so badly to be blessed and have a good life when I got home. This “your mission is a mirror of your life” mantra was ingrained in me. My mission was incredibly difficult, and you know what, my life has been incredibly difficult too, so I guess there is something to the mantra.

This has a lot to do with holding onto anger. Sure I made the ultimate sacrifice, but this disorder has been the hindrance in me finding any success in a career or dating. It's the fight like a dragon starve like a church mouse cycle. All work, all pain, little to no reward. I get mad, and wonder, what is the point?

I came home in September, I served for 17 months. Eventually I work at BYU grounds. I’m a zombie raking leaves. It's in the fall. I came home in September. (My second episode at 31 was also during the fall. The fall is beautiful, but can cause some eeriness in me. I don't like the fall.)

I’m angry, I’m sad, I’m confused. I remember after being home a few weeks, I was walking with my dad on BYU campus to go watch a devotional. I remember feeling so uncomfortable and sheepish around all the kids. I felt so inadequate, strange, less than all of them. I felt like an infant if that makes sense, completely vulnerable.

Through meds like Depakote and Fluvoxamine, the help of a psychiatrist at LDS Family Services, low stress levels, and the incredible loving support and understanding of my parents, a year later, I started college.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Visual Aid- My Psychotic Depression Episode, an abstract hell-

Visual Aid (Another way of looking at it)- My Psychotic Depression Episode, an abstract hell-

COLLEGE

(WRITTEN PRESENT- 2024)

When I started college, I was angry. I was angry not just because nothing over that past 18 months prior to starting school made any sense, and all I believed in was shrouded in doubt, angst, and resentment, I was also angry because growing up, I dealt with all the labels of stupid, unfocused, irresponsible, etc., and it really hurt my self esteem. Then, through psyche pounding trauma, you come off the mission and realize how compromised you were by this horrible time consuming mind distorting mental illness called OCD. I wanted to prove a point. But when I look back, just like growing up, I would just say to myself, "People don't define you, God defines you, listen to him, and just be yourself."

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

I start school in the fall, and under my parents advice, I only take 2 classes.

I think about my past as a child, as an adolescent. I think about all the judgement, the dumb labels, the loneliness and OCD and how it effected me in High School, how incredibly debilitating it had been my entire life. I am so incredibly angry. I’m really mad at all “The upper middle class white kids I grew up with” all my peers, teachers, leaders, older siblings, everybody. They all labeled me stupid, they labeled me less than all of them. I had OCD DAMNIT, it was an incredibly debilitating disorder, it severely affected my childhood and adolescence in so many ways!! How are you supposed to perform when dealing with all that I did.

I was hell bent on proving a point, that I could go to school where all the entitled upper middle class white kids went to school, that were condescending and made fun of people deemed less intelligent than them, that picked on me, I wanted to go to BYU. I guess for that reason I have a love hate relationship with that school. 

I also was still really angry about the mission experience, it was so unfair, I couldn’t make sense out of it. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have enough counseling upon getting home.

My OCD can make me hyper focus when I’m passionate about something. Ask my bandmates, ask my mission companions. So that is what I did. I went to junior college, because I wasn't gonna get in anywhere else. I didn’t really socialize. I didn’t really make friends, I withdrew (when your not well you withdrawal). Eventually I went to a YSA ward, and started socializing more. But I was so angry, and so set on proving all the upper middle class white people wrong that send their kids to BYU, they’re all condescending pricks! That’s what I felt.

I basically redid High School, because I didn’t learn anything in High School. OCD, scrupulosity, and depression were my High School experience, it sucked really bad.

I remember being so lonely then. I remember studying on Friday nights, just pissed off at the world. I remember driving home and wishing I had more friends, wishing I was more social. When I’m healthy, I’m an extremely gregarious extrovert, but not so when I’m depressed. I remember finals, and I remember the stress and anxiety getting to me, I remember driving home and feeling like the night sky was coming down on me, it was bizarre. Oh, I was so misguided. I was so mad. 

I got a 3.9 GPA, almost perfect. I pretended there wasn’t a curve, and would study so. I really did have a love of learning I found, it wasn’t just about flipping the bird to those I resented, I really absorbed information, and loved it. 

In a Biology Class of 200 students, I got a true A with 3 other kids, the only true A’s in the class. Our grades were thrown out to help the curve. In reality, I found 90 percent of kids float through college, don’t really learn a whole lot. It’s cram and vomit information for a test. It's not really how one learns though. I remember getting free math books in all my algebra classes for getting the highest grades. Even up through College Algebra I would get an A+.

So I applied and I got into BYU. I remember the day I received my acceptance letter. I was hanging out with one of the few buddies I had at the time. We were watching Rudy. 

After watching the movie, I had a Rudy moment, and I went and walked alone on BYU campus, and I felt in my heart, I did it, I got in, I was never supposed to go to school here. I got rather emotional. 

But you know what, it didn’t change how I felt while I was at school there. I still felt inadequate, I still didn’t feel like I was good enough. Oh that devil called inadequacy. I got into the business school, I thought I was going to be a corporate man. I did well in the business school. It was hard. It took all I had to balance school and OCD, and again, I didn’t have the counseling I should have had while in school. I didn’t have a steady girlfriend or get married, the thought was overwhelming. The thought of marriage and kids still overwhelms me today. Like I said, it took all I had to graduate and keep it together, school was all I could handle. 

After my first semester at BYU, I finally felt like I could move out on my own and be a normal college kid. I was 24 ½ years old, and I was finally moving out to be a college kid. 

Look, a lot of college sucked, but there were some good memories at BYU. In the midst of all that had ensued in my past, the year my little brother came home from his mission, and the summer we went to sell pest control in Modesto, CA, which really is quite a dump, but the girls we met at church, the beach trips, it was the best summer of my life. 

In college, I remember my YSA wards, I remember all the girls I became friends with. I remember having good times with my roommates. Though there was a lot going on inside that nobody really knew about, though there was this ugly past that nobody knew about, during the moments at school with roommates, when I wasn’t stressing about school, during social and ward activities, I was a really gregarious fun loving guy. My roommates loved me, because I really am at the core a social guy, I mean really social. 

Nonetheless, it was hard to balance OCD, I often felt inadequate and angry, and I studied way too much. 

There were times when I was so tired, and thought, “Man, I don’t know if I can do this.” Some kids coast through college, and some don’t. I was definitely the latter.  Though I loved learning, OCD made it hard to balance. It especially made studying effectively difficult, at least in a college setting. I would try to memorize and learn everything, I had to know every detail and reason why. I was terrible at just studying what might be on the test. I had to see the entire picture, studying every last shred of information. 

The problem is I would start studying for a test a ways out, way before most, so I could cover everything, and then as the test drew near, I would forget some of the earlier stuff I studied. 

I honestly would have done better to just cram and regurgitate like every other college kid. That’s how college is set up, it really cultivates a cram and vomit learning environment, which isn’t really conducive to a learning environment ironically. At the end of the day, college isn’t about learning, it’s about taking a test and making connections.

I can't just get a halfway idea about a topic. If I can’t dive in and eat the entire elephant, I’d rather not eat the elephant at all. Yes, its definitely an OCD thing. I do best learning outside of structured environments, learning what and how I want to learn, as do most people who with mental illness.

Non the less, I remember the day I walked out of the BYU testing center, after finishing my last final. This is what I felt inside- "ITS DONE!! I DID IT! HOW? I DON'T KNOW, BUT I DID IT! IT'S DONE, I FINISHED COLLEGE, AND I DON'T EVER WANT TO GO BACK!"

POST COLLEGE, WORK FORCE, AUTHORITY ANXIETY SWITCH

(WRITTEN IN 2024)

When I wrote this, it was a very difficult time for me, and I still struggle today. But now more than ever, I realize that I'm a member of The Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter Day Saints, not The Church of Latter Day Saints of Jesus Christ.

Here's an example- God sends an angel, a messenger, to deliver some crucial guidance pertaining to my life. I say to this angel, "What did you do for a living? How much money did you make a year? What's your ethnicity? Did you ever get married? Did you have a family? Did you have a nice home? Did you have leadership callings in the church? Did you have prominence in your community? Were you an administrator? How could you relate to me and my life?" The angel responds, "I can't relate to your life, but I know somebody who can relate to your life, PERFECTLY, who understands every detail of your life and hardships, PERFECTLY, and I'm here to deliver a message to you from them."

I've learned, don't look at the messenger, listen to the message. Their professional life, personal life, and education is irrelevant to the message they share. The church is giant, with assets, and millions of members, in an ever changing precarious world. The leaders have to have certain secular and professional skills to steer the ship in a sense, but that has nothing to do with my own personal worth, or importance. The message, that's what matters. Christ is the message, look to him. I've realized, Heavenly Father loves me so much, that if it was just me, he still would have sacrificed his son, for only me. That's a sobering fact, humbling. But, when I wrote this, I didn't realize that. When I wrote this rant, I very much was a member of The Church of LATTER DAY SAINTS of Jesus Christ.

POST COLLEGE

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

After college, I was naïve, I was foolish, I thought I was like all the other college kids around me. My plan was to move to California, find a business sales job, make lots of money, surf, and marry a pretty girl. Well, that’s not how it played out.

I think my first mistake was making surfing my life. I was obsessed with it, I wanted so bad to live by the beach and become a talented surfer. A career was an afterthought I figured would just happen because I went to college. I’ve always been enamored and in love with the beach.

But my foolishness and naivety were fueled by the incredible stress and toll college took on me. Battling depression and OCD was rough in college. It took all I had to keep it together and graduate, and I did graduate, hallelujah!

So I moved out to live with my Uncle in Temecula, CA. I lived there for a month, with a loose plan, and surfing on my mind. Like I said, my foolishness and naivety were fueled by the incredible stress and toll college took on me, and really life in general for that matter. A nervous breakdown, psychotic depression, early release from the mission, angry, had to prove a point in college, OCD study craziness, etc. I was tired! All I wanted was the sunshine and ocean, that’s it! 

But, indeed I was naive and foolish just to move out there thinking it would just work out. If I wasn’t afflicted with OCD to the severity that I am, honestly I think it would have worked out.

But, mental illness is a cross I must bare, and always take into account. Living with Uncle for a month was great. I surfed. I hung out with my cousin till the wee hours of the morning. I met a guy in the YSA ward who was a surfer and guitar player, and we jammed and surfed every week.

I was hired by a company in San Diego. During my job interview my gut instinct said this is a bad idea. But I was desperate for a job, a parachute to catch my fall. I basically jumped out of a plane and thought I would figure it out before I hit the ground, that’s a great metaphor for my impulsive California move. And as I mentioned, some can do that, but being mentally ill, even with my meds, its added an entire new level of difficulty and complexity to the scenario. 

I took the sales job. It was calls in the morning and going business to business trying to sell this communication product. As soon as I started the job, the anxiety hit hard. The pressure to sell, the structured environment, the bosses, it all was a cocktail for pouring gas on Anxiety and OCD. 

I can't handle environments where my performance comes under scrutiny, criticism, expectation, and a strong reaction from an authority figure above me. I can deal with game day once a week in football, but corporate/professional work environments with bosses, make every day game day, and I become a wreck of a person.  

I was dry heaving every morning. I would dry heave in the car on the way to work. I would dry heave at work. I would come home exhausted. I had a knot in my stomach the entire day. When I’m anxious and stressed I dry heave, or throw up.

I would yearn for the weekend like a stranded person yearns for water in the dessert.

Once the weekend came, I would surf and just let down. As soon as Sunday evening came, that knot would come back. The retching would start, the dread would come back, it was horrible. You do this week after week, and you get to the point where you can’t do it anymore. 

One day I got a call from a recruiter from a job I had applied for while at BYU. They were hiring for an office that covered all of LA and Orange County. I figured this was an answer to prayer, a god send.

The exact same scenario at my previous job occurred at this new job. Only it was worse. I was hired as an area sales rep for a food and beverage company. Basically I would have an area, about 12 or so grocery stores, and in each store I would be responsible for maintaining inventory and trying to up sell product and get featured spaces in stores with exposure to customer traffic. I started as a JR. Rep in training. I would be trained for 6 to 8 weeks and then be over an area for 2 weeks all by myself, but under close supervision.

The above would be the ideal situation. In reality I was trained for a week, a guy went out for an entire month with heart problems, and I was on my own. I had no clue what I was doing. It was sink or swim, and I sank like a rock. 

The anxiety was a constant fire inside me. I was dry heaving throughout the entire day. I made mistake after mistake. I was so anxious and fatigued. My cell would ring, and it would be my boss, who I hated, and it would just be another fire I caused that I needed to put out.

I would get really aggressive with my boss, I would talk back, I would become quite defensive. I was just under so much stress. 

I would leave at 5:30 am and get home at 10 PM often. I would fix mistakes, and then I was responsible for my day to day functions. 

It all comes to a head at a Food 4 Less in Inglewood, California. I’m throwing a temper tantrum, I’m pissed, I’m overwhelmed, my anxiety is making me it's puppet, I’ve sucked and made so many mistakes, my cute USC grad manager tells me to calm down, and well, I don’t calm down, I’m livid. I’m holding a package of cookies in my right hand in the air like Moses and the 10 commandments. I'm cursing, I’m yelling, I’m stressed, I’m depressed, I feel defeated.

A few nights later, I’m sitting in front of a Ralph’s Grocery store somewhere in LA. I had just pulled a 17 hour day. I call the office, I leave a message, I tell them I’ve been getting sick, bad stuff is happening to me, I get laid off with benefits the next day, they say, maybe you can find a better fit somewhere else, they're relieved to get rid of me and I’m relieved to go.

They probably thought “that guy was intense, he had a temper, and he really sucked at his job.” They would be correct, lol.

I feel dejected, I feel untalented, I feel all the work and preparation and sacrifice in school mean nothing, I will never be better than my OCD, than this anxiety, than this imbalance, it’ll be a millstone around my neck, it's my weakest link.

BIG RANT-

I feel angry because I feel judged by peers, by women, I lack the confidence to ask out women, I think, why would a cute girl with a good job want to date me, I’m going nowhere in life, OCD is my governor, it would be a mistake to marry me, I can’t support anybody (I still feel that way often).

I wanted a good life. I thought, you’re supposed to go on the mission, and be a stellar missionary, and then go to school and study hard and do well, and marry a stellar girl, and then graduate and get a good job, and you can support your wife and family like a man, be the breadwinner, make babies, and move up in your career, and become upper middle class and live in a nice brick home.

That above picture is what was painted in all my upbringing in the church, in all the men I saw in the General Conference issues of the Ensign Magazine, of every bishop and stake president I’ve ever had, of my mission president, of my own father. That is ingrained in my brain, that is how its supposed to be. WELL, I’M NOT LIKE ANY OF THOSE MEN!!!! I’M MENTALLY ILL!!! IT SUCKS!!! ITS SUCKS MORE THAN ANY OF THEM KNOW!!! THEY’RE NOT LIKE ME, AND I’M NOT LIKE THEM, AND THOSE ARE THE TYPE OF MEN WOMEN WANT!!! Women= Security, and I have none!! Women=Good Career, I don’t have one!! 

I would get mad, and still do today, because all the men that counsel me, from my father, to my bishops, to my stake presidents, to my mission president, to the brethren at general conference, ALL HAVE SUCCESSFUL CAREERS, THEY ALL HAVE NICE HOMES, THEY ALL HAVE WIVES, THEY ALL HAVE POSTERITY, THEY ALL HAVE NOTORIETY IN THEIR COMMUNITIES AND PROFESSIONS, THEY ALL HAVE RETIREMENT PLANS, THEY’RE NOTHING LIKE ME!! I WANT A PEACE OF THE PIE TOO! All this work, all these hee man efforts, all these trials, the great efforts to stay active, to repent, to even care and try to change sinful behaviors, and I’m a bachelor pushing middle age, broke, and at home! Its a hard pill to swallow. 

I often wonder what these men in leadership positions would be like, if they walked in my shoes, if their mission’s ended early, if they failed time and time again at their careers, if they didn’t have money, if they didn’t marry the women they did, or even get married at all, and if they suffered from chronic OCD, schizophrenia, or some other chronic mental illness. Would they really be all that different from those of us that do?

I constantly hear leaders say money doesn’t matter, your career doesn’t really matter, just be honest in your work. A nice house and nice cars, they don't matter. It’s funny, because all the men who tell me that, have money, have a great career, have a nice home, and drive something besides their parents car pushing 210k miles. My question to them is-

“If they don’t matter, then why do you have them? If they don’t matter, why did you go to school, why did you sacrifice, why did you work so hard to ACHIEVE them? If they don’t matter, then why do you live in a house with square footage beyond what you or your family needs? If they don’t matter, why don’t you sell all your assets and donate all the funds to poor people in the church and live in an apartment and drive a Geo Metro?”

These SYMBOLS of SUCCESS, they do matter. It’s a way a man shows the world he paid his dues, he worked hard, he took a risk, he made it. My father, my mission president, the apostles, general authorities, bishops and stake presidents, I see them possessing these symbols all the time. If they don’t matter, a man wouldn’t have them, they wouldn’t have them. They do matter, and they matter to me, I want some success symbols too, and women like to see them.

When the brethren talk, sometimes I think in my mind- 

“This man has a balanced brain, this man has a resolve, resiliency, and ability to handle stress, to raise a family and lead an organization. These men, their minds will bend, their knees might shake, but the lord's anointed leaders don’t break. They’ve never been suicidal months and years on end. They don’t stay in mental wards. They have a tenacity, resolve, and discipline to become educated and work hard, and they achieve. They don’t have any chronic debilitating bottlenecks that throw them down to the bottoms of society. They have weaknesses, of course, but these men were never pushing 40, broke and living at home. These men weren’t sent home early from their missions in the midst of insanity. These men all have careers, they have wives they have sex with, they have posterity and children, they have success in there careers, they have prominence in their communities. I worked just as hard as they did on the mission. I gave just as much effort as they did going to school, maybe even more. I’ve walked lonely roads as they have. Why are they up there, and I’m down here?

My entire life, I have observed and perceived that though there isn’t one way to be a member of the church, there is a favored way, there is a way that is held up on a pedestal, there is a way that gets all the attention, there is a way that is looked up to, there is a way people compete and strive for. It seems like that way is the administrative way. We all know who the administrators are, they make the most money, they hold all the leadership positions. They have the cute upper middle class daughters at BYU that wouldn’t date me. It’s tough telling those girls you’re pushing 40 and live at home, there is no easy way to tell a woman that, I just try to avoid it, it never goes over well. They’re highly educated, they’re people who have never socialized with me. I've never been good enough to run in their circles.

Hyperactive kids with OCD that perform poorly in school, get sent home early from their missions, and love music and drumming, no, I’m not an administrator, not favored, not noble and great, I don't fit the part, and my entire life, schoolmates, roommates, peers, they've let me know that in subtle and obvious ways. The best members that lead the best lives, the best souls, they hold leadership positions, and that is reinforced again and again in my experiences at church. My mental and emotional capacities can’t handle church leadership in anyway. I’m sensitive to stress and easily overwhelmed. I feel like a loser at church, but I feel like a winner, I feel successful drumming on stage.

BYU, apostles, GAs, Mission Presidents, APs, they’re all so elitist!!! They’re all the same!!!!! Why can’t a good hearted community college graduate who manages a tire store be a high leader? Why not?!! I bet they could do it! Money drives the church, and the elite make the money, those are the simple facts. Yes, I resent the administrator, and the peers that hold those roles, they’ve never much cared for me, I’m a joke and a good laugh, a leper whose trying. My father loves the administration circle, he’s worked on it his entire life. He was a bishop once. I can’t do what my Dad does, my mind is too screwy. For all his talk about being the only brown face, which is rough, he’s fit into the church better than I ever have.

The administrators, they get all the praise and attention, and why shouldn’t they, they run the church. I’m a drummer who sits in the lobby or back rows of sacrament meeting. The thing is, I’ve learned to love myself more, doesn’t mean I don’t still resent the leadership culture or culture in general of the church, the culture starts at the top and trickles down. It’s just that I love music and the drums so much, that being in the margins of the church, though it irks me, I don’t care as much, because I love music and the drums so much. Was I noble and great? I don’t know, I’m not an administrator, so maybe I wasn’t.

Music is the only thing that makes me happy, actually, nature too. When I book a gig, when I play a show, when I play a cool groove, when I put together a concert, I feel like I’m on cloud 9. When I hear a song I love, it lifts my spirits. When Im at church, when I was at BYU, really anything church related, I feel like a loser, I feel marginalized, and I have always felt that way at church. I serve, I minister, and I still feel blue each Sunday, it’s a rough day. 

Why are my buddies from college, married with kids, making 6 figures, and owning a home?Why are all the kids I grew up with, active or inactive, all living in homes, married to people they love, have children, and have careers. My Dad has a big brick home, gained a solid career, has a family, and married the love of his life. By my age he had a home, a career, a wife, and kids. By my age, as weird as it is to write, he had been getting laid for 10 years. I don’t like thinking that my parents have done that more than 6 times. Anyway, everywhere I look, I see success, and every time I look at myself, all I see is failure. Yet I worked so incredibly hard, I went on a mission and I went to college under such difficult circumstances, and have made such sacrifice, to not end life, to not go inactive, to keep trying, to remain open with my bishops, to continue taking my meds and talking with my counselors. To give this much effort, to fight this much, to suffer this much pain, to have so little money, to have such little success, to have girls look you over, because what kind of girl takes seriously a man pushing 40 that lives with his parents that makes a low hourly wage at a warehouse pursuing music, it’s difficult to process all this. I have a business degree from BYU, but if you were to look at my life, you would think I was a lazy irresponsible high school dropout. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

I feel resentment toward leaders because of their success. It’s my pride that has taken root in my failures and pain, that is why I possess resentment toward them. I’m tired of successful men giving me advice. I’m a leper, not a leader. I gave everything I had on the mission, I tried so hard in college. I can not make sense of my life's situation. All you people, friends, peers, siblings, neighbors, this is how debilitating mental illness is. This is REAL mental illness, its ALL you do. All you do is manage it, day after day.

It is my weakest link. OCD affects every aspect of my life; work, finances, process of faith, religion, romance, body, family relationships, mental health, emotional stability, etc. It's like chopping cotton in the fields as a boy, and dealing with the morning glories that would entangle cotton plants from bottom to top and choke them. That's been my experience with OCD, it has entangled itself into every aspect of my life. I hate morning glories, in reality and metaphorically, and I hate OCD!

There is such a divide in the church. Could a poor man preside over a rich ward? Could a man who works in a blue collar trade preside over a ward of white collar professionals? Do rich wards call janitor bishops? Does money, socio economic levels, and race play a role in the church? The church is incredibly diverse, but is it also incredibly segregated? Is it an issue if black and white people get married? Is it an issue if brown and white people get married like my parents (because it caused a lot of uproar with their stake president in the mid 70s)?

The Ensign can say what it says, men can preach over the pulpit, but at the end of the day, this is a fallen unforgiving world, and in my EXPERIENCE, money and race play as much a role inside the church as it does outside the church. 

I look at the high leaders of the church and I don’t see common men. The rhetoric is they’re just ordinary common men.  The redneck at the gas station, that’s a common man. The guy who works at Big O tires, that’s a common man. The 7th grade school teacher, that’s a common man. The apostles and prophets, they’re executives, they’re not common people. I feel like the leaders we have, it’s about money. You need to keep the people with money happy, because in reality they finance the church.

Will there ever be a day when the 12 apostles really represent the international nature of the church? It’s because old rich white men would be irked if they were leaders, and they pay tithing, and their tithing amounts to a lot more than the tithing of a poor family in Bolivia. You can irk or annoy common church membership, the blue collar people, the school teachers, the mentally ill warehouse worker like myself, but you need to keep the money happy, because the church is a business. It’s centered around the gospel, but it’s still a business. I understand it now that I’m older. Stake centers, meeting houses, temples, sacrament trays, etc., they all cost money. The reality is that making and keeping covenants actually isn’t free. From the baptismal fonts you're baptized in, to the plastic cups used for the sacrament, to the cars driven by missionaries, to the temples where we take out endowments, they all necessitate LOTS of capital.

So, the church will always pander to the wealthy, who are usually conservative and white. Perhaps as minorities make more money, we’ll see different colored apostles. To have a Polynesian apostle, Mexican Apostle, Black Apostle, Asian Apostle, it would be awesome. It’s finally starting to change slightly with President Nelson. But the church membership has been conditioned to, “Prophets and Apostles are white, they just are, and therefore, that’s the superior noble and great chosen race.”

So if you have a righteous man in a rich ward, and maybe he lives in a condo on the outskirts of town, and he works changing tires, and he might be very capable and intelligent, he’s not gonna get called to anything. Because the rich white members aren’t going to like it. Imagine if said tire employee wasn’t white? Whoa, there would be a problem, it would be even worse. The last thing the church needs is rich members not paying tithing, or getting annoyed. Wealthy people finance the church, wealthy people are usually of a certain culture and race, and wealthy people like to see certain types as there leaders, and at the end of the day, like I said, wealthy people pay a lot more tithing than poor people, so the church panders to those people, the ones that have money.

BYU panders to those types. BYU is full of a very well to do white intellectual arrogant condescending student body, with an education subsidized by tithing and sacrifice, and some said tithing is paid by poor struggling members in third world countries, with children that will never go to BYU. Did I prove a point to anyone by going to BYU? I think the only point I proved is that I didn’t fit in there, and should’ve gone to BYU Hawaii or ASU and studied music.

The church is indeed a business. Rule number one, keep the money happy. Doesn’t matter if it’s the church, a large corporation, a start up, etc. For an organization to grow and thrive, you have to keep the money happy. It’s a business, I get it. But for me, in the church, in the realm of religion, it’s a much harder pill for me to swallow than in a secular setting, but it is what it is.

Here is another money rant. BYU is probably the highest budget item, or easily one of the highest budget items for the church, and poor Honduran families sacrifice and pay tithing so well to do white kids can go there and complain about the honor code. I actually never did complain about the honor code, it was my decision to go there, that’s the truth and that was my thought process. But these poor families pay tithing, and their kids are never gonna go to BYU. If you’re me it doesn’t make a difference, and I even feel my place should have been taken by a balanced poor kid who could go back to his country and actually do something with his degree.

Nothing is free in this world, from baptismal fonts to temples to church buildings to mission homes etc. Of course the administrators, the men with means and money, are gonna be favored and held on a pedestal, because money is the life blood of the church. I have none, and it’s so hard to live with that. I’ve constantly grown up around people that do have it. It’s hardwired into my brain, MONEY MATTERS!! I never had a stake president or bishop or YSA bishop or even Counselors in the bishoprics in my BYU wards that didn’t have it.

We would have these big FHE events at a bishop or counselors home while I was at BYU, and they ALWAYS had such nice homes. I would think, how would this affect kids in my ward if we went to a bishopric members home and it was a trailer or a two bedroom house? The only way for money to not matter in the church is for it to not exist.

There are no rich people unless there are poor people. There are no good looking people unless there are ugly people. There are no smart people unless there are dumb people. I remember my Dad getting called as bishop. He was the only brown face in the ward. The stake president even said in his interview, “you’re not who I would have picked. Being Mexican and all will cause some issues in that ward, but you’re who the Lord wants.” Well, there you have it, of course race matters, why wouldn’t it, being a member doesn’t change being human, but I feel we preach differently when it comes to certain taboo topics like race and money. We preach love and acceptance, blah blah blah, it comes down to race and money, just like in the rest of the world. 

This one heart Zion stuff, it’s impossible for it to happen in this life. I think it could happen in the millennium, as class will be dissolved somehow with the law of consecration, however that works. As far as race, will my pops have white skin in the Millennium, I don’t know. I hope not, because it doesn't matter. The color of your skin does not define you in Gods eyes, there is no way it can.

By the end of that thousand years, maybe interracial marriage won’t bother people in the church. I just get tired of Sunday school answers and rhetoric, money and race, it all matters, it all matters in this life, and I’ve always felt like an outsider looking in, that’s been my experience at church, that was my experience growing up.

Sometimes I want to say Dad, “You remember being put down for being Mexican. You remember how blatant racism was in your life, even in the church, especially in the church. You remember when your grade school teacher said it didn’t matter if you learned the material or not. You remember being attracted to as you put it “the European looking girls in the nice brick homes.” You remember day dreaming, and wanting to achieve success. You remember all that right? You married mom, the apple of your eye, the well to do blonde girl you always dreamed of. Against all odds, you went on a mission, and you served the entire 24 months and didn’t come home insane. You went to college and you graduated. You were accepted into the seminary program, and you taught, you were happy. You got a Masters Degree. You were hired by The LDS Foundation/LDS Philanthropies. You earned a good wage, and you built a nice big brick home, and all the neighbors wondered how a brown guy could have such a nice home and beautiful wife. You didn’t have a lot of family support in any of this, you didn’t, not at all, but dammit you achieved it didn’t you, it came to pass. I know you fought like hell sometimes to get it, and I know you felt like an island, but you did it.

What if that mission you went on ended in hell, was 6 months of horrible psychiatric torture and then you came home early. What if that college degree you earned amounted to nothing, and you had this chronic mental illness, and you fell apart in the work place, and the seminary program, which lead to grad school, which lead to The LDS Foundation, none of that ever worked out, it was all a huge failure. What if you didn’t marry mom. What if you were pushing 40, and you looked back and all you had was a string of failures and disappointments, of an early mission release, of no pretty blonde wife, of no success in career. What if that same nervous breakdown you had as a bishop happened when you were young and single? What if it happened again at 31, and it was worse than the first time. What if at this time period you were living with your parents too. What if you looked back, and all the condescending attitudes people had about you were true, and you didn’t amount to anything, you didn’t prove them wrong, and you were a grown man living with your parents. What if after all this and going to school, you’re 37, and the same horrible job of making carpets at a low wage you had right after your mission, you were still doing, or doing something similar, after all these efforts and trials, because of some millstone mental illness. How would you feel?

There were plenty of good memories too. Listening to oldies on the radio, on a sunny afternoon, after a game, and getting a burger or hot dog. The Sunshine and warmth of the Arizona sun will always be tied to these positive experiences with my Dad. Even despite the complexities of OCD, religion, and authority, all a cocktail my Dad can set off, the fact that my father encourages me to pursue my dreams, to stay true to music, it keeps me looking forward, it pulls me, I need it. He has always reminded me that the lord loves me. I’m trying to learn to love God back, it’s been difficult, I get mad at God often. I love my Dad. I’d lay my life down for him. He taught me to work, he taught me how to repent, and when I’m sincere he’ll listen, and when I’m hurt, he’ll drive me to the Apple orchards and be by my side, never mind we don’t always see eye to eye, we’re incredibly similar yet incredibly different at the same time.

Authority, Rules, Bureaucracy, Pressure From Others, Micro Management, people with strong emotions= This really irks me.

Autonomy, A Direction to pursue, I’m my own boss, I manage myself, peaceful people like my little brother= Calms me, makes me feel good.

Give me an open field with Sunshine in the sky, and beautiful Mtns in the distance, and one rule, go work Adam, just head towards the horizon, you have all the space and room in the world, and your little brother to be your friend, he’s by your side, this here is a metaphor for my life.

RANT DONE-

I lose my confidence after losing my job at Kraft. I figure I’m doomed, because OCD will be a constant bottle neck in my life. For whatever reason, if I have to answer to an authority figure, if there are higher stakes, and lack of performance is returned with a boss coming down on me, in any environment, I catch on fire, I throw up and dry heave daily, and I start a free fall to really bad places. In a nutshell, if I don’t have complete control of my environment, control of my destiny, I don’t do well. 

People will ask, well what about in your band, what if you mess up, and bandmates get annoyed. When that happens I’m fine, because it’s coming laterally, not from above, not from authority, it’s coming from a peer, I shrug it off or become kind of a jerk, because I can, because I can’t get fired in that band. I book everything, I promote everything, without me there would be no band. Basically I’m in an ownership position, not an employee position. If I’m the boss, I’m fine.

But if I were a hired musician, and I didn’t know these bandmates, basically the position of a paid employee as a drummer, and they came down on me for messing up, then OCD would catch on fire, and here comes the vomiting, anxiety, and dry heaving everyday. I’ve dealt with this since childhood. It really sucks, it’s involuntary, it just happens. I identify it, I know why it happens, but I can’t make it stop, it just happens in those environments. 

Also, what people don’t understand is OCD affects everybody in a different way, it’s not the same for everybody. One can’t say, “well I know this one guy who works as an executive for ABC Corp, his job is high stakes and he answers to a CEO, and he has OCD, and he does just fine.” I would say, wonderful, good for him, we’re different people, with different brains, with a common affliction, that affects us differently, so don’t make assumptions or umbrella statements about this illness, and assume we’re all the same, because we’re not.”

In hindsight, after failing miserably at Kraft, I should have said A) What am I really good at B) What do I enjoy C) Turn to God and pray about those things D) Have faith and move forward.

Again, the above would be the ideal scenario, what I should have done. What I did was the following-

Felt rejected, Felt Despair, Anger, Fear of the future. I was convinced college and becoming a professional in some organization, was the superior and only road. Not true, not even close.

I decided to sell pest control that summer. I was perpetually millencolin. I hated knocking doors, even though I wasn’t bad at it. I came to California with dreams, and all I had was failures. I sold a fair amount of accounts, but I wasn’t happy. 

Like an idiot, I decided to go surfing one more day with my cousin before heading home. I looked at the snow report, it said 20 percent chance of snow, 100 percent chance you’re gonna be an idiot and go surfing rather than drive home when the skies were clear. 

Driving home, through the mountain pass from Nevada to Utah, it started to snow. My car hydroplaned coming around a left curve, the car spun around, I went up an embankment, came down and my car tipped on its side. So, I rolled down the driver side window, jumped out of my car, and took off down the road. I thought there was a possibility the car would explode.

So I call the Highway patrol, and my car gets towed, it’s totaled and ruined, and I spend the next two days in Wells, Nevada at a Motel 6. My Dad came to get me, he was obviously angry on the phone. When parents get mad, they’re either frustrated or scared, or both. I think with my Dad it was the latter, and he had every reason to be scared. When he came and got me, and I showed him where the accident occurred, and he saw how easily it would have been for me to tumble down a mountain side, he became emotional, obviously.

I’m quite lucky the accident wasn’t more serious.

It’s November, and I’ve moved back home with my parents, failed miserably at two jobs, and lost my car. I was quite defeated. Surfing, sunshine, and a career where what I envisioned. I did surf a lot.

From this point on, I go back and forth between selling pest control in the summers and working remedial crap jobs during the rest of the year with temp agencies.

Pest control could actually be a future, but I hate it, it’s not what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to California, surf, and be a young professional in the city, and date cute girls, well, I sucked at my job, I barely dated, and I lacked so much confidence. 

I couldn’t work in any white collar professional environment, it's an environment based on hierarchy and bosses, high stakes, and having to answer for mistakes to an authority figure. Because those environments make me so anxious, in them I make lots of mistakes, and it’s a rapid downward spiral.

Unfortunately the formula of depression and fatigue sustained for a long period, all came to a head.

EPISODE 2-EXISTENTIAL THOUGHT LOOPS & AKATHISIA (THE WORST!)

(WRITTEN IN 2024)

After floating and being depressed for 3 years, it finally all came to a head.

(WRITTEN IN 2020)

EPISODE NUMBER 2-

I was working at a safe factory sanding safes. People find out I went to BYU and studied business, and ask, why are you working here? I tell them I have brain problems.

I'm so tired, of life, and struggling to find success in life. After working at the safe factory for 4 months, a weird existential thought drops in my mind in Jan., I can’t shake it, my mind is very tired. I’m tired, I’m really sad, and I’m really angry. Anxiety and the existential thought start to gain momentum.

I see shrinks and a psychiatrist, they don’t really understand whats going on. Winter becomes summer time. During the summer, I’m going to my car during lunch, and this awful feeling of dread overcomes me, its so heavy, I feel like I’m doomed and falling into a depressive oblivion, its hard to explain. I fall apart, the dread, the thoughts, momentum is building, I have to quit my job at the safe factory.

I go see another psychiatrist. A well meaning psychiatrist gives me Risperidone.

Unbeknown to me, a side effect starts to occur, called "Akathisia", and its the devil, it is pure hell.  Akathisia is a side effect cause by antipsychotic meds sometimes, and even from other meds. Its not an overly common occurrence, but it happens more than you might think, and its pure evil agony.

Mild akathisia starts

She gives me a higher dose

Medium Akathisia

She Give me a very high dose of the medicine, thinking I’m just not getting better but worse 

Acute Akathisia

Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwe!!!! I want to die!!! That is what severe Akathisia feels like. It’s like being deep fried alive, from the inside out. Its is a panic, an anxiety, so severe, so debilitating, I literally have no way to explain it, I could not believe what was happening. To make matters worse, if you sit still, the anxiety builds and builds, so you constantly have to be pacing, constantly moving. Akathisia is hell, it is HELL!!!! What needs to be understood, is I had no idea when Akathisia was occurring, that A) I was experiencing something called Akathisia and B) It was a side effect to the anti psychotic medication I was taking. So imagine being in hell, and not knowing how you got there, and if it will ever end. I’m like this for 2 or 3 weeks. Imagine being deep fried for weeks at a time, straight. Literally enduring second to second, moment to moment. 

Anyway, I flip out in the living room, I tell my dad I’m going to blow my head off. I go to the emergency room. The intake nurse at the in patient crisis facility, she is an angel, she saved my life, I can not even put into words, how grateful I am for my NP. She was the baking powder on my internal grease fire, might sound funny, but she was, that woman saved my life. 

To this day, I talk to family practice doctors when medicine side effects come up, to peers who are therapists, and I mention Akathisia, and they A- don’t know what it is, or B- give me this stupid test answer definition of “oh, restlessness,” as casually as if it was a common cold. I wonder, do psych books pair definitions of horrible side effects and disorders with real life stories, because they should. If you haven’t experienced or witnessed Acute Akathisia, you have no clue, I mean no clue, I mean no clue! It's being deep fried with 400 degree oil from the inside out, that’s what it's like. Try to imagine an anxiety and discomfort that bad, literally, that bad. I would rather make love to a wood chipper, no joke. 

So the existential thought and the dread depressed oblivion feeling beat me up pretty bad, and then suffering the Akathisia was like having to run a marathon afterward. 

So after all that, my chemicals were incredibly out of balance, I have no clue what was wrong. I was terrified to be alone. I would wake up feeling scared to death every morning, for no reason, fear inundating my body. I would look at the mountains and feel that scariness in my chest and gut, and it wouldn’t go away, it’s such an agonizing grueling pain and discomfort. I was off, and to this day, I have never been completely right or the same. I'm ok, but anything high adrenaline, creates a floating anxiety, a subtle scared feeling. But not when I play shows, I feel like I'm in heaven when I'm on stage at a show.

During Akathisia, I was in so much agony, and so scared, it took all the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength I had, to not take my own life. Suicide was a constant thought. I didn't wan't to kill myself, but I didn't know what was happening, why it was happening, or if it would ever end. I can't even put into words how bad it was. My doctor told me I suffered a very extreme and severe case of Akathisia, but sometimes I wonder if there is any other type of Akathisia. Its one color, one state, HELL!

When I was in the midst of Akathisia, this literally was my thought process, “In hell, Satan's minions and colleagues are organized, planned out, and they execute. It’s hell, but their process of thought and reason must operate, because they're strategizing and executing. I can’t do this in my state, so hell must be better than this, even if it is hell, maybe I should just kill myself and go there.”

But that wouldn’t have happened, God was there with me, I couldn’t feel him, but he was there. God isn't a punitive OCD God. Mental Illness is a distorted lie, its chemical. People boiling alive that end up committing suicide DO NOT GO TO HELL! HARD STOP! The saviors atonement reaches to the lowest, loneliest, darkest places, I know it does.

Suicide isn’t murder, and it is so unfortunate, but almost always, people who do that are completely off, not themselves, and something is very wrong, and one is sometimes completely absent of agency. To look into your future, and all you can perceive is pain, and you don't know when it will end, or if it will end, you will be terrified, and you will be in despair. I KNOW THIS!

When horribly depressed tormented people commit suicide, they pass through the veil, and the first thing they see, is family that has passed before them, and they give them a loving embrace, and I think they express their deep love and understanding for that individual. They have opportunity to learn of the gospel, through proxy work the work of covenants and ordinances can be done, and I feel certain they will be exalted on high. Often the most angelic souls endure such severe hardships.

My cousins son was one of these souls, who I know Heavenly Father loves so very deeply, he was an angelic person, a pure soul, he really was. I know in my heart, he is being taught the gospel, he is safe, and all those that love him, will see him again, and it won't be very long, because we don't have very long. That kid will grow and learn and have all the opportunity I do to be exalted and live eternally with his Heavenly Father.

Agency is compromised, where knowledge and understanding are absent, and continual pain is all one perceives. It is a very very very scary place to be. I know, because I've been there. I think all that saved me, were past memories of feeling the spirit strongly as a boy, gospel understanding to the degree I was able, the support of my parents, and the two angelic health care professionals that helped me, and still help me today.

In the midst of psychiatric hell, I found myself yearning to be really depressed in high school, or sitting scared in a prison cell, or feeling awful guilt for an awful sin, even just being physically tortured, because that was all real to me, relatable to others, they possessed a mental and emotional direction, even if it was due south, but at least there was reality, at least there was direction, which if you can believe is better than no direction at all.

An example, would you rather be drowning underwater knowing which way was up, or drowning underwater completely disoriented? Anything that was in the realm of that emotional box prior to my psychiatric episodes was better. If an emotional compass existed in the realm of my psychiatric episodes, the compass needle would have been spinning in circles. It’s so scary, so awful, and lasts so long. I know this is hard to grasp and makes little sense, but it’s as bad as it sounds, it is complete and utter hell. All one's preparation, unimportant if you were a ward librarian or a stake president, rich or poor, it all goes out the window, and in that realm, it’s unsure who will come out of it without taking their life. A good comparison would be, who could be burned alive slowly in a vat of acid, with a gun in your hand, and not blow your brains out?

I know that's a disturbing brutal comparison, but that’s an adequate comparison to my psychiatric episodes. All you can use is determination, just a will to suffer it out until hopefully it stops, which is months and months down the road. Again, I can’t convey in words how awful it is, and I am 100 percent not trying to diminish the hardships of others, or earn the sorry or self pity gold medal. It’s just therapeutic to write it out in brutal honesty, how raw and sore the pain is, and it’s frustrating that so very very few people understand it.

The majority of people won’t ever go there, thus how frustrating it is for those who have, to feel understood. I really had no choice but to believe and think of God. Without a belief in deity, I would have killed myself. There were times of intense anger, and doubt that a God could be real in such intense pain. Since my second episode I’ve thought, “He let his own son endure that pain, who he loves more than anyone, and at a degree far far worse than myself or anyone could comprehend, or literally imagine.” 

Going through my episodes, the atonement became incomprehensible to me. It was an intensity only a God could survive. The atonement was the greatest most intense pain ever felt on Earth, by the most pure and clean individual to ever walk it, Christ. I don’t know how the atonement worked. It was above and beyond the laws and comprehension that govern mankind. I’m not sure if time stopped, I have no idea how it occurred. But the savior understands feeling “not understood.”

His apostles fell asleep during the atonement, but wept during his crucifixion, that’s interesting. I feel like those around me are sleeping, because they can’t relate to or understand what happened when I was in that psychiatric hell, but the savior can.

In all honesty, I would have wept intensely while the savior endured the atonement, and would have felt relieved when he was being crucified, and I know that sounds awful. I couldn’t have said that before enduring psychiatric pain either. I only tasted a mortal dose of Gethsemane, a drop, a literal drop, and it was horrific; Christ drank the entire cup.

Films and paintings can not adequately convey how raw, sore, and painful the atonement was, it would be too brutal. But, what does that say about Gods love, that he willingly allowed it, he sacrificed his own son, so mankind could repent.

I’ve become good at warding off my psychiatric thoughts, they still try to come back, but I’ve managed to start other pathways, thought pathways, so the stream is flowing a different direction now. But after my second break, the bottom of my box didn’t heal as well as the first time, it’s loose, and if I become over stressed, over emotional, depressed over a period of time, those psychiatric demons can start to creep back. Thus my trepidation about marriage and kids, could I handle that stress?

I will say, 100 percent, I become my worst, my most angry and depressed, when I hit a wall and loose hope about my ability to become successful in a career, to gain independence and financial security, which seems perpetually out of reach, even after all I’ve tried. I wanna shake my fists to the heavens. I think, if you leave the church, that bar of success, and all that it encompasses, from peers, marriage and family, being old and single in a marriage and family culture, winning over that wife because she knew her man could be successful (which I have heard so many times, from men and women), the successful leaders, my BYU complex, call it upper white middle class angst syndrome, you can just be done with it, just be through with it, and go somewhere, far away from the church, from religion, just be a vagabond drummer, and adopt a hippie lifestyle, and sleep around.

I could just completely take myself out of the equation of society, of caring, off the grid, live on little, live in a hippie friendly country, which would be great for pissed off drummers who could never find peace and happiness and acceptance in their religion, in the professional world. I could go live in a tree on an island off the Mediterranean or Pacific. Would I be happy? Maybe at times.

But there will always be that little boy who felt the Holy Ghost burning in his chest while he was standing there being presented to everyone at his baptism. That kid didn’t know what he signed up for, he had no clue how incredibly cruel and unfair life was going to be. That a social, intellectual, and racial hierarchy permeates through the church just like everywhere else in the world, that was going to make it difficult.

At that time, it was just peace, the burning in the bosom, warm fuzzies, and in all honesty, those feelings are the only reason I have remained active in church, even though I often don’t want to, when everything inside me is just angry. 

My baptism was a rare experience, and I can’t deny it. Children don’t know much, but they’re brutally honest, and I remember my baptism. If I left the church, I would have to answer to that little boy inside me, who felt the Holy Ghost so strongly, word for word as described.

*Back To Episode 2

I started therapy with the most amazing therapist. It was all about exposure therapy, facing all the fear. I was convinced in the midst of all this hell, I could kill myself, spend a thousand years in hell, and be resurrected in the lowest state possible. Again-this was mental illness, not truth. 

As such, I had to write these sentences, pages of them, “Kill myself and spend a thousand years in hell.” My therapist said by writing them down and confronting them, it was an exposure therapy, and my anxieties would lessen. It actually helped, it helped me to calm down.

I had the horrific feeling of fear inundate me, completely chemical, adrenaline, every morning, I didn’t want to leave my bed. Post Akathisia sufferers will sometimes suffer from something called "mono-phobia". Mono-phobia creates a fear or panic when one is alone. You constantly have to be in proximity to somebody. The urge to kill myself dealing with the symptoms of post akathisia were daily, and intense. But I pushed through, and with the support and tremendous sacrifice of my parents and two angelic health care professionals, I didn't take my life. I owe my life to them.

I would have an assignment to do something in the mornings. I would sand the wood handles on the rakes in the garage, or do other tasks, to get my mind off of the fear and to fight it, to face it. When all you want to do lay in your bed scared, you must do the opposite. It was so incredibly difficult. I had to face being alone.

The worst, we’re the walks to the grocery store a few blocks away. I was paranoid, horrified. I felt a bizarre heavy disturbing feeling constantly. I was a grown man, but felt like a vulnerable infant. I had to be close to my father, brother, anybody, I couldn’t be alone, it was terrifying. So my therapist Dan made me take daily walks. I HATED these walks, I loathed these walks! This gives you an understanding of how bad off I was, I was scared to death to walk to the grocery store as a 31 year old man a few blocks away. I did this for a good month, and the walks got easier. Again, this was an exposure therapy, it was very difficult.

I would volunteer at the cannery, it was awful, but I did it. I was also on anti-psychotics, and they would make anything, take immense effort, even getting the mail was difficult. They shut off any excitement in my body.

In all this hell, I was allowed only 3 Ativans a week. Ativan, was so powerful, it would eradicate all these horrific feelings, and give me euphoria, they gave me a much needed break. But my doctor said “They’re addictive, and they’re like a band aid, they cover up the problem temporarily, but they don't fix it, that’s  all you doing your rehabilitation tasks.

I just sucked it up and did it. It was rehabilitate or sink and die. After my Ativan day, the next day I would just fight through the pain, the intense terror feeling of fear, all post Akathisia issues. I would push through my rehabilitation tasks, it was incredibly incredibly difficult.

After doing this 6 months, I was ready to work at Deseret Industries. After working there a year, and there were bad days, I finally felt normal in my skin again.

I’m not sure many people understand enduring agony moment to moment, second to second, exquisite pain months at a time. Being trapped in your own mind, with no escape. Having your body involuntarily react and behave apart from yourself. Having a horror, a hell, a dark surreal agonizing oblivion, become as real as the noon day sun.

It’s rough, because I really don’t feel understood by most people around me.  My friends, bandmates, peers, siblings, they don’t understand. I remember being in the psych ward and my sister sent me a card, saying she understood what I was going through, and though I did appreciate it and do love my younger sister, in my mind I said “No you don’t, this is far far beyond your classic depression, even deep depression, it’s beyond anxiety, it’s psychiatric hell.”

People say,"well, you’re not the only one who has dealt with depression and anxiety," and I’m not. But these episodes I’ve had, I wish all they were was depression and anxiety. NO ONE AROUND ME UNDERSTANDS these words “psychotic” “akathisia” “existential ruminations” “Delusions” etc. BECAUSE MOST OF THOSE PEOPLE ARE DEAD, THEY KILLED THEMSELVES, OR THEY'RE ON THE STREET, OR THEY'RE IN MENTAL WARDS!!

This is why psychiatric issues are so difficult, because they’re not overly common. People form judgments based on their own life experiences, from what they perceive looking at you from the outside. The inside looking out, only we can do that as ourselves, but if those around us could do the same, they would hold off on their judgments. To know about one's past, the battles they’ve fought, the pain they’ve endured, to know the storms inside them, to see their scars, how would that change each one of us? If they could do that, maybe they wouldn’t look down at the middle aged man bagging your groceries, or waiting  your table at some diner late at night, and think in their head, “what a loser.” Maybe they would be able to realize the nobility in that individual. Maybe they would realize the profound love God and the savior have for that individual. I have a hard time recognizing that nobility in myself often.

I worked with a couple young 18 to 20 year old girls at the warehouse I’m employed at. One wondered why myself being a man pushing 40 with a business degree was single and working at a warehouse. I said I struggled with OCD and anxiety issues. She said, “Well that’s everybody.” I got rather mad, but didn’t express it. I guess I should have said, “I’ve been a psychotic delusional suicidal mess a few times, and can struggle with maintaining reality when put under to much stress, but I have anti psychotic meds and Ativans in the car, just in.”

Again, people take their personal experiences, what they SEE from the outside at the present, and judge you.

Another girl at my work place just got off a mission, was all of 20 years old or so, I could not stand her! She asked, “Why aren’t you married, what bad decisions did you make in your life?” I am not making this up, this happened, this really happened.

I was mad, I was really really mad. You cross the Sahara, almost die, and at the other side is some judgemental girl right off her mission ready to offer you her ciriticism of your life circumstances. Wow, how Christ like.

It wasn’t worth blowing up and losing my job. I kept my cool, and answered with sarcasm. I felt like saying, “You’re naive, you’ve hardly life, and it doesn’t always unfold on the expected timeline your mission president says it should, and I doubt your mission president understands either.”

But here is the thing, and I have thought about and considered this deeply, my own parents do have an idea. They have both gone through psychotic depression. No, they didn't keeping pushing and pushing in that state, and much of that was due to my environment and thinking as a missionary. They don't understand all my issues, but they have both been to that alternate horrible reality known as psychotic depression, they know that pain. That’s a pretty major blessing in my life. 

So why was I born to them? Why did I as a spirit agree to be born to them? I probably wasn’t fully aware of how hard this was going to be. But I said yes to this life. I said yes to them as my parents. Who was I before I got here, I have no clue, but I was a spirit of some kind, and I believe perhaps I knew God, on a personal level. Or perhaps I was like an elder who flew under the radar and barely knew his mission president. God does reign over billions if not trillions of souls. But did he know me personally? Maybe. I don’t know. But I’m here, this is the life I agreed to.

Nonetheless, I’m out of my intense pain, I am above it, I’m beyond it, and I never ever ever ever ever want to go back.

To a small degree, I have an idea if what I think the pain endured by the savior was like in Gethsemane. A mortal body will bleed from every poor when a god breaks, and enters into what I can only imagine to be a type of psychotic depression, a psychiatric pain, a mental and emotional pain, a spiritual sorrow, at a level only a deity could endure. 

It becomes more evident to me now, how Christ, being so pure and perfect, being so high, yet having to endure a pain so exquisite, to go to a place so low, even lower than anything this world could ever know, paid a price that is infinite, even the price of saving our eternal souls.

So after working at DI, I drove a truck for shingle deliveries. One would think OCD couldn’t affect this job, but it did. Driving a giant truck isn’t easy, and when some of the senior employees got on my case, it triggered the anxiety. Of course I would act like I didn’t care. Like I mentioned earlier, OCD exaggerates. In the mornings I would throw up in the parking lot because I was nervous to drive, this behavior is absurd and rather extreme, it’s called mental illness.

I eventually left this job and worked doing customer service on the phones somewhere.

The miracle is I was a functioning adult on his own, simply driving to and from work. I had endured and overcome Hell for the second time in my life.

AFTERMATH, TIME, GOOD ENOUGH, MARRIAGE?, CAREER?, WHAT HAVE I LEARNED?, WHAT IS TRUTH?

(WRITTEN PRESENT-2024)

Psychotic Depression-

Since psychotic depression, unfortunately, I can't sit here and say I came back 100%, and everything is just fine. I think the biggest issue was when the first symptoms started manifesting, because I did not know I had OCD or that I was in the throws of Psychotic Depression, my actions reflected what I knew, "If its bad, it must be the devil, and all I can do is keep pushing, and start pushing harder." My thinking and actions were all the voice of mental illness, not truth, not the reality of the situation. So I pushed WAY too far. Not only was this unfortunate, but also very dangerous. I was blind, my mission president was blind, and I went home very injured.

A comparison-

Imagine having a severe tear in your knee ligament during a basket ball game. Rather than seeking help, like an old Baptist preacher or the mother of Bobby Boucher a.k.a. "The Waterbody" (90s reference) you say "Its the Devil,"! OCD in some ways is very much an old Baptist preacher.

So you figure the way out of this predicament, is to put your head down, push through, and play harder. It becomes worse, and worse. Your entire knee blows out, and you start hopping on one leg down the court and in your mind you're saying, "Its the Devil! I'm not leaving this court, I will not be sidelined, because this basketball game is a mirror of my life, and I want a good life, and I want to prove all the naysayers wrong I grew up with, and this is how you do it, you don't give up, you don't leave the court!"

Blood starts spewing everywhere, its all over the court, your leg is hanging by a single ligament, its just dangling, its about to fall off, and you keep going, until your leg is laying lifeless on the court, you fall down, have a heart attack, and start to go into cardiac arrest. You're carried off by a stretcher to the trainers room, and your coach says "Here's a band aid, this will fix everything. I'll let you sit this next quarter out, and then you're going back out there."

You go back out there, and your teams mates are like "Coach, he's worthless, he's disoriented from the the insane loss of blood, he can't even dribble the basketball." The Coach says, "I think its time to take you out of the game permanently, you should head home and get some medical attention." Well, you do head home and get medical attention, but you never walk the same again for the rest of your life.

---

This example/comparison, was literally my mission experience the final 5 or 6 moths. I was out for 17 months. In reality, I probably should have never gone, or if I did go, it should have been some type of service mission. I should have come home right when the symptoms started manifesting. But here in lies the danger in the blind leading the blind, and all you can do is move on the best you can, and learn from the past.

Since psychotic depression, the part of my mind and whatever part of the brain governs it, that maintains a barrier, a centeredness on the real vs. the existential, is diminished. There was a time when I could think deeply about the wonders of the universe or watch a mind bender movie and be just fine. I can't do that anymore, it triggers that scary part of my mind, and I'll literally start to feel panic inside. Is it PTSD? Yea, probably. My episode was very traumatizing, so scary.

The Remedy-

I don't watch movies or any type of entertainment with a "mind bender" theme. If I'm watching something, and it starts to trigger me, I leave, or ask the company I'm with if we can watch something else.

I distract and redirect my thoughts. I have become really good at doing this. Its taking years, but doing it over and over again, I'm now pretty good at it.

Akathisia-

Since Akathisia, I have become sensitive to certain stimulus. I used to love night boarding, not anymore, because the shadows and lighting of the slope under the night sky coupled with the adrenaline of snowboarding, triggers a free floating anxiety inside me. If I chill out, and take a step back, it calms down. So surfing, snowboarding, the adrenaline things I used to enjoy, I don't much care for anymore.

What's interesting, is you would think playing concerts as a drummer would trigger it, but it doesn't. Drumming is so interesting, it puts me in an interesting place, I have an intense focus, and even what is called "drummers high", but no anxiety trigger switch is flipped. The power of music, the power of drumming, and the power of sunlight also, they're so incredibly helpful and therapeutic, they make me happy.

OCD (Disturbing Repetitive Thoughts, Authority Anxiety Switch, Exclusive Dating Anxiousness/Romance Anxiety)-

1. I can't have a boss. If I do have a boss, they have to be a really chill boss in a low stress environment.

2. When I get thoughts, I do the redirect and distract. My therapist has told me, don't keep batting at the thought or the fly, or one fly will then become 3. The more I focus on a thought, the worse it gets. So I identify it as OCD, I ignore it, and even laugh at how ridiculous it is, like a B Horror Movie, and say "Its just OCD."

3. If I brush my teeth in the morning and I wretch, its because my gag reflex has become more sensitive than usual, and it's a sign I need to pull way back or change my environment some how.

4. Acknowledge the Romance Anxiety, it just is, much like you acknowledge OCD thoughts. But call it what it is, it's not truth, it's anxiety. Be open with girls, but only when the time is right, and there is some trust. Don't think less of yourself because of it. It's just part of my mortal life, it's not me, its just something me has to deal with. I am a child of God, that's who I am.

Weight Gain & Weight Loss-

Anti-psychotic medications work, but their side effects suck! I was a lean 190, I was ripped, I had a six pack, I was a healthy man. After the second episode, I had to take Zyprexa, which is one of the very few anti psychotic medications that doesn't cause me Akathisia. But Zyprexa makes it hard to do anything, even get up and get the mail. In the worst of my episodes, I was on a very large dose. Zyprexa also makes you really hungry. I gained 60 pounds over a period of 2 or 3 months, and I stayed at that weight for like 6 or 7 years. I'm finally losing the weight, and becoming my "old self" in a sense, at least physically. I no longer take that medicine, only in emergencies, which only seem to ever happen in the fall. When I do take it, its usually for a short period, not even a month. Yes, I do not like the fall.

My doctor said this- 1,800 calories a day, and don't eat after 6. It works. I've also accepted that no, its not fair, and also, just because its not fair, it doesn't mean the weight loss fairy will come and tap me with her magic wand, and make me a lean 190 again. Losing weight is uncomfortable, and you will feel hungry sometimes, and that's the nature of the beast.

Time

The more time I spend removed from conflict and these traumatizing experiences, the better I feel. Time heals all wounds they say. I might not ever be healed in this life, but self care coupled with time, does wonders, as much or even more than meds.

Good Enough

To anybody who has endured trauma, especially for extended periods of time, you get to a point where you embrace "Good Enough". My psyche, mental, and emotional self has taken a hit so big, it's just not ever going to walk how it once did, and that's ok. It's ok because it's still walking, and it can still walk fast in bursts. No, it does not have the endurance and resilience it once did prior to the traumatic experiences, but it definitely is good enough.

Marriage?

I don't know about this one, I really don't know. Marriage is Mt. Everest in my eyes. I've witnessed the stress of family, friends, and others, and wondered how I could ever deal with that stress. Clinical anxiety issues and what probably is PTSD, have often painted a picture of a wife as less of an ally, and more of a bar I have to clear, and if I'm not feeling up to clearing that bar at times, than I'll hear about it, I'll feel pressure, and then all these anxiety switches and effects from past trauma will light up.

I've often thought, "I can just quit a job when the anxiety switch turns on and I'm on fire day after day. I can say "this is enough peace out I'm gone." But in a marriage, you can't just peace out. In my experiences, my perception of women is that they have a standard of life, an expectation, that makes them feel secure, and if a guy can't realize these standards and expectations, then there is going to be stress, and lots of it, and having gone through what I have, I don't have the capacity to deal with this. Husbands have to do deal with this, not all, but some. I've witnessed it time and time again in my family.

Because of my issues I need a lot of space, I mean A LOT of space. I'm not an orthodox LDS guy who has lead an orthodox existence, climbs the ranks at his employment and is the stereotypical breadwinner. I tried to cook bread and it burnt me, like really bad, lol. As such, my employment has been quite underwhelming, especially as a business grad.

This visual aid will help-

Twice the effort half the results, that's been the OCD "morning glory" struggle. As hard as one might try, in reality, with most things, you don't get an A for effort. Life is results driven more than it is effort driven.

Examples-

Student- "Professor, I tried really hard, I put my heart into it, I studied, I prepared."

Professor- "I know you did, but you wrote down the wrong answer, and your efforts don't make the incorrect answer correct."

Employee- "I'm really trying, I'm giving this job all I have."

Employer- "Yea, that doesn't fix your mistakes, and your mistakes cost us a lot of money. Sorry, you're just not cutting it, and we're gonna have to let you go."

Guy- "I've been through hell, and I'm really trying my very best, and doing all I can."

Girl- "I know you are, but there is a standard of life, a type of existence I want, that I was raised with, or at least that makes me feel secure, and though you have a good heart and you're trying, you're just not cutting it."

Life's tough, it is, and being mentally ill makes it way tougher. I can't think of anything else as unfair as mental illness, it's a thief that steals your time, energy, and life experiences. Mental Illness isn't situational, it's a life long struggle, and though some have spent time dealing with "mental illness" due to stressful times in life, that doesn't mean they're "mentally ill".

My therapist told me once, "I have people coming in and out of here yearly. Most of my patients experience a traumatic event, fall on some rough times, and experience symptoms of mental illness. I work with them, they take meds sometimes, and eventually they get past their rough patch, and I never see them again. Then I have other patients, that have a chronic life long condition, that just isn't going to go away in this life, and I'll see them until I retire. I work with them, and they make great strides in life, but its something that must always be managed, and you're one of those patients."

So, with his help, I'm managing, and it gets better with time.

My therapist is a god send, and meeting with him I believe it is part of the process of coming unto Christ. I also currently have a really good bishop, this is also a part of coming unto Christ.

If I trust God and change behavior, maybe this marriage thing could actually happen. But if it never does in this existence, I might just have to wait until the next.

Career?

I'm not gonna ever fit a standard box. I'm a drummer, and I have to do that autonomously and in a way that is good for me, among people that encourage and help me to be a better me. I'm teaching, and there is a learning curve, there is anxiety to manage. I'm gigging, and I have a couple great ideas, and I'm turning to my folks for some help to implement them, because quite frankly, I can't do this on my own, and that's ok.

What Have I Learned

Reading this blog, some might believe religion was the root of my problems. I would agree to an extent, but there is so much more to it than that. I'm still an active member of my faith, and much has changed because of medication and therapy. The reality is, the root of my problems was OCD and how it distorted my faith. Secondly, my heart was set on false truths. These are two things I have come to understand.

1. OCD is no respecter of persons. The root of OCD is genetic, at least when it's a clinical condition inherited through family lines, as is my case. Yes, environment and upbringing will effect this condition, for better or for worse. Also, if its caught early, meds and cognitive therapy can almost cure it I would say, but there will always be that genetic predisposition, which can manifest during stressful periods of life. If it is not diagnosed until adulthood, depending on its severity, it will be something one must learn to manage for the rest of their life. If I was born into an agnostic family, OCD would have wrapped its morning glory vines around something rather than religion, and it would have been difficult. My point is that it has served no purpose to speculate on environment. Of course I have dealt with some intense father and religious culture resentment, obviously. But when I look back at "The Traditions of My Fathers," my father had a giant ship to turn around, with no help from anyone, as did my mom. Sometimes the path of truth can be difficult, and full of criticism from others. Truth being eternal in nature, requires faith within a finite context, often made difficult by the pointing fingers of others. But the reward of truth is a calm, a quiet reassurance, even when nothing is quiet or calm around you. I digress. What needs to be understood, is that genetically inherited acute mental illness, that goes undiagnosed and unmedicated, will wreak havoc on any person, from any background, in any environment. My mental illness is rooted in my physical nature, my genes, but with medicine, therapy, and support from family and friends, especially my parents, who have made incredible sacrifice to help me, I'm managing it, and I get better at managing it as time goes on.

2. Truth, what is truth? Obsessive Compulsive disorder distorted my faith, my religion, my process of belief, my father, and ultimately understanding the TRUE nature of God. Scrupulosity is not faith, it is not obedience, it is mental illness, it is OCD.

What is truth? Truth is, will be, and always has been, it never changes, and as such, it is one, it stands alone, and it does not vary. There are partial truths, 1/2 truths, and then there is TRUTH.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I was a member of The Church of Latter-Day Saints of Jesus Christ my entire life. All that angered me about my faith, was the product of comparison, and ultimately looking at "people". People are people. People can seek truth, but they themselves are not truth. People are imperfect, after all, we're only human.

Culture is not truth. Branding is not truth. Monetary success is not truth. Career is not truth. Politics is not truth. Tradition is not truth. All of these things aren't bad, and they all may cross truth sometimes, but they all change, they are not truth.

My mistake was looking at the professional lives of my leaders as the truth. I was looking at the messenger, not hearing the message. I thought I had to earn a degree from a certain school, make a certain amount of money, earn a place at the table, gain prominence in my community, I thought all that was truth. The reality is, success, career, money, callings, leadership, politics, etc., these aren't bad things, and they can be a catalyst for much good in the world, but if our hearts are set on those things alone, then it will be to your own demise.

Truth stands alone, all by itself, and it is never changing. It is today, it was yesterday, and it will be tomorrow. It was the same a million years ago, and it will be exactly the same a millions years from now. This is why setting your heart on the norms of society, or the success of people, or politics, or anger, or resentment, or hurt, or money, or vindication, or jealousy, or emotion, etc., is so foolish, because all of those things change. They change on the daily even.

Truth is light, it is Christ, that is truth, and it's not bought, it's not earned, it just is, it always has been, and it always will be, its infinite, and it is in the heart of every person on earth if they allow it to be there. I'm finding Christ brings peace, calm, understanding, extinguishes fear, and makes me feel hopeful, because those are the fruits of truth. Unfortunately I had to go to hell before I realized what the truth was.

NOCD - Official Site

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My faith, find out more-

What do members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Believe

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/welcome/what-do-latter-day-saints-believe?lang=eng

Meet with missionaries, receive a hardcopy of the Book of Mormon

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/requests/free-book-of-mormon

Download Book of Mormon

https://bofm.page.link/app