Take a minute and answer this question: Is anyone really normal today?

I mean, even those who claim they are normal may, in fact, be the most neurotic among us, swimming with a nice pair of scuba fins down the river of Denial. Having my psychiatric file published online and in print for public viewing, I get to hear my share of dirty secrets—weird obsessions, family dysfunction, or disguised addiction—that are kept concealed from everyone but a self-professed neurotic and maybe a shrink.

“Why are there so many disorders today?” Those seven words, or a variation of them, surface a few times a week. And my take on this query is so complex that, to avoid sounding like my grad school professors making an erudite case that fails to communicate anything to average folks like me, I often shrug my shoulders and move on to a conversation about dessert. Now that I can talk about all day.

Here’s the abridged edition of my guess as to why we mark up more pages of the DSM-IV today than, say, a century ago (even though the DSM-IV had yet to be born).

Public speaking is the king of phobias. That’s according to Taylor Clark, author of the insightful book, Nerve. He writes:

According to a 2001 poll, more than 40 percent of Americans confess to a dread of appearing before spectators. (In some surveys, fear of public speaking even outranks fear of death, a fact that inspired Jerry Seinfeld’s famous observation that at a funeral, this means the average person would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.)

To get to the solution of this phobia — which can help us with all our other phobias — Clark tells the story of cellist Zoe Keating. Today her music is featured everywhere from National Public Radio to film scores to European ballets. Clark attended one of her performances and comments, “Keating seemed entirely oblivious to the hundreds of eyes watching her. She played as though she were in the midst of a dream, eyes closed, swaying languidly with her cello, utterly immersed in her performance.”

But it was a long way getting there.

“I don’t have bedbugs, Kenneth. I went to Princeton.”
~ Jack Donaghy, Character on NBC’s show “30 Rock”

You probably have heard on the news about the problem with bedbugs in hotels. Nasty little things. They come out at night and suck your blood while you sleep.

I like vampire stories as much as the next guy, but when it comes to my blood I am very possessive. I don’t want to share it with a bug. I assume you feel the same.

You can learn more than you’d ever want to know about these creatures at the government’s CDC website here, but suffice to say that it is worth an ounce of prevention to cope with them beforehand, particularly this holiday travel season. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency have issued a joint statement on bedbugs, including emotional reactions to them: “Bedbugs may also affect the mental health of people living in infested homes. Reported effects include anxiety, insomnia and systemic reactions.”