YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

From Just Mercy: "America's prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. Mass incarceration has been largely fueled by misguided drug policy and excessive sentencing, but the internment of hundreds of thousands of poor and mentally ill people has been a driving force in achieving our re...

Thanks, rg. Again, it's uplifting to get reassurance and kindness around this stuff. I am currently listening to Just Mercy, by Bryan Stephenson, a civil rights lawyer devoted to helping people currently suffering much, much worse than I have. I knew that extreme and incoherent injustice was/is ende...

Thanks, mmg. I still feel shame and embarassment about the ordeal; before that very poor choice, I had never really done anything "wrong" (anything nontrivially illegal, or anything similarly unsafe or covert), and the seemingly catastrophic consequences have thrown me into what feels like...

Hey-ya, rivergirl. Thx to you and MMG for your encouragement. I'm glad to see you too! It has obviously been quite a while since I spent much time here. I go through periods where I get too confused and frustrated by some of the coping mechanisms -- particularly the narratives of the just-keep-swimm...

I finally gave up on EMDR. I was told, eventually, after a regrettable amount of frustrating failure to be helped, that my damage is beyond the scope of plain-old-EMDR; I needed to find a practitioner trained in "resourcing," a particular specialty within EMDR for addressing a client's per...

Heya, oak. I feel very sheepish about promising to contribute to this thread if you started it, and then disappearing rather utterly. In the name of Rosenberg's proposition of nonviolent communication (NVC), I am resisting the urge to apologize, but please know that I very much wish I'd been able to...

Brenda's story was remarkable. It reminded me of other stories I've heard about the wildly different outcomes for victims of violent crimes, depending on the circumstances surrounding the event, the narratives the victim can apply to the event, and the resources for recovery that are available to th...

Ditto oak.

Look! I can be brief!!

: -]

Namu

Hello, rivergirl. I wrote you a PM earlier this evening, but it seems to be parked in my Outbox. (If anyone knows what determines whether/when/which PMs get stuck in one's Outbox, please enlighten me!) I hope it gets to you soon. In the meantime, if you see this, know that I’m thinking of you, and t...

oak, WOW, look at you go!! It is lovely to hear you feeling better about your situation. (It's also quite charming to hear that I’ve served as a mantra. : -> To quote Ron Weasley, in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, in front of the Mirror of Erised: “I look goo-oo-ood!”) You seem to be firing ...