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

That actually makes a lot of sense, thank you for the response. That might be one of the biggest hurdles that people facing mental/emotional issues face, the overall perception by the portion of society not afflicted (or not aware that they are) likewise that it's all "in your head" and &q...

I'm 41, and for the longest time I've self-diagnosed myself as having "anger management issues" due to severe bullying I was subjected to as a child that I am still unable to let go. I am prone to bouts of anger - often hair-trigger responses - that remain with me for days, my fight-or-fli...

Hang in there, Ether, I hope the therapy helps improve your outlook. Creative types tend to feel and experience things deeper, so the "hole" can often seem so much deeper.

I just want to point out that I originally referenced "empathizing" with people who perform these unspeakable acts, not sympathizing. There is a huge difference between feeling sorry for someone and understanding their motivations and mindset. It mind sound like I'm splitting hairs, but I ...

Jesus, Ether, talk about a perfect example of how hard it can be to climb out from under crushing bouts of depression and self-loathing when the world itself seems to conspire against us. With childhood bullies (and their enablers), abusive ex-spouses and their new vindictive mates, and an oppressiv...

I've felt that way so often, I eventually wrote a screenplay about somebody who actually does it. How's that for externalizing? For me, I think it is a response to that feeling of helplessness just in everyday life, as far the pressures involved, and how tangled we become in our responsibilities and...

Your cautious approach to a perfectly rational examination of this topic really underlines one of the major stumbling blocks to seriously approaching and understanding mental illness as a society: cultural norms dictating that we should not be able to empathize or sympathize with somebody we also re...

We now live in a culture that thrives on self-identification through the ridicule of others. From sitcoms to movies to advertising to reality television, others are mocked and defiled in order to make us feel better about ourselves. Any Adam Sandler film is a textbook example: even as he portrays a ...

Damn it, I just realized that in my haste to start this topic, I screwed up the name. It should have obviously been Nobody LIKES a Fat Kid. Damn it.

You bring up a great point, MizLzie. Even beyond the relentless bullying by peers, it's the fact that even most adults, including parents, are either passively abusive or non-supportive enablers. In my case, I was lucky enough to have parents who didn't place a majority of individual worth on appear...