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

I can't really give any advice about how to stop swearing, but I can share my own experience with it. I've always been the type to swear a lot and loudly, but after my husband and I had kids, he began to be very touchy about it. I have toned it down a lot, but I still do it fairly often. I honestly ...

This is just a thought, and this might be the wrong way to think about it, but I'm going to go ahead and share it anyway. You're truly in a difficult situation and I can't really imagine how stressful it must be, but I wonder if perhaps you accept that this is a tough time in your life... and you ar...

I fear that I will live my entire life without doing something worthwhile. I fear that I will live my entire life without anyone ever really knowing me or caring about the real me. I fear that there is no “real me” worth knowing. I fear that I'm fucking up my kids with all my anxieties. I fear that ...

Girl, I wish I could hug you. You are being so hard on yourself. It would hard on anyone to take care of an ill family member, let alone someone who is struggling with depression. If you could only step outside yourself for minute and see how hard you are struggling to be perfect and how unfair you ...

I've had the online nickname "bitteroldshrew" since I was sixteen, back when I was much younger, probably less bitter, and definitely less shrewish. The name is more fitting now than it was then. lol I can certainly relate to that distrust you mentioned. I think, for me, it goes back to th...

You'd never catch me on a submarine and I'm hardly smarter than the average person, but I did find myself relating to a lot of what you said. My parents completely disregarded much of my emotional experience. My father was simply absent in an emotional way... and my mother was wrapped up in her own ...

Hi, Jay Dub. I can tell you feel a lot of shame for what you've done. I remember reading somewhere (I think it was a Brene Brown book) that the difference between shame and guilt is that guilt is feeling bad about what we've done... and shame is feeling bad about about who we ARE. The fact is that w...

The first impression I had after reading your post was how much shame you have put on yourself for things that you couldn't possibly control. When I read about the bedwetting until you were 5 I just felt so sad. It is perfectly normal for children to wet the bed up to that age and sometimes beyond. ...

It sounds reasonable to me to think that fear would be behind most hatred. Hatred is a product of anger which is often a product of fear. I think that we use anger and hatred as tools to deflect those feelings of helplessness and vulnerability. So yes, it's possible that there are fears behind your ...

Great fear list, Lilac! I should probably feel bad for enjoying it.