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

Oh my my. How lovely. How necessary. How kind! I've only just now listened to O'Tuama's reading but am a big On Being fan. Going to jump right back in the pool then for the whole episode, but thank you thank you thank you, SD.

It’s sort of based on that idea of, Trust your belly not your eyes Don’t bight off more than you can chew My mother always said my eyes were bigger than my stomach. It is true. My sense of needing is positively grandiose, but I won't ever admit it. So I perform and contort and intend and convey con...

(Well. I as soon as I surfaced, I guess I decided to dive back down to the deep dark. I just can't keep my head above water lately.) But thank you snoring dog, river girl, and troebia, however belatedly. Whitman was my first great literary love. He lived for living's sake and delighted in everything...

So I have a theory. When I go to be happy I reach for a full uninterrupted feeling. Unfortunately the only feeling in my repertoire that matches that description is humiliation. My brain receives my prompt, and returns “‘happiness’ does not exist, ‘humiliation’ is this what you’re looking for?”. Th...

Marvelous for Walt Whitman Rage woke me up again, the stunning disappointment we are, the colossal waste of ceremony and prestige. A potlatch in honor of no one: what happens next will shock you! God’s was the first self-esteem problem, InMyNotSoHumbleOpinion. No viler creature exists than a person,...

Good question! I think, for me, there wasn't a defining incident so much as several tendencies. I was diagnosed later in life, but it's shocking to me now how obvious it has always been. My mother says my first word was NO and my first sentence was "That's not fair!" She's probably exagger...

💙💙💙 I, too, was burdened with my abusive father while he was in his last years (thankfully not as a resident in my home!), and it did a number on me to have to direct the care and manage the finances of this person who had done so much damage to me. I constantly wondered if I was trying hard enough,...

Thank you to you lovely human people with all your words and hearts and invisible high fives. I found a forgotten chocolate hiding under a bag of lentils today. But reading your messages was better.

Wow, relate to a lot of this. Never sure how to harness the strong feeling of wanting more for my mother. Why can’t I love her as she is without hoping she’ll let go of all those nerves and worries??

oak wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2021, 5:57 pm

JennaM wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2021, 4:54 pm Love that feeling of being able to recognize my own good company. And it never takes too long for me to pine for it after a foray into the Petri dish of other people!

So true!

I was just thinking today that I could really use another year of this. And maybe every ten or so years.

100%!