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

I started listening to the podcast a few months ago, and I've been going through the archives. The episode with Phil Hendrie really got to me. Not that my mother was "abusive", but I realized that there was definitely a pattern of inapropriate behavior that I had previously only remembered as a series of weird isolated incidents.

For example:

1. When I was around age 5 I remember being in the bathroom just after my mom had gotten out of the shower. She asked me if I "knew the parts of the body." I don't think I said anything, so she proceeded to show me her vagina, like really up close, spreading it with her fingers. I just sat there not really knowing what to do, like am I supposed to comment on it? I remember thinking it was rather ugly. My mom is a redheaded 60s era feminist, so you can be damn sure a razor had never been anywhere near that area. It was like a big Carrottop afro of pubes right in front of my face.

2. Around the same age, my mom one day explained to me her vaginal hygiene habits in detail. I guess she thought this was an important thing for a 5 year old boy to know.

3. Around age 11-12 I was in the car with my mom driving and my brother (2 years older) in the backseat. I don't know how the conversation was steered this way, but I recall my mom saying "sex feels nice, you should try it!" I squirmed in my seat and felt awful and uncomfortable. My brother then said to my mom "mom why are you telling him this? He's too young." My mom responded by saying "what? it's a natural thing, it's what people do." What I remember most from this moment was feeling so relieved that my brother also thought she was being inapropriate which meant I wasn't overreacting or being immature.

4. Age 12-13, my mom repeatedly asked me if I was getting hair on my crotch. This always made me super uncomfortable and I never answered. The 3rd or 4th time she asked, I really started wondering why she was the only person who ever asked me this, and why was she so interested in it?

5. I was always very aware of how I was dressed whenever I went out of my room. I just had the sense that my mom would be looking at my crotch or something if I walked around the house in my underwear or with my shirt off.

In general, I had the feeling that she was trying to sexualize/objectify me in some way, but without any actual touching or direct sexual comments towards me. From ages 16-20 I had a lot of fantasies of raping and killing my mother. I was also very depressed and suicidal at that time.

I'm 32 now, and I still live with my parents, although I had lived alone in another city from age 22-26. I talk to my parents as little as possible.

The shit I'm dealing with now is depression and anxiety. I'm a lonely, sad, useless piece of shit. I started having terrible frequent panic attacks last summer. I had to quit my job and I'm finding it impossible to get a new job. Just the thought of going to an interview or meeting a room full of new people sends me into a panicky negative thought spiral that will leave me suicidal in a matter of minutes.

I've been taking xanax for about a year, which helps with the anxiety but makes me feel dead and I want to get off it.

I started taking Lexapro a month ago and it has helped with the anxiety but not much with the depression. The worst part is the side effect: my libido has gotten stronger. I have to jerk off like twice a day now. I thought SSRIs were supposed to do the opposite? I hate my dick, I've always wanted to cut my dick and balls off. I don't want a gender or a sex. I want to be free. Having to think about sex is awful and depressing.

The other thing that sucks about my anxiety is it gets worse when I do any exercise more strenous than walking. I'm 5'8" and 123 lbs. I want to workout and get stronger and at least look like I could lift a sack of potatoes. But no, my fucking anxiety has to make my heart rate shoot up and not go back to normal for the rest of the day, and prevent me from sleeping at night if I did 20 pushups that day.

I'll go fuck myself now, thanks for reading.

This is my first response on this site but your story hit me with such a personal connection. Honestly it has given me a view of something wrong that I didn't know was there. I am female but have one older brother and "many" younger brother and sisters. I didn't think it bothered "me" much but my mother always walked around the house naked. She had breast implants, an eating disorder.... bleach blond, lots of makeup. Basically she looked like a plastic surgeons anorexic patient. She said, "I just want my children to be comfortable with the female body and not be weird perverts about it." But in all reality, we all now body/eating disorders and relationship issues. She even went as far as explaining in depth to my two year old brother PMS and how a man should be there for a woman, so he can be a perfect husband. Anyways, all I'm trying to say is that... You ARE a great man who, as a child was exposed to traumatic and inappropriate situations. You should not feel ashamed, but I am very aware that just by me saying that doesn't mean you aren't or that all the issues you have from these events all the sudden make sense and you can not feel the negative feelings bubbling up inside of you. You deserve someone to listen and to help that inner soul and confused boy understand and separate the crazy happenings that are now your memories. You did not create the broken pieces, they were forced upon you, but you can help put the pieces of your broken puzzle together by getting help. It is one thing to hear that something was wrong, it is a whole nother thing for your mind and body to finally feel whole and be able to make sense of the past. Please seek therapy, you are still in there. You are just hurting and confused. I am so sorry, my heart bleeds for you. There is a happy life for you, you just need to find you first.

Elizabeth,

Thanks for taking the time to register an account here just to respond to me. I wish you all the best with your struggles.

I've been seeing a therapist for almost a year now, but I haven't really talked about everything regarding my mother. Part of it is that it's too weird and anxiety provoking to talk about. When I started going to therapy, I just wanted to get some tools and techniques to manage my anxiety and panic attacks, I didn't want to go around uncovering all this shit.

I remember the first time I walked into her office and sat down, the first thing I saw was the box of kleenex on the coffee table. I thought to myself "oh, I guess that's for people with real problems, or pussies. I would never cry in here that's for sure!" Well, I did end up crying in her office a little a couple months ago when I was in a really low mood and thinking about killing myself. One of the first things I learned in therapy was that I had massive emotional suppression to the point where I couldn't even identify what emotions I had at any given time. Unfortunately I think it's still going to take some time for me to be ok with talking about all this shit to a real person face to face. I was hoping that talking about it here might inch me closer to being able to talk about it in therapy.

I think the other part of it is that my therapist seems to have more of a practical logical approach to things. She's really nice but most of the time is spent with her picking apart my negative thinking patterns and trying to work on preventing them from spiraling out of control. When I express a painful feeling that's just a feeling and not a way of thinking, she looks sympathetic but I feel like it just hangs there and we don't really do anything about it. Maybe there's nothing to be done, I don't know, this is the only therapist I've ever had.

I think there's something to be done, but facing childhood trauma is daunting and terrifying.

I think, you could benefit from sharing this with your therapist and posting here, is a step in the right direction. I remember sharing similar stuff with my therapist and because of her reaction, I could finally give what happened to me weight. I realized how profound it had affected me and how it continued to control the way, I lived/wasted my life.

Your upbringing could very well be the primary cause for your negative thinking. I mean, every time you got dressed or left your room, you probably had to prepare for the worst case scenario. Maybe by accepting that this trauma affected your thinking, you can understand, that this negative thinking protected you in a very unhealthy situation and because it truly protected you, now when it's becoming a problem, it's so difficult to change. Kind of like a bullet proof vest, it's great if people are shooting at you, but if you're not in any danger, you're just caring around heavy weight. Realizing that this is a substantial task, can be a disheartening and intimidating, but knowing the size of the task, will also help you be more patient in your healing process.

For me understanding the function and purpose of emotions, to express oneself and to initiate taking action, it made sense, that if I kept my emotions hidden deep inside, I became completely incapable of being around other people andof completing even the most trivial task. Strength training has really worked wonders for my self esteem, but I really had to confront the trauma and my thinking, before I could even muster the energy, motivation and courage to start exercising. Also because I tried to silence and suppress my emotions, they just kept getting stronger and more insisting, which in return meant, that I got even more afraid of getting in touch with them. I thought, if I faced my emotions, I'd lose complete control, either explode in rage or lose myself in despair.

If your negative thoughts was a childhood survival mechanism, maybe now your negative thoughts are beginning to threaten your adult life, you adult survival will have to starting healing to survive. I don't know how much of this makes sense, but you deserve more of life, than what was offered to you at such an early age. Maybe you can simply start with telling your therapist, that you're holding something back.

Well, congratulations, I too registered just so I could respond to your post. But, I will probably make some other posts on other topics, now that I am here.

I wanted to comment on this:

I think the other part of it is that my therapist seems to have more of a practical logical approach to things. She's really nice but most of the time is spent with her picking apart my negative thinking patterns and trying to work on preventing them from spiraling out of control. When I express a painful feeling that's just a feeling and not a way of thinking, she looks sympathetic but I feel like it just hangs there and we don't really do anything about it. Maybe there's nothing to be done, I don't know, this is the only therapist I've ever had.

So this is where meditation and breath therapy come in. It helps to allow yourself to think in somewhat 'alternative' ways, although I don't know why we have to do that considering the modern science has such an appallingly poor track record of even acknowledging that emotions exist, let alone being able to define what they are and how they should be addressed.

Anyhow, what ~I have found to help is to think of emotions as bands of thick air that go through us and occasionally get trapped , sometimes due to trauma sometimes due to excess of happiness. Either way, it stops the flow of life though you and the way to release this trapped 'wind' is to breathe while being mentally and emotionally back in the situation and set your intention on letting it go. Don't ask me why it helps to visualise, but it really does, specially if it's an emotion that you cannot really qualify such as when you are a small child and don't know what the fuck you are feeling. So you go back into that memory in your mind's eye and imagine for example a towel on a line and you take this emotion and you attach it to the towel or you take the towel and wipe the emotion off and then you let go of the towel in whatever way makes sense to you..river carries it off, wind takes it away, you burn it..whatever. ~it doesn't matter what you visualise, what matters is that it has personal power for you to allow you to let go of these unprocessed emotions. And of course you breathe deeply right through this whole process. Breathing in the clean energy, breathing out the bad stuff.

The other thing I've found that was really super helpful, although this may be way out there for most people is The Emotion Code. I won't link it here so as not to seem like I am promoting it, but I found it helpful even when done by a practitioner from a distance, it really transformed my life in a few short sessions.

So, finally, thank you for sharing and keep looking for a way out of the darkness!