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

I took my username from the film, "Charlie" and the book it came from. I'm middle age now, a male and free from many troublesome mindsets that persisted for a long long time in my life. Things psychologically trying for me still exist, but momentum is surely on my side. Let me encourage you about the freedoms of growing older as the ultimately meaningless or excessively meaningful values of (American) youth fall to the gravity of a longer life. I believe that modern American society with all its familiar institutions is greatly inconsistent with good mental health.

I'm divorced with two grown sons, one with a family of his own. I'm a grandfather. I have a long time girlfriend that I have never lived with. My father and sister have long ago died and my mother is soon to be 86 and in a nursing home where she is doing well despite all her fears and reluctance to face her inevitable transition before it happened. Ma discovered a social life again!

I'm a trucker with a superb record for a long time. I'm frugal and a do-it-yourself person with lots of tools. I'm a procrastinator with lots of do-it-yourself projects waiting for my arrival. I've got three years of college. I'm living where I live for 24 years this month. I exercise and ride a bicycle and sail a small boat at times. I play guitar with no great dedication, so I don't blow anyone away but it's amazing how a few simple chords and some spotlight posturing can get people smiling for a short show, and I always keep it short.

I have clutter and hording issues, but this is finally under control and a slow but increasing discharge of ridiculous possessions (like boxes and books and food containers and bits of steel and broken tools to name a few) is taking place. My mother had/has this disorder big time including the classic rubber band ball, so I figure like so many things, Ma got me going on the clutter and hording too. Possessions possess us, just the opposite of what you would figure when you're salivating at a yard sale or Wally World or wherever possessions are to be gotten. Incidentally I love Wally World for many reasons and yes I've heard all the beefs about it.

I'm not taking any drugs at all nor do I drink or smoke cigarettes. What a subject there for human beings!

I've been big on self help books since I've discovered them long ago. This wonderful wonderful creation of Mr. Paul Gilmartin, Mental Illness Happy Hour is where the path has taken me and I'm grateful for the discovery. In my nation of such misleading leadership, the shocking selfish and absurd egoity driving and baiting the children from the earliest stage, it's angelic to hear these fearless interviews, or rather courageous interviews that reward my innocent trust for answers.

Unable to name them all, here are a few of the instructors I've heard or read over the years relative to mental health and psychology: M. Scott Peck, Steven Covey, Anne Katherine, Armand Demille, Albert Ellis, Noah Benshea, Tara J. Palmatier and Eckhart Tolle!!

As an ex-rOMAN cATHOLIC.....there is no peace or trust for me in the rattle of that doggy-ma......and so my ease is as an agnostic, with the myriad other god systems left bluntly unconsidered while I would rather read about my hero, Harry Houdini, a Jew just like my girlfriend!

Home for the weekend from trucking all week and look at the time! We gain an hour this weekend, incidentally, which is dandy. I was looking forward to joining the "mentalpod" gathering here for quite a while since I discovered Paul's wonderful podcast, my very first selection from the huge list after getting my first ipod. I never heard of Paul before and now I'll never forget him.

Thank you for the chance to say hello!

.......I forgot to include one more professional in my list that absolutely must be stated.......Judy Perlmutter and her book, "Kick It: Stop Smoking in 5 Days"......found randomly in desperation on the public library shelf in 1987 when my chain cigarette smoking habit ruled my existence. While I tried to quit that hugely gripping addiction for so very many countless times in prior years, this author Judy Perlmutter and her book showed me how, with compassion and the power of education on the subject. I love her.

......I just learned how to spell the word, "hoarding." Thank you, Miss B!

Hello Algernon,

I'm middle age now, a male and free from many troublesome mindsets that persisted for a long long time in my life.

Yeah, I am so happy that middle-age means less of the destructive voices in my head that caused me so much pain for so long.

Algernon,
Charlie is one of my favorite movies ever. When I saw the late Cliff Robertson in Spiderman, all I could think of was his role in Charlie.

Thank you for your kind words about the podcast. You're glad you found us. We're glad we found you.

Paul

Thanks Congressman Martin!!

....incidentally, I just now ordered a 9 disc DVD set from Amazon via the mentalpod link to Amazonia......look what I got!

http://www.amazon.com/Abbott-Costello-S ... roduct_top

Alexanda fo fo...fo fo!!!!

Good Afternoon from New Jersey!

I saw the massive SPAM job last night which Paul spoke about on the podcasts........what manner of individual would spend that childish effort to do such a thing when it will simply get wiped away by the boardkeepers?

I got my Abbott and Costello TV series DVD set and have begun to enjoy the frolics......I have, as a psyche amateur, concluded that my personality today has roots in this TV series that was embedded into my child's mind so very many years ago. Costello's mannerisms have influenced my own to this day and I have no regrets.

Messageboards by design have topic groupings throughout, but under my introduction post I thought this would be the place to best write in a wide association flow as I often will think and write.....a little locker of my shit.

Presently I am overloaded with self-help reading, having four individual books started and one more....Victor Frankl....borrowed with the clock ticking and still not started.......no problem.....I'm not in a school with a deadline.

I was once concerned with forgetfulness in reading all this psyche self help content, but not anymore.......I do retain the core information. I like bullet point passages.

Lately I've been consistently content increasingly. This is measured by the same old nagging thoughts of worry that pop up like a silent screaming kid asking, "when we gonna get there?"..........and I recognize the arrival of these thoughts and then I dismiss them with a self compassioned reason. HA!! FUCK YOU!!........I think these "pop-up" thoughts are now managed by rational thinking that appears everytime I need it......and this is I'm quite sure, the result of deliberate habit forming. Did you ever practice scales on a musical instument? Boring (maybe not so much if you can meditate it out).....but with great results after you do the work.

I recall Albert Ellis emphasizing "HARD WORK and EFFORT" as vital to one's mental health and healing.

Christmas time is here.........or if some will insist to label the season as a HOLIDAY time......I don't care either way much, as I'm an agnostic......and I know some people get extra gloomy because of the season. FUCK THAT SHIT! Do something good for yourself even if you have limited resources. Give yourself the gift of dismissing stupid harmful depressing thoughts as soon as they get consumed.....talk to yourself......do something spontaneous and silly. Smell your fingertips in a long deep in-breath and think about what you smell.......live in the moment.

I love taking photographs and with the arrival of digital cameras with no more film to buy and process, the hobby is fabulous (tho the new hassle is STORING/MANAGING all these pics!).........and I thought that I would photograph all my shoes in a standard composition of side by side from the top down as you would look down at your feet and see them in any given moment. This little project was never pursued with dedication and I let it go, but the idea came from the thought about how all my life I've been wearing shoes (all footwear) and every single pair had a personality along the lines of personal satisfaction and expression........and how so very COOL it would be to have a photo catalogue of all the shoes that came to be mine, and how I would recall them looking back through those photographs. As you may imagine, I had some strange looking hoofies in my 57 years of stepping and I wish there was such a photo catalogue to look back upon. Maybe I never followed up on this idea because most of the shoes I will have worn in my life have already been worn and are lost to photo-imaging forever? Maybe I should begin to pursue this idea this week and simply begin at age 57 my eccentric collection of footwear images?

Time to call Miss B now. I'll be spending Christmas..........HOLIDAY!!!!..........time with her and that includes Hanukkah with her family. The times of our lives.........

.......sorry about the nonsensical beginning of the paragraph with, "Lately I've been consistently content increasingly."

What I mean is..............."I'm practicing what I've learned from reading and listening and it's becoming habitual and effective."

algernon wrote:I was once concerned with forgetfulness in reading all this psyche self help content, but not anymore.......I do retain the core information. I like bullet point passages.

Re-reading is important too, because, I find, I cannot "hear" a message or technique that I am not ready for yet. I don't let it get me down - I just remind myself it is not surprising that I may have to take a linear path to get better, so re-reading lets me get the steps in the correct order.

OLA!!

No work tomorrow and it's SO very good to be home, where I am less at than NOT, greatly. Home.....where when you knock on the door, they gotta let you in! (that's a cute quote not mine and me not remembering whose, regrettably)

I'm a night owl, which is quite compatible with truckinghood, even with the ridiculous early rises, so early often that they are like pulling all nighters, some work day starts. But tonight my home is under my ass and not so far far away from me, its heartbeat homefire provider of the scene......

And so I'd like to catch up with the forum proactively and thank you for my chance to diddle-dee highly on here.

Surely surely a lifetime of commercial media content AND the stamping of emblems on EVERYTHING from sneakers and vitamin pills to dog biscuits and charcoal briquettes is not consistent with good mental health. I have nothing but a street corner intuition to state this theory. Imagine the relentless volume, frequency and intensity of this stimuli from the earliest moments of awareness as an infant plopped before the TV set all the way to the nursing home hospital bed.....by which time the damage is done and life reflection is measured as a consumption experience......well.......maybe for some or even most but not all.

I suppose human intelligence has the capacity to keep the commercial advertisement toxins of an entire lifetime under some kind of control, but what a fucking DRAG on the natural rise and play of human happiness. If Madison avenue is to be trusted, fat girls, amputees and those with beater cars and modest incomes are incapable of giving and receiving joy. Add the cruel peer pressure of American adolescence and then the harsh pecking orders of employment scenarios, all supported by the media lust to create and maintain an American consumers' desire........and it's a WONDER why bridge jumping onto concrete isn't a major American sport.

I was watching Youtube vids of douchebags or....guidos.....which are the badda bing "YUTES" of "Jersey Shore" of which I am living just minutes away. I never have seen the show, but the fucking MEDIA is so POWERFUL, a television non watcher like ME gets to know about the product!! (well....the Internet gets me informed)........that ORANGE tan look is quite the fashion statement, reminds me of the Nehru jacket of the 60s for overbearing impressions. How about the "duckface" posing for the digital cameras??? Wow, it's all so sexual implicit.....and primitive.

I can see these myriad forces building up in a young person's psyche with the pressure of beating time upon FIRST PLACE or you're shit otherwise and let's not forget weird parents thrown into the formula.....and then maybe some traumatic violations set upon one's innocent trust.......this is our new youth....and our not as new youth....and it's often our middle age too, but like I said elsewhere, there are dividends of aging relative to leaving forever the self-imposed shackles of youthful values....like excessive cosmetics which are chosen because of unrealistic unhappiness with how nature formed our bodies, among other self-imposed shackles.

And so this is Christmas...........and what have you done? (JL)

What I advise you to NOT do is.........get all bollixed up over Christmas which is upon us now. Don't fret the SPELLING of Xmas, or of Christmas or the tree or the gifts that you feel you MUST BUY.....don't buy them.....and DON'T expect any gifts or cards or magic Kris Krinklies kissing mommu.......

Try going to the mall and getting a nice cup of comfort (I never recommend booze)....and adjust yourself to a special PACE....called nice and leisurely.....and STROLL this mall......and observe your fellow Americans.....do not judge or criticize but see simply what is there.......and when you have had your full measure of this experience, leave with an easy tempo and go home. When you reflect on this Christmas shopping observation trip to the mall, think about your own participation in this frenzied ritual and decide if it's something you really want to do each year. I have done this myself. Whatever you decide, if you try this little project, there is no right or wrong. What I think IS WRONG, is when someone does something energy (mental and physical and economical) intense from essentially brutal media driven repetition beginning early in life preparing for Christmas....and as a young adult becoming miserable about it, but in DENIAL to the fact of the misery and inescapable obligation that Xmas has become.

Yeah yeah, I've been called a SCROOGE before and it's a canned nugget out of the spend-more-for-love playbook of commercial media success......and I'll tell you truly.....

Cmas and Chanukkah, Halloween and Thankyday.......for me all mark the end of the calendar year.......HEY, and NEW YEAR'S DAY TOO (of which the eve these years I'm home and even asleep for the midnight gong).......these special days fall into a 60 day span that warrant, and this upon a nice human social tradition, a celebration of life with people. WHY NOT? The year is never easy, always trying and now coming to a close. When excesses in these days of joyous hoopla start to gnaw into the goodness desired and misery gains instead.....let's set a fucking correction course right away......How about turning off the television and radio, being more selective on the Internet for starters? Maybe staying away from our drunken goombas? Make effective changes as the RATIONAL YOU.

THINK! it's not about other people opinions when we ourselves bog down into some ironic misery when December hits. How dare those fucks parade fashion models getting Santa's diamonds and pearls on TV and dare everyone else to beat that booty....What does the end of the calendar year mean to YOU and your well-being without the rattle of a jillion advertising hooks everywhere you go telling you who you need to be?

Take it from a messageboard person named Algernon who runs a corporate symbol photograph as his avatar!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MERRY CHRISTOCHANUKAH CHERRY!!