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

Howdy!

It dawned on me I've been listening to the podcast for a whole year now without becoming part of the community. Listening is such a big part of my week, there's no possible way it's healthy for me to stay out of the most important part.

Timing isn't a coincidence. The holidays are a trigger for me. My family sucked at holidays. I tell people it was because we never lived around extended family, but that's only one small piece of the pie. Everything was such a chore. It was not okay to need things. I grew up with an overly involved, needy mom with huge issues. She had no boundaries when it came to sharing all her problems and neurosis with me. I felt like nothing I worried about was important because my life was so much better than any of my parents had it growing up. Worse, even now, telling Mom something is wrong turns it into her being so hurt that her child is hurting that even my problems don't get to be about me. Lucky for her, denial runs in the family, so what I now know was childhood depression since I was 4 years old didn't even phase her. I suspect she blames my ex-husband for the majority of my issues as an adult as if a well adjusted me would have gotten involved with him in the first place.

I really needed to get that out tonight. *laugh*

The basics: I'm 32. No kids. I'm under 5 feet tall and over 200 pounds. I'm a geek and a bookworm. I work in a call center which I'm good at even though it's soul sucking. Depression and anxiety are my primary "diagnosis" but when I was in the hospital for "brief reactive psychosis" for a week in February 2010 they tried to pin "borderline personality disorder" on me. I'm not sure if I own that diagnosis, but if so I learned it from watching my mother. I'd been through a program of cognitive behavior therapy in my early twenties and a few sessions with a therapist after the hospital. I wouldn't mind more therapy or a support group, but I don't have a driver's license so going anywhere besides work is a pain in the ass. For now, I'm not in crisis. I wouldn't even say I'm depressed although it's always under the surface.

Life is not all bad. In fact, the last couple years have been among the best of my life. It was a phoenix-like experience with my life going up in flames and grew things back from nothing. Not to say I don't struggle, but I have a beautiful life. I'm engaged to a wonderful man. I have hobbies for the first time in my life. I am learning how to honor my needs.

I'm really looking forward to getting to know people here.

Nice to meet you! Boy, I sure can relate to some of the things you said about your parents/childhood. Your "stats" make me want to share that i'm 38, 5'3.5" (very protective of that half inch hehe) and 240lbs. I just one hour ago purchased a Groupon for a weight loss hypnosis class. Intrigued and hopeful. When i was in high school I read a book on self hypnosis and was able, via a cassette tape I created, to hypnotise myself to be unable to open my eyes! It was fascinating. So, I know I'm suggestable.

I downloaded an ebook about self hypnosis. It seems like a sound idea, but I suck at doing things daily. Like really suck. You'll have to keep everyone here up on your adventures in hypnosis. If nothing else the placebo effect should be on your side.

As of weight, I'm heavier than I want to be, but the size 14/16 I was in high school is plenty skinny for me. I was almost there, but I've gone back up. It's lousy, but I'd settle for being all firm and fit. If I was honest with myself, I'd say some of my identity is wrapped up in being the "short, round girl will big boobs who smiles a lot."

Haha! I also suck at doing things daily. See: meditating, practicing violin, housework, etc etc. I have to figure out when to take the hypnosis class.

Maybe I wouldn't feel so gross if I also had big boobs to go with my big tummy, but I do not. My sister got the skinny genes AND gigantic knockers. It isn't so much that I care how big my boobs are because I really don't, this size is much easier to deal with. I'm just so disproportionate!

I can understand that would be hard. Our culture is so fucked up about body image. Nobody is good enough in the eyes of the fashion and fitness industry. My taste definitely doesn't fit the Cosmo imagine, that's for sure. I've also found it's just as bad or worse for men. There's not even a politically correct term for an overweight man. But I digress. It's all bullshit. Bodies are important for what they DO and who lives in them more than for what they look like or their size.

Most people have know idea I'm as heavy as I am because I've still got an hourglass figure, through it's more like an hour and forty-five minutes. I've spent the last couple years learning to sew and found I have the "correct" hip to waist only like ten inches wider than the largest commercial pattern size. Of course, I also take ten inches off the length from waist to ankle.

But here I am talking about sewing... yeah, I'll stop now.

Wow.. I knew I had posted an intro thread before but I didn't remember it being almost exactly a year ago.

I've since found depression isn't an issue for me anymore, but anxiety is much worse than it's ever been. One of the reasons, I think, is because my life is better than it's every been and I'm still not okay on the inside.

A few weeks ago, I went to my first appointment with a new therapist. I wrote Paul a ridiculously long email I intend to repost here because it's really as much for all of my fellow listeners as it was for Paul.

I imagine I will always look back at this time in my life and my decision to seek therapy (again) as a series of bright shiny epiphanies sprouting from soil I've been fertilizing for about a decade. I’ve had some little sprouts here and there. I haven’t always tended them even if I did put the flowers in my basket for later. Owning “I have mental health issues” hasn’t ever before got me to turn the corner from trying to learn how to cope with - manage - deal with - lessen the impact of - and most importantly hide my problems under the crafted shell of a normal healthy smiling friendly nerdy girl.

Finally, finally, I’ve got the message: It’s not the symptoms you treat, stupid, it’s the root cause of the disease. I *know* it. I treat my blood pressure and pre-diabetes with diet and exercise. Other methods could treat the symptoms and can be useful but cannot make a person healthy only manage the disease. Brains and souls aren’t any different. I am guilty of allowing it to be okay for other people to need more help than helping themselves will provide while expecting myself to be strong enough and smart enough to fix myself, but I’m mending my ways.

Paul, I had to tell you how you seem to be connected to many of those sparks. The unhealthy parts of me feel like you won’t care, but I hear you say it means something to you to know you’ve helped someone. Selfishly, opening up feels good even when it scares me more than anything. With three years of listening to the podcast, I trust you enough to know sharing with you isn’t wasted. In my head, it’s not about a response, but picturing you understanding vs. thinking “whatever” as you finish reading. I can only dare to hit send because I believe even if you don’t reply, you’ll “get” me and be glad I wrote.

I discovered MentalPod via Adam Carrola’s podcast. Adam and Dr. Drew and Alison Rosen all have helped me in their own rights talking about their journeys. As you may have figured out about me, defining and articulating a thing - especially a feeling - is my very first step to dealing with it. Podcasts have been invaluable in helping me identify my internal landscape. I could fill pages with names and I know full well if I did, fellow listeners would be able to tell roughly what my issues are with a high degree of accuracy. The thought is oddly comforting like knowing others have read a book I love because their are so many date stamps in the front of a library copy.

It’s taken me three years to go from empathy for the hosts and guests, to identifying with some stuff, to being ready to face the core of my own story to the point I can imagine how my episode of MentalPod would go.

It was only a couple of week ago that I turned this corner. I’d been struggling after a period of relative calm so I sought out voices who I could tell myself would understand if I told my experiences in return. Or, more simply, I caught up on MentalPod.

The co-narcissism mini episode was first. I so relate only unlike the guy who went to Spain every summer, I’ve never had an intimate bond with my extended family or even enough time with them to know who they are except stories from my mother. Several days later, the Susan Hagen episode: I cried walking home from my little adventure out thrifting and taking myself out to lunch. It’s funny because I’ve recognised myself in things you say about your upbring, survey responses and guests for a long time, but something about Susan, I swear, her voice, her accent, and the phrase she uses “you were set up” said with such compassion felt like she was talking to me. It’s the only episode except Gray Delisle, I’ve listened to more than once and I only listened to that one twice because, seriously, Gray is hysterical .

Also important, is your story about the billboard on the Sunset Strip. I can’t remember which episode it was I heard it recently and I do seem to remember hearing it before, but this time the meaning behind it finally sunk in. I can be a hard study, but it’s always been true for me once a truth gets into my bones, it’s with me for good. “Nothing external will change how I feel inside” and “I can never be perfect enough to satisfy my inner demons.” I get it now, really, I get it.

And other things, too, just knocked me over. Since I was a kid, I’ve found if I sit down to write about a problem, I actually learn things I didn’t know until they are out on the page as if I’m accessing a different database. It’s not exactly “dialoging” but my experience feels like how she describes the exercise. I’d always felt like it was my imagination, if still a useful tool. It’s awesome to find it’s a niffy feature of my hardwiring. I was trying to figure it all out and heal myself at ten years old. It’s empowering to think of my inner child that way even admitting it’s clearly disassociation if I’m to call a spade a spade, right? If I’m being honest, I’m doing that right now. If there was a record of how I wrote this, it would be less A to Z and more D to E to A to X to Q to L to Y. No Z because I don’t know how to end written pieces and there’s with all kinds of things my unconscious is telling me after I reread a paragraph to edit for logical coherence. My main worry in actually sending this to you is I’ve written too much or I’m including things less than relevant, but as I peck away at the keyboard, I’m telling myself to get the words out first and then decide what is for Paul and what is for my eyes only. I also wonder how many words the average emailer sends in without mention of the CIA or tinfoil hats. Not that I worry what other people will think of me or anything. Nope. Not at all.

Since the first listen though of Susan’s episode, I’ve made an appointment with a counselor (this time next week, I’ll be filling out intake paperwork), read “The Emotional Incest Syndrome” and “Surviving a Borderline Parent” and am working through the exercises. I’ve looked at pictures of myself as a kid. It stings pretty bad. It hurts and if I could have made the feelings go away any other way, I’ll be honest, I would have, but I am at peace knowing this is a growing pain.Still facing thirty-three years worth of feelings and managing to function in my day-to-day life hurts like a motherfucker no matter how mature and self-aware I can be about it.

I can’t decide if it’s my low self-esteem or my perfectionism that kept me from dealing with root causes in the past, but either way it’s fucked up thinking and I’m DONE coping with my diseased spirit all by myself. I’m *not* broken but I need the right kind of healing for my ailments. My current round of anxiety is going to be pulled up from the roots of my childhood and I’m pouring concrete in the god-damned holes if the process takes the rest of my life, I swear. I don’t know exactly know what I’m building the foundation for with that fresh concrete but it’s got to be an improvement compared to the alternative of continuing to build from where I am now without so much as asking for instructions. The manual I was provided with as a kid sucks, my own attempts are better but flawed, so I’m seeking to find some with a proven track record.

Adam Carolla always talks about how the best thing about human beings is the capacity for change - this clip he did for Prager University is something I revisit often when I need inspiration. I joke with my husband how I’m trying hard to make sure Adam’s 2013 New Year’s Resolution is kept: He resolved for everyone else to get their shit together, stating that will benefit the world better than him resolving to lose 20 pounds or some other pointless pie-crust promise. I started exercising in February, lost 40 pounds since April when I did a 180 degree turn on my beliefs about food, even reevaluated my wardrobe choices. Now, it’s my grey matter needing some attention. Yes, I bought better shoes before I considered therapy and, for me, it’s progress. Self-denial and out-and-out-cheapness are values I grew up on.

I don’t feel like the details of my story are needed to express my determination to follow through with even the hard parts of changing, but one thing I hold close to my heart when I think “you’re overreacting. Nothing is really wrong. It’s just feelings. The drop dead fact of the week I spent in a lockdown ward of a mental hospital in 2010 justifies my needs even though they don’t require justification. Brief reactive psychosis. I’d called 911 myself and I hugged the cop who came to check on me after talking pure nonsense to the man. I remember just enough to know I was out of my ever-loving mind. I didn’t magically get all fixed up in there somehow. If only mental health treatment worked like taking an appendix out or pulling a tooth, right?

I got better. I had a brief few sessions with a great therapist. I got on with my life. I’ve made some huge changes, internal and external. My life is better than I ever dared dream. Even the nature of my struggle has changed. Before my hospital stay, I used to primarily present as depressed with some anxiety. Now, it’s rare for me to have more than a day or two of “depressed thinking” but anxiety builds in the pit of my stomach, spreads to my chest and keeps on going until I’m visibly shaking. It’s not every day or even every week, but even just knowing at any time it could happen makes me feel like a walking time bomb. I maybe could ignore it if I wasn’t acutely aware of the few people who inhabit the blast zone. I’m so blessed to have recently married one of the most empathetic people I have ever known who only wishes I would tell him what’s wrong more easily and more often. Also, my best friend of twenty-odd years who lived through visiting me every day in the hospital even though they wouldn’t listen to anything she had to say, instead, listening to my parents on phone calls I wasn’t involved in as if I had elected to live over a thousand miles from any blood relation for no good reason. No one bother to ask me who I felt understood me. I’d love to say there are others, but that’s something I intend to work on. Healthy intimacy is about the best medicine I’ve found. Who knew?

I don’t want to living with the consequences of my past for the next thirty years. Shit, half the causes of the effects I am experiencing happened BEFORE I was born like the world’s ugliest cascade of dominoes lined up across at least three generations on every side of my family. Not only is it no wonder I need professional help sorting it out based on all the things I know - shout out to my mom for oversharing - *really* helped - even if I didn’t know why I felt like I do, I would be worthy of assistance.

Before I chicken out on sending this, I’m going to sign off with lots of love. You say so often when a person starts seeking, opportunities present themselves. I don’t actually like surprises, but safe isn’t feeling comfortable anymore, so I’m giving up some of my control to whatever is out there for me.

Tina

Tina,
Thank you. I don't browse the forum that often, but I did tonight and happened to stumble across your post. Thank you for sharing that and I know the forum appreciates that kind of honesty and vulnerability.

And welcome back Nevina!

Hug,

Paul

Thank you, Paul. I'm extend to make some friends here on the forum.

I just read your posts and your letter to Paul and wanted to tell you I came away thinking that you are brave and wonderful. I liked the part about the pouring of the concrete and the foundation it hopefully will create too. What a good image. I wish you the best, send a hug and hope I can get up the strength to follow in your footsteps as you really seem to be moving toward being well.