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

When I first joined the board, a while ago, I did a "Hey" post, just saying, yeah, I'm here. Didn't say anything about myself.

So here's a "Be" post. I'll try to keep it readably short.

I'm a 63 yr old male. I'm currently diagnosed with major depression. Medically, this is in a vicious circle with my sleep apnea and my history of risk for heart disease.

I have experienced "situational" or "existential" depression for many periods in my life. It's possible that my heart bypass surgery, about 12 years ago, may have triggered changes in my biochemistry that may have led to my current "major" depression. I currently control it with Celexa.

All this stuff is fairly late and new in my life, though. The thing I have struggled with, for most of my life, has not been this biochemistry. It has been my noggin.

I'm "too smart for my own good."

Nowadays, we have a name for this -- "gifted" -- and we have a sub specialty within the education profession that studies it, learns about it, and tries to find workable approaches for helping those kids who find themselves struggling with it.

In the 1950s? Fuggeddaboudit. Even in the Midwest, where I was born and raised.

The chief puzzle that I presented to the adults around me was ... my development was (what those sub specialists now call) "asynchronous." That is, in terms of intellect I was much more mature than my age-peers, but in terms of emotions, social interactions, and some physical elements (such as fine motor skills) I was less (sometimes much less) mature than my age-peers.

My teachers had no idea what to do with me. My parents had no idea what to do with (this side of) me. The child psychologist who saw me, when I was in 5th grade, had no idea what to do with me.

(All that I remember about that session was telling him that nothing really mattered anyway, because we were all going to die when World War III broke out. This was 1960 or 61, 2 years before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Today, I recognize this as a "typical gifted-kid remark." In those days -- I don't think anyone recognized it as anything in particular.)

I have had counseling on several occasions. No one has really "clicked" with me. The one I stayed with the longest, for several years, specialized in gifted children; she came closest, perhaps. But in retrospect I think they have all seemed to resemble, too closely, those "caregiver" adults during my schoolboy days, who put on a facade of interest and caring, and whose behavior subsequently revealed that it was only a facade.

No doubt I'll have more to say about this stuff elsewhere.

This will do for starters, I think.

I agree with your feelings on councelors. I use councelors in an "a-la-carte" fashion - I have one specific thing I want to fix in my broken head, and I concentrate the counceling sessions on just that, and quit once I get the hang of it to do the last 15% by myself.

Although now I have a very empathic councelor for EMDR - EMDR is quite intense, so it would be impossible without an empathic councelor anyway. But she is very nice, and she is a nervous soul like myself, so I feel comfortable (she may be mirroring me and my nervous anxious neurotic behavior).

I am sorry so many people have let you down. I read your whole post and I honor your pain. You don't deserve this weight of suffering. Please take care, we are all excited to read your written contributions to the threads here. All the best (oof, spelling is not my strong suit) AsynchronousMe (forgot the "h" first time around not 100% sure, difficult to cut and paste on iPad)

All the best to you, we here are all cheering for you and for your greatest today and tomorrow!

Thanks for posting a little about yourself. I hope that you can find some relief from the depression. I'm sure your health problems are contributing. Please keep in mind that millions of people face the same troubles you do, and things can get better.

Thanks, Manuel. One of the stickiest things is -- I cannot in all good conscience blame anyone. They have all been doing the best they have known how.

The fact that that hasn't been good enough ... truly isn't their fault. The fact that it has been maddening … truly isn't their fault.

It's like having been born with an extremely rare genetic disorder, in a place-and-time where the disorder is unknown (much less, any treatments for it). (More about this, in a minute.)

Despite everyone's best intentions, appropriate treatment was just not gonna happen.

And thanks, Chris. Y'know, I hadn't realized it til I saw it, but ...

... when I saw " Please keep in mind that millions of people face the same troubles you do," what happened in my gut was "and they've got a handle on it, so what's your beef???"

I know that's not what you meant, and I know that it's not what you intended to say. Just thought I'd give the emotional-reaction feedback.

Actually, if the IQ scores do fall along the normal-distribution that the test-scoring-process follows, then out of a national population of about 310 million there are probably about 82,000 people as smart as I am (or smarter, much smarter).

Of those 82,000 not all went through stuff (and reacted to stuff) as bad/badly as I did. Some of them listen to me blankly and say, "wha? I don't get it!" because their own experience was very different.

So, you see, the numbers actually are quite small. Which is why you can't get all blame-y when "they" act like they've never seen it before. Most of them haven't, and not because of negligence.

Did it take me a while to get to this point? Yes. But that's where I am, right now.

Hey! Welcome. Thanks for sharing. I appreciate it.

Nice to meet you!

Comments like "millions of people suffer x, y, z" even under the best intentions are certainly loaded when it comes to mental illness. On one hand, MentalPod is great because it helps us feel less alone in our suffering, but even without the math to back it up, I know my cocktail of problems is unique. I think most people's are to one degree or another, but if you have factors that are out of the ordinary even among those people with the same diagnosis, it's hard to swallow. I find hearing an individuals' stories comforting because I can appreciate their quirks in a way that makes mine not seems so downright weird. One thing I do find comforting about the statistical data is the vast numbers of people who have gotten better with known treatment plans. I can read the same books and follow the same path to get better myself. As my best friend and I so often say, "plenty of people dumber than us have managed to do" whatever it is we want to do.

Also, with respect, I would say walking around in the world believing you are "smarter" than other people is a road to disappointment. I'm "book smart" in may ways and I've found it's not the most practical way to be smart. I've learned - mostly the hard way - people who are much less intellectual than I are much better at life than I am. People with poor vocabularies and zero understanding at algebra can be great at friendships and understanding people. It might be helpful to learn about other types of "intelligences" which go beyond the types of smarts which get tagged as a "gifted child" as it could help you feel less isolated. I have found that to be the case for me. The other thing I find pleasure in is working on things I'm not "gifted" in - artistic pursuits, things requiring manual dexterity and anything fitness related even though I have to try harder at them compared to the kind of things they measure on the SATs.

I hope things get easier for you. If you keep seeking and put that intellect to work on the problems, I have no doubt you'll get healthier even if it is a longer and slower process than you'd like it to be.