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

This is yet another stellar episode in a row of stellar episodes. Paul I think I speak for a lot of folks when I say I appreciate so much you sharing the specifics of what you're going through during your conversations, God Bless You sir. It helps us feel so not alone!

Just a random thought that hit me while listening to Lisa talk about what is was like to go through emotional incest with her mother. And this isn't aimed at Lisa's situation specifically, it just seems to be a common denominator in many of Paul's guests, and many people I meet who are in my age group, I'm in my mid 40s.

I hope I express this right. Back in the 60s and 70s, a lot of couples who weren't ready for children, or didn't want them, had them anyway, because of societal pressure. It was just the thing for married couples to to. And, it looked "weird" or "selfish" for a husband and wife to be childless. And nobody wanted to look "weird" or "selfish." So without regard to their future offspring, they gave birth to them. And then they didn't know what to do and some of them got overwhelmed so they either panicked and turned to substsnces or just checked out. Psyciatric help wasn't readily available like it is today, and what "help" that was tossed around at the time came in the form of useless platitudes like "cheer up," or "oh, get over it," or "well, life isn't fair."

So, fuck you, societal pressure.

I wish I had a better ending for that but as (I think) a product of this societal pressure, all I can do is tell it to go fuck itself.

I loved this episode, too. They had great chemistry--I remember laughing a lot during this episode.

On emotional incest: to be frank, I don't think the societal pressure thing really started to pushback until the late 90s--really now it's far more acceptable to be a childless married couple. I was born in 1991 to parents who were over 30... so though they didn't intend to have me (I'm a fun birth--mom didn't know antibiotics interfered with birth control, barely had sex with my dad during their marriage, and here I am), I still got the emotional incest thing from my mom.

Since I still live with her I don't know quite yet what the full extent of it is. I have told her not to tell me so much since I've been in therapy and probably told her that she told me too much when I was 13 (can't remember if I ever said the latter), and she did admit faults for it, but there was this one time when I asked if she was okay and she shot back with, "Well I'm not supposed to burden you" or something to that effect.

For her it's really an issue of not having close friends and having a co-dependent relationship with my step dad. She's a vessel for all his ramblings and rants--she probably is only able to tolerate it on most days because he's funny and smart, but he's also very loud and depressive, and I know it gets to her that she doesn't quite get to vent as much as he does. The only other thing she has is facebook and her friends on FB, which really sucks, but she's sort of put herself in a mental state of "meh I don't need a social life anyway" even though she totally had tons of friends when she lived in Southern California. It was like once she wasn't able to work she became way more isolated with my step dad, and so when shit got bad around when I was about 13, she would vent to me (when her dad passed away and his step kids/her step brothers and sisters acted like total shitheads).

So it's this thing like... I'm not uncomfortable with my mom, but I'm VERY afraid of worrying her or making her go into a panic. She now admits she thinks she has PTSD from childhood abuse, past rape, and being physically abused by my dad, but she hasn't made any steps yet to help herself cuz she probably feels like she has too much on her plate with everyone else in the family. It's kind of annoying how she's suddenly so into pleasing the family--she puts too much of herself into other people.

Like today was my first day back to college, and it was actually kind of awesome--I felt great. Then I found out instead of signing up for Art History like I thought I had, I actually signed up for Painting. The whole time I thought, "Damn I want to take Painting--but I told mom I'm taking Art History and this is going to be expensive will we have money?????" Then when she comes to pick me up (construction on my usual route to school causing her decide to drive both me and my brother to school--*SHRUG* I'll take it I guess) she's like "Oh I'm totally cool with that."

So it gets into my head that I could potentially panic or worry her and sometimes deliberately just don't mention things out of fear of that. She doesn't really blame me--I just feel like the cause for her emotional stress and hate it.

I'm hoping the more independent I become and when I move away, the transition will be fairly easy. I can imagine talking to her fairly often and not asking for too much help--I can imagine myself giving back to her in whatever way I can. She once joked about what if she gets fucked up when she's old and has to be taken care of and I pretty much said, "Uh, I'd be the one taking care of you..." just based on the fact that my sister is across the country and my brother gets a lot more frustrated with her than I do.

Phew. Long ramble. I definitely don't have it nearly as much as Paul had--like, never to that icky sexualizing part--just this "best friending" me thing while having a dad who is Only Dad and a step dad who is absent as a parent just kind of leaves me where I am today... along with other fucked up shit in my life, of course.

Were we supposed to be talking about the episode? Because I genuinely did enjoy it.

Oh, one thing did help me distance myself from her, though:

She kept calling me "her kid" at some point. Meaning I was the most like her out of her three kids.

THIS BOTHERED ME SO MUCH ON SO MANY LEVELS. Basically, "I see where you're coming from, mom, BUT I DON'T WANT YOUR LIFE PLEASETHANKS."

I just brought up that I love her so much but I'm my own person and want to be my own person and while I see our similarities--I just want to be my own person. And her answer was basically like, "Cool, me too--I just want you to be happy."

So that was good--it felt like a relief in a lot of ways.

Wow Sherlock, so... just zeroing in on step dad here just for a minute, funny & smart to loud & depressive, that really covers the gamut.

That sounds like it would be overwhelming, because this one person could be coming at you from so many different zones, and it'd be hard to predict where from and then where to.

So, did he overwhelm your mom? And then your overwhelmed mom overwhelmed you?

It sounds like she knew she was doing something because "I'm not supposed to burden you" with the emphasis on 'supposed,' sure seems to indicate to me self-awareness. And then what would she burden you with, would it be her feelings about your stepdad?

Just taking a total shot here in the dark as the peppermint tea and melatonin sink in. Ya know, I realize I'm showing up late to the party here when it comes to peppermint tea (or I could say the peppermint tea party, but I don't want to make this political), but I had it for the first time last night and oh my, the combination of melatonin and peppermint tea, it's really quite a magical, warm, cozy feeling!

Yes, she still unburdens me about my step dad. Part of me likes it because there's some things I don't know about him until I ask her. So I ask questions like, "So why does he do X?" Like, why doesn't he help pay for me and my brother's schooling when he totally has the money?

Answer from her: his eldest son, my step brother, blew the money my step dad had given him for university by getting kicked out of school.

Answer from HIM (did not specifically ask him for money--we were just talking about money one-on-one--my communication with my step dad is improving): he's saving up to give inheritance to my mom if he passes before her, and to his kids and grandchildren (including now my nephew, which is nice). My siblings don't get money until my mom dies, but I imagine it's in the will if she passes first and then he does, we'll probably get what was going to go to her. Pretty sure that's the agreement anyway.

The problem with both these answers is that he spends money A LOT. On stuff for himself or the house generally. He's OCD and a DVD/CD maniac--the latter part can be pretty cool because it's like, "Hey do you have [insert cool movie here]? Awwwriiiiight." Or "Do you have insert [cool musical artist here]? ... Awwwriiiight." He also has a huge book collection but that's the lesser of his hobbies these days.

I guess I'll give you a prime example of how the dynamic can be AWFUL. But in this case I succeeded in some way.

So he's OCD, and he goes to the gym everyday with his ipod shuffle. Since he has so much music, he has about 5000 songs in his iTunes library, and since he has a shuffle, he has playlists to load his stuff on so he can shift his music around on his shuffle as he so pleases.

Problems arise as their shitty laptop begins to putter out. He can't get his music to synch. Computers cause MAYHEM in this house because my brother and I are only children of the internet--we're not computer experts, just computer explorers, like we know how to solve a problem only to an extent. My step dad and mom by comparison are clueless.

So after a big debacle over a laptop that doesn't have a disc drive (he does not buy music off of iTunes, he has giant bookshelves of music he already likes and listens to after all), they buy another laptop with a disc drive, and my mom makes it her duty to take the old laptop and the new laptop over to a store to convert the memory from the old one onto the new one.

Yesterday we pick up the computer (I had to buy art supplies so I went with), and my step dad FLIPS THE FUCK OUT because iTunes is not on the new computer and because my mom can't figure out where the music files are, he assumes both his music but worst, HIS PLAYLISTS!!!!! are all gone.

I offer to help. Then I go into a back room to organize all my new art supplies and he throws a toddler-sized tantrum about how the computer people fucked up, send it back to the store, make them do it right--this is MOSTLY because of the playlist because "IT TAKES HOURS--DAYS!!!!" for him to organize his music. He drives away for the rest of the day--who knows where.

So I come out of my room and my mom is on the computer, looking mousy--she wasn't really blamed but no one likes tirades like. Frankly I was pissed because I offered to help.

So: I did. I put all the old music back on iTunes... wrestled with the playlist problem until I asked my more computer-literate friend, and he directed me to where I should have gone in the first place, which is how to recover playlists--I follow the steps and BAM! The playlists are there.

My step dad comes home somewhere in the evening and I'm pretty chipper because I already know I just did him a huge favor.

So when I wake up, he's like, "Thanks for your help yesterday," and I just give him thumbs up because seriously--whatever, patience is what you need with computers that he doesn't have.

My mom says later, "So he's going to pay for your new haircut." And I'm like YAY because that's what I asked for after I recovered the playlists--my mom was like "wow he should do something for you" and I was like "HE SHOULD." She said he wanted to buy me roses and she said "no, she wants her hair done."

That's a GOOD story. But believe me we were really nervous putting it all back together--appeasing him, basically. I get that he's OCD... which is probably why he should take medication that he USED to take for it. He decided to go off it once he retired, and that's when he REALLY got bad with all his habits.

So yeah... that's kind of the dynamic? He'll blow up or my mom will blow up and the house will be all quiet--since I can't stand that, I just did what I knew I could do about the situation. Does not surprise me at all that his mood lifts when the computer woes are fixed. Does not make a difference that how he reacted was really not cool for a guy over fifty... maybe he's even 60ish?

I definitely have love for my step dad--and he's told me before that he'd do anything for me and my siblings. Like I know deep down he's a good guy that's struggling with his mental illnesses and just not dealing with them the right way. It's funny since his two sons are very much jocks while my step dad is this Fine Arts major--I think he majored in art and literature? He and my mom were both stage actors and he's just been around the arts his whole life--he just basks in art in all forms. Meanwhile his step kids: my sister--wonderful artist, like child prodigy practically, my brother--guitarist and music enthusiast, me--writer, budding movie enthusiast, and now a budding artist.

I think I definitely crave his validation... probably too much. I mean yesterday was a triumph even without him saying "thank you" just because I know I did something that would help his daily routine--it was just icing on the cake to be thanked, to my face and monetarily. But I still remember bad moments: I showed him my best figure drawing from last semester and he just looks over and comments quietly, "It's good..." without even looking at it, because he was depressed that my mom had been gone for a few weeks to be there for my sister's baby. He couldn't engage. I just rolled with it and hung up the picture in my room to admire my own accomplishments. I probably only showed him because whenever he's complimented my artwork it's usually very validating, like my first year of figure--"Wow. I've seen a lot of figure drawings... that's really good." Or even in high school when I did a water color of our dog: "We should have that framed--it looks exactly like him!"

So yeah. He's just very self-involved a lot because of his depression--he's also a little agoraphobic now. And yes, my mom does dump on me her issues with him. She's overwhelmed by him because of her PTSD I think--she can't think rationally when he explodes because it triggers her into defensive reactions, like yelling back or crying or just getting shaky and scared. Meanwhile me and my brother? Neutral face, so much neutral face. Or we just get angry and just go into our rooms. In some cases I just don't comfort my mom after stuff like that, like their last weird fight--but it did like... just depress the house the whole day.

So yeah I'll stop rambling now cuz I really need a shower.

Also he's pretty much never yelled at me. At worst, he's very brusque when he tells us to do something--no pleases, just "do this." When my brother was helping clean the house by cleaning some of the mirrors, he repeated a dozen times for him to be careful of this one mirror's gold paint on the frame. My brother: "I know... *smoldering*"

So he doesn't yell at us--nor is he really beefed about me and my brother, getting into our mid twenties (yikes ) living at his house. We're a lot more respectful compared to how his eldest son was so that's probably part of why he's cool--and we make an effort, going to school, looking for jobs when it comes our way, etc. Doing chores when we realize chores need to be done.

It's always a mixed bag when I think about leaving before I'm financially able to be independent--like, looking at my options: staying with my dad, who would be a total control freak and now has a very enmeshing girlfriend with him, my aunt... who would probably also be controlling in another way. Or staying with friends, which would make me feel like a burden if I didn't financially compensate. Also all those options leaves a long drive to a community college I love going to and want to graduate from because its art department is kickass.

I just have a lot of freedom here; it's mostly because we're all mentally ill that makes it chaotic. My room is a fucking mess right now--believe me, when my step dad told me ONCE to clean it, I went into overdrive and did it. But generally I can just do whatever the fuck I want--I don't have to interact with my step dad or mom at all if I don't want to. It's just when chaos reigns it affects everyone's moods--that's the crux of the issue when it comes to household dynamics. Besides me and my mom one-on-one... well, basically the men in the family find it hard to just talk about issues, which I guess is typical but I wish it wasn't that way.

Shower time now cuz I fucking stink.

Hi Sherlock, so, it sounds like your step dad has issues with emotional regulation. Does any feeling that he has just go to a 10?

And the OCD part means that everything has to be a certain way. And there is no gray area of "Well, all this technology is bound to screw up sooner or later. I'm sure I can eventually get some of my playlists back to the way I would kind of like them to be. 'good enough' will just have to do for now!"

Yeah, right.

And it sounds like there's maybe a little enmeshment happening because you're having to observe, predict and manage dad's sensitive, sometimes volatile moods? That can take its toll and be mentally fatiguing.

What was your step dad's life like growing up? Do you know what kind of people his parents were?

And your mom gets kind of mentally overwhelmed because the fight-or-flight instinct is unfortunately kicking in and doing what it's supposed to do, and closing down access to her intellectual, analytical resources, to free her up to just react. But, there is nothing to flee, she needs to think of what to do to please him, but now she's scared shitless, and can't.

I'm sorry, I'm really reaching here to analyze based on only what you just wrote. If I'm overreaching, please feel free to tell me to go fuck myself.

I instinctively try to analyze family dynamics because, until only recently, mine was a mystery. My mom was always trying to find fault with me. If I got a "bad" grade (less than a B), the house would turn into total chaos for the entire afternoon and into the night, with her screaming things at me like, "What is the meaning of this!" and "How dare you!" and "We're going to have to put him in military school." It would go on and on, and it would be hell. To this day, I'm moritifed over anything having to do with the education system.

Only recently, after talking to my therapist who is also an MFT, have we been able to come up with some logical explanations. I always like to find the logic in emotional situations, because then it seems to make it less of an emotional issue, and more of a logical one, and it hurts less. A little less. Anyway, her faultfinder father lived with us for a long time, and he had found fault with my mom all her life. So, she was always on the defensive as to what her dad was going to find fault for her with. So, she was always trying to stay one step ahead of him. And, needless to say she was also burdened with the psychological effect that it can have on a person when her dad almost never approves of her. And this was the 1980s. Nobody had any clue as to what the effect of that was, or even how to identify it as a thing. So, I come home with a bad grade, and she's reflexively freaked out that she's going to get "in trouble" over it, and that threw her into a blue panic, and so she would take it out on me.

And her dad was a faultfinder because his dad had died prematurely in a freak accident at an untimely age. And so, this would have been around I guess the late 1890s or early 1900s, and so my mom's dad was the oldest son, so he had to drop out of school and go work in a coalmine. And he never got to go to college or anything. So, he was pissed. And, we're guessing, he stayed that way.

I'm glad you have art, Sherlock! You found something pretty great, there. I never had such an interest.

My whole theme of my life today (and for the last couple of weeks) is acceptance and forgiveness (of me). After all the chaos and the acting out and the numbing out and the self-medicating that went on all through most of my life up until age 40ish, what was supposed to happen? I was gonna be President? No. I'm blessed today to have a job, and some nice things, and I'm not in jail, and I have my health. And that is to be celebrated, I am truly blessed. And it's up to me to perceive my life that way. No one can do that for me, only me.

What was your step dad's life like growing up? Do you know what kind of people his parents were?

Oh my god. Worthy of a drama--stage, screen, or TV.

His mother was highly depressive; when she got upset, she'd bring out funeral clothes. Eventually she was in and out of mental institutions (this would probably be in the 50s??) and got electroconvulsive therapy several times, which my mom and step dad agree made her worse. She was a compulsive shopper; his dad had a very nice job as an entrepreneur so he grew up privileged and pretty wealthy. By the time he died and she had aged, she just bought and bought and bought--when she died, my mom claims she had 200 different belts. I think she was doing this even before his dad died, too, because a lot of the clothes they brought back were vintage from the 60s or so. When she became elderly, she was VERY nasty towards Jay, bickering at him and eventually when she succumb to dementia, thinking he was trying to poison her and also just going down the rabbit hole into totally paranoia and a generalized meanness.

His dad constantly traveled for his job; I found out a while ago that my step dad would stay at his dad's friends house for weeks when his mom was hospitalized, and then live with his dad until he had to travel again. They lived in Providence but his dad mostly worked in New York. My step dad actually really liked living at that family's house, at least--he said it introduced him to rock and roll since the family had some teenage daughters who would listen to stuff, and they also had sons around his age.

So yeah, I'd say it was highly dramatic and chaotic--he went to a private school and it sounds like he recieved a wonderful education, and was in a rock band when he was a teenager and lived some of the hippie life of the 60s (says he missed Woodstock because it was just a rumor he heard of a random concert but got to see some other great bands of that era anyway).

He's not always at a 10; like today, the toilets got clogged and he didn't freak out at all, just sort rolled with it. At worse when stuff like that happens he just obsesses--him: "Did it overflow?" mom: "No, it didn't--" him: "because if it got under the woodboards--" mom: "it didn't overflow." He does put a lot of energy into talking and both he and my mom project their voices when they're railing about something but it's almost always about something on TV or something political or whatever. He has strong opinions but I definitely think he self-medicates with marijuana and occasionally alcohol (both at once if it's the alchy) so while it's not good and not a full tamper on his emotional regulation for the stuff that REALLY matters to him, it's at least good enough for the stuff that doesn't matter to him.

One thing that does matter to him is how the house is arranged and if it's clean enough. When I was psychotic/manic, I changed all this stuff around in his room--he and my mom really like little chochkies, so that's mainly what I messed with. He FLIPPED THE FUCK OUT ON ME, though I notice he's left one thing that I changed unchanged, which is that I tipped over this Elvis thing so that it's not upright, it's angled. Kind of weird. I know OCD comes from wanting to control the microcosm in the idea that it will help control the macrocosm, and that's what it really seems like with him.

I don't mind the questions or presumptions at all; you're mostly hitting the nail on the head. I'm interested in family dynamics as well since mine is strange--yours sounds horrible, so I'm really sorry you had a mother like that. My mom thinks his whole family has genetic brain issues--his mom was depressive and OCD, he's depressive and OCD, and she connects it now to one of his sons who has epilepsy--she makes the connection because now that he's on medication that fully controls his seizures, he ticks like he has mild tourettes. I'm not sure about that but it makes sense to me that he has trouble communicating and regulating his feelings with absent parents and that he picked up OCD from his mom.

The art thing is a blessing and a curse; I know my mom still has it in her to make the argument that we're all mentally disordered because we're sensitive creatives. The next time she brings that up, I'm straight up going to tell her I can't write or draw when I'm full-on depressed, and that when I'm manic, the quality of my work declines. I do SOMEWHAT believe my OWN creativity has come out of being introverted and therefore drawing from my imagination so much and being able to use my mind as an escape, but it has nothing to do with scale. I think she views it differently because she was an actress; it's much more OUT THERE, like you get to act out your crazy, your sad, your whatever that you have inside you and it's more cathartic. For me, it's only cathartic when I'm in the fucking zone--and there was a period in my life, when I was first depressed, when I phoned in my writing and it just wasn't working out. I can't art my way out of my mental illness--it'll just be a resource there for me when I have more emotional regulation myself to be able to actually make it become cathartic for myself. I also really resent the "crazy/sad artist" cliche because if I'm successful but also openly a mental health advocate... well, I'll be boxed in. So that's something I don't really like. I think I'm going to talk to my forcibly adopted mentor about it next time I see him. Saying forcibly adopted because he's so nice and I just crave his insight because he was a lot like me in that he thought he wasn't naturally talented but learned how to create really good work--and now he's working on comics, which is what I want to do, so it's even better.

Anyway, I appreciate your interest, honestly. And really... yeah your own situation sounds interesting. Did you have a dad around or what? I can't imagine how she'd treat you that way if he was around...

Bah, called my step dad by his name n accident; oh well. :/

Also I am very happy that I grew up with a step dad, mom, and biological father who all appreciate the different arts; it definitely makes me different, even if it used to feel really alienating. I like that I grew up surrounded by paintings and shelves full of books and amazing music blasting in the living room (even if that was sometimes weird and now sometimes annoying--he does have extremely eclectic and interesting taste in music). I like that my step dad and I can connect on literature, movies, music, and art. It's a blessing in that sense.

Also I'm wondering what YOUR relationship was like with your grandpa, if he lived with you for so long? I barely grew up with any grandpa figures; my dad's dad died of diabetes related to his alcoholism, and my mom's dad lived in SoCal and was very caught up in his "new" family--she had a very close, I think enmeshed, relationship with him, but I only met him once or twice and I barely remember him. I pretty much just had grandmas. Now that I think about it it kind of makes sense when I think about my fantasies; I do like to fantasize myself with older men romantically (not TOO old but definitely over the ten year gap a bit--I'm in my twenties), but I also like to imagine making friends with like OLD guys, just friends, like a surrogate daughter or granddaughter. Michael Cane and Stephen Fry are my favorite to fantasize about.

... Actually I do make friends with old guys. One of my really close friends is probably in or closing in on his fifties; I felt very doted upon when a local music venue guy just... put his hand on my head when I said something kind of funny/ambitious, and really like talking to him cuz he treats me like I'm on his level; a lot of people in my punk scene are just older dudes since you know, it was the fucking 80s/early 70s when punk started happening--my favorite band in high school had guys in their forties in it, who started the band when I was a baby and was still playing.

Then there's that art mentor I mentioned. I guess I'm just naturally inclined to want male figures in my life because my dad was strict and overwhelming (I often feel like things have to always be on HIS terms to get validation), my step dad was distant, and I just plain didn't have many other relatives I saw consistently. When I had a history teacher I really admired in high school, I imagined him adopting me; that kind of shit.

Sucks to have daddy issues when I know I'm bisexual. Like I do have flights of fancy about women but they're not as poignant to me about fantasies about men, friendship or romantically speaking. I also really have more guy friends than girl friends... it's just odd.