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

Sarah shares about her mother's battles with Borderline Personality Disorder, her relationship with such a "beautifully disastrously complicated" woman, Sarah's own battles with bulimia, anxiety, and co-dependency and the role exercise has played in helping her moods.

This episode is sponsored by Blue Apron. For your first 3 meals free (with free shipping) go to www.blueapron.com/mental

Follow Sarah on Twitter @Smartypants_Inc www.twitter.com/smartypants_inc

To read the Salon article she wrote about her mom go to http://www.salon.com/2016/02/28/i_loved ... _disorder/#

Tickets are still available for LAPodfest. Go to www.lapodfest.com and use offercode HAPPY for $5 off.

The best episode from a borderline parents child.

How totally and utterly beautiful. As someone with a borderline parent this has been my most accurate description, the beautifully disastrous person. Sarah's mother sound so, so troubled and trapped but as Sarah says she seems to have done the best she possibly could. Just totally and utterly beautiful but so so disastrous.

I have had BPD for 30 years and I'm still amazed at the complex nature of this illness. While Sarah's mother had BPD, the manifestation of the illness is so much different in her than in me that it almost seems like another illness entirely. So much of my BPD is about depression and not about the manic controlling behaviour that Sarah's mother exhibited. At one point Paul talked about depression and BPD being quite different and yet my BPD experience has been much more about depression than anything else. I have also never had any issues with substance abuse which goes to show you that you can't define a person by an illness like BPD. It's interesting to see just how people try to narrow down these complex mental illnesses and put them in boxes when humans are far more complex than that. I also didn't like the simplistic comment about empathy which doesnt' fit my experience with many other borderlines I know. Most borderlines I know can be very empathic but only lose the empathy when they are in an active state. It's also important to note how quickly the research on this illness is changing. 10 years ago it was only a female illness and now it's very much for both sexes. As little as 5 years ago most therapists believed it was primarily an illness brought on by abuse or neglect. Now that is being challenged significantly as there appears to be a much greater genetic component than first realized. The bottom line is that this illness and much of mental health is still being explored and it's extremely dangerous to jump to conclusions about people based on a diagnosis that has changed markedly in the last 20 years. I'm sick of being labelled quite frankly.

Thank you for sharing that Jimmy. What your wrote is really important for me and other people to know. Can I read it on air? If so how would you like me to refer to you?

Paul

Paul, your podcasts have been a very big part of my very small life for the last couple of years. You can certainly read my comment on the air. Jimmy is a pseudonym anyway so you can use that name. Take care.

Paul, on the topic of empathy and the limits of modern psychiatry/psychology (two of the points in my comment), there is an excellent podcast where Sam Harris (a cognitive neuroscientist) discusses empathy with Paul Bloom (professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University). It briefly touches on the limits of psychiatry and goes into great depth on empathy. It's a very interesting take on the subject and might be worth a listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIK2vlE6UIk

Thank you!