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

The dynamic between Susanna and her father was what kept me in the interview.

What a great podcast. Susanna is SO tough on herself and doesn't give herself enough credit. Sometimes just getting up in the morning is something to be proud of! BE PROUD.

I think what Susanna was trying to get to when speaking about her father was the fact that his words mean nothing because he has no integrity. My father cheated on my mother and although I didn't really care for my father before that, he truly lost any respect I had for him when he cheated.

Susanna, if you read this please know that you have value no matter what you do to make rent or how long it takes you to achieve your dream. One caution for you would be that you are very empathic and intuitive and I think other people's shit affects you emotionally and drags you down as a result. If you can, look on iTunes for meditations on psychic protection and the like, I think this will be very helpful for you to keep that shit from sticking around and affecting you.

Paul, this was a wonderful interview. You were so honest in speaking about "the shell" and wanting to get behind that and why. Thank you so much for that!

I was so creeped out by this interview. This feeling had nothing to do with Susanna Lee, whom I felt great empathy for. I thought she articulated the burden of sex work in a very thoughtful way.

What bothered me was Paul's comments about being a consumer of the services of a sex worker and wishing they would also allow him to purchase their emotional involvement as well as the intimate parts of their bodies. Later in the interview he said he had read a book about the reality of sex work and had realized that sex work is dangerous and soul destroying. But at the beginning of the interview it seemed to me he was putting on a 'sex-positive sex worker' attitude that was all about increasing the power of the purchaser to coerce the sex worker to open up their soul as well as their legs. I found it disgusting and hypocritical.

It was no wonder to me that Susanna Lee felt that she had to defend herself from him. She even mentioned that he wasn't giving her anything with his expression, that he was hard to read and she didn't feel comfortable. Then, later, when he actually pushes her to open up (because his manner and the tone of his comments had not given her reason to trust him), he uses the power of the interview relationship to force her to become emotionally available to him (ie. "I don't want to be a bad interview I had better open up and cry."). Which is exactly what she did.

It was informative to understand how sex workers cope with the danger and inherent violation of personal space that their work entails. Susanna Lee gave a good example of how our moral compass can be compromised when our internal state of emotional and mental well being has been in an insecure condition (the rack attack and negotiating a sex deal with a friend). I felt Paul really missed an opportunity here to talk about that relationship, rather than trying to rationalize the role he had played in the past of further victimizing women for his own sexual gratification.

I know that Paul specifies that he is not a therapist at the outset of these interviews, I hope he takes this interview to his next therapy session and examines his relationship with women and his views of sexuality and what it means to be a sexual human being. I also think Susanna Lee could do herself a favour and take this interview to a therapy session and discuss how she felt at the different turns in the questioning. I sensed that she was not happy to be a sex worker and that she also didn't know what it was that compelled her to stay in the game, other than a generalized idea about 'daddy issues'. She talked at length about how her father saying, "I'm proud of you." did not mean anything to her, but she didn't talk about the actual dynamics of what it was about her relationship with her father that left such a damaging impression, or what she needs to do now to recover from its harmful effects.

I realize that Paul has been open about his acting out on obsession and compulsion through a video game recently. I wonder if he realizes the effect that absence has on his own capacity to engage with humanity.

Cudos for Susanna Lee for sticking out the interview, but I feel Paul owes her an apology.

irrationalpersist, I think you're being way too judgmental.

Irrationalpersist;

I agree with what you have posted above. Everyone is probably sick of me bitching about this and I am too frankly. Some of Paul's line of questions and his private thoughts (which sneak in covertly) make for some really harsh listening. The comment about people giving their soul as well as their time in a business transaction is just ICKY since the business being conducted is sex work.

Even if if it wasn't sex work the person is at their job, this is not an appropriate setting to be baring someone's soul for a stranger. Even in comedy a certain level of information is uncomfortable if that is what Paul is using as a frame of reference. Personally I have felt very uncomfortable when customers at my job(s) asked me about my arm not working and how that felt, or why I looked beaten and defeated every day, or tried to engage me emotionally. It's "work" I'm here to make rent and pay bills, otherwise I would be anywhere else. There is such a thing as boundaries and my goodness people feel the need to stomp on those all the time. I think in this interview you may have crossed a few Paul. Susanna eventually did cry, did that make you happy? Did it fill the gap? If it did it was probably temporary because that gap can never be filled the way you are doing it.

Please Paul take your own advice and fill the gap by being of service not by making some stranger cry, because you opened up something just for the sake of opening it. Susanna told you she was being guarded and you intentionally broke the wall to see what would happen.

I feel Paul that maybe you should take some of your therapy time and discuss ways to not push people so much. Bring in sample questions you would ask a guest and ask it that is something you should be asking. As you say at the start of the podcast you are not a therapist but some of the question lines you follow should only be asked by professionals in a therapy setting. Where the person feels protected, safe, and there is a ethical standard that can't be broken. The way the podcast works there is no such ethical stopgap and sometimes there should be. For the protection of the guest and the listeners too. I sound like a broken record I know that but these issues have still remained.

You have resources to make these changes I know you do whether you sit down with past guests who are therapists (or where) (Emily V. Gordon is at the Meltdown all the time, drive over and run questions by her. Talk to Dr. Jessica Zucker via email, ect, ect) Or taking time out of your therapy to ask your own therapist.

If you are afraid of losing listeners, fuck those people, they aren't listening for the right reasons anyway. Look for validation in something else.

I try really hard to be open minded because I know deep down everyone tries their best to be as good as they can be. Intellectually I don't believe anyone deserves to be judged, but emotionally I can't get past the fact that this woman is a hooker. I'm supposed to feel sorry for a hooker who is unashamed of her lifestyle? I couldn't listen after the first few minutes because of that. Also, I think Paul is frequently dishonest about his true feelings in his attempt to be politically correct. He's in a constant battle between his heart and his head and when he follows his head he comes off as inauthentic. Am I projecting? Perhaps somewhat, but there is something fake about Paul that I can't put my finger on. He tries WAY too hard.

This interview was sooooo awkward. I thought that Paul usually meets with his interviewees beforehand to do sort of a pre-interview. I got the impression that this was the first time they had met in person and that Paul hadn't prepped any questions. I also got the impression that they did not like each other. Paul was trying his best not to be judgemental but it still came across in his tone. I was annoyed at him complaining that strippers treat men like children and act dumb and don't share their personal lives with clients. That is called a REAL relatioship and not something you can buy in a strip club.

I was very disturbed by this podcast, I really feel this woman needs help and that Paul was over his head with her problems, I felt he was just patronizing her and she needs to value herself more her story upset me and I am not that easy to shock.

This is one of the rare interviews where someone is in the middle of their issue rather than well into recovery if not already recovered.