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

First up, besides considering how difficult life is at any time, I fully recognize that summer 2020 is a time of unprecedented upset, confusion, and suffering. That I am showered, fed, and clothed means today is a good day. I'm a success today if I don't drink today, and I haven't.

That said, I am spending up to five hours a day doomscrolling.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/19/89272859 ... -the-cycle''

I can't stop the strife and divisiveness of the world outside my brain and mind.

Meanwhile, perhaps exacerbated by all these mental troubles, I continue to have dental pain, which just drains my soul faster than anything. The mind and body are connected, and my mind is sad. I wonder if my racing mind is being manifested in physical pain

I can't control the larger world, but I can inch into better choices for me:

1. I can take an aspirin for my dental pain.
2. I can go outside for five minutes of sunshine.
3. Per the article above, I can set my phone timer to limit doomscrolling.
4. I can have paperback books ready, which can transport me to another world.
5. I can do five minutes of tai chi.
6. I can post here.

Thanks for listening! I will indeed post here, again, with updates as I mitigate doomscrolling.

If you regress back to doomscrolling, please be compassionate to yourself, humans are not about perfection, humans are more about gently improving capabilities.

This is great honesty. I can really feel your sadness and suffering coming through. Inching is a good way to put it. And it’s good focus. Tiny movements foreword.

Doom is not certain, but even if it were, there’d still be decisions to make. I imagine there’d be endless repetitive tasks and long wait times. And it wouldn’t be a cataclysmic event; just a hectic series of banal twists and turns that seem to go on forever.

Keep the decisions coming. Keep inching like an absolute boss.

Keep posting, Oak!
We're here.

As they say on the rooms “progress not perfection “