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

A therapist I saw a few years ago had a really provocative suggestion for a query about negative self-talk: "whom does this serve?"

I was just struggling with a lot of negative self-talk during voice practice... and that query popped into my mind.

As I practice voice and the negative self-talk casts all kinds of ableist slurs in my direction and tells me I shouldn't bother... whom does that serve?

Some ideas:

1) a capitalist culture that wants to stymie individual creativity and discipline around anything that doesn't make more money for some rich person
2) people who don't have the discipline to practice an art regularly and resent anyone who does so
3) people who want the spotlight on them rather than you
4) my own inertia. Autistic inertia is for real and often I resent doing anything other than sitting on the couch.

I wound up punching through a lot of the negative self-talk and I had a pretty fulfilling session of voice practice. It's not always that way of course.

Thanks for sharing, techchick. I've been doing online therapy for a few months now and occasionally I question why I spend the time and money on it. But then there are sessions when my therapist says some profound or a light bulb goes off. That keeps me going back.