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

I have <real> challenges

when I acknowledge those <real> challenges, i come up with really great and do-able and realistic plans

acknowledging my <real> challenges is <not> excuse making

bad people make excuses to allow them to continue doing bad things --- but i simply am <not> making excuses at all, anyway you look at it --- i am not a bad person

Word, Manuel Moe.

A small but important challenge I’d like to offer you:

While you need not name it here, what is the smallest/most accomplishable of the challenges?

Is there a challenge, however (seemingly “small”) you could accomplish this week?

Food for thought!

Oh I am so glad to hear from you Manuel Moe, I was worried. How can we help?

You are not a bad person. Please tell me you didn’t kill a duck!

I like that you keep it simple MM; easier to process.

Simple is better; in this case.

Heh, no duck killing here

Deep in my mind, I am terrified I will turn into a bad person like my father if I am not harsh on myself

Also I can’t believe that most days I am only good for 2.5 hours of productive work - to be that lazy I must be a bad person who really doesn’t care

Piecing it all together…

Manuel Moe, I offer this with all sobriety:

2.5 hours of productive work is very common and standard for modern American employees.

In fact, pre-pandemic I'd estimate we were, on the whole, less productive.

Just my two cents!

Manuel Moe, if I may I'd like to take back my post just above.

Here is what I should have said:

Time on task is a moral issue, and I'll be glad to stand by you as you explore and address this in 2023.

Taking on the negative characteristics of the parent is somewhat inevitable. Resisting this can be a little pointless. The very good villain though may actually pass on positive traits. In different hands their bad habits could even be the key to unlocking good superpowers.

Fear of becoming the father can be precisely the thing stopping the child from becoming their whole self.

The sweetest revenge might lie in being like them and yet still getting it right.

(((feel foolish about the insignificance of my problems compared to the day-to-day emotional rollercoaster that is Mental Fairy's life)))

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continuing prep work on my new year's resolutions

life throws a lot of responsibilities at me, and i am simply not up to the task, because of challenges that i don't control and that i never chose

but i am not as effective as i could be, because of how i choose to react to: pain, fatigue, stress&anxiety, emotions, thoughts, feelings

i have some habitual tightly-coupled negative reactions to pain, fatigue, stress&anxiety, emotions, thoughts, feelings

pain, fatigue, stress&anxiety, emotions, thoughts, feelings is neither good nor bad, they just <are>, simple neutral facts of life

it is the habitual tightly-coupled negative reactions that are the problem

they feel completely automatic, but i can use the spirit of play and experimentation to see that they actually are very much under my power of choice

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what do you guys think?

hope you are doing well, you guys mean so much to me, you make me feel <heard> and <seen>

Morning MM

Well it is here. Rain, grey sky and distant thunder. My favourite.

I worry about you and hope you understand how important you are on this forum. Your kindness is felt.

I understand you feel somewhat less worthy of such compliments but everything you place on here is a nugget of gold to get to know you.

Your truth, your expressions and your support is worth more to us than you with ever know.

You’re learning so much about yourself as we are about own minds, bodies and souls.

Your response to events, situations, friendships, family and emotions are only felt by you. You have an internal gage that allows you to process feelings and emotions and sometimes they express themselves in ways that are hard to control. Learning that myself.

I admire how you have insight on yourself. It took a few words from others for myself to see how I handle things. How I react to a situation might be completely different on the inside.

Example: seeing someone walking towards me smiling and saying good morning on my walk or jog, i become torn inside as I want to be left alone, remain in my bubble of silence and say nothing. I do however reply with a nice response but inside I am struggling to accept others are out and about at 5am, it makes me a little annoyed! This morning I drove to a trail I know well and got just over 1.6km in and saw people. I immediately turned and went back to car and drive home because it’s too late in the morning. I’ve learnt now that I do this because of fatigue and lack of sleep. After conversations with SD i have learnt I react certain ways when I’m tired. Late afternoons or evenings I know I’m not mentally available for intense conversation.

Do you find you’re more reactive at certain times of day? When you have overworked or overeaten? In the presence of to many people or difficult locations?

Can I ask what situations concern you most?