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

Today I came closer than ever before. Opportunity after opportunity, each one passed up. What I did was lie. What I wanted to do was, for the first time in over 5 years, be totally honest with my psychiatrist. What's baffling about the 5 year, and counting, lie fest is that I trust him completely. Why do I lie to someone I have so much faith in? Well, it's because that would require being honest with myself... a skill I learned only a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately I'm still not the best at it. Rather than divulging my current issues, which include skipping nearly all my classes and drinking too much, I started talking about the past. Sure, telling him I've tried heroin a handful of times got a monkey off my back, but it did little to improve my current situation. My plan to fix this? Write the truth down. Nothing too long, just a short list/summation of the current problems I have heretofore been unable to share.

While I am disappointed that tonight did not go as planned, I am looking forward to next week... because I may not have admitted enough to get us on the same page, but for the first time in a long time we are on the same chapter.

Wow, this was awesome to read, EliCash!

That is a really good idea to write down some things that you might be tempted to skip over with your therapist, and that you know your next appointment is next week means you are really close to the honest communication that will really help you.

This is awesome, we are all cheering for you, and we are happy you are treating yourself with the love you deserve!

Thanks! I got the idea from a time my parents wrote a letter to me, but e-mailed it to my therapist so I could go over it with him instead of simply going through the usual family argument. Also, I know my next appointment because it's a weekly appointment, but I can tell that I'm closer than ever to being honest with him because I'm closer than ever to being honest with myself. I've been going to the same guy for 6ish years, I trust him completely and feel that I can be 100% honest with him... but I lie to him all the time. This paradox slapped me in the face a couple weeks ago, it finally hit me that I've spent all these years lying to him (and everyone else) because once I share the truth with others I can no longer deny it to myself.

Keep trucking, EliCash. I've been in therapy for a few years now, and though I like my doc a lot and trust him, I still find myself lying about certain things. For me, I just find that these issues I'm not honest about are really painful to talk about. Usually, I end up talking about all these things and attain some sort of peace with them. I think it's a tricky balance between letting things swim around in your head for a little bit (thinking about what you're lying about) and pushing yourself to be as honest as you can and to let it out and start getting to the bottom of it. In the meantime don't beat yourself up too much about it, just be as good to yourself as you can.

Also, big ups to your pic of the panda projectile vomiting (?) rainbows. That's amazing.