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

Hi everyone. Been struggling/suffering for a long time, and been working with various therapists and on my own for quite a few years to try to fix what I can fix about myself and cope with or try to extricate myself from situations that I can't improve. I've been depressed and anxious for a long time, and as I have done more work, I have realized that there is a lot of anger and self-loathing underneath all of that as well.

Things just have felt like they are more intense lately. I feel like things go through cycles, and a lot of it has to do with external events (work deadlines, family stress) as well as the passage of time (wedding anniversary, birthday coming up). I am hitting 40 soon, I am going up for tenure in a year, and I feel like everything in my life - professionally, personally - is either completely broken or teetering on the balance. At the same time, I feel like I understand my problems - the internal scripts that keep me stuck, the negative self-talk, and all that - and I know that I deserve to be treated better (by myself and others), and I deserve happiness. My current therapist is good, but I just can't see him often enough, and I am frustrated with how long it's taking for things to get better. I feel like my wife's problems, my parents' bullshit, work stress just keep reinforcing all of the negative shit and it's like swimming against the current. Everyone says to take care of myself and be nice to myself, but it's hard - not enough hours in the day, not enough dollars in the paycheck. And I don't even trust my instincts and thoughts and feelings enough to really believe that I know what I want or need anymore. It sucks.

Thanks for reading.

i understand the not being able to truth yourself. I tell my friends i'm an unreliable narrator, in part because i know things aren't as bad as I make them out to be but it's still not comforting.

Life is a hell of stress and trying to get past it, and I think it does move in cycles. The beginning and end of the school semester are the worst for me, every semester.

Thanks for sharing, I wish I could say more than that but knowing that someone is listening can help.

JasmineP wrote:I tell my friends i'm an unreliable narrator

This is a fascinating way of putting it!

JasmineP wrote:
I tell my friends i'm an unreliable narrator

This is a fascinating way of putting it!

I got that way of phrasing it from one of my lit classes, we were reading Beloved and my professor described the narrator as unreliable.

Cycles – there are definitely cycles. I’ve been going through another rough patch the last week or so – after the longest smooth patch (?) I’ve had in years. The cycles never end. The best therapist I’ve ever had (he was a genius - seriously) told me one of the signs that you are improving is that your periods of depression gradually get shorter and easier to recover from. That has definitely been the case for me.

I definitely understand your frustration with how long it’s taking, though. That has driven me crazy in the past. For me – and this was with twice a week therapy sessions – it seemed like I would go a month or more talking about the same shit ad nauseum with absolutely nothing happening, and then it was like something would just click one day. It might have been something that had been discussed multiple times previously, but for some reason it never clicked until…it did. Strange how the mind works. Regardless, it’s still frustrating. All I can say is, keep at it and try to open your heart as much as possible. Just because you know something about yourself or your situation logically doesn’t mean you have let it into your heart. And knowing things logically doesn’t really make a damn bit of difference. You have to feel it if it’s going to make a difference.

One of the biggest obstacles I have had to face – and still do - is the wall I have constructed around my heart. It was virtually impenetrable before lots and lots of therapy. I didn’t feel much of anything. Very slowly I started to chip away at it. Very slowly.
I had/have many of issues with my dad. Tons of anger, frustration, resentment, rage, etc., etc. My dad is basically the entire reason I’m so fucked up…but he’s not a bad guy. He really does love me and has busted his ass to provide for me my entire life. It was quite the conundrum, but one of my biggest breakthroughs in treatment was when I was able to “hold all the parts” of who and what my father is to me. Before I was able to hold all the parts, it was either love or hate, compassion or no mercy – none of them simultaneously. It wasn’t until I could accept all the feelings I had about him at the same time that I was able to break through a huge barrier to our relationship.

I think we automatically try to make sense of our worlds by attempting to categorize things as black or white. It’s never black or white. We can’t make sense of anything until we are willing to hold all the parts simultaneously, thereby accepting that everything is a shade of gray. It’s never all good. It’s never all bad. It’s not “completely broken” or “teetering in the balance.” It’s somewhere in between. Sometimes it’s worse than it is better. Sometimes it’s better than worse. It’s never all or nothing.

Life and truth are shades of grey. Hold all the parts.

Good luck, my fellow struggler.

-D

Thanks Jasmine and diaz.

My therapist told me yesterday that I am obsessing too much and I need to get out of my head. That I need to just sit with my feelings. At the same time that I know that is true, it scares me, because I don't like a lot of my feelings (they aren't pleasant, or they aren't how I'm supposed to feel), and it annoys me a little, because I hate getting "advice" from my wife, my therapist or other members of my group that feels to me like they're saying "just do this and you'll feel fine." Especially when I really don't completely understand how to do the thing they are saying I should do.

I head what you are saying about black and white versus gray. My therapist constantly reminds me that feelings aren't right or wrong, and that "always" and "never" and other absolute statements are things that I should look out for. He says that I am too logical/analytical/obsessive and not in touch with emotions or emotionally connected enough to other people (and to enough other people) - but I am feeling a lot more emotions since I started working with him, but most of them are very bad emotions!

Grrr.

weary wrote:I hate getting "advice" from my wife, my therapist or other members of my group that feels to me like they're saying "just do this and you'll feel fine." Especially when I really don't completely understand how to do the thing they are saying I should do.

Yeah, I know this feeling. Some people have not struggled enough to be a good coach - good coaching is definately not telling someone to do something that they have no idea to do. Good coaching is breaking things down, so that every failure just means a little course correction, that the person can do right now.

I think what your therapist is saying is for you to try not to resist your feelings because they won't go away until you do. Just let them come and they'll go away sooner. Resistance is futile. It sounds counter-intuitive but it can work.

You might even - heaven forbid - cry or something. Hard to believe, but it does happen. Often my anger/rage is actually a result of feeling hurt in some way. If I figure out what I'm so hurt about, it sometimes leads to tears.

Oh, I cry. I've cried a whole hell of a lot over the past year or two. A lot more and a lot harder than ever before.

I've been shutting down feelings for years - anger, sadness, happiness, all of it. I'm a fucking coward - I can't handle the consequences of expressing my emotions if I feel like they're not the "right" ones or there will be conflict/disagreement/disapproval. I don't even know what I want or need anymore, Ive spent so long suppressing it and convincing myself that what I want or need doesn't matter compared to what everyone else wants and needs. I'm so fucking tired of accommodating other people and putting up with other people's shit. I want it to be my turn. But it never will be. I'm fucking stuck. And even if I cut off contact with my parents, leave my wife, quit my job, what then? Then I will really be alone, and nobody will want anything to do with me.

weary wrote:I'm fucking stuck. And even if I cut off contact with my parents, leave my wife, quit my job, what then? Then I will really be alone, and nobody will want anything to do with me.

Please know we here are all cheering for you, and we know all too well the sorrow and the pain you are being asked to endure.

I don't want to lie to you, doing right by yourself may alienate and isolate you from people in your past, even family members. It will probably be merely temporary, there is a tiny risk it could be permanent.

This is a piece of business advice about how to manage money in a business during the difficult times: "First, pay the feds; Second, pay yourself; then pay everyone else with what is left". But that advice stands for how to "spend" your psychic energy and time - "take care of yourself first". Any way you analyze it - taking care of yourself first is the most loving thing you can do for EVERYONE in your life. Stupid society calls it selfishness, but really it is the most GENEROUS way to live your life - because you cannot be generous to others if you are not generous to yourself first. It is a law of the universe. When you are generous to yourself, you cannot help but out-pour a huge surplus of generosity to all others.

However you decide to proceed, weary, we here are all cheering for you and for your greatest today and tomorrow. Please take care!