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

Hi, I'm going to use this thread to write down my day to day thoughts. Maybe daily, probably less.

I've been isolating myself more and more over the past while. Actually when I look over the past weeks, months, years that statement probably is true for all of those time periods. I've been becoming more negative and less activity focused. This is not good.

One good thing I did this past week was I went to a support group for the first time. Nothing revolutionary, but it was good to hear people speak about some of the issues I have as well and get the chance to speak about what is going on with me.

Very good! I look forward to reading. I celebrate you using your words, finding your voice.

Short post, long posts, I am looking forward to it.

At the moment I have some tightness in my stomach.

Day 3 of a 4 day weekend. Weekends I find are the hardest because I isolate.

I've had my neigbour smoking out on their back patio the whole summer (ok maybe bothers me 2 times a day on average, sometimes many more). It blows into my window. I don't even know whether they know its a problem for me. The window makes a noise when I close it so I suspect they do but maybe not. Its frustrating. Its ludicrous that I've not even at least said "Hey I'm not sure if you realize but..." I have no relationship with this neigbour.

Had a good chat with a chat friend of mine on messenger. Although I'm somewhat frustrated with her b/c she wont even say her real name or anything. We do have good discussions. She is on another continent so its not like I'll be popping over.

I think I'm also spending too much time checking this site and Reddit (and Twitter). When someone put a mentalpod page on Reddit I kind of got a bit addicted to it. And by addiction maybe not so much an addiction but a distraction that I do to keep away the negative thoughts and so forth.

A tough week possibly coming up at work this week.

That's all for now.

Take care, gfyourself. Please be kind to yourself!

So it is Sunday.

Sunday is my worst day.

Especially with the weekend having been lived in (for the most part) total disconnection.

I feel sick about my life and my stomach is starting to tighten a bit.

I feel both fearful of making changes yet sick about the amount of time that has already passed and the opportunities to change that have already passed.

Its a catch-22.

Just pulled out the list of Cognitive Distortions from Feeling Good (Burns). I'm doing many of them right now:
All Or Nothing Thinking
Overgeneralization
Mental Filter
Disqualifying The Positive
Jumping To Conclusions (Mind Reading, The Fortune Teller Error)
Magnification (Catastrophizing) Or Minimization
Emotional Reasoning
Should Statements
Labeling And Mislabeling
Personalization

Bad night last night - little sleep due to anxiety but today I went to the gym for the third day in the row so that was good.

gfyourself wrote:went to the gym for the third day in the row

Huzzah for gfyourself!

Thanks Manny!

Today I actually went for the fourth time... its cutting into my workday so really I have to start getting to the office earlier.

I find that it definitely helps make me feel less physically stressed although I still have quite a bit of mental activity.

love Burn's book.

I also like 'Feeling Good'. I reluctantly pulled it off my bookshelf today considering that it may be helpful. I read a little bit of it about a year ago. Lots of what you say, gfyourself rings true for me. Good for you for getting out to the gym, how is that going? Being active helps tremendously, but I struggle with staying disciplined.

Nice to see a fellow Canadian on here.

-serenity88