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

For the past 10 years, I have been on a roller-coaster of mental afflictions including depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders. This year has been extremely rough on me as my wife went through a trial separation for 3 months. We worked on ourselves during this time and recently moved back in together. She has worked so hard on becoming a better, more responsible person and I'm so proud of her. Our life together is good now. I feel like our marriage is having a very stabilizing effect on my anxiety/depression. This all sounds good, right? Wrong.

After dealing with anxiety/depression for over a decade, I find happiness/contentedness extremely uncomfortable. I am a musician and have always thrived on "the struggle". I am getting strong urges to self-sabotage (binge/purge, restrict, drink heavily, smoke pot, etc.). It makes me sad to think about because all I have wanted this whole time has been to be happy but now that I have a taste of it, I feel like I don't want it. Has anyone found themselves in this situation? How did you deal with these feelings? Thank you in advance! This is a great community.

B

Hello SonicCat24. I am not sure if this is the same thing, but I find it impossible to contemplate leaving my constant low level of anxiety behind. With my therapist, we are having success with creating little bits of peace in my life, instead of trying to make everything perfect all at once.

Please take care, and go easy on yourself, because you deserve to be self-loving to yourself. All the best, cheers!

Thank you, Manuel. I have a difficult time trying to work on things a little bit at a time and really enjoying those small moments of peace. It sounds so cliche but I really have to learn to live in the moment. If things in my life get "okay", my anxious minds fires up and starts looking for the next thing to worry about.

-B

My therapist explained it this way: If you've had 10 years of anxiety/depression, that's your "comfort zone". All your habits, all your coping mechanisms, everything you know is in that place. So it's bound to feel "wrong" and strange when you start to experience contentment/happiness (or anything different). I think the key is to allow yourself to experience those small moments. Eventually, in time, you will feel more comfortable with them.

I have to echo manuel_moe_g. Go easy on yourself. As they say "Rome wasn't built in a day".