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

With much thanks to our dear friend and diligent mod, Manuel Moe, I offer some of my own thoughts on awakening the inner warrior. Get ready for some Freud, Robert Bly, and Joseph Campbell.

@Manuel Moe and others: please please please share your own thoughts on awakening your inner warrior. I am also deeply interested in hearing about how the culture or sub-culture you grew up viewed nurturing the warrior.

In the meantime, my preliminary thoughts:

1. My father failed me.

He failed me in about 4 specific ways, each of which I've detailed to him, as a way of clearing the wreckage from our past. I also told him that for every time he specifically failed me, he really came through for me 19 times. So a 95% success rate, which is statistically significant! We get along fine nowadays.

As a child I was getting bullied for years. One day a degenerate punched me in the mouth. I took it, and bled. The geniuses in my junior high gave me a Saturday school. (At that detention session I read Edith Hamilton's "Greek Mythology", including the Norse mythology, which is just pure moral instruction for a beat-upon boy.)

2. I came to my own rescue

In the last year I've tried Brazilian jujitsu and karate.

Were I to find myself in that same situation as years ago, I'd immediately put my hands up and try to get away. If that were impossible, I have been trained in Americanas and Ezekiels. Both of these are very serious matters to apply to another human. I sincerely hope I'd never have to use any of them, ever, especially the Ezekiel.

While I hope I never have to use them, if faced with it I am ready.

About six months ago a loose dog threatened me. Without thinking I immediately put my hands up and looked for an easy way to escape. Seeing none, I instinctively assumed this defensive posture:

https://stock.adobe.com/images/forward- ... do/1709475

The idiot owner eventually observed what was happening, collected his dog, and went away.

So, a small thing, demonstrating how far I've come: from learned helpless to taking responsibility for my own person.

I'll write more, detailing my father's egregious faults, and thoughts on larger cultural depictions of the warrior. But for now, I used my words.

In the moment when we’re desperately trying to get the approval of a parent, the parent can desperately be trying to prove to their (sometimes even deceased) parent, that they are a good person. “Look how I am parenting my child”, they’re trying to signal to their parent, “please validate me.” And ironically, in that moment, while the parent is turned toward their own parent, the child experiences neglect; and a cycle is reinforced.

It’s important to reach for strength. But it might also be that because vulnerability is such a strong feeling when it comes on, strength is required to stay in it, while still listening and being able to respond as yourself.

I guess that’s what I read into it.

I was suicidal around the age of 25, which was 25 years ago, even though the feelings are still fresh in my mind.

So I often think if life is worth living.

Yes, it is, I tell myself. Because I can be a warrior for good, because the battle between good and evil is pitched, and terribly evenly matched, even a tiny disturbance can unleash great good, or great evil.

So I can be a warrior for good, and my warrior spirit is greatly needed.

Now, in the past, I would see myself do something not in line with a warrior spirit, like nap or waste time, and i would think: "self, you are obviously not a warrior because your actions are not true to a warrior, you are a slackard, a sloth, and your failings mean you are really on the side of evil, and you are a garbage evil person"

that is literally where my mind would go, so i would quickly drop the idea of being a warrior, and i would hate myself.

but now i see the flaw in that thinking. A true warrior is compassionate with himself/herself because only then can a warrior sustain and persevere. and a true warrior knows that if he/she falls down 7 times, and gets up 8 times, that is far from being a failure, in fact, such spirit is epitome of great success.

so i am compassionate to myself when i collapse. i am fighting in a great battle, and like all great battles, it has ebbs and flows.

it is a new way of thinking, and i must thank/honor the old way of thinking, because it was simply my younger self making sense of the world. If i knew better, i would do better: that is true of my current self, it is true of my younger self.

i will honor my younger self by building a lego kit, because the young me that started trying to make sense of the world was a fan of legos.

That is my current thinking. Terrifyingly, in the future, I will have a better formulation of how to life. Terrifying to me because my mind is always grasping for the _ultimate_ formulation. If it is not the _ultimate_, how can we say it worth anything at all? I would see my ideas mutate, and I would see that as proof that my ideas were and are just so much mush, born of a mush head.

This is also flawed thinking. Something that is 98% true is still helpful and doesn't become less helpful just because there is something in the future that is 99% true. Living truth plays by rules different than mathematical truth - and as a warrior we are interested in living truth.

So that is where I am right now. I cannot guarantee that this will always be my truth, but that is OK.

What do you think?

I am not a warrior. I have always been a bit of a pacifist. I have risen to the occasion once or twice in my life, but I try to stay in a peaceful mind.
I was a bullied child too Oak and I feel your pain. More than anything the bullying stunted my emotional and social growth and did incredible damage to me and made my life much smaller. I don't think about them now, but I know I will never forgive them.
My father was a failure as a father and I cut off contact with him 30 years ago. I have more of a sense of peace about him. As a person that struggles with mental health, I realize that he probably had struggles too and so while I feel no urge to contact him I also wish nothing bad on him either.
My father always said I was lazy and would amount to nothing. My sick need for validation has made me a hard dependable worker at crappy jobs for the last 30 years.
Mr Moe, I to went through that hell of being suicidal. It has been many years and I am not at all suicidal, but that voice will always be in my head.
For me in the battle of good and evil, I set my goal as being able to make a difference in one life and in my small corner of the world. If I can just reach one or two people, then that is something. I will never do battle with big evils, but maybe I can do a small amount of good and toss my pebble into the pond.
You're talking of falling down 7 times and getting up 8 reminds me of one of Vince Lombardi's quotes. I will paraphrase it "Losing isn't about getting knocked down. It's not getting back up. "

I am not a warrior. I have always been a bit of a pacifist. I have risen to the occasion once or twice in my life, but I try to stay in a peaceful mind.
I was a bullied child too Oak and I feel your pain. More than anything the bullying stunted my emotional and social growth and did incredible damage to me and made my life much smaller. I don't think about them now, but I know I will never forgive them.
My father was a failure as a father and I cut off contact with him 30 years ago. I have more of a sense of peace about him. As a person that struggles with mental health, I realize that he probably had struggles too and so while I feel no urge to contact him I also wish nothing bad on him either.
My father always said I was lazy and would amount to nothing. My sick need for validation has made me a hard dependable worker at crappy jobs for the last 30 years.
Mr Moe, I to went through that hell of being suicidal. It has been many years and I am not at all suicidal, but that voice will always be in my head.
For me in the battle of good and evil, I set my goal as being able to make a difference in one life and in my small corner of the world. If I can just reach one or two people, then that is something. I will never do battle with big evils, but maybe I can do a small amount of good and toss my pebble into the pond.
You're talking of falling down 7 times and getting up 8 reminds me of one of Vince Lombardi's quotes. I will paraphrase it "Losing isn't about getting knocked down. It's not getting back up. "

This thread is amazing and I'm learning so much about different ways to be. Cheers and victorious leaps to you all for making it through so much. I'm glad all of you are here.

I don't see myself as a warrior either, Brownblob. To me, being a warrior means there is a battle to fight every day and I don't want that to be my life. I like the thought of enduring. Not in the sense of taking everything without fighting back, but much like Campbell's heros, surviving act 3 and coming out stronger. But I can fully appreciate Oak and MM as warriors and I will surely call on you when I need your help! And Brownblob, your pebble will ripple out and cause a chain effect of goodness far beyond your reach.

Beany Boo, your posts have been hitting it out of the park lately. I'm getting so much out of your thoughtfulness.

MM, I bought myself a playmobil farm a few years back. I had the best, joyous time assembling it and I had it in my office where seeing it brought me daily happiness. When I was done with it, I passed it along to a friend with kids. Another great joy. We have the opportunity to be so kind to our younger selves now.

Maybe it's the quarantine talking, but I'm picturing us as this great D&D style group, heading off into the unknown. I'll bring the sandwiches.
Heather

Thank you Heather. This is a good place to do ‘the work’. It feels less like actual work to know it’s beneficial to you too.