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

I want:

To share food; even if it makes me anxious for others to watch me eat, and also, for me to not be able to choose the circumstances on my own.

I often try to remind myself that feeling worthless isn't the same as being worthless, so the word swap is an attempt to get that through my head. Funny what happens when you start challenging your thoughts, huh?

At some point, I stopped trying to change either of those, in me. But your right, there's not a causal link between them either. Feeling worthless is a feeling of abject humility. Being worthless, is being vulnerable to others who are not. But they're powerful worthlessnesses. One's a very powerful force and the other a powerful state. There's not a lot of situations that offer 'controlled environments' as though you could practice them; and their effects don't often feed back. Everyone tries to get feedback for them in symbolic ways, to compensate. But I don't think they ever go away, as they are. They just need room, to breathe.

I want:

To focus on recovery. Even though I'm still going to die one day, be hurt, feel pain, fuck up, and be taken advantage of - all of that makes no sense without recovery.

I want:

To cease doing prep setup in private, just to ensure I'm happy enough to be around, by the time I encounter someone.

I want:

To give my depression a life of it's own; knowing that, it's inspiring intense emotion in others, is mostly a matter of coincidence.

I want:

Someone to have all the same (or similar) problems as me; mental or otherwise; and for me to accept them in that person, for the purpose of negotiating times to hang out and do fun stuff.

I want:

To feel less, and show more, shock, when I say something important and the response comes back to me as a 'nothing'.

I want:

To do things that I know won't work because I want to show myself that I don't know everything.

Most people get more satisfaction from being right than from being happy.