Episode notes:
This episode is sponsored by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. To participate or support their Out of the Darkness Walk which takes place on Sept. 20th in Chicago, go to www.chicagowalk.org
To read the article that Paul wrote for the Quartz website click here.
Episode Transcript:
Paul: Welcome to Episode 186 with my guest, Jimmy Doyle. This episode is sponsored by the American Association For Suicide Prevention, and if you would, please support them by donating at Chicagowalk.org and help prevent suicide. If you’re in the Chicago area, join them for an Out Of The Darkness Walk and it’s on September 20th. Details, donation and registration information at Chicagowalk.org. Support suicide prevention by giving your donation at Chicagowalk.org. Again, that’s Chicagowalk.org.
This is The Mental Illness Happy Hour. I’m Paul Gilmartin. Aw, I did that backwards... let’s plow forward... I’m Paul Gilmartin, this is the Mental Illness Happy Hour. Honesty about all the battles in our heads, from medically diagnosed conditions, from past traumas and sexual dysfunctions, and everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling, it’s not a doctor’s office, I’m not a therapist or an expert. I’m a jackass that tells dick jokes and this is more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. The website for the show is mentalpod.com. Go there. Check it out. Read the forum. Read a guest blog or a blog by me. Support the show, make a donation. Take a survey, see how other people filled out surveys. Or, as I like to say, sit at home with your thumb in your ass and go fuck yourself... wow, that was harsh! That was unnecessary, Paul!
Well, as you guys know, it has been a heartbreaking week for a lot of people. I would venture to say most any moviegoer who ever saw Robin Williams had the – I think my first movie that I was like ‘Wow, I think this guy is amazing’ was The World According To Garp, just the vulnerability that he played in that. I wanted to BE him when I was fourteen years old, I just, I NEVER missed an episode of Mork and Mindy, there was nothing else like it, it was – for those of you that are younger, that didn’t have a before-and-after idea of what his comedy was like when it came out, it was revolutionary. And yes, you could draw lineage to Jonathan Winters, who was brilliant and also suffered from mental illness. There was just something really special about Robin Williams.
And he certainly left some wreckage in his past. You know, one of the things that I think is fair to do when you eulogize somebody is to paint an accurate picture of them. And you know he did leave some wreckage in his past, as we all do in our lives; but everybody I know that knew him said that he was just a really sweet, humble, gentle man.
When I heard the news my first thought was sadness for how much pain he must have been in; and then, the irony that this person I wanted to be had taken his own life; and then I didn’t want to weigh in... I think as I mentioned in the episode with Jimmy, because where is the talk every day about everybody else that takes their life? Or the urgency to step up helping our returning vets, who are killing themselves at the rate of ONE AN HOUR? I mean, wrap your head around that! Do we think about that when we send people off to war? No, what we usually think about is, ‘We can’t make America look bad’.
I don’t want to get political, but if you want to know some more of my thoughts about it, I wrote an article – I was asked to write an article – for courts.com, I believe that’s the name of the website – anyway, they’re associated with Atlantic magazine, Atlantic online; I’ll put a link to the article, I’ll tweet it or Facebook it or whatever, but I think it puts my thoughts together in a more coherent way.
They wanted me to write about mental illness and they wanted it to be written in light of what Robin Williams did, but I didn’t know Robin Williams personally. Other than knowing that he had a father who was basically a workaholic who didn’t take an interest in his life, and suffered from mental illness, I don’t know what was going through his mind, and I think to try to imagine what it was is a really dangerous tightrope to walk, so I basically shared about my struggles with suicidal thoughts and how ironic that it was for me when it was at the height of my career and financial success –
... which I hope people begin to understand that material success has NOTHING to do with mental health, it will never, that no amount of money will ever ease mental illness in a way that is lasting. It may bring excitement that numbs it for a short period of time as it did with mine, but it never lasted. Success never lasted more than a week or a month in easing that feeling that I was worthless and my life was ultimately doomed and I needed to end it. As you can imagine –
... by the way, this episode with Jimmy was recorded, we were set to record in advance, so it was just, whatever you want to call it, fortuitous sounds like an insensitive word to use... coincidental that we recorded on the day that Robin took his life. But part of Jimmy’s story was his mom taking her life. And for those of you that are tempted to turn the podcast off right now ‘cause you’re like ‘Ugh, this is going to be too heavy’, I encourage you to stick with it. Yes, some of the surveys and e-mails we’re going to read are a bit heavy, but the interview with Jimmy is anything but heavy, and that’s one of the things that I want to counter all the sadness with, without minimizing the sadness, is to celebrate the victories when we do (as the walk is called) walk out of the darkness, because it is possible.
I also want to give a shout out to Megan Perkansky, who’s a former guest, and is really struggling to raise money for a documentary film that she is trying to make, called Mental Health in America, and you can find it by going to indiegogo.com and searching ‘mental health film’ and it will come up, so help her out if you would. One of the things that she was offering to try to raise money for it was for a thousand dollars to have a forty-five minute or one hour Skype session with me, where we would talk about whatever you wanted to talk about; we could chat, you could interview me, I could interview you. No takers so far so it’s been lowered to a hundred dollars. Maybe that’ll help raise some money, but again, there you have it.
I want to read a couple of Struggle In A Sentence surveys.
This one was filled out by a woman who calls herself Ray... actually, she’s a girl who calls herself Ray Is OK, she’s a teenager, and about her anxiety, and she writes: “I can’t focus on the now without constantly wondering if there’s something significant elsewhere that I ought to be doing.” Boy, do I relate to that one.
This was filled out by Meredith M., who writes about her bulimia: “To be the girl who was once Homecoming Queen, and yet still cried herself to sleep. They must have noticed the bleeding knuckles, the times I fled the bathroom with those knuckles reeking of vomit. To know my protruding clavicles can never be enough, yet still believing that a ‘thigh gap’ will remove all insecurities.” Snapshot from her life: “My mom expects a college degree, a career, a daughter who is able to function properly in society, but I still have trouble making it out of bed.”
This was filled out by a genderqueer, transgender female-to-male, who calls himself My Cords Are Wrong. He’s bi and in his 20’s. About his depression he writes: “Chronic. Severe. Lucy and the football.” About his anorexia: “Hunger feels like strength.” Wow, that is so – it couldn’t get any more condensed and profound than those four words right there. About being an abuser: “Emotional. I am pretty much a feral cat.” Anger issues: “I can research your weaknesses and then exploit them in order.”About his dissociating: “It kind of feels like I am operating a giant robot mecha-suit with clunky controls.” And about being on the autism spectrum: “The world is a giant Wal-Mart and I am the kid with my hands over my ears asking it to stop.”
And then this last one is from Wren, who is in her 30’s and I recognize her name, she’s filled out some other surveys that are really really deep, she really pours it out. About being a sex crime victim she writes: “This body? Sure. Do what you want. Wren doesn’t live here anymore.” Snapshot from her life: “Today is a good day. I bought all the groceries. I only sobbed in my car for fifteen minutes. I didn’t hit the bottle until 1:00 P.M. and I’m not hiding in my closet with a knife. Go, me.”
(Recorded music/guest quote intro montage)
Paul: I’m here with Jimmy Doyle, and it’s funny, you and I hardly know each other –
Jimmy: I know!
Paul: – but it feels like I’ve known you my entire life.
Jimmy: (giggling)
Paul: We’re both from Chicago, we’re Irish, we’re drunks, we’re sober –
Jimmy: Yes! We’re depressed –
Paul: We’re depressed; I work – my gig is talking about our inner crazy, and you’re a drug counselor, so we’re dealing with not only our own mental illness and addiction every day, but other peoples’. But that aside, even if you didn’t do that for a living, I just, the first time I met you, I felt a similar wavelength to you.
Jimmy: Yeah! Yeah, I know! It was, well, you were wearing a ‘Hawks jersey, so that brought up a lot for me, of good stuff, yeah. Actually, I used to love the Blackhawks.
Paul: Do you not watch ‘em anymore?
Jimmy: No, for me it was... I don’t really like sports that much, for me it was just hot chocolate, and hanging out with my dad and my uncle and my cousin.
Paul: What was your relationship like with your dad growing up? Was he a drinker?
Jimmy: He was a drinker. He was –
Paul: Is he still alive?
Jimmy: No, no. My dad died when I was twenty-two.
Paul: Did you kill him?
Jimmy: Pretty much.
Paul: Yeah. Okay. Good! So you have a resume, then.
Jimmy: I do, I do! No, I’m second-generation American, so he was very, you know, the child of immigrants, whatever. On one side I’m second, on one side I’m third. He was very, like, he was an alcoholic but he never missed work.
Paul: High functioning. Hang on one second, I’m just going to move this back a little bit...
(sliding sounds)
Jimmy: Oh! Too close!
Paul: Well, you project a little bit more than our average guest.
Jimmy: Sure. Sure.
Paul: That’s good.
Jimmy: (In upper-crust accent) Theatre!
Yeah. My dad was... I’ve done a lot of writing about my dad, I’m actually working on a memoir now and I had a one-man show called Must Be Nice that was about my parents and just the envy and the jealousy we grew up with.
Paul: Envy and jealousy of...?
Jimmy: Everyone.
Paul: Your family, of other people?
Jimmy: Of everyone, yeah.
Paul: And within your family, towards each other?
Jimmy: Yeah, if you get too high and mighty – like, somebody in my family will be like “Oh, he’s on a radio show... oooh.”
Paul: Is that a Midwestern thing? It seems much more – I don’t see that on the coasts, much. I should say, New York and L.A.
Jimmy: No, some of it is a little Irish I think, they call it the ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’: the tallest poppy gets whacked.
Paul: So Catholic, it’s a Catholic thing?
Jimmy: Very Catholic, very ‘know your place’. My husband calls it going to the back door like a bog person with your hat in your hand. ‘I don’t want to mess up the good room.’ Like there was a room in our house that no one could go into.
Paul: Plastic?
Jimmy: No! We weren’t Italian.
Paul: (guffaws)
Jimmy: For Chrissake.
Paul: (more laughing and sounds of either knee-slapping or table-pounding)
Jimmy: No, no! We just never went into The Room.
Paul: (gasping) That’s fantastic.
Jimmy: So yeah. I’m the fifth kid.
Paul: Of how many?
Jimmy: Five. I’m the youngest. And there’s eight years between my brother and me, so I was like a big accident.
Paul: Your next oldest –
Jimmy: The next was eight years. They’re twelve, eleven, ten, and eight years older than I am. And my mother was bipolar, as far as we know. She committed suicide when I was twelve.
Paul: Oh, I’m so sorry!
Jimmy: Yeah. So. That’s why I was like, ‘I’ll do the Mental Illness Happy Hour!’ Yeah, she committed suicide when I was twelve. First day of eighth grade, and she planned it so I wouldn’t find her, and of course I found her. My father and I found her. So my father died ten years later of a heart attack, as an alcoholic, he just dropped dead. So, we had a rough relationship. You know, having a gay kid was like, unheard of on the South side of Chicago. I came out when I was sixteen.
Paul: Really?!
Jimmy: Yeah. At Catholic school!
Paul: Oh my God, dude, you are a fucking REVOLUTIONARY!
Jimmy: Well, it didn’t –
Paul: High five!
Jimmy: (Slightly Elvis-like voice) Thank you very much, thank you very much!
Paul: Oh my God, Jimmy! Jimmy, you’re how old?
Jimmy: I am forty-eight. I’ll be forty-nine soon.
Paul: That’s unheard of!
Jimmy: Yeah, that was 1981. ’82? ’81?
Paul: And if I can just... oh my God... I don’t know how I can express to our listeners –
Jimmy: Yes, exactly!
Paul: – how blue-collar the South side of Chicago is. I was also raised in really technically the South suburbs of Chicago, but you were raised where?
Jimmy: Well, I was mostly raised in the suburbs, in Orland Park.
Paul: Oh, my God, we grew up ten miles from each other! I grew up in Homewood.
Jimmy: Oh my God, I went to Providence!
Paul: Providence St. Mel’s?
Jimmy: No, Providence in New Lennox.
Paul: Oh, okay.
Jimmy: (Exaggerated nasal voice) Providence Catholic Academy. Where’d you go?
Paul: I went to St. Joe’s grade school, and then Homewood Flossmoor High School, for high school. But even today when I go back and visit, there’s a homophobia and a racism there that makes me so uncomfortable. Isn’t it weird, too, when it’s people that go to church every Sunday, and then the N word comes out of their mouth?
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. And do you know what’s interesting, too – I don’t know if this is your experience, but with all the Israeli Gaza shit going on in the news and stuff – I am very pro-Israel. I think Israel has a right to exist. And that’s not quite the way some of my friends seem to feel – I don’t know, but I grew up with this respect for Jewish people. I actually asked my mother when I was a kid if they went to Heaven and she said they did because they were God’s chosen people. And then when I asked her about the Lutherans next door, she said no.
Paul: (Laughing)
Jimmy: So, like, we were so busy hating black people and Protestants that, like, we didn’t have time to be anti-Semitic. It’s not that I was raised well, it’s just that we only had so much hate to go around, and we figured the Jews, you know, they’re nice. My mother used to say, “They’ve suffered like the Irish”. That was a good thing.
Paul: There are very few populations that haven’t suffered at some point. I think the English, they might be the only ones.
Jimmy: Well, they were busy, I mean think about it, they fuck up everywhere they go; they colonize it, draw a line when they leave –
Paul: Although, who conquered the Norman conquest, who was that?
Jimmy: (Laughing) I don’t know, but I used to have to... it was 1150? 1170? That was one of those things you had to memorize.
Paul: It was the Romans, I think! Wasn’t it?
Jimmy: Yeah, the Roman conquest! Hadrian’s Wall... I don’t know.
Paul: So getting back to you coming out at seventeen... well, let’s see, where should we go first? We’ve got the three big things: we’ve got your mom’s suicide –
Jimmy: Always a hit. Always a big seller.
Paul: Great conversation starter.
Jimmy: Well, you know, it’ll get you a review. If you’re doing a one man show and there’s a bunch of one man shows, you got the suicide thing going for you. You’ll get a review.
Paul: Oh, yeah. And a hug after the show.
Jimmy: (Snickering)
Paul: (Very tenderly) ‘Are you okay?’
Jimmy: Actually, it’s interesting because one of my first, directors, was it? No, it was Rose Abdoo – do you know Rose?
Paul: Mm-hmm, not personally, but I know of her.
Jimmy: We’ve been friends forever since Second City, and she pointed out when I started doing spoken word stuff and one-man shows, she’s like, “You’ve gotta let them know you’re okay. You can’t talk about your mother’s suicide without couching it like before-and-after with how well you’re doing now.”
Paul: That’s a really excellent point, because I think we need to know that, because that’s a heavy heavy thing.
Talk about – and when Jimmy says Second City, Second City is a very famous, very difficult to get into, improvisation troupe in Chicago that John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, Mike Meyers, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, a who’s who... and you probably performed with some of the SNL people?
Jimmy: Oh yeah, I was Steve Carel’s understudy, I was Stephen Colbert’s understudy –
Paul: I’m not familiar with them.
Jimmy: (Laughing) But you know MY shit!
Yeah, when I was at Second City, it’s interesting because I got sober really young, I got sober after my dad died –
Paul: You’ve been sober how long now?
Jimmy: It’ll be 26 years in a month; September seventh it’ll be 26 years. Yeah, it’s really amazing, but I’m a slow learner, because I didn’t get the part that you’re supposed to change, for like the first ten years; so literally I’ve shared this with clients – I now work in an addiction recovery treatment center – and I’ve said to them, “I worked at a place and I was sober, but I wasn’t sober, I was dry” –
Paul: You weren’t emotionally sober.
Jimmy: – and I was so hostile and so toxic to be around. I got FIRED from Second City at the same time they were able to work with Chris Farley! They were like, ‘Well, he’s sick, he has a disease, blah blah blah... Doyle’s just an asshole’.
Paul: What were you doing that was so...?
Jimmy: I was making people cry. I was making fun of people on stage. I was acting out of nothing but fear and insecurity. It was horrible. It’s the closest I’ve come personally to suicide was during that time in my life. That’s when I got diagnosed with depression. But my depression doesn’t manifest as, like, ‘Aww, are you okay? You look a little blue’. I’m the original lion with the thorn in his paw.
Paul: I’m glad you mentioned that, because a lot of people don’t realize that rage can spring from depression.
Jimmy: Oh my God, yeah.
Paul: For me it did. Right before I finally went to see somebody. I would have conversations in my car with people that weren’t there, screaming at them the things I wanted to say, pounding my fists on the steering wheel like a crazy person, and I didn’t know that that wasn’t reality.
Jimmy: I have a brother – my older brother, who’s also sober – and he’s a cop, he’s a Chicago cop, he was also in Second City –
Paul: So he has an outlet for it!
Jimmy: Well he had a heart attack, in April –
Paul: Did he die?
Jimmy: Thank God he didn’t die, but in April – Steven and I got married May 17th, and my brother had his heart attack like six weeks before the wedding, and he would have died – he was at the police station and he was just doing the treadmill and he turned to another cop and was like, “I think I’m having a heart attack” and then was like BOOM. And from event to stent, Paul – that’s what they call it – it was 24 minutes or something. But he would have been dead. And that’s how my father died. The cortisol and everything that gets released when you’re that rageful all the time –
Paul: Takes a toll.
Jimmy: It’ll literally kill you.
Paul: Did your brother make it to your wedding?
Jimmy: He did, and my family is so funny in the way we deal with shit, when I saw him at the rehearsal I was like “Oh, you’re here, I’m so glad you’re here” and he goes, “Yeah, it woulda really fucked things up if I’d died”, and I was like “Yeah...”
Paul: Is he – I mean, clearly he supports you because he showed up –
Jimmy: Oh, yeah, there was no problem with my brothers and sisters. Look , the good thing about something like a suicide in a family like mine is that all bets are off after that. There was no – I remember my father was trying to bribe the coroner to say that my mother had a stroke or something, and he was starting to lie to people about it, and I remember my sister Rosie saying, “Dad, don’t”. It was just like, ‘look, we’re done pretending we’re perfect and Catholic’. Rosie was getting divorced, it was just like ‘No, we’re done. She killed herself, we’re fucked’. Everybody went to therapy. My brother Kevin, when I was kid, I was like fourteen – and that’s when I started using and drinking, go figure – and I used to use and drink with my brothers and sisters because, again, it was a different time –
Paul: And they could buy.
Jimmy: Exactly! So I used to smoke – we called it dope. Now ‘dope’ means heroin. Back then it was grass. But you know, we smoked weed all the time.
Paul: Shit weed, filled with seeds that would explode all over your upholstery.
Jimmy: Yes, yes! Ditch weed, that you’d clean on a double (indecipherable) album.
Paul: It was brown and powdery, but it was inexpensive, thirty-five bucks an ounce.
Jimmy: Exactly. It was good weed. I had good weed. But I remember my brother, we were really high and he said, “You know, after all the shit you’ve been through, you could be a serial killer and nobody’d be surprised. So you might as well be happy.” I was like, ‘Alright...”
Paul: When was – how old were you when he said –
Jimmy: I was like thirteen, fourteen?
Paul: Meaning, because you – what –
Jimmy: He was basically trying to say – what I got – we were high, it made sense at the time – what he meant was, ‘Don’t be defined by what’s happened to you, just fuck ‘em all and be happy’. And I really, from that point I was just like, ‘I am NOT going to be the Suicide Survivor the rest of my life’. Now, I’ve had to go to therapy for the last thirty years, and I’ve done all sorts of different kinds of therapy. I’ve done psychotherapy, I’ve done cognitive behavioral therapy, I’ve done EMDR for the post-traumatic stress of, you know, finding her and all that stuff. But really, in that stoned moment, he was just kinda saying ‘just go be happy’.
Paul: That’s very beautiful, and precocious, for a teenager to be able to have that kind of emotional intuition and wisdom, and to be able to be comfortable enough to share that with a sibling.
Jimmy: Well, he was twenty-two.
Paul: Okay, so he was a little older. I was thinking he was, like, you know –
Jimmy: He was at college doing theater.
Paul: Oh, so he was really in touch with – what did you – the different kinds of therapies you’ve been through, I want to talk about them and what you got out of each one. But talk first about the EMDR therapy and what was that like, going back and re-living finding your mom?
Jimmy: I went –
Paul: Was your dad standing next to you when you found her, or did you find her and then he –
Jimmy: She killed herself in the garage, and the notes were on the kitchen table, and he figured out what they meant first and ran to the garage and I heard him say, “Call an ambulance.” Back then you had to dial zero to get an ambulance. And I dialed zero and got the ambulance and then I ran out. By that time he had opened the garage door, the big door, and had my mother outside the car. So I saw her body. I didn’t see her in the car. But I saw the car. Also, we had a dog who was very old, and she took the dog with her, so I actually saw that the dog was dead and that she was dead. And every time I would go to therapy there’d be the ‘Okay, now we’re going to do –’ and I had her letters still. The first time I went to therapy after I got fired at Second City and I was like ‘something has to happen’ and that’s when I went on meds and started going every week in Chicago. And he had me read the letters aloud to him, my therapist at the time, and we processed it. He was very psychotherapeutic. The thing that therapy did for me, that episode of therapy – and it was about seven years – was it helped me love my father again, and then grieve him, ‘cause he died before I got sober. So, one thing that suicide survivors don’t have is object permanence.
Paul: What’s that?
Jimmy: Object permanence is when a little toddler’s at the park, and they go running off to go to the slide, but then they turn to look back and see if Mom is still there? That’s a sense of object permanence, and a lot of people, from – it doesn’t have to be suicide, it could be divorce, it could be anything – they lack a sense of object permanence. That’s where a lot of borderline personality disorder comes from.
Paul: From the abandonment.
Jimmy: It’s the constant fear of abandonment.
So what my therapist then was able to help me realize was that my father, warts and all, had at least been there, and had been some sense of support. And my brothers and sisters. The show I did like three years ago that I did in Chicago, the version of Must Be Nice I did there was a love letter to my siblings. And I had them come. And it was really cool.
Now, so that was one layer of the onion that I was able to get to that at least, well –
Paul: And was that in EMDR? Or in the other one?
Jimmy: No, the EMDR came about ten years ago. I was in a relationship with a guy who was incredibly mentally ill, and very early on his own journey of sobriety, and I just sort of latched on to him, and we ended up living together. He would say things to me like “You know, I’m not really that attracted to you”, and I’d be like “Eh, that’s okay”, or “I’m not really sure I’m in this”.... “Sure y’are!” You know, things a normal adult with any sense of self would be like, ‘Well, then don’t be with me!’, ya know? So, he left me. And I actually had another kind of breakdown. I was in Ireland for three weeks after that and I kinda had a breakdown there and I went back into therapy, and went and got a different doctor and got new meds. And the therapist I was working with I found through the Didi Hirsch Foundation, which is a suicide survivors organization. And Mariette Hartley is a friend of mine and she had said –
Paul: She is a lovely person. She lost a parent.
Jimmy: Her father committed suicide. She and I have known each other for years and she was like, “You’ve gotta get somebody who will get to this wound”. So I went to this specialist who specialized in suicide survivors, and we did EMDR. Now, I didn’t do the visual EMDR. EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization... Reprocessing?
Paul: Reprogramming?
Hold that thought for one second because I just want to put my phone on airplane mode ‘cause when I get phone calls it buzzes. I didn’t realize for the first two and a half years of doing the podcast, I thought it was a bad – I thought it was a ground loop in the electrical system here in the building. Thank you to the listener that sent me an e-mail.
So, Mariette said you need to find somebody that can help you process this, this wound.
Jimmy: Yes. I went to a specialist who specializes in suicide survivors and we did EMDR. Now, the EMDR that most people have heard of is the lights, where you look at lights that go back and forth from one side of your vision to the other. Some people do it with hand movements.
Paul: My therapist, she was very old-school, she actually did it with horse reins.
Jimmy: (Guffaw, sound of clapping)
Mine did it with headphones.
Paul: Oh really?
Jimmy: I had a Walkman, a Discman, and I had a CD of tones. And I would put the headphones on like half on my ear and half off, and the tones would be going in my head as I was telling the story of what happened with my mother. It was groundbreaking for me, but I don’t think I could have done it ten years before. I just wouldn’t – I don’t know if I was capable of it yet.
Paul: So how did it involve your eyes, then, if it was your ears?
Jimmy: It doesn’t have to involve your eyes, it just has to involve the two polarities of your brain. Basically what it’s doing is taking the limbic system information where everything is stuck – and that’s where addiction lives as well, is in the limbic system – and any sort of trauma that we have that’s in the limbic system feels present. The limbic system doesn’t know from past. When we process it through EMDR, with the tones or the lights, what we’re doing is we’re bringing it to the frontal lobe, the executive function of our brain, and we’re saying: ‘It’s NOT September 5th, 1978, every day’. I found out a lot of things about myself, like – go figure – I was triggered by the smell of car exhaust.
Paul: Wow...
Jimmy: So now, when I smell car exhaust, I know that that could trigger me and I could start to dissociate. I don’t have to do it as much anymore, but what I used to have to do was, if I smelled car exhaust, I would actually have to say to myself: ‘It’s August 11th, 2014. You’re in Van Nuys, California. You’re sitting with Paul Gilmartin, who’s a very nice man, and if you need to take a minute, he’ll understand’. I would have to go through all that so the limbic system would have a chance to catch up.
Paul: Wow...
Jimmy: Yeah. It’s really powerful stuff.
Paul: Kinda like sitting down the caveman, putting your arm around the caveman, going: ‘It’s okay, buddy. We got food...’
Jimmy: Yeah, exactly!
Paul: ‘Chill out, we’ve got a nice fire going...’
Jimmy: Yes, yes!
Paul: ‘Look at the nice painting you did on the wall... it’s shit, but I’m not going to tell you that...’
Jimmy: Exactly!
Paul: ‘But people make a big deal about it ten thousand years from now, they will appreciate it, you’re the Picasso of your time...’
Jimmy: BISON! It’s a bison! Isn’t it?
Paul: ‘...and for God’s sakes wipe your ass.’
Well, that’s – so – talk about, was that the biggest breakthrough, in doing the thing? Was that it allows you to – well, don’t let me put words in your mouth, talk about the – you said you had a huge breakthrough doing it. What form did that take? And talk about any emotions that were involved. Was there any purging of emotions, or was it more kind of intellectual?
Jimmy: Yes.
(Both giggle)
And that’s the beauty of it. It was crying-crying-crying, and then being able to say, ‘Okay, I’m done crying. That WAS really sad’. I started to be able to say, ‘That’s too bad that that happened’, as opposed to carrying it with me every single day.
Paul: So you were able to separate yourself from your story.
Jimmy: Yes! And be able to say, it’s in my painting, but it’s not the focus of the painting, it’s in the background of the painting.
Paul: That’s a great way of putting it. You know, it’s like that divide – it’s like those tears, there can’t be a divide, it’s like a curtain of tears that has to come down, the most painful stuff in my life. I know there’s no way I could have recovered if I hadn’t cried and cried and cried with safe people.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. And then it’s interesting because through just sort of an accident of insurance, my insurance ran out and I couldn’t afford this incredibly expensive woman anymore, and then I went to someone else who was completely CBT – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And coincidentally – (intense whispery voice) is it odd or is it God, Paul?
Paul: (Choking giggle)
Jimmy: Coincidentally with air quotes, his mother had committed suicide, this therapist. And he said to me one day, “I don’t consider myself a suicide survivor. I don’t define myself as that.”
I was gobsmacked. Because since September 5th, 1978, I have been – if I’m anyone, I’m Jimmy, Rosemary’s kid, who killed herself, and isn’t it sad, and you can’t expect too much of Jimmy... all that learned helplessness that comes from being a trauma survivor. The not being able to support myself, the always needing to count on somebody, because I could never count on somebody.
I used to like to borrow money from people a lot. That was my way of going, ‘You DO love me! $500.00 worth! If you REALLY loved me, it would be $1,000.00’. Very mixed shit. I was just starting to date my now-husband at the time; this is nine years ago, when I was with this CBT therapist, and Stephen and I had a fight, and we were actually in Tiburon, California –
Paul: Robin Williams took his life today, and he did it in Tiburon.
Jimmy: Which is also where we got married. So beautiful up there. But I was telling my therapist about this fight I’d had with Stephen, and I said, “You know, and I was thinking, I should just kill myself”. And my therapist said, “You can’t think that way”. And again it was one of those, ‘Wait, what? I’m paying you... whuuut?!’ And he just said, “You cannot, you don’t have that luxury. You cannot think about suicide anymore”. And that was another breakthrough. So, it’s intellectual AND emotional.
Paul: I would imagine, though, some people would recoil at that and say, ‘How dare you tell me what I can or can’t do with my life!’
Jimmy: I think on another day I might’ve, but on that day, I knew that what he meant was –
Paul: ‘Let’s not think about that’?
Jimmy: I think what he meant was... (sigh). I had another therapist, years ago, who used to say that I had my Battle Shields that I put up in front of me, and one of them was I’m depressive, so I’m not responsible. I think what that therapist, in a very cognitive-behavioral way, was saying was: ‘I have higher expectations of you than that, and you should, too’.
Paul: I see.
Jimmy: ‘And if you start crying suicide every time there’s any sort of bump in the road, there’s no moving forward’.
Paul: And I think it can keep you stuck from doing the work, because you begin to tell yourself ‘I’m incapable of change’. An important thing that I think – you know, people that are kind of emotionally illiterate will say, ‘You just need to get over it’, and then at the other end of the spectrum is staying in that state of victimization. And for me, and lots of people I know, the middle ground is: Have compassion for yourself. Cry the tears, but then take responsibility for the fact that it’s only the background of your painting,like you said, and move on, because you now have a responsibility to those around you, and to yourself.
Jimmy: Well, you know I work with addicts, so I work with a lot of borderline personality disordered clients, or clients who have been diagnosed with borderline personality... there’s a big discussion about ‘Do you call them Borderlines, or do you call them – ’
Paul: I don’t think you should ever call someone depressive or a Borderline because you’re saying that’s who they are, instead of a part of who they are.
Jimmy: Yeah, so when dealing with clients who have borderline tendencies or who have been diagnosed with that, it is a really fine line between hearing their problems, and then saying ‘We can’t do that today’. Like we have one client in particular who I’m working with, who’s under a behavioral contract, and she is not allowed to be dramatic. And when she starts saying, “Look at this mole, I think it’s cancer!” we have to say, “That’s not part of our agreement”. It’s very interesting. It’s the compassion mixed with the executive function.
Paul: And the boundaries. That to me is the sweet spot, functioning between boundaries and compassion, because a lot of people, especially manipulative people, and I will include myself as one of those, flourish in that no-man’s land where they wanna manipulate, but just enough where they are short of your boundaries. ‘Cause then you can get as much as you think you’re gonna get, but you don’t realize you’re short-changing yourself, ‘cause you’re ruining a chance for intimacy.
Jimmy: Yeah. It’s interesting because I work with – well, with Borderlines – as a clinician, because I think through my years I’ve been like Borderline-adjacent. I was sort of on the borderline for years.
Paul: I think a lot of people are, especially addicts, because we’re like –
Jimmy: So yeah, it’s been really interesting. You know, I keep thinking about what day this is.
Paul: Robin Williams, taking his life?
Jimmy: Yeah...
Paul: What’s going through your mind?
Jimmy: Well, it’s just, I’ve been through all this therapy and I’ve been sober for all this time, and now I have a couple letters after my name and think I know what I’m talking about, and there’s still part of me... it’s like with Phillip Seymour Hoffman, there’s still part of me, because I’m an actor, that thinks: ‘Well shit, if I get an Oscar, and enough money to buy land and a house in Tiburon, I wouldn’t be depressed’. I mean, even I feel that way.
Paul: Even though intellectually you know that’s not true.
Jimmy: Of course! It’s just so fucking sad!
Paul: Jimmy and I were talking before we started recording that, when the news broke, Twitter was afire with people saying things like hearts broken, and all that stuff I completely understand, and I felt this pressure to comment on it but I didn’t want to.
I was like, ‘Why do I feel this push and pull?’ ‘Cause I think people that follow me, listen to the show and follow me on Twitter, expect some type of comment from me on this. But I don’t want to – I didn’t want to – because anything I would have to say about it felt trite.
And then I realized what I really feel, which is that I wish I wasn’t cynical, and this is just gonna be treated as a voyeuristic – it’ll be shrouded in some sort of ‘Where is our mental health system at today? Depression is a serious thing!’ but it’ll be done in a very lip-service-y kind of way and no real change will be effected by this, and that’s what made me wanna not post it, because it makes us THINK we’re moving forward, because we talked about it, because Dateline did a five-minute piece on depression and suicide.
Well, that’s not gonna fucking fix people. A better healthcare system, learning how to talk to your family members, learning how to parent your child, learning how to listen to them, learning how to be a better friend, all of that stuff.
We are in the emotional Medieval Times. We don’t think we are, but in fifty years we are gonna look back and say, ‘How the fuck did we get by? The average person could not express their needs or even understand what healthy needs were!’ Now I’m not saying any of this contributed to Robin Williams taking his life, only he knows what it was, but I think you and I both are on the same page, that depression and/or addiction probably factored in to it.
Jimmy: Oh yeah. He was – I know what you’re saying, Paul, but also on the other hand, I think about the fact that fifty years ago we wouldn’t have had a place to go to deal with our alcoholism. I sure as fuck wouldn’t be here as a married gay man, doing anything, or on the radio as a gay man unless it was anonymous, you know what I mean?
Paul: But we are the tip of the iceberg. We are the minority and – tip of the iceberg, that’s a terrible metaphor for it. We are one percent of the population. The other 99 percent don’t understand the ripples of untreated mental illness and addiction. They don’t understand that trauma affects your child, which affects how they are at work, which affects how that corporation deals with the world, which affects – you know, wars, addiction, abuse, all of those things are interrelated. You can’t just say, ‘Oh, it’s that person who shot up the school, that’s where mental illness explodes’. No, it’s the workaholic C.E.O., which by the way Robin Williams’ father was, he was a non-present workaholic super-successful C.E.O, and he had a wound in him that he talked about, being a lonely child who was forced to live in his imagination – no idea whether or not that contributed to it but as I heard myself say that I felt compelled to mention it – but the ripples are so far-reaching and I’m just tired of people thinking a five-minute piece on a news magazine show on T.V. is going to move us forward.
Now, and I’m sorry I’m talking so much, yes, we are better off than we were, but one of the posts that you saw, one of the replies to my post, was a woman who said, “Oh, another dead celebrity? F them”.
Jimmy: (Gasp) Somebody said that on your thread?
Paul: Yes, on my thread, and I didn’t respond because I felt sorry for this person that they must be so unhappy with their life that they think that if somebody has that stuff they shouldn’t ever be depressed. Which I know both you and I get into that headspace, ‘What the fuck’, we share that –
Jimmy: Yeah! It’s just that I think it and then go, ‘What an absurd thought’. It’s like after Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, I didn’t know him but I know members of his family, I know that he got sober the same year I did in ’88, obviously slipped or relapsed or whatever you want to call it, but that Christopher Titus was on the Morning Zoo Show on 95.5 making fun of Phillip Seymour Hoffman. And I got into a Twitter war with him.
Paul: You guys had a red hair triangle going.
Jimmy: We did! (Laughing)
Paul: Between you and Hoffman and Christopher Titus, yes!
Jimmy: (Laughing) Lotta Catholic anger going on. It was just –
Paul: What was he making fun? Of?
Jimmy: He was saying it’s not a disease. We shouldn’t feel sorry for him. What about his children. He was an asshole.
Paul: The fact that somebody does it despite their children is what you should look at.
Jimmy: Well, he doesn’t want to, Titus doesn’t. So we had this Twitter war and blah blah blah, and I’d been working an overnight shift at the treatment center where I work, and I used to when I worked overnights, I’m a case manager now so I’m much more on the clinical side but when I worked overnights I was literally like holding their hands while they were going through detox from heroin addiction, and taking their vitals and calling the doctor in the middle of the night and seeing the struggle –
Paul: Front lines –
Jimmy: Front lines of this disease, and I just could not believe the arrogance Titus had to talk that way, but he’s another broken child from a broken home, he’s choosing to be angry about it, I’m choosing in my own way to change it a little bit. And when you’re feeling this way, and I know why you’re feeling this way, because it is systemic, it is the way our society is built, is on – you would be such a good therapist, by the way.
Paul: Aw, shucks.
Jimmy: Such a good – because we study things like addictive systems. There’s a great book called Addicted to War. Have you ever read it?
Paul: No, but I’m down with the title!
Jimmy: It was a required textbook. I went to Pierce College for Addiction Studies and this madman named Dr. Jim Crawson, this OLD man, just crazy, and he’d wear a beret sometimes and he’d be like, “Hey, man...” and you were like ‘WHOA’, and he’d talk about smoking ‘marry-jah-wanna’ back in the fifties with the jazz musicians, I mean he was just amazing. We had a class on addictive systems and we read, it’s a graphic book called Addicted to War about the fact that our society’s addicted to war, that we – there’s so many ways that addiction runs everything.
I was splitting hairs today like, ‘Well, was Robin Williams sober? Maybe it was just depression’, and it’s all one thing.
Paul: You can’t – that’s why I started this podcast, it’s a tangled bowl of spaghetti – you can’t separate trauma from addiction from mental illness. Not everybody has all of them but it’s rare that somebody has JUST genetic mental illness, or JUST trauma-triggered mental illness, or JUST addiction. So, often you see two, three, four things that require a support network of their own, and maybe a decade into working on one, another layer is revealed, of ‘Oh, I have this buried thing that I didn’t know!’
Jimmy: You know, it’s interesting because thirty years ago if you went to treatment they didn’t do anything about your mental illness. They said it was secondary to the addiction, and they would yell at you and have you go clean toilets, you know, that old getting sober movie, what was it?
Paul: Clean and Sober?
Jimmy: Clean and Sober, where everybody’s smoking and yelling. And now addiction science has grown enough that – well, we still have to yell sometimes, but we try not to yell too much, because the unconditional positive reinforcement works better, and we have to try to address the co-ocurring disorders because something like 87% of all addicts who go into treatment have a co-ocurring mental illness. I think they’re 13% off on that number...
Paul: (Explosive laughter)
Jimmy: (Southern accent) mahself... but the literature says.
Paul: And you know, my thought on what Christopher Titus said, the few times I’ve interacted with him he seems like a lovely guy, and I understand a lot of people feel that way about addicts, because as addicts we create a lot of wreckage and resentment in our wake, and I’m sure he was hurt and disappointed by somebody who talked the talk but never walked the walk regarding their addiction, and I understand that.
Jimmy: Well I told a story on Pepitone’s podcast of, I had to – Adam McKay who I worked with at Second City, he went on to become a head writer at SNL, and then direct –
Paul: Anchorman, and everything Will Ferrell does, basically –
Jimmy: Yeah, he and Will Ferrell do movies together. So I saw Adam somewhere in L.A. with Will Ferrell and I was like, “Hey!” and he was like, “Get away from me, I don’t want to talk to you.” Because of all the damage I had done as a dry alcoholic.
Paul: Really?
Jimmy: So I had to write him a letter, to try to make amends for my part of what had happened, and I was living in North Hollywood and I was waiting tables and I was broke, and I sat down and wrote a letter and addressed it to Adam McKay and I addressed it to 30 Rockefeller Center! (Laughing)
Paul: Really?
Jimmy: I mean, can you imagine how people feel when I go back and say, “I’m reeeeeally sorry I called you a cunt. I reeeeeally shouldn’t have done that on opening night right before places.”
Paul: (Laughing)
Jimmy: It wasn’t good. I would make people cry. I mean, lookit, most people that I’ve tried to go back and amend the situation, they’ve said “You know what? God bless you, and I accept your apology, and I knew you were hurting.” Some people have actually said that to me, which is an amazing gift of forgiveness, but some people have just said, “You know what? You’re an asshole. I don’t care what your label is, you are an asshole, so, just, I don’t want to deal with you”.
Paul: Do they understand that you’re not denying that you were an asshole? You’re apologizing for being an asshole.
Jimmy: No. Well, you know, some people don’t want to forgive.
Paul: I suppose it depends on the way you make your apology or your amend, because if you blame it on something else it’s not really an apology.
Jimmy: Yeah, I would never do that. What I did is if I bumped into people from Second City, I would say, “Hey, by the way, I know I was horrible to work with and I’m really sorry that I made your time at the theater unhappy, and if there’s anything I can do to make up for that, please just let me know, but I just want you to know that you were really good and you’re very talented, and I’m sorry about that.”
Paul: What does it feel like when you say that to someone?
Jimmy: So freeing. And so amazing. You know, the more I’ve forgiven myself, the more I’ve been able to forgive the people who’ve quote-unquote hurt me. I have – again, my brothers and sisters have very angry opinions about my father, our father. I have great memories of my father. He was an abusive alcoholic, but he was also just really funny. I’m trying so hard to just approach life with compassion.
Paul: You know, one of the things I’m trying to do with this podcast is to get people to that place, because I know I need to get to that place, but as I say over and over again, it can’t be done intellectually. You oftentimes beat yourself up because you can’t get there intellectually, and you think you’re either stupid or you’re cold-hearted, when in reality there’s a process that involves being vulnerable with other people – and not wanting to make that amend because you’re gonna be vulnerable – realizing the greatest, one of the greatest workouts your soul can ever have is to make a heartfelt apology where you’re scared beforehand. Nothing strengthens your spirit like that. Talk about that.
Jimmy: Well, a really good friend of mine once said that – because he knew I was gonna be making an apology to someone like that – he said, “Think of it not so much as you throwing yourself down and going ‘I was a piece of shit in 1992, I was so angry’ – and not making excuses, ‘Hey, I wasn’t on meds, man’– and ‘My mom killed herself’,” that was always my go to – he said, “Think of it as giving that person the opportunity to learn how to forgive, and how freeing that’ll be for that person; think of it as being of service to that person,” and I was like, “OOO! I like that!”
And I’ve had to do it the other way around, because, you know, some of my friends have hurt me over the years. Some of them have been brave enough to apologize to me. And I have had to say, ‘Do I wanna walk the walk, here, of actually being someone who is forgiving? Or do I just wanna be some asshole who hangs onto stuff?’
Paul: To use it as power.
Jimmy: Well, yeah.
Paul: I think for a lot of people, what keeps them from making an apology is thinking that it’s gonna be used against them. Which I think happens in such a small percentage of situations.
Jimmy: Unless your last name is Doyle.
Paul: (Laughing) Has that happened? To you?
Jimmy: Oh my God. OH. MY. GOD. My sisters and brothers will LITERALLY bring up things that I did in 1975.
Paul: To make fun of you? Or to say, ‘I’m still hurt about that’?
Jimmy: No, but –
Paul: To leverage a situation?
Jimmy: Well, if they knew how to say ‘I’m hurt’, that would be amazing. No, what they’ll say is, “Well, THIS ONE...” You know that phrase, don’t you?
Paul: (Laughing) Oh, yeah!
Jimmy: ‘THAT ONE’. Remember when McCain and Obama had their debate? And the big thing was that McCain went, “THAT ONE...” It’s like, that’s my uncle Bob. I was like, ‘I’m not voting for you, just for that shit!’ No, my sister will bring up, like, when I was eight, they took me camping, and a bunch of butterflies came out of a bush, and I screamed. She’ll still talk about it. Or when I knocked her glasses off on a boat: (nasal voice) “They were $250.00 and I bought them for my wedding and Jimmy knocked ‘em off my head”.
Paul: (Snickering)
Jimmy: I think they think that’s reminiscing. They don’t know! But it’s like, ‘Really? Are we really – do you want a check? I’ll give you a check for $250.00 if you promise’ –
Paul: Oh my God. So! Let’s go back to the EMDR thing with your mom, or do you feel like we covered all that? You got to a place where you felt like – oh, I know what it was, I wanted to ask you, when you were reading with the other therapist, that was it, the first time you read the letter. What do you remember?
Jimmy: Mmm. Yeah. Well, that was... (sigh)
Paul: Were you dreading reading?
Jimmy: Oh, yeah. He had to talk me into bringing it. And then I would bring it with me and say, “I can’t do it this week”, I would just carry it with me. And then it’s ‘Oh, great, I’m carrying suicide letters around with me, this is fun’. So, when we finally read it, it was – I think for him it was a way for me to start the mourning process, a healthy way to sort of – you know, the way I think of it is, it’s like if you break your leg, and then you set it yourself, let’s say you’re on a deserted island and you set the leg yourself, it will heal, but it’ll heal in a way where you’re still handicapped. And if you then get back to civilization and they want you to be able to walk normally, they have to break your leg again, and then re-set it properly. So I think that’s kind of what was going on, because she died, and then I picked up. I started drinking and smoking weed.
Paul: There’s not gonna be any processing of those emotions when you’re numb from getting loaded.
Jimmy: Yeah. And I was in such a reactive state, in that – you know, I wasn’t just acting out at Second City til I got fired, I was also in an abusive relationship with a guy who was also a suicide survivor, and we would go at it. I mean, that’s a secret in the gay community that nobody really talks about in mixed company, that if it’s two guys who are gonna to be violent, shit’s gonna get really ugly. And shit got really ugly for us. And that’s something I would have never really thought I could say on a podcast: that I not only was a domestic abuser, I was domestically abused. Again, that compassion and freedom of forgiveness came later on, through a lot of work, has me really not regretting my past, and wondering what it can do for other people.
Paul: Would it be fair to say that it wasn’t about recognizing that what you were doing was wrong – because I’m sure after you threw a punch you knew it was wrong – it was about taking some of the coal out of the thing that was making everything really hot, so that you wouldn’t feel compelled to punch somebody? Or – what – how did you get to the place where you didn’t want to punch somebody? Your partner? Or you wouldn’t stand for them punching you?
Jimmy: I was promised, by people I trusted, that there was a world where I didn’t need the armor and weapons I had grown up thinking I needed. And, another really good friend of mine back in Chicago, who was like a mentor to me around that time, said to me: “Just keep the guns in the holster today.” And I love that he said it that way, because he knew that coming from where I come from, to say ‘Take your armor off’... I didn’t know that there was anything under my armor. But what he would say was, “Just for today, try to keep your guns in the holster.” Or try not to act out. I mean, my rage would come out in such ways that – I have a sister who was arrested for assaulting someone because she parked too close to her driveway. My brother who’s a cop almost lost his badge. We come from, you just act on your impulse. So what made me stop was, I stopped the behavior – first of all I got out of the relationship, I mean, that was number one, and I actually had to put a restraining order on the guy – but I stopped the behavior, and then I started slowly but surely getting the compassion I loved that I needed that I never thought I could get, and then I could start extending it.
Paul: From who?
Jimmy: From an amazing group of people that I met. From my family, for better or for worse, they really do circle the wagons when things get heavy.
Paul: Your biological family?
Jimmy: Yeah, my brothers and sisters. But also just incredible friends, incredible support groups, and good therapists. Good professional help.
Paul: So you acted your way into it, before – and the feelings eventually –
Jimmy: Yeah, I mean, I can still – if I have to go around one more Prius on the fucking freeway. What is WRONG with those people?
Paul: (Laughing)
Jimmy: Okay: does it have a gas pedal? Because anytime we’re going along, going along, everybody’s doing 80 and the Prius is in the middle... that’s GREAT that you’re not burning any fossil fuel, we’re thrilled for you, but MOVE IT ALONG. And then if you’re texting? In a Prius? YOU are responsible for my high blood pressure.
Paul: (Laughing)
Jimmy: (Funny voice) Do you see what I did there, Paul?
Paul: Give me some seminal moments from your life that we haven’t touched on, or have we touched on all the big ones that you wanted to get to?
Jimmy: I gotta say, I never thought I’d have someone in my life that I could really be a partner with, and I never knew that – again, to young people, when I talk to gay guys in their 20’s, I say, “You don’t understand, when I was your age we didn’t know that there would be such a thing as gay marriage, it hadn’t been invented yet”. It’s not that we wanted it and didn’t have it, we didn’t even know enough to want it.
Paul: You couldn’t think that far ahead.
Jimmy: No! It wasn’t a concept! I was at the national march on Washington in 1987 for gay and lesbian rights – there weren’t even, transgendered rights weren’t even considered – and we wanted to be able to, it was people with AIDS, there was a lot of stuff about people with AIDS, which is what we called them then. It was about housing, not being kicked out of your house. It was about not loosing your job. There was nothing –
Paul: It was about surviving, not thriving.
Jimmy: Yeah! So, and growing up Catholic. I became an Episcopalian in 2005. I wanted – you know, most people who grew up Catholic and don’t want to be Catholic anymore just stop going to church. I wanted, like, paperwork. I wanted something signed that said ‘Jimmy Doyle is no longer a Roman Catholic’. I became an Episcopalian. So on May 17th of this year, I married – LEGALLY married – Stephen, in an Episcopal church, in Tiburon actually, where Robin Williams died. That is so seminal that I don’t even know how to talk about it yet. I can only tell you that I was looking in from the outside, and I never realized how much I resented it when my straight friends got married, until I got married, and I could be in the club. I didn’t even know that I felt left out and disenfranchised. So that, I worked so hard for that personally. I did a little work for it politically, but personally, to get to that place where I had a church I was comfortable in, and a person I wanted to marry who wanted to marry me... we wouldn’t even consider... I mean, the fact that we’re so far from being domestically violent. He won’t even smack my ass if I want him to, ya know what I’m sayin’, Paul?
Paul: (Laughing)
Jimmy: I’m sayin’ I need a little violence, and he’s not givin’ it to me!
Paul: (Prolonged laughing)
Jimmy: Is what I’m sayin’. (Giggles)
Paul: (Snort) Wow, that... I’m just thinking back to the moment when you were getting married, and what, how beautiful –
Jimmy: I’ll never –
Paul: Like you felt like you were watching yourself, because it’s so surreal. I mean, that’s powerful.
Jimmy: Yeah. It was incredible.
Paul: I love moments when you see the world change.
Jimmy: YESSS!
Paul: I love that.
Jimmy: Yeah! Because that’s the shit! Like, today’s been a rough day.
Paul: We talked about it. The drama.
Jimmy: Yeah, I didn’t – one of my sisters called and told me, and I was still in work mode. I can’t use my emotions too much at work because they need me to help them with theirs. So I was like, “Oooh, that’s too bad,” and then when I got home, actually looking on Facebook which is such a cliche, but I started crying. I’m so sorry. I know what that feels like. I know that pain, and I’m just so grateful not to be feeling it right now, and I so wish I could’ve helped. I love what you do, Paul. I think you help a lot of people.
Paul: Thanks. I appreciate it. And they help me. They help me every bit as much. It’s a two-way street. It’s totally a two-way street. I love the feeling of sitting at the mics and getting real with a human being. It’s the feeling I’ve wanted my entire life but I thought it was going to come in the form of money, property and prestige. Who knew what a fucking disappointment, what a dead-end street that was. ‘Cause it’s exciting – money, property and prestige, when you get tastes of them – but it always left me wanting more and feeling like something’s wrong with me because it isn’t filling, and I had no idea that my spirit was dead ‘cause all I cared about was myself. Who knew? It’s still a struggle, to not become obsessed with one’s own self-pleasure. Do you find yourself struggling with that?
Jimmy: Yeah!
Paul: Talk about that?
Jimmy: Well, first, I mean, you know, not to be too, whatever, Pepitone about it, but I mean, we live in a world – we live in a country – that says: ‘If you have this car, this face, this this, this that...” It’s a constant thing. And sometimes I do fear that I’m just deluded. But I know how it feels. I’ve had money before. I’d like some money back, now that I know how to handle it. But yeah, it’s a struggle all the time, like being an actor: ‘Did I get the job? Did I not get the job?’ Stuff like that. When I went to school I thought I had failed as an actor because I had to go to school rather than seeing how exciting it was that I could have another way in which to use my gifts. I’m really good at what I do!
Paul: That doesn’t surprise me at all! You’re so good at articulating your experience. I think that’s what drew me to you the first time I met you was the look in your eye, you know? There’s just – when I come across another person who’s a seeker, and they have eye contact, that isn’t inappropriate –
Jimmy: (Knowing laughter)
Paul: You know what I mean?
Jimmy: Totally.
Paul: It’s – it feels like a warm jacuzzi, to me.
Jimmy: Yeah! The same friend who told me about keeping my holsters – I mean, my guns holstered, he said, “Seek out those who search for truth, and run like hell from those who’ve found it”.
Paul: ‘Run like hell from those who’ve found it’?
Jimmy: Yeah.
Paul: Was the last part meant to be humorous? Or –
Jimmy: Yeah! Paul’s not getting any of my pithy sayings.
Paul: I didn’t know if I was missing –
Jimmy: I want the seekers!
Paul: No, that part I get, but ‘run from those who’ve found the truth’?! Oh, I see: run from those who THINK they know the truth.
Jimmy: YESSSS.
Paul: I thought... I didn’t get that.
Jimmy: Because the knowledge is in the seeking.
Paul: I’m not very bright, Jimmy. Even though I do a podcast. There’s a lot of shit I don’t – a lot of stuff goes over my head.
Jimmy: (Giggles)
Paul: I get it now. I get it now. Because, yeah, it’s a very dangerous place to think that you’ve got it all figured out.
Any other seminal moments that you wanted to touch on?
Jimmy: I dunno, I think we got a lot here...
Paul: Wanna do some fears and loves?
Jimmy: SURE! I’m afraid that now that I’m happy and married, I’m going to wake up next to my husband’s corpse.
Paul: Wow! You – right outta the gate!
Jimmy: Yeah...
Paul: You took your guns out of the holster!
Jimmy: Yeah...
Paul: I’m afraid of watching my dogs decline in health, because they’re eleven and ten.
Jimmy: Ohhhhh!
Paul: They’ve both still got a fair amount of energy, but I just...
Jimmy: Ooohhh...
Paul: Go ahead.
Jimmy: I’m afraid of giving a client the wrong advice, and then they relapse and die.
Paul: (Silence)
Jimmy: You SAID you wanted fears, Paul.
Paul: No, absolutely! I have that one, about people in my support group, that their suicide note is gonna say: ‘Paul said...’
Jimmy: YES.
Both: (Laughter)
Paul: What, you got another one?
Jimmy: I’m afraid I’m gonna loose my license by slapping a female Borderline who reminds me of my mother!
Both: (Laughter)
Jimmy: That’s a REAL fear!
Paul: I’m afraid I’m going to get letters because you referred to them as ‘a Borderline’.
Jimmy: A client with borderline tendencies.
Paul: Thank you. How controlling of me was that?
I fear getting critical e-mails from people, but not a single one has yet to destroy me. It’s the anticipation of criticism. I think it’s because that was the silent tension in my house, because my mom was just a machine gun of judgment, good or bad... it’s just the anticipation.
You know, they say that when you were raised with a narcissistic parent, you view the world the way you had that relationship with the parent. So you think everyone views you the way that parent did, so I’m constantly – a lot of times the way I put myself down is because I want to put myself down before you get the chance to, because it hurts less when I do it. So I’m afraid.
I got a really really intense e-mail from somebody who did not like how we handled a recent episode. I wrote him back and I didn’t loose my temper because I understood that they were hurting. I’ll probably read it on the podcast, but when I read those first – where it goes from ‘here’s a couple of nice things’ to ‘HOWEVER...’ , I get – I feel – I feel my stomach tighten when they get to the ‘HOWEVER’. ‘Cause I’m like, ‘Here it comes! Here’s the truth that I had never thought about before, that’s going to make me realize, yes, I AM a terrible person’. How’s that for a long fear?
Jimmy: Wow! That’s a good fear!
Paul: I’m afraid of being destroyed by criticism. That I will suddenly realize that I am SO much worse of a person than I think I am.
Jimmy: You’re so not!
Paul: But tell your crazy limbic system sitting in it’s cave –
Jimmy: HELLO-O! In it’s cave (giggles).
Paul: Your turn.
Jimmy: I’m afraid that when I write my book, my brothers and sisters will never speak to me again.
Paul: Wow, that’s intense.
Jimmy: ‘Cause I really – and then there’s another fear I wrote down, which is I fear I will never write my book. So I walk between this thing –
Paul: You’re fucked!
Jimmy: Yep.
Paul: You’re FUCKED.
Jimmy: Yep! And it’s a very – we started with the Tall Poppy Syndrome – it’s the airs and graces –
Paul: ‘Oh, your story’s worth a BOOK, is it?’
Jimmy: ‘Oooohhh, I could write a book. I could write a better book. About you and the butterflies. Couldn’t I? Knockin’ my glasses off into Lake Michegan. There’s a book.’
Paul: I’m afraid that most of us are going to die from Ebola.
Jimmy: Really?
Paul: That’s just a fear. It’s not like, every second, but every time I read a news article about it, I’m like, ‘It’s been a while since we had a plague. We’re due!’ Sorry to anybody out there who has anxiety, but – I should say, that’s not the rational executive function in my brain, that’s my limbic brain, that feels like things are too good. Too good in your life. You need – your stomach lining needs to slough off out your asshole. And your mouth.
Jimmy: One of my fears has always been that I’m going to get AIDS. Which obviously, I came out in ’81.
Paul: Good timing.
Jimmy: (Laughs) Right?! Well you know there was a horrible joke back then, which was: ‘Mom, Dad, I’ve got good news, I’ve got bad news. The bad news is, I’m gay. The good news is, I’m dying.’ Buh-da-bum-duh-bum-baah! I was ALWAYS afraid of getting AIDS. Always always always. Like to the point where I’d be driving and I’d think, ‘If this light stays green, I don’t have AIDS’.
Paul: Wow! Did you have a lot of unprotected sex?
Jimmy: NO! This is when I wasn’t having ANY sex, practically!
Paul: So you had seven years, though, of getting loaded and being potentially sexually active, right? Because you got sober in ’88...
Jimmy: Oh, no, I definitely – in there, there were some unprotected moments, but nothing that unreal. I think that the test came out before I got sober. The first blood test took two weeks to get results, the first blood test.
Paul: Some sleepless nights.
Jimmy: I got my first one in ’86, I think, or ’87, when the first one came out. And it’s weird, because I just got a physical, and they did my bloodwork, and I am now more worried about, like, my blood sugar and my cholesterol, you know, it’s like new worries. But they tested me for HIV and syphillis, and I was like, ‘Well, it’s good to know I’m HIV-negative and don’t have syphillis, but would you have done that for a straight married person?’ I don’t know.
Paul: Yeah, that’s questionable, huh?
Jimmy: But I was glad, you know. ‘Good that I don’t have syphillis’.
Paul: And you were wearing chaps.
Jimmy: (Giggles)
Paul: Your turn. Or maybe that was yours. Give me another one even though it’s not your turn.
Jimmy: What is it? Well, we’ve already covered the AIDS fear. I am afraid of my depression. I’m afraid my depression – and I’m not afraid of committing suicide, I’m afraid of the rage. I’m afraid I’ll destroy my life again. I destroyed my life. Actually, the only thing I can say to the people who I hurt so much back then is, ‘I’m not dead’. Which is small comfort to them, because maybe some of them wanted me dead, but I look back at that point in my life and I’m like, I reeeeeally could’ve died. Because the rage just needs a little more push. That’s why men are so violent when they kill themselves.
Paul: Did you ever hear back from Adam McKay? After you sent him the letter?
Jimmy: Yes!
Paul: What did he say?
Jimmy: He was lovely.
Paul: Is that it for the fears? Do you have any more?
Jimmy: Nope.
Paul: Let’s go to some loves.
Jimmy: I love falling asleep in a room while people are talking and doing things in another room.
Paul: Yeah, that’s a particular sound. It’s like a weird ocean sound.
Jimmy: Yes!
Paul: I love having a heart-to-heart with another southside Irish Catholic drunk who is sober. I love it.
Jimmy: Yes! YES! Ditto! I love smoking cigarettes in Ireland. Every time I’m in Ireland, I have to smoke.
Paul: Are you normally not a smoker?
Jimmy: I am normally not a smoker who wants to smoke. I will always be a smoker who doesn’t smoke.
Paul: I see. And what kind do you break out, when you’re there?
Jimmy: What are they called? Silk. Silk Cuts.
Paul: Those are fancy, aren’t they?
Jimmy: Yeaaaah! OH, they’re tasty!
Paul: I think the Queen brings them up on a velvet pillow. Doesn’t she?
Jimmy: (Guffaws) Well, I know THIS queen doesn’t have a pillow, but he enjoys a Silk Cut. Am I right, ladies and gentlemen!?
Paul: (Laughs) I love a good documentary about World War One or World War Two. I’m watching one right now on the History Channel called World War One Apocalypse. Because when it’s done well, there’s always some detail of it that you didn’t know in the last documentary or book you read about it. And the thing that I learned in this most recent one is that almost every head of a country involved in World War One was related. They were almost all cousins, offspring of Queen Victoria. And two of them look exactly alike: Czar Nicholas and King George. EXACTLY alike. Picture them side by side. They look like twins. Crazy! I love that.
Jimmy: Yeah! Wow! I love shit like that. That’s pretty cool. Well, this one is insane because it involves the southside AND cousins: I love when my cousin John picks me up at Midway airport and we go to White Castle on the way to his house.
Paul: Mmm-hmm. Whaddaya get? Doubles, or singles?
Jimmy: Just singles.
Paul: Singles.
Jimmy: I get five or six White Castles, some of those crinkly fries, and the orange pop.
Paul: God dammit, you’re southside.
Jimmy: Aaah?
Paul: Speaking of southside, and this is just a southside thing, but it’s the way it’s decorated: a good paneled basement.
Jimmy: (Gasps)
Paul: And the smell of it in winter. Or summer.
Jimmy: (Gasps)
Paul: The coolness, when the house isn’t air-conditioned, and you go down into the basement in the summer, and you smell maybe a little bit of the moist concrete, and there’s like a Pabst Light or something. I just love that.
Jimmy: Oh God, yes! With the dehumidifier running, in the corner.
Paul: Yes! And there’s also that smell of a little bit of the outlet hose from the washing machine, which is so specific. And you see just the little bit of the nylon that is catching the lint.
Jimmy: Yes, yes! (Laughs and claps) Okay, you wanna hear something weird? This isn’t a fear or a love, but Jane Lynch’s aunt and uncle bought the house I grew up in on the southside, 81st and Clausner, and her aunt still lives there. Uncle died, grandma died, her aunt still lives there. I can go to the house that I lived from birth to eight, and go into the basement, and the same extra fridge is in the basement from when I was a kid!
Paul: Really?! Still working? Oh my God!
Jimmy: Yes! Fifty years old!
Paul: That should be an advertisement.
Jimmy: I know, right? I know! Wait, what’s another love? I love –
Paul: I’m serious, whoever makes that refrigerator, they should shoot you, walking in, to get the same soda you drank when you were five years old, and say, ‘This is the refrigerator...” I mean, that would be the greatest commercial in the history of the world.
Jimmy: And then I’d finally get another commercial!
Paul: Get your SAG insurance! Call them!
Jimmy: God dammit. I will!
Paul: I want ten percent.
Jimmy: I love being able to nap in a cold room. Very cold room. With a blanket.
Paul: That’s a good one. I like that. When the air-conditioning’s on, but you also get the blanket. Which is probably not very global-friendly, but –
Jimmy: Yeah, fuck it.
Paul: I love when I kiss Herbert, and his lip moves up just a little bit, and my lips touch one of his fangs.
Jimmy: Awwww!
Paul: I know that’s gross to some non-dog people out there.
Jimmy: Why isn’t he here? Herbert?
Paul: Oh, he’s – they, both of them, are petrified to leave the house. They like the backyard, but yeah, they’re not travelers.
Jimmy: I love watching – my husband’s very quiet, and I love watching a group of people who doesn’t know him well when he says something fucking genius-ly witty, and they all realize at the exact same time how brilliant he is.
Paul: Oh, that’s sweet.
Jimmy: I LOVE THAT.
Paul: I love walking into Hugo’s on a Friday or Saturday night, and seeing you two with Eddie Pepitone and his wife Karen – wife or girlfriend?
Jimmy: Wife! They got married.
Paul: The four of you having dinner and laughing, and coming up and saying hi to you guys and just feeling that warm positive energy.
Jimmy: Yeah. Yeah, I love that too. Hugo’s is a great, is a good place. Wait, where is my – I know I have more loves, don’t I? Did I write more fears than loves? That’s very telling.
Paul: That’s okay. Let’s do one more each. We’ll improvise it, or Miles Davis it, as we like to say on the show.
Jimmy: Oooh! Sure.
Paul: Let’s do one more each.
(Slurping sounds)
Jimmy: We’re both taking sips of water.
Paul: I love human spirit when it rallies after a tragedy and it brings people together, closer together, in a way that none of them would have predicted.
Jimmy: Wow. I love watching someone choose to not be an asshole.
Paul: That’s a great one.
Jimmy: I was at Whole Foods the other day, and this woman was being so horrible to the guy ringing her up. And I’m sure the guy did it partly so that he could keep his job or maybe mostly so he could keep his job, but he chose to not be an asshole and he was really nice. And I actually said something to him afterwards. I like that.
Paul: That’s a good one, that’s a good simple one. Then she got in her Prius and drove slow in front of you.
Jimmy: Exactly! Texting!
Paul: Jimmy Doyle, thank you so much for coming and sharing your life with us.
Jimmy: Thank you.
Paul: Many many thanks to Jimmy. I told you that wasn’t going to be a downer! That was one of my favorite episodes. Hopefully we’re having dinner with him and his husband on Saturday night.
Before I get to some e-mails and surveys, I want to remind you that there’s a couple of different ways to support the podcast if you feel so inclined. You can go to the website, mentalpod.com and make a one-time Paypal donation, or my favorite, a once-a-month donation for as little as five bucks a month. It’s super easy to set up and then it just takes care of itself, you don’t have to do anything. And it means the world to me, it really helps keep the show running. You can also support us by shopping through our search portal when you’re gonna buy something from Amazon, and then they give us a couple of nickels. Just make sure your adblocker is disabled. Otherwise the box won’t show. It’s on the home page, right hand side, about halfway down. Not to be confused with the search box for the mentalpod site itself. You can also support us by going to iTunes, writing something nice, giving us a good rating. That boosts our ranking and it brings more listeners to the show. And you can also support us by spreading the word through social media and that really helps and it means a lot to me.
Also, you know, I want to give a shout out to a couple of listeners who commented after the episode we did with Pamela Martin, whose issue among others is living with chronic pain and Fibromyalgia.
It was not my intent in that episode to link it to her having been sexually abused. I merely mentioned that that is something that a friend of mine, one of my best friends, who is a pain specialist, had mentioned he sees occasionally in people. When I mentioned it, Pamela said that she absolutely believes that that is the case with her, and so I picked up that thread and I went with it.
If I gave the impression that I thought all cases of chronic pain were buried trauma, that was not my intent at all. I know that some of these people who suffer in feeling alone and in pain with chronic pain were turned off by that episode, and I just want to send them a hug and say that I cannot imagine what it is like to live with chronic pain that you’re going through, and I hope someday to have a guest on that will help you feel less alone.
This is an e-mail that I got from Peter C., and he writes:
“Just listened to the Desiree El Stage Episode #1 and I understand your apprehension about general practitioners prescribing psych meds, but I think you and your guest failed to take into consideration the fact that unless you’re sucidal it takes months for people to get in and see a psychiatrist, especially a well-regarded one. I know there are a lot of GP’s who have long lost their bedside manner, who look at medication as the first option, etc. but there are some great ones out there who are compassionate individuals who take a more holistic approach to patient care, even within large healthcare conglomerates.
“When my entire system was shutting down due to severe anxiety and depression, I refused to accept that it was psychological, and my doctor bore with me and even indulged my desire to be given an EEG and a battery of other heart-related tests. I was 25 and in excellent shape. When I finally gave in and realized it was all in my head, I resisted medication and took meditation classes, changed my diet, vitamins etc., none of which worked.I started taking Zoloft and entered therapy at my GP’s behest. My life completely changed.
“After eight years and marriage to the most wonderful woman on the planet, two perfect little girls, and tremendous progress in therapy, I decided, with full support from my doc, to taper off meds. Within a month I was a nervous wreck, crying about everything from the fact that Led Zeppelin’s first album was poorly received upon its initial release to the notion that Stevie Wonder will die someday.”
God dammit, you can’t make this up, I fucking love it!
“During a stressful weekend at work, I developed insomnia and for two weeks I slept no more than an hour a night, and spent 20-plus hours every day bawling and shaking, convinced that I was going to die. I went to my GP and she got me back on an increased dosage of Zoloft and added Buspar plus Trazadone for the insomnia. I asked her and my therapist if I should see a psychiatrist and they both said that they could refer me but it would take months before I got in to see one.
“Within a week I was feeling better, and grateful not only for the life and family that I have, but for my wonderful loving care providers. My doctor not only prescribed the new meds, which she views as temporary crisis control, but exercise, meditation and journaling as well. She also gave me her clinic e-mail so that I can message her with any issues or questions I have without going through a receptionist and nurse triage first. Sorry to go off on a tirade, I just wanted to say my piece, and stick up for the humane GP’s out there who look at their patients as people and not widgets on an assembly line.”
Thank you so much for that, Peter. You really opened my eyes to that and I appreciate it. You know what, maybe that would be a good thing for the sponsor that we talked about earlier, for somebody that’s feeling like they need to talk to somebody immediately.
This is the Shame and Secret Survey filled out by – I love her already – a woman who calls herself One Sick Bitch. She is straight, in her thirties, raised in a slightly dysfunctional environment, was the victim of sexual abuse and never reported it.
She writes, “I was twelve. It was an older cousin of mine who I looked up to. I used to spend summers with his sister in their home. One night he came home drunk while everyone else was asleep and told me that his girlfriend had just broken up with him and he was devastated. He began telling me how beautiful he always thought I was and how all his friends felt the same. Naturally, me living for total acceptance from the opposite sex since my dad never showed me any affection, I ate it up.”
And please, I hope any fathers that are out there that are emotionally distant from their daughters and don’t give them attention, for the love of God, understand the ramefications it can have in their choices. Although she didn’t have a choice necessarily here, but what happened later, but anyway, now I wish I could take that back because it was so fuckin’ messy how I expressed myself.
Anyway, she writes, “I didn’t misplace it for a sexual come-on, I was naive and trusted him. Next thing I know he started to kiss me. I was disgusted and felt like I had to go along with it at the same time for fear of hurting his feelings and rejecting him. I felt in some way that because he gave me all of those compliments I somehow owed it to him, plus his girlfriend just dumped him, I couldn’t humiliate him further. I carried this theme into adulthood by the way.”
And by the way, that way that she is reacting is textbook for children that have narcissistic parents who they wind up emotionally getting used to caring for, trying to carry their pain.
“I carried this theme into adulthood by the way. Shortly after the kissing stopped he performed oral sex on me. I had never had anyone do that up until that point. It felt so gross. I couldn’t stand it but again I felt like I had to go along with it. The phone rings. It was the girlfriend. He was distracted. He tells me to leave the room. I felt like a discarded piece of trash. I sit in the living room by the front door. I hear him doing something in the bathroom. After fifteen minutes he comes out and sits on the couch to tie his shoes. I try to talk to him but he ignores me. He then leaves the house. I try to sleep but can’t.
“Hours later the phone rings. It’s my aunt who is working the graveyard shift. She tells me that my cousin, the one who molested me, is in the hospital because he tried to kill himself by slitting his wrists. With my female cousin, his sister, and my uncle, his father, we meet my aunt at the emergency room. We visit him lying in a bed with his wrists bandaged up.
“I feel dirty in his presence. I feel somehow responsible, like he did this because of what he did with me, but he seems to act like nothing happened so I just try and forget about it. Weeks later he seems to be avoiding me and never apologizes. Maybe he doesn’t remember because he was drunk, or maybe he just can’t face it – ”
I think the latter –
“I tell my closest friend about it in a letter. My parents find it and confront his parents. Nothing comes of it. No apology or recognition of it has ever been made.”
You know, so often I think parents think it’s confronting the other person that is the most important thing, when yes, that may be important, but the most important thing is, comfort your fucking child!
“My parents, throughout the years, I have seen them at various family functions and always wonder what he thinks about what happened. He is married now and seems to be fine. I don’t think it would do any good to address it now. I do however know that it set the tone for how I would respond to the men in my life.
“I was a stripper/escort for many of my adult years and even in my personal life struggled to be a fantasy girl to every man I dated, all the while hating myself. It kills me to think back on all the things I allowed to happen to me. I can’t take it back. All I can do is try and forgive myself for being so stupid and careless with sex, etc.
“After tons of relationships I’m now 38, recently married, and finally feel like a healthy functioning human being, despite my self-hatred. My husband has helped a lot with that but I had to come clean about my past which was the worst feeling ever. Such shame and disgust with myself. But we are better for it.”
“All those who are withholding secrets from your spouses, take note. “We are better for it”. Well, I should say, spouses who are remotely healthy and compassionate.
“He needed to understand why I would get mechanical and have sex just to please him when I wasn’t into it. I felt an obligation, a duty, an need to please even if I was dying inside, sick of performing for the opposite sex.
“I could go on and on, but that was my experience with sexual abuse.”
Thank you for sharing that.
She’s also been “emotionally abused by several boyfriends including of course my emotionally unavailable father I would do anything and everything to please them because they knew it and were disgusted by my desperate attempts to keep them.
“I in turn experienced this as emotional abuse because the things they would say were so hurtful. I’ve also been lied to and cheated on which feels lower than shit.”
Any positive experiences with your abusers?
“I had a personal close relationship with a man who took on my daughter as his own. Even though there was no romance between us we became very good friends.”
You know, my fucking antennae went up the minute I saw that, it was like – you know, an older man taking interest in – and I know it can happen also with a female taking interest in a younger boy – but my antennae really go up when there’s no – I’m not going to read the whole thing, but yes, of course, this guy started molesting her daughter. I don’t know what the point of that was, I just didn’t feel like reading another two paragraphs about somebody taking advantage of a child, so I just thought I’d condense that.
Her darkest thoughts:
“That a gang of black men with huge cocks anally rape – ” I like how, yeah, then I’m gonna read this, because it’s lighter.
“A gang of black men with huge cocks anally rape and torture my husband – ”
For once I’d like to have somebody have it be a gang of black men with unusually tiny cocks. Just to mix it up for once.
And now for the third time: “A gang of black men with huge cocks anally rape and torture my husband’s ex-wife until she begs to die, and which I show up to stab her repeatedly, cutting off her saggy dog-tits, choking her and reviving her until I get bored and then eventually slicing her from ear to ear while I watch the life drain from her dogshit-colored eyes.”
Let’s just soak that in for a second.
That may be – you know, that – I’ve gotta say, that’s like some of the darkest poetry I think I’ve ever read. I mean, that is, that’s – WOW. That is one of the reasons I wanted to read this survey because it made me want to hug her, and it made me laugh at the same time. I’m a professional stand-up comedian that for 25 years tried to find ways to express the darkness in me, and I think you might have topped – although I could never have said that on stage and not had the audience walk out, but that is – aw, fuck!
Moving on.
Darkest secrets:
“I once seduced the man that my mom was having an affair with. It turned me on so much that I thought my genitals were going to explode. Afterwards I felt like a total piece of shit and ashamed that I could do such a thing, but I somehow felt entitled because my mom shouldn’t have been having an affair in the first place. Sick, I know. I would never admit it to her to this day. No way.”
Sexual fantasies most powerful to you:
“That I am being molested by my father. Not my actual father, that thought makes me sick, but a father figure, who makes me feel nurtured and safe. Best fucking orgasms.”
By the way, I also have similar fantasies that are extremely powerful to me, where it’s not my mom but it is a mom figure.
“Also I fantasize that I am a gay man. I’ve done this with pretty much every sexual partner I’ve ever had and with my current husband. He doesn’t seem to mind. Whatever turns me on, he says. I imagine –”
That’s beautiful.
“I imagine that the man is straight and we’re friends and just exploring. Brokeback Mountain made me so wet. Also that my partner is cheating on me or fucking other women while I watch. Other people would look at these fantasies as sick, but for me it feels normal, and it’s not hurting anyone.”
I just want to high-five you.
“As far as I know, there was no incest in my family aside from that time with my cousin. I think it’s healthy to have fantasies.”
Right on. Right on!
What, if anything would you like to say to someone , that you haven’t been able to?
“I would like to tell my husband’s ex-wife that she is a worthless pile of dog shit that serves absolutely no purpose in her children’s lives but misery and chaos, and if she would just die, which I would gladly help with (not really, I know that real prison isn’t like Orange is the New Black), her children would actually have a standing chance. I cannot have words or write poison pen letters to her because it would be evidence to a court that maybe we shouldn’t have any custody. I never tell the children this, by the way, but you better believe that she never holds back, and adds nothing but lies to it all.”
So creatively, I might add.
What if anything do you wish for?
“For my husband’s ex-wife to die. My hatred for her is all-consuming. I know I need help, therapy and support big time. My chest is so tightly wound right now just writing this, but aside from wishing her death, I mainly wish for inner peace and a better spiritual understanding of things, to have more faith in the universe and to trust that everything is happening for a reason, blah blah blah.”
Oh, I love her!
Have you shared these things with others?
“Yes, and some understand whereas others don’t care because they’ve never experienced it or don’t know what narcissism really is. I always end up looking insane when talking about her because I have so much rage, and the people that have spoken to her are confused because she plays it up like an angel and tells them how happy she is that her ex and his new wife are so great for her kids, all the while stabbing us in the back and doing everything she can to turn them against us.”
How do you feel after writing these things down?
“Lighter. Validated. That I’m really not crazy. I mean, would meds probably help me? Yeah, but I have insane emetiphobia (fear of vomiting) so I can never take a drug that says the side effects are nausea or vomiting, and pretty much all of them do. I know how I’ve chosen to respond to my issues, current and past, isn’t the healthiest, but I do feel better after writing all of this.”
Therapy would be a great place to start. Because that much rage, I think, is too much, even for friends, if it’s more than a single instance, you know, or a couple of instances.
Anything you’d like to share with someone who shares your thoughts or experiences?
“That you are not alone. I think that a lot of people feel like they are the only ones who have felt this pain, but they are not. While each and every experience is individualized, with unique feelings, the outcomes from these feelings are usually the same. Find a therapist, support group, take this survey, keep a journal, any way to get it out.”
Thank you so much for that.
I know I laugh at some things that other people wouldn’t laugh at, but regular listeners of this show, I think, laugh with me. And clearly we are NOT laughing AT her, we are laughing WITH her, because we’ve been there.
I have had insomnia, I have had hate-related insomnia before. This is an Awefulsome Moment filled out by Fran Baxter, she’s in her 30s, and she writes: “I lost my husband to suicide a few weeks ago – ”
I’m so sorry.
“He ended his years-long battle with chronic pain and depression on his terms, being kind enough to spare me from having to find him or identify his body. I forgive him even though I miss him dearly. He is out of pain, with a lot of people he admired, and cats that we loved. A dear friend who was a lover before I met my husband came over today on his way to visit a relative and I wanted to experience intimacy with someone I trusted as a way of helping me grieve. My friend was happy to oblige me. We had no set expectations except showing each other enthusiastic consent. I had a feeling I’d cry a few times (sense memory triggers), and I did. My friend was as kind and loving as he was nearly half my life ago. After the really great sex was over, I could faintly hear my husband’s voice: ‘See? I told you my cock wasn’t as special as you thought it was! You came just as easily just now as you did with me.’ I couldn’t help but laugh and share that with my friend. My husband knew me better than I know myself sometimes, and it is awfulsome to know that he was right about this too. It is also awfulsome to be able to fuck another man again, because my marriage vows have expired.”
That is so heavy, and human, and I just wanna give you a hug.
This is an e-mail that I got from a woman who wants to be referred to as Thesha, and she writes:
“I found the podcast about a month ago when a friend sent an e-mail saying I should check out Maria Bamford because I would probably like her and indeed she is definitely now my life hero, thanks in part to the podcast, which had all the amusingness of her comedy, with the seriousness that comes from knowing it’s not all just for laughs.
I’m guessing you get weird e-mails with questions all the time, so know that I know this is weird, but something is compelling me to send it anyway.
The current episode talks quite a bit about suicide attempt survivors – ”
I think she’s referring to the episode with DesRae L’Stage –
“... a category I cannot for the life of me figure out if I belong in. I know it shouldn’t matter to me. My experiences are my experiences, exactly as they happened. But for some reason it does matter to me to know whether or not I fit into that box. It’s basically the suicide attempt equivalent of, ‘something happened but I don’t know if it counts’ and I am, for an unfathomable reason, e-mailing you, a complete stranger, to basically ask, does this count? I feel like an idiot. I can’t believe I’m planning to send this.
“What happened is, I’d been suicidal for quite some time (in the realm of five months), holding out for my family, and a little bit because killing myself seemed like it would take more effort than I could muster. I had a number of plans, all serious, but none with a set date/deadline. I very much wanted to kill myself, but I very much wanted to kill myself all the time and was somehow managing to not do it.
“One day something in my brain just sort of snapped and I tied a slip knot in a rope, put it over my head, and leveraged it over the shower curtian rod, which is bolted to the wall. I don’t know what I was thinking exactly. I do know that I knew before I did it that I was doing something in a way where I could get out of it if I changed my mind, which is I think a big part of my confusion as to whether it ‘counts’.
“So when I could feel my heart beat in every part of my head, and things were starting to get weird, I basically did change my mind, not totally consciously, not totally unconsciously, and I got down and I shoved the noose in a drawer and never told anyone what happened.
“I didn’t tell my therapist about it because she was already being very generous in what she was letting me get away with saying without making me go to the hospital. And then, when I was able to check myself into the hospital the next week, they asked me if I’d ever attempted suicide and I said no because I figured it didn’t count if you didn’t end up in the emergency room, but then I also felt like I couldn’t talk about what happened without a risk of them thinking I was lying.
“I keep telling myself that you get tons of weird e-mail and that this is a totally offensive question to ask. It’ll just blend in with all the other offensive questions, and even though you know my name from my e-mail address, you’ll never meet me and it won’t be awkward, right?”
And I wrote her back and I said:
“Your e-mail really touched me and I just want to give you a hug because I’m so sorry you were in such pain, and my my thoughts are: You attempted suicide. You put a plan into action. You came close to dying and it scared you, thank God, and you changed your mind. That to me is a suicide attempt survivor.
Anyone who shames you or corrects you is either in a bad mood or an asshole. What you attempted is every bit as heartbreaking and serious as anyone else’s attempt. Pain is pain. Hopelessness is hopelessness. What you choose to call it isn’t nearly as important as acknowledging the feelings that made you wanna die, and working on finding ways to cope with them.
I know we need a shorthand to convey events and it’s frustrating to not have one that we are completely comfortable using. I have the feeling that the more comfortable you become with your humanness, the less you will fear being judged in your syntax, and you will heal, and the most important thing to come from it is that you reached out to help. You are getting stronger and sharing your story to let others know they’re not alone and that we can come back from the brink.
Imagine the loved one of someone who did kill themselves hearing your story. You think for one minute they would think anything other than, ‘Thank God she changed her mind”? You think a single loved one would say, ‘Ick, what an exaggerator”? No! Because they see that you were hurting, just like the person they loved. The overwhelming feeling would probably be to want to hug you, because they can’t hug their loved one again. I will never get to hug my friend Wendy who shot herself in 2001.
But you’re still here to let us know how you got to that place so we can help, and I get to e-mail you, and that is a good thing.”
I want to read two more things. Two more Awfulsome Moments.
This is from Sarah, and she writes – she’s in her 30s, and she writes:
“My younger brother was diagnosed – ”
This one’s dark, but you know, this whole show, or I should say, all these surveys are pretty dark, but if you’ve listened this far, you’re a trooper.
“My younger brother was diagnosed as a juvenile delinquent at age 15. He spent the next ten years of his life being re-diagnosed, medicated, hospitalized, etc. until he took his life. His final diagnoses included clinical depression, OCD, and possible schizophrenia. He left a nice note full of love, and even tidied up his place so we wouldn’t have to deal with a bunch of empty pizza boxes, Slurpee cups and beer cans. That is awfulsome in itself. I spent a lot of time worrying/fantasizing that he would kill himself and I thought I would be less shocked but it was fucking bad and I wanted to do it too. I lost my shit. He truly was my best friend. Kind of a fucked up and majorly co-dependent relationship there. That’s a whole other thing though. This awfulsome moment happened when I got his official autopsy results. There was a zero percent blood alcohol level. He was on meds but he also self-medicated and drowned the crazy with alcohol. I was so fucking relieved that he was clear when he made that choice. I’ve never been angry at him for taking his life. It was his to take, and who am I to ask him to stay in the hell he was living in? Of course, it would have been better if there was a med or therapy or religion or philosophy or something that worked for him. I don’t wish he was never sick in the first place, either; I feel like our illnesses are part of who and what we are, right? I could go on and on. I need to get back to some talk therapy. Ha ha. Fuck.”
Thank you for that.
And finally – and how do we not end on this guy’s name? This whole episode? “Hitler’s Moustache”! GOD, do I love you guys! God, do I love you guys – you just – there’s just – all the walls are down. ALL the walls are down. I’ve wanted it my whole life, in communicating with people. He is in his 20s and his Awfulsome Moment, he writes:
“You know those moods, where you haven’t had enough sleep, and you go back and forth between being pissed off and giggly? I was in one of those moods. The difference between a normal exhausted mood-swinging morning was that I had also been suicidal for months and was developing regularly erratic behavior. I was being transported to a hospital’s mental health ward after spending a mostly sleepless night in an emergency holding facility. An ambulance came and they informed me that they would have to strap me down to a gurney. I think that it was some kind of handcuffing or arm-strapping to the bed. I just knew that I had enough freedom to raise may hand and flip off the cars behind us as we rode to the hospital. I don’t know if they could see what I was doing, but I found it pretty amusing. Anyway, we get to the hospital, and we go to the floor that contains the mental health ward. I’m being pushed, tired-eyed and crazy-brained, through a busy hospital. The objective is to get me to the mental ward, but we cannot find it. The two EMT’s took me to where the mental health ward is supposed to be, past a counter with a young attractive nurse sitting at it, but that is the civilian entrance to the ward. Patients have to use the V.I.P. entrance someplace else. So they take me back the direction we came, past the cute nurse. ‘Hello again,’ I thought. Wheeling me around, still can’t find out where the hell I’m supposed to be. They had to go back and ask for clarification. They wheeled me all around the hospital, up and down elevators, down and around hallways, passing doctors and family members and nurses and children. They wheeled me past the same counter with the cute nurse six times total: three there, and three back. I found it all very amusing and annoying. I laughed and scowled and yawned. I made rude comments about douchey doctors we passed in the hallways. The female EMT was so apologetic and embarrassed. I was kind of just along for the ride. Eventually they stuck me in the hallway while they went to get the accurate information, so I sat there, dirty and wild-eyed, watching the people go by looking at me, not unkindly but still with the sense that ‘Oh, this is slightly different’. It was a farce, filled with confusion, doors opening and closing, back and forth and in and out and up and down, and I was handcuffed to a gurney wondering about the odds and ability of making an escape. It was a rough day, a rough week, a rough month, but eventually we found our way to the mental ward, and later, I had mashed potatoes for dinner. I enjoy that memory.”
Ah, that is AWFULSOME. Thank you for that.
I hope if you’re out there and you’re feeling stuck, I hope to God this week can be a touchstone for growth for a lot of us. I just hope it. I hope we can start communicating better, and we can improve the emotional illiteracy, not only in this country but in the world, because we don’t realize how trapped we are and how much we lack language to express our emotions in a healthy way, and that is at the source of so much. Anyway. You’re not alone, and thank you, thank you so much for listening.
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