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Paul: Welcome to episode 104 with my guests listeners John and Megan B. My name is Paul Gilmartin, that was very Bill Curtis-like, the way I introduced them. There might be a murder. My name is Paul Gilmartin, this is The Mental Illness Happy Hour, 90 minutes of honesty about all of the battles in our heads. From medically diagnosed conditions and past traumas, to everyday, compulsive, negative thinking. This show’s not meant to be a substitute for professional, mental counseling. It’s not a doctor’s office. It’s more like a waiting room that doesn’t suck. The website for this show is mentalpod.com. All kinds of stuff there on the website. Mentalpod is also the name you can follow me at on Twitter if you want to know when I’m going to performing somewhere, or sometimes I’ll do like a fear-off or a love-off on Twitter, if you follow me on Twitter then you can be a part of that. One of the things I’ve been talking with the listeners about is trying to do some type of Internet meetup, either via GooglePlus hangouts or maybe like doing a TweetUp, where you do a hashtag #mihh for Mental Illness Happy Hour and maybe have like a specific time set aside. To talk about it more, I created a thread in the forum called Meetups. So if you want to go check that out—if you haven’t been to the forum in a while, please go check it out. I created a whole bunch of new threads there that hopefully will accommodate a lot of the requests that you guys have been making over the last several months. And I deeply, deeply appreciate those of you who do participate in the forum because not only do you bring comfort to other people in the forum, but you bring comfort to me too because sometimes I need to go there and kind of vent and connect with people. There are surveys on the website, you can take those. Thank you so much to those of you that are—have been taking those. And thank you so much to those of you guys that have been collecting audio clips, and have been keeping the spammers out of the forum, and especially the transcribers. You guys have been doing a great job. I really, really appreciate it. And of course the donors, the one-time and especially the monthly donors. You fucking rock. And can I just give some love to Australia and Canada. The majority of our listeners are—the overwhelming majority of our listeners are in the United States, but a large proportion—a disproportionately large number of the monthly donors are from Canada and Australia, and I just want to say I fucking love you guys so thank you. And I don’t want anybody to feel bad about not being a monthly donor. Sometimes I’ll get emails from people that are broke and they apologize, do not feel bad. Do not feel bad.
Where do I want to start? How about let’s kick it off with a survey. This is from the Shame and Secrets survey, filled out by a guy who calls himself Hopefully Redeemed. He’s straight, he’s in his 30’s, was raised in an environment that was a little dysfunctional. “Ever been the victim of sexual abuse?” He writes, “Yes and I never reported it. When I was around 12 or so, my aunt was drunk and took me into the bathroom to proceed to slip me the tongue. I knew what was happening but just kind of laughed it off. I told some people and there were laughs shared, but it’s pretty insane when I think about it.” “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” “I believe I have a lot of self-hatred and which I need to seek therapy for. In fact, I went to see one psychiatrist recently who basically just kept throwing his pen down and rubbing both of his eyes with his index finger and thumb. I could tell he thought there was a lot wrong with me and didn’t want to deal with it. I never saw him again. I have a lot of anger towards myself for not following my dreams. But this is due to the fact that I received brain damage from Paxil withdrawal. It really is quite a long story, but since I quit the drug, it’s been mental agony. There’s been a lot of healing, so I’d like to say that for anyone out there dealing with withdrawal, there is hope. I have dreams where I’m looking at my own face in a mirror and I’m gritting my teeth and growling. I wake up and I’m still growling. I can feel it because I’m mad at myself.” “Deepest, darkest secrets?” “I learned about sex from a very early age. I grew up with four older half siblings, three of which are brothers. They would bring their girlfriends home and I would hear them doing things with them. It was pretty quickly that I learned what it was that they were doing considering that I saw Spank mags around the house, and I think I learned to masturbate around the age of nine, maybe even a little earlier. I got turned on at a very early age. At age eight, I was in a tent with my two older aunts and a local girl who had a crush on me. They made us make out. I didn’t really know what I was doing but I remember being excited as they encouraged me to kiss her. That stuck with me to this day. Probably explains why I have an attraction to little girls. Although I know I would never act upon such a desire, I can’t help the attraction. Every time I hear the word “pedophile,” I shudder, knowing that if some of my close friends knew this about me, that they would label me as one. My fiancé knows about this as I made sure if I was going to marry someone, they needed to know my deepest and darkest secrets, and that if they didn’t run, they’d be the one.” “What sexual fantasies are most powerful to you?” “When I was younger, around ten or eleven years old, my parents’ friends would visit frequently and would bring their son and daughter who were about a year or two older than myself. To this day, I still fantasize about having sex with both of them at the same time.” “Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” He writes, “Yes.” “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself?” He writes, “It’s a battle. I don’t think it’s something that I can change about myself, so I’m learning to accept it and continue to know that nobody gets harmed in the making of this life. However, I’m going to continue to seek counsel and therapy. I’ve become convinced that it works because of this podcast.” Aw, that’s very sweet. And I can’t tell you how much joy it brings me when I get emails from people who have taken that step and have reached out for help and are finding that it is helping them.
This next survey is also—this is gonna be kind of a survey-heavy show, just cuz I feel like it. How do you like that little bit of attitude coming at you from the San Fernando valley? This is filled out by Susan, she’s bisexual, in her 30’s, was raised in a stable and safe environment, was the victim of sexual abuse but never reported it. “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” “Thoughts of my daughter being violently killed bring me a feeling of calm because people would fuss over me. I sometimes wish my brother would die so I could be the savior to his wife and kids and move to their town. I sometimes dream of getting naked in a bar and allowing all people there to have wild and violent sex with me, using me any way they want to. I sometimes wish I could get cancer to go through chemo, losing all my body hair and 20 kilograms.” “Deepest, darkest secrets?” “I’ve had sex with different people on the same day. I gamble almost everything I have. I stole from my parents and blamed my alcoholic father for it.” “Sexual fantasies most powerful to you?” “I fantasize about being publicly humiliated, getting naked in a bar and letting everyone do anything to me, no matter what. I also fantasize about being loved and held. This can be as powerful as the above.” “Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” She writes, “No, I don’t have that kind of trust. Although I have one friend who would totally understand.” “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself?” She writes, “Both make me feel wrong, as I don’t think I deserve to be treated that badly or that well.” “Any comments to make the podcast better?” “I’d love to hear a gambler.” I would too, so if you’re out there and you’re in the Southern California area, or you’re gonna be visiting here, and you’re somebody with a gambling issue, roll the dice, come see me, huh? Ugh. That’s all I got is that? It’s my podcast. I can fail when I want.
This is an email I got from a young man named Garrett. God, what am I, 100? “Young man.” Garrett writes, “I’m a twenty-year-old male college student. I was diagnosed with depression roughly three-and-a-half years ago. However, I feel I have suffered with the illness since I was about 12. I tried to type some events out and spent a while doing so, only to read that they literally made zero sense. The timeline of everything is just a madhouse. I still am really struggling to this day. However, recently I actually sought help by my own will and I owe most of that to you and the show. I was recently labeled with an eating disorder after seeking and I’m really struggling with just handling it all. I think that is the biggest thing with mental illness or just experience – everything just seems to be like a whirlwind of emotions and uncontrollable thoughts. It’s like having OCD and having someone come into your house, disrupting and ruining everything you try to do and keep sane while being tied down in a chair with your mouth taped shut. That is how I feel. I know this email is really poorly written, but unfortunately that’s just how my head is at this point. Thank you for everything. I’m going to try and continue to work through this and hopefully one day beat it. Sincerely, Garrett. (the most awful email author in the world)” And I had to write him back. I said, “Garrett, I love your email. It reminds me so much of me, especially when I was younger. You sound like a great, sensitive kid who is really seeking peace and serenity. Let me tell you, of things we have control over, that hands down is the most important. I’ve been seeking for 25 years. The road’s been hard and bumpy and sometimes I get lost, sometimes I drive backwards, sometimes I break down, but I always get back up and trudge forward. And I wish the same for you. I found your email to be quite articulate even though you don’t. I think it’s a testament to how deeply our depression and low self-esteem can affect us. In a nutshell, you make total sense, especially emotionally. So a big hug to you Garrett.”
And before we get to the interview with John and Megan, I want to share something from the Body Shame survey filled out by a woman named Megan, not the Megan from the interview, she’s 25, she’s straight, and she writes, “My whole life I’ve been chubby. I hated my stomach, breasts and thighs for being thick and covered in stretch marks. Everything changed last year when I had my daughter. She is my first, and my body hate turned to body love when I saw what was happening during my pregnancy. I realized how beautiful my body is, it can actually bring another human into this world. It can feed that human and provide arms that hold and love that human. I got bigger during my pregnancy. I got more stretch marks over my breasts, stomach and thighs. But they weren’t ugly anymore. They were beautiful reminders of what came from them. Every stretch mark over my stomach is a reminder that I had a home for my daughter, that she was safe and warm and loved in her tiny home until my arms, although they might be thick and stretched, could hold and love her.”
[SHOW INTRO]
Paul: I’m here with John and Megan Brehman, and John had contacted me about—was it about a year ago?
John: No actually it was only about two months or so ago.
Paul: Couldn’t have been further—
Megan: Nice start Paul.
Paul: You had contacted me a decade ago. And you were just kind of describing your family situation and I said if you ever get out to LA, shoot me an email. And you said, “Well, my sister lives out in LA, and she might be interested in coming on and doing the podcast with me.” And I thought that would be a great idea, because we’ve never had siblings talking about—
John: Well, just, you know, we can both relate. We both have our own issues.
Megan: We’ve always kind of—well, we didn’t use to get along.
John: No, as children we definitely did not get along.
Paul: Oh really?
John: Yeah, yeah.
Megan: Yeah. We were termed “the Bickersons.”
John: Until we both moved out of the house and only saw each other on vacations or holidays so.
Megan: Even still, I didn’t feel like we really had a connection.
John: That’s true.
Megan: It’s kind of been developing for the past few, past years.
John: Couple years. I think really since, we’ll get into it more, but your extensive outpatient treatment in Colorado.
Megan: Yep, yep.
John: That was—that kind of sealed our relationship a lot.
Paul: And I’d just like to preface it at this point too, or interject, whatever the verb that would be, that the purpose of this podcast, and this is directed to the listener, not at you guys, the purpose of this podcast isn’t to lay blame on parents. The purpose is to try to identify dynamics that happened in our past and say how do we move forward with who we are today and what we know about ourselves and I think it’s important that we have that information. And I just think that’s an important distinction to make because somebody listening for the first time may think, “Oh, this is gonna be ‘blame the parents’ podcast.” Which, I suppose if you listen of them, some people might feel that way, but I think we also, no matter what our circumstances that we were raised in, and I’m speaking about myself, at a certain point I have to take responsibility and say, “I’m now an adult, I have this information, and what can I do with it now.” I just wanted to make that clear to any new listeners that that’s the—feeling healthier and better about ourselves and less alone is the goal of this podcast, not to lay blame on people so I just wanted them to….
John: And I agree completely. I mean, we’re not here to bash anyone, but I find that what I’ve been going through recently, I find it very interesting, and I’m in therapy right now, and it often comes up, it’s more interesting to me how my childhood has affected what I’m going through right now. 20-25 years ago…
Megan: Has had an impact.
John: It’s still impacting me to a great degree. And I’m working through that.
Megan: Yeah.
John: Again, like you said, I’m an adult now, I have to make my own decisions, I can’t just lay blame to anyone in my past.
Paul: And just lay in a pool of self-pity and say, “You broke me. I’m unfixable. I’m just gonna hold on to this resentment,” which is its own sickness that a lot of people get trapped in. Well, let’s start from the beginning. You—Chicago – is that where you were born and raised?
Megan: Yep.
John: That’s right.
Paul: What was your childhood like?
John: Pretty stable. I guess we’ll get into that more too. It was very stable. We were taken care of, upper middle class.
Megan: Yeah, I would definitely say stable on the outside. There’s five—I’m the first kid, John’s the second, there’s three younger brothers. You know, we lived in the city, nice house.
John: Yeah, we were physically taken care of, emotionally maybe not so much.
Megan: Yeah, we got our basic needs met.
John: Yeah, definitely met.
Paul: Your basic practical needs.
John: Yes.
Megan: Yeah, totally.
John: We had a roof over our heads, food on the table every night.
Megan: And they did a lot of effort to, you know, we had fun birthday parties, homemade costumes for Halloween, you know, there’s definitely—family vacations, it’s, yeah, pretty normalized.
John: Pretty typical.
Paul: So you weren’t neglected and abused.
John: Not abused, no.
Megan: No, no, no.
John: But there are the—looking back, the emotional components that just weren’t there. All that you can see even on TV or in movies, or talking to friends, that those needs were met for them, but maybe not so much for us here and there.
Paul: Those needs were met for whom?
John: Other people going through similar situations, like I have major depression, a diagnosis, I’m not sure …
Megan: Yeah, I would say, well you can obviously speak more to that, but John’s mental health background was more prominent in the family and started a lot younger. For me, it was, I was like pretty normal, and even—so I’m recovering from an eating disorder, and even throughout, even up to today, I’ve been—it basically started when I was 18, so 14 years ago, but throughout my recovery I think a huge component has been that no one—I’ve always, especially with our family, no one understands what it is. I look normal, that’s like just—our family is in a lot of denial, and so there wasn’t really support, and I think, yeah, when John was a child it was much more, like, there was a problem, they need to look at it.
John: And it was dealt with to a certain extent. We did get—I started seeing therapists here and there, or doctors, at about ten or eleven years old, because I was basically hitting my head against the walls and they didn’t know what to do. So there was that element of, well, we’ll take you to a doctor, we’ll diagnose it, but there was never any follow up, there was never any distinction of going through childhood or teenage years, and, you know, what’s the difference between being very depressed and also, you know, growing up?
Paul: Did you get the feeling that your parents couldn’t understand it or didn’t really want to understand it?
John: Well there was that kind of shroud of normalcy that our family wanted to project at all times.
Megan: Yeah, I always describe my upbringing as a façade. When my—our parents got divorced, what eight years ago?
John: Uh, yeah, more recently than they should have perhaps.
Megan: Yeah, and when they did, all my friends from high school were like, “Your parents?” Like no one expected it. And I think—well, I guess we weren’t surprised. When I was in high school, I was very busy taking care—I was oldest. Perfectionist, caregiver.
Paul: Would it be fair to say that your parents were very concerned with what other people thought?
John: Absolutely, at least our mother—
Megan: Our mom.
John: For sure.
Paul: Ok.
John: She was raised upper class, I’d say. And she has seven siblings, three sisters, and four brothers. And they married well. And they have—I don’t want to say ideal, because who knows from the outside, but I mean they’re well off, and I think she wanted the same.
Paul: So maybe there was some type of inherent competition in her mind.
Megan: Oh yeah, that’s why she got married. I mean, she admitted that all of the sudden they were married and she needed to keep up with it. And we noticed our parents—when they got divorced, I asked tons of questions, so I won’t make the same mistake, like, how well did you know each other? And it’s incredible the miscommunications they had, from, you know, they were moving back to Illinois from DC where my dad went to law school in DC, to moving to Illinois, my mom assumes, obviously Chicago, and my dad’s thinking they’re moving back to his home town on a farm. So it’s just huge miscommunications.
Paul: Wow
Megan: Like how did you not—I don’t know.
John: It’s almost amusing how little they actually got along.
Megan: Opposite in absolutely every way.
John: Yeah, even as children, I mean, you know, dad’s a Republican, she’s a Democrat, and that goes so much more deep than just those labels. But it’s amusing that on a basic level, like, they just didn’t get along. I mean—
Megan: It’s hard to understand. I think it was kind of appearance-based. And kind of superficial in the sense that, you know, my dad’s this up and coming lawyer, he’s older, he had all these aspirations.
John: He’s very—born, raised on a farm, made his own way, went to, you know, law school, became fairly successful living in the big city, and, you know, was a partner at a firm for a while. And so he’s got that work ethic, that, you know, has paid off for him in a lot of ways. And so he’s very self-sufficient. He believes in the value of hard work but—
Megan: Then I think our mom, coming from, you know, like a pretty, you know, decent upbringing had a lot of expectations, like wanted this house that they couldn’t afford and she was like, “We’ll figure it out.” You know, just purchasing—just wanting to kind of keep up with a lot of things. I remember like the $5000 couch, you know, just these things that—
John: Material goods that—
Megan: Our dad could not keep up with it, and he would never say anything. So he just kind of became more resentful, more depressed, yeah, more disconnected from just trying to work harder, work harder.
Paul: Do you—I know this is probably a difficult question to answer because who knows where the real truth lies but do you feel like your mental illness more a result of the environment or kind of a thing that was genetically there that was exacerbated by environment?
John: I personally, I’ve been learning as much as I can about my, I guess, my illness, and, you know, certain people are predisposed to certain conditions, and so I believe it’s not caused by environment, but it certainly didn’t help. I mean, I would definitely not blame them for my depression, but going through that and not having the support that I probably should have had, was fairly difficult. And now I’m coming to terms with that and getting the support that I need by myself, after so many years of, you know ….
Megan: Suffering, or …?
John: Well suffering, but also just neglect on my part too. Because I didn’t know how to reach out. I didn’t know how to go about getting support, or even being in denial. Like, I’m fine now, like at this moment I’m ok, so I’ll be ok eventually, and it’s not something I need to deal with on a regular basis.
Paul: Yeah and if there’s an illness that is custom made for self-neglect, it is depression. Because it tells you that you don’t have depression, it tells you that you’re just weak or lazy or unlovable and it saps your energy to reach out and get help and it makes interacting with other human beings feel like sandpaper. So the idea of going and contacting a stranger to open up about these things where you don’t even know where the truth lies, where it’s just kind of an icky ball inside and the thought of having to untangle those iPhone ear buds in front of another person, and it’s gonna cost you money, is so overwhelming for most people.
Megan: It keeps you depressed. I mean, just thinking about that makes you more depressed.
Paul: Yeah.
Megan: For me, there’s a phrase that I’ve heard—so it is, eating disorders are like genetically predisposed, they say, you know, genetics loads the gun and life pulls the trigger. So I think that’s like completely accurate, you know.
Paul: (laughs) Although I hate that metaphor for depression. Because it’s like the last thing people need to be reminded of, I guess. Apt, but a little too close for comfort.
Megan: We can look for another metaphor.
Paul: You know what? If there’s a podcast that joke about that, it’s this one. So, yeah.
John: Yeah.
Megan: I mean, it’s pretty—I don’t know. I like the metaphor in the sense that it’s like pretty obvious when you say it that way, and, yeah, I feel like that, you know, I think I have a lot of like, there’s a lot of temperament, there’s anxiety, depression, that contributes, a lot of my perfectionism, just all these things kind of come together and make it what it is. And they you have your obviously media and all that stuff going on, you know, and ….
John: We’re big balls of mental illness basically. Which I find more recently, and again, interesting trying to pick that apart.
Paul: But there’s two of you so you make a nice scrotum. From where I’m looking at right now, it’s perfectly proportioned and seems very—
Megan: Thanks a lot.
Paul: Very nice. So give me some snapshots from childhood to help me better kind of paint a picture of what it was like.
John: What immediately comes to mind when it comes to childhood is family dinners. Every night we would—there’s seven of us, sit around the table, and not talk, not even “How was your day?”
Megan: No we would—Momma would always do “How was your day?”
John: A little bit, but never—there was always—you could cut the stress with a butter knife. There was always that between Mom and Dad. Not—
Megan: They each sat at, you know, different head—the different ends of the table and our dad would not talk at all, I feel like, and Momma would make this superficial conversation of how was your—yeah.
John: Yeah, very—but the point that—was that we sat down every night and had dinner together as a family and that’s because that’s what people are supposed to do. Even if it’s very tense and even if, you know, Mom and Dad had been fighting earlier that night, we did it anyway. You know, there’s no escape from the family bonds.
Paul: So it seems fair to say that there was no talking about emotion and what people were feeling on the inside.
John: No not at all.
Megan: There was just not a lot of talking in general.
Paul: Was it the feeling that you guys wanted to talk about that but didn’t feel safe or that you were not even aware of what you were experiencing emotionally, so why even talk about it?
John: It’s more the latter. We didn’t know what we were going through. We thought this was normal. And, again, it came off as normal. I remember in high school trying to explain that family life wasn’t as my friends pictured it, it wasn’t that picture perfect setting. It was more—there was that tension there. And there was the fact that they probably should have gotten divorced earlier.
Paul: Yeah.
John: Those disagreements always came up.
Paul: As you’re describing your situation, it is my experience completely. It’s exactly what I experienced. And I think the thing that can kind of really fuck you up about that is you begin blaming yourself because you don’t know—kids don’t know that their needs aren’t being met. You don’t often know that until you’re in your 20’s or 30’s or even 40’s.
John: Only maybe a few months ago did I actually realize that. Because I actually did seek treatment. And this is this past August, at a very low point, finally reached out to my sister, actually, she was the first one I called and said, “I need to get help.” Finally.
Paul: What did that feel like? Being able to call her, or calling her, were you anxious about it? Did it …?
John: I’ll tell you exactly what happened, as I only mentioned a couple hours ago, I was watching The Sopranos late at night, and Tony was in therapy and he pictured his family with him gone. He pictured what they would go through if he did not exist anymore. And I had never put that together for myself, what my friends or family would go through. And it just hit me. And I went to work the next day, and got home, and immediately called Megan.
Megan: Is that the night we were talking until like three in the morning?
John: Probably. I just broke down. I said, “I can’t do this anymore. I do need help and I don’t know how to get it.” It was a very painful week. But it was also relieving that I was actually, finally, after almost twenty years, finally doing something about it.
Paul: It is the most important phrase, for me, it was the most important phrase that I ever said in my life, was, “I need help. I can’t do this on my own. Please help me.”
John: And part of it for me was that I thought I could keep going on my own.
Paul: Because you viewed it as a weakness and if you could just buck up and think your way out of it.
John: Or, again, like I’d be ok for a while so I would think everything’s fine and then I’d be super-depressed—
Megan: Yeah, just get it together.
John: The future wouldn’t matter at that point, because I was so depressed.
Paul: It’s—you know, depression is like, it comes in and gives you these Coke bottle glasses and then you’re supposed to find your way out.
Megan: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
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Megan: And I feel like with all disorders, you know, people just on the street say—just kind of throw out anxiety, depression, “oh, you’re bipolar,” you know, just kind of these terms that really minimize what the feelings are. And I guess the more I understand what my background is and how I’ve come to terms with things, the more those phrases kind of bother me. You know, that it’s—you’re acting—I was—this past summer I was diagnosed with Bipolar II and I didn’t even know what that was.
Paul: We call that one Electric Boogaloo.
Megan: Oh great.
John: I prefer The Secret of the Ooze.
Megan: Awesome, yeah. And that was a huge relief because I’d been diagnosed with depression for years, and I don’t even know how many therapists I’ve had, medications I’ve been put on, and any kind of depression medication, it’s I guess I feel a little better, I don’t even know. You know, and I’m afraid to go off of it because then I have crazy side effects. But it just never really seems to help. And I’m not saying that everything is, you know, absolutely, you know, perfect at this point, but it definitely felt a lot more right. And I think I always had those feelings and I didn’t really know what—when I thought of bipolar, I was just much more familiar with, you know, the mania and that kind of stuff, and that doesn’t really qualify me, but I definitely have these like huge mood swings and, you know, you call me—they weren’t as outwardly. It’s not like you call me one day and it’s like, “Oh! Things are amazing!” and the next day, “Things are terrible,” but just internally I was totally up and down.
Paul: Yeah it’s funny too—I would imagine for somebody that’s experiencing those mood swings as you just tried to present yourself as being in the center. So it’s either, you know—
Megan: Oh yeah, it’s all black and white. I mean, well, that’s, from an eating disorder perspective, of course, you know, it’s like I’m gonna be everything’s great or everything’s, you know, I’ve feelings sometimes of just wanting to hide in the closet for the rest of my life. You know, it sounds a lot simpler than going out in the world and getting—doing stuff.
John: And having that pressure of trying to present yourself as normal doesn’t help either.
Paul: No.
John: As—you know, everything’s fine to everyone else but in your head you’re creating that stress of everything’s not fine. Everything is not ok at all. But here I am. And I have to present that to everyone, is that I’m a normal person too.
Paul: When in fact the exact opposite is what you need to be doing, which is being honest with people that are safe and appropriate. But it’s hard. Before you get into therapy, you don’t know who’s safe and appropriate. And so you reach out—
Megan: You go to your parents for help. I mean, the opposite of what’s helpful, you go to the people who, you know, had a huge affect on you. And then they’re like, “What are you talking about?”
John: They don’t know how to deal with it themselves.
Megan: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah, and it’s not that they don’t love you.
John: Of course not.
Megan: And I think what you trigger—we’ve noticed this with our dad recently, and our mom, you trigger what they’re not looking at in themselves, so they really close down, they just don’t want to admit it, and when it’s like, ok, you have these two children at least, some of our brothers are kind of young so we don’t know how they’re impacted—
John: None of us have been—this is more recent that we’re actually open about it, but until then, until maybe a year or two ago.
Megan: Well I’ve been pretty open about it I think. I don’t know if you agree.
John: Since—yeah, since um …
Megan: Well ever since—
John: We weren’t actually very close until more recently.
Megan: I would say for me—the eating disorder started when I was 18. I wasn’t really aware that that’s what it was. I started when I was 21, like starting to understand that this is a—
Paul: Is it bulimia or anorexia?
Megan: So technically it’s non-purging bulimia. So I would not eat during the day and then I would binge at night because I was, you know, obviously physiologically needing food in my body, and then I would eat more than I was comfortable with. And then the next day I would punish myself or have a plan to fix it. So I would starve myself all day and then at different points I would over-exercise. And it was just this cycle that was really difficult to get out of. And socially it affected, you know, dates, I would make sure we went out for a drink instead of dinner, you know, and never eating around people, just so many—looking back it’s—that was the most important thing, you know. It’s—I needed to—I wouldn’t feel comfortable eating unless I’d gone to yoga that day or gone for a run.
Paul: So food—
Megan: Just absolutely controlled me. Yeah.
Paul: And it was just littered with shame.
Megan: Oh, completely. And then it would border on—depending on my weight, it would border on anorexia. But I’ve never been, you know, extremely, visibly anorexic, so I think that contributed a lot to having, especially with our parents—I mean, I think since when I was like 23 maybe, I started being like, listen, there’s a problem, you know, and it’s like, “What are you talking about?” You know.
John: Everything’s fine, everything’s normal.
Megan: Yeah, like—
John: We were raised with a roof over our heads and food.
Megan: And then, yeah.
John: But there’s no reason to complain because everything looks like it should be ok.
Paul: Yeah. Boy, that is such an apt description. Everything looks like it should be ok.
John: And that really for the past—I mean for me, for the past ten or so years really describes what I was going through. I was trying to make things ok. I was in the Air Force for three years and you can’t be depressed. You’ll lose your job if you admit to mental illness at all. My recruiter told me to lie to get into the Air Force and I accepted it, I was ok with that. So I did. And I did three years.
Megan: Well interestingly our dad always goes to that point – that John was doing really well with that structure in the Air Force.
John: Yeah and it did help but there were times where I wanted to say something to someone but I couldn’t. I mean that’s—my job was more important than actually admitting that stuff.
Paul: And that certainly has to contribute to the fact that there are more deaths of enlisted people by suicide than of being killed in action.
John: I assume it’s the same in the Army and the Marines that you can’t self-report.
Paul: No.
John: Not just being looked down by people in your unit but—
Paul: It affects your career.
John: It absolutely does affect your career. You won’t have one after that. So I got out of the Air Force and thought, “I did this for three years. I could tamp it down for that long.” But there was more pressure on me because in civilian life it wasn’t—I still wasn’t able to express myself or to reach out and get help even though I did have health insurance, so I did have the necessary tools but I couldn’t make that step.
Megan: Well it’s interesting because—I don’t know if you’ve seen this at all with the Air Force, but our dad was just in the hospital two weeks ago and he has been smoking, what, for forty something years?
John: Probably 45 years.
Megan: And he was talking about he didn’t smoke for a few days but it was a controlled environment and he said he’s quitting smoking and he’s still smoking. But then when I was in treatment, you know, eating disorder treatment, it’s—I wonder if the Air Force was like that for you at all, in the sense that it was a very controlled environment, so you got kind of accustomed to—I mean it was different because that wasn’t obviously based on recovery, but it was—
John: Absolutely, I mean it was controlled.
Megan: And a very different environment from day-to-day.
John: Well for me it was very—day-to-day was very stable. You know, had a good job, went to work, enjoyed what I did. So things were fairly stable for those three years but there was still those feelings there, those suicidal feelings, depression, here and there. But I was able to control it. And then afterwards, getting out, I still felt I should be able to control it. And did that for another six years.
Paul: Describe—and I’m going to want you to answer the same question about your eating disorder, Megan, but John, describe when you were a kid and you would beat your head against the wall, what were you experiencing, thinking, feeling, what did your body feel like, what did your—
John: I think—you know, I’ve never actually been asked that question before. I think anger, cuz it was always in—probably more frustration. I didn’t know how to let anything out so that was my, that was my response, just go to the doorway and bang my head on it. Maybe confusion? I didn’t know how to—I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to react to any sort of frustrating or difficult situation. So that’s how I would act out.
Paul: And did you feel like crying in your family would not be welcome?
John: Not necessarily. But talking about, talking about needing help or getting help was definitely—not overtly frowned upon, but just not even really—I don’t want to say it’s not an option because my parents sent me—I probably had 20 different therapists or psychiatrists in high school, and was in inpatient a few times. But—
Megan: I mean—
John: It was like—that’s—w-we basically took care of the problem because we got you to a doctor. That’s, you know, everything’s shipshape because we sought treatment for you and—
Paul: We spent the money, it must be fixed. (laughs)
John: We spent the money, we drove you to the doctor, we, you know, made an appointment to put you in the hospital for a week, so after that everything must be normal because you’ve had that treatment.
Paul: It almost reminds me of the wealthy family that has a kid who’s an addict and they search for the most expensive rehab to send him to, to which, you know, I usually just want to say, “You’re almost ensuring that this kid is going to fail.”
John: That’s pretty much what it was. Went to a good hospital for the inpatient treatment. But actually got nothing done. I mean, I didn’t –
Megan: It was kind of more traumatizing.
John: It was more traumatizing because I was in there and I—this probably sounds terrible, but I didn’t feel crazy in there. I was with other teenagers that—that was like their last resort. But for me this was like option number two, after seeing a doctor, was well, deal with this in the hospital. Not bring this home and, you know, be helped through it, but go to the hospital.
Paul: Or bring the family in for a group session.
Megan: Hell no, we did that once. We did that once and it was terrible.
John: We each had our own instances of that.
Megan: Well that was like a ten years’ difference, but when we did it for John—
John: But that’s also to say that nothing changed over those ten years.
Megan: Well my recollection from when we did it when you were probably in late grade school, was that it was all blamed on me. Like that’s what I left feeling like.
John: Really?
Megan: Yeah. The Northface jacket they bought for me, the dresser. I remember you saying like, “She gets everything she wants.”
John: Huh
Megan: And I left feeling like, “Fuck, I totally screwed up. Look what I did.”
John: I remember probably the only family group session that we had with one of my therapists, my—after everyone goes around and says why do you think we’re here, my mother said, “I don’t know why I have to be here.”
Paul: Oh my God, that breaks my heart.
John: “I don’t understand why I’m here.”
Megan: “I have nothing to do with this.”
John: And then the same thing—
Megan: Didn’t she have her arms crossed, wasn’t she in the corner?
John: I don’t remember that much. But that’s what I took away from it. “I have nothing to do my son’s illness. And there’s no way I can help, there’s no way I can relate.”
Paul: How did that make you feel?
John: Awful. I mean even then, truly awful. And then the same thing happened. My sister was in extensive outpatient in Denver.
Megan: Was in treatment, yeah. And so they came in—there’s family weekends, you know? And so my mom—I’m sure I pushed her to come. And I guess I should have known that our mom completely checked out, like emotionally all weekend.
John: It was—there were probably like ten different families there in support of their inpatient, you know, loved ones, and at one point we were all sitting in a circle and each patient would talk to one of their family members about—there were like three different things you had to bring up. And everyone did it, you know, Megan and myself—
Megan: It was a regret, something, and then a hope. You know, it was like very—
John: Very, very open, very, very emotional.
Paul: The purpose of it, which is to show people how important vulnerability is around loved ones.
Megan: It was like the pinnacle of the weekend, you know, extremely important.
John: One of the last things. But my mom would not do it.
Megan: She was the only one in the room that absolutely refused. And even coming up to that—so they had been there for a few days, and at different points—so when you get there, you get this whole binder of things, and (I forget what they called the thing) I remember it being the night before, kind of bring it up. And of course my mom was in the bathroom when they initially talked about it and then she entered the night before and she’s like, “I don’t know what that is,” or something. And then left—was on her BlackBerry or something. You know, like she just was not—anytime there was anything that was important, she just happened not to be there.
John: Or just, again, she said pretty much the same thing, “Why—what do I have to do with this situation? Why am I here?” It’s like, well, even if the events aren’t related to you, and to your actions or anything—
Paul: It’s your reality.
John: It’s support.
Megan: Yeah. “And why are you digging up from the past, like what is that?”
John: “What does anything have to do with anything at this point?”
Paul: I would imagine your mom has some stuff from her past that’s so painful and so scary to open the door to that to even begin to go there is probably so terrifying.
John: And there’s that façade again. You must appear normal and you can’t crack that wall. If you do, who knows what could come spilling out.
Megan: I often describe it as though our parents—I don’t know how old she is, fifty something? And our dad just turned 65, so they’re seven years different. But she seems really young, and I always describe, you know, she does Bikram yoga, very frequently she rides a scooter, she’s in real estate, kind of all these things, it’s almost as if they’re two different generations. And, you know, she throws these—she’s on the board of this non-profit, and she throws these parties. I mean, she’s very—
John: Decent, professionally.
Megan: Yeah, I’ve always compared myself to her, and I’ve always seen her as—we’re half an inch—I’m half an inch shorter, and her as like tall and thin and graceful, and me like short and fat. Like it’s I guess kind of distorted, but I mean, yeah, you’re right. I’m sure there’s tons of stuff and it’ll be interesting whether—I feel like recently she’s starting to come into it a little more, her fiancé died a little more than a year ago, and so that’s—she’s obviously dealing with a lot of depression based on that. So she has been—it’s been a little bit easier to relate to her because she’s actually openly suffering.
Paul: People can always come around. That’s the thing that’s so amazing is when they decide to finally stop trying to manage it and keep the demons down on their own, they realize that your pain can bring you closer to other people. And if—go ahead.
John: I was just going to say that I make the distinction—only personally, it’s not—my therapist hasn’t mentioned this to me, but I make the distinction between coping and dealing. You can cope with something for a very, very long time, but to actually deal with it much more difficult and scary.
Paul: That’s a great distinction. I like that.
Megan: Well I think the coping mechanisms, if you look back at it, you know, and you did the best you can at the time with what you had, and I think, I don’t know, I was trying to think of what coping—I guess sleep, going out drinking, like I guess those are kind of different coping mechanisms.
Paul: Distractions.
Megan: Yep, and for me—
Paul: Addictions.
Megan: Totally. It was, yeah, that’s how I dealt with it, like I, God if I actually lived with it—like I had to numb out at some point or I’m sure—you know, that was the way I had to—the only way I could function was …
Paul: So talk us through the first time that you began to abuse food to numb or to feel, what were you thinking, feeling, what would you get from it, what would you feel in your body, in your mind and your soul before and after abusing food?
Megan: Yeah, it was—so initially I was in college, I was sophomore and I started restricting. And—
Paul: Because you thought you weighed too much, or?
Megan: Well I guess my first memory was I was working for my dad, it was between freshman and sophomore year in college. I had a friend in high school that was severely anorexic. And at that time, I was on the other side. I was reading books, I was trying to help her, I didn’t understand. And so then she and I both worked downtown, so every day we’d get together for lunch and I would eat and she wouldn’t and I guess a part of me started thinking, “That’s not fair. I don’t want to do that.” So instead we started going shopping. And so initially it was kind of more of a surface-y level, like that was kind of cool that I fit into this thing that was, you know, smaller. And so I went back to college and started continuing that. And then the smaller—the less I weighed, it was just kind of like a confidence, it was just, I don’t know, it just felt good.
Paul: Would it be fair to say that it felt like power?
Megan: Yeah, and—
John: Maybe control?
Megan: Oh totally, control, yeah. And I mean that’s—what I was gonna say earlier when John went to 20 therapists and had all this stuff, I was in college, I was just learning about this recently, I had no idea when—I knew that you were going you were going through depression, I didn’t know about banging your head, all I knew is like when you lied down in the tracks in New York, the railroad tracks.
John: Yeah, that was actually unrelated, but.
Megan: Oh, ok.
John: I was, basically—
Paul: What if I said I’m not really interested?
John: Well, I’m gonna leave. (laughs)
Paul: What happened?
John: Me and my cousin—I was very close to my cousins at the time, and we would just—at night we would sneak out and ride our bikes to the railroad tracks and just talk and watch the trains pass. And that’s all it was. One night, though, he didn’t feel like going, he wouldn’t, you know, sneak out, he wouldn’t wake up, so I just decided to go by myself. And the one night—an engineer I guess saw me by the tracks and called it in. And so a police cruiser pulls up a few minutes later, and it’s like, “Hey, what are you doing here?” “Oh, I’m just watching the trains, no big deal.” “Ok, well head home, buddy.” And they were going through my wallet and saw that I had my psychiatrist’s card in there. And then, you know, liability, they have to do something about it.
Paul: I see.
John: So I was taken to a hospital and—
Megan: I didn’t know any of this ever.
John: And then had—you know, I was picked up the next morning by my mom, who was very—
Megan: You had to stay the night there?
John: Yeah, well, she came and got me basically right away but it was a couple hours away. And she was very angry, obviously. Which is just as well – I shouldn’t have been on the railroad tracks.
Paul: Have you ever seen the movie Ordinary People?
John: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
Paul: Do you feel like—did you relate to that movie at all?
John: A little bit. It isn’t very inwardly focused, so I take certain things from certain places and relate to them how I can. Actually, what I wanted to mention, what’s great about this podcast is that even if it’s an issue that I’m not dealing with, I can relate at some point.
Paul: Well good, good. Megan, getting back to what you were talking about, I’ve—we have a survey on the website called Struggle in a Sentence and one of the ones that I’m particularly fascinated about, because I’ve never experienced it, is the diseases around food, and some of the ones that have struck me that people have described about the controlling of their food or their abusing of food—the controlling in particular, that somebody said, “When I restrict my food, when I starve myself, it feels clean and it feels like a victory.”
Megan: Mm-hmm. Oh, totally. I feel like between the two, anorexia is much more clean, less shameful, I mean it’s—
Paul: Because it doesn’t involve throwing up?
Megan: Right, and I actually never threw up, but binging is like disgusting, shameful. Like the fact that our body needs food is kind of terrible. The restriction is much—yeah, that’s ultimate control. You’re like a failure if you’re eating, especially overeating.
Paul: It’s like a fucked up way to feel good about yourself. You know what I mean?
Megan: Yeah, yeah. Well one thing that I was just thinking, one thing that’s different than, you know, other addictions and recovery is that, you know, with drugs or alcohol, it’s black and white in the sense that you can’t do this anymore. And it’s, you know, the recovery is very difficult and there’s definitely some similarities, at the same time with food you have to have a relationship to it. You have to, you know, somehow figure out how to deal with it, and a lot of people become, we love rules. You know, this is good, this is bad. You know, certain things—I would always binge on, of course, things I would never let myself have, like sweets or carbohydrates and that’s what, you know, that’s the—if you’re really hungry, that’s the quickest thing to kind of get in your blood flow, and yeah, I mean fruits and vegetables obviously, like very, you know, that’s safe.
Paul: It strikes me that that kind of binary thinking—it makes me wonder if the person that finds comfort in that black and white thinking finds agony in shades of gray or nuance or things where the truth isn’t quite clear. Is that—
Megan: Yeah, I want the right answer. I want an answer, yeah, it’s—I mean, that’s a huge part of recovery, just, I guess, acknowledging that it’s not all black and white, and you know, I kind of joke around, “Oh, this seems like it’s the gray thing to do.” You know, it is definitely something that doesn’t come—or if I choose the thing that’s gray, it’s—I guess aware of how far I’ve come. So that’s, yeah, there’s a lot of like, I don’t know if it’s pleasure, it just comes very naturally to see it as complete extremes.
Paul: Any other snapshots from your guys’ past that…
Megan: I’m sure. Well, for me I was thinking, because you have a lot of childhood things, I think I was very, you know, in high school, I still have nightmares at least once a week about high school. And that wasn’t—they’re not family nightmares, but just, you know, huge fears of getting called on in school and—I went to an inner city public school but I was in like a very advanced program, so this was a strange dichotomy, and I always hated it. I mean I absolutely hated high school. But looking back at how not nurturing the situation was, but I don’t—I can’t think, you know, as—I guess because my disorder started later, my memories of my 20’s are a lot more prominent than my childhood memories and how it affected me. I was telling John—I mean it still happens pretty constantly, like just our—especially my mom being completely unaware of what’s triggering and what’s not. And I’m in a place now where it—I’m ok with it. I definitely notice when someone says something that doesn’t feel good and I kind of wished that they understood, or, I don’t know, I see it as like cared more how I deal with things or where I am. But our mom especially is—I mean even when she came to that weekend, the treatment weekend, she would tell me how she hadn’t eaten all day. Or she wouldn’t feel—like we’d have one night we ate dinner at the treatment center and you have to finish everything in a certain amount of time and I think she was like—I was—said explicitly, like, “You know, these are the rules. Like I have to do it so you have to do it.” And you know, when she says, “Oh, I haven’t eaten all day,” and I’ve eaten six fucking meals, like I have to. And that just—just her not being aware of things.
John: Yeah, she didn’t seem very cognizant of what triggers might be—
Megan: And I almost felt like it was purposeful or something. And she—growing up, especially in my 20’s I always noticed how she wouldn’t eat all day, and then at night, you know, she’d put butter on her bread and have a glass of wine. Like she would eat a normal meal, and so I would always feel really guilty that like I ate all day, like I don’t deserve to eat this. And so I think, as much as she wasn’t outwardly saying like this is, you know, you need to starve yourself or something, it was just her behavior had a huge effect on me.
Paul: Yeah, I think a lot of parents forget that, they think that all kids feed on is what the parents tell them, but really what kids feed on are—
John: It’s what they do.
Paul: What you do and how you carry yourself, and when a parent carries themselves with this kind of belief the world is incredibly judgmental and unforgiving and harsh and you can’t let them know anything that’s going on inside you, how can your kids not be filled with anxiety? Because you think your parents know, and maybe for your mom, that was her experience you know, as a child.
Megan: Yeah, what I say about my—I’m not very close with my mom’s family, and I think a huge part of that is because I tell people it’s, you know, to be accepted into the family, you have to be thin, you know, you have to have your master’s degree and you have to be very attractive. And our family, our like close family is like the black sheep, you know, our parents got divorced, we don’t have—we’ve dealt with a lot of financial issues compared to everyone else. We’re like completely unacceptable as far as I see it.
Paul: Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you next. Where there any other snapshots that you wanted to—
John: Yeah, I would—
Paul: Just move a little bit closer, that’s ok.
John: I guess I would go back to my father and, exactly, the way he carried himself, not being present. He’d get home from work and go take a nap and then when dinner was ready, he would get up and be there for dinner but then disappear again. And, yeah, he was obviously—looking back, he was obviously very depressed. But, he didn’t take any action toward it, he didn’t—and I guess as a kid I learned not to take any action.
Megan: Well also it was in my—in our mom’s family, and I think our mom, if you take a nap you’re lazy. There’s all these things that still kind of exist.
Paul: That was said or implied?
Megan: Implied. You know, you’re—I mean even recently every year when we go to visit my grandmother in Florida for Christmas a lot and I’ve—the past few years I feel like I’m always working on boundaries when I’m down there. And I used to—the eating disorder completely helped because going to the gym was acceptable, or taking these long walks were acceptable. But things like I need time by myself and I need, you know, a nap really helps my anxiety, just lying down there for a while, is—I’ve kind of helped her understand and it’s been more acceptable especially this year, but there’s just—yeah, there’s just complete opposites where Daddy’s depressed and he always sleeps, and our mom is, yeah, that’s just not allowed in this house, you know. It’s—do something, vacuum or do something, you know, you need to …
Paul: One of the best tools that I’ve developed in coping with my depression, especially when I start to beat myself up and, you know, things become difficult to accomplish, and you feel like, you know, your to do list is just the Dead Sea Scrolls, and you can’t fucking get anything done, taking a nap and not beating yourself up for it, and saying, “I deserve this. I deserve—I’m tired, you know, I have an illness that is no different than somebody having the flu, and if I had the flu, I wouldn’t tell myself ‘push through the fever and do that.’” And that compassion for oneself by doing that can oftentimes be the door that kind of opens into you realizing that you’ve been too hard on yourself. When in reality what you really need to do is have more patience and love for yourself because you are battling something that is huge and multi-headed.
John: A couple things – one thing that absolutely helped me finally admitting and realizing that it’s a medical condition and that allowed me to be more easy on myself, to work towards something one small step at a time instead of thinking that depression is a mountain that I have to overcome tomorrow.
Paul: Right.
John: Yeah. And, yeah, exactly, allowing yourself to go easy on yourself and to take a break.
Paul: Not call yourself a lazy bum.
John: Yes. And not worry about being successful tomorrow.
Paul: And not listening if you have somebody close to you that doesn’t understand depression, that calls you a lazy bum, to tell yourself, “They don’t know. They don’t understand.” Thank God my wife has always—had never shamed me for taking naps when I need them.
John: Th-that’s helpful.
Paul: It is.
John: Coming from the other side of that, as children, the opposite – “Why don’t you just get more exercise?” or “Get regular sleep.”
Megan: Well also we are—especially Momma, still stays up till like three in the morning, like she’s always going, and even going to bed at midnight is kind of unacceptable. I mean, it’s like, yeah, I was gonna say like right now I have two roommates, and overall the situation is great and I love when I see them taking naps, because I’m like well, ok, it’s more acceptable if I do. But there’s definitely been times when I will come really tired and take a nap from like 8PM to 10PM or something, a not as acceptable time, and when I get up, it’s been more than one time that my guy roommate says, “Good morning.” And that just, you know, pisses me off, cuz I feel like that’s just him saying it’s really not acceptable. I’m not sure if that’s true or not. But, yeah, that’s completely what I make up, that there’s certain times—in general, it’s like naps are for kids. And I love that there’s more studies recently that it’s good for you. I mean I think that helps me at least be able to be easier on myself.
Paul: And I think one of the most important tools in dealing with depression, addiction or whatever is knowing when to listen to your body, and when to go, “Maybe this is something that I can address and help kind of, you know, ease or soothe,” or “This is my anxiety and I just need to take a deep breath and this is my mind fucking with me.” That’s the thing that in the long run I think just takes time and experience and being around other people and therapy and support groups and yada, yada, yada, yada.
Megan: I don’t know where this came from, but I use the term “monkey mind” a lot, and I love that, like if you’re already kind of, you know, you take a nap or something, and someone doesn’t call you back, like the monkey mind just totally loves it and just goes on and on, and I think it’s really helped me see that—kind of separate myself from it.
Paul: Talk about what it feels like to have each other.
John: It’s very comforting. It’s odd that we didn’t actually connect until more recently. That there were those barriers there.
Megan: Yeah I think that—
John: For the longest time.
Megan: Yeah. I think before that, honestly, it was kind of challenging, my relationship with you. Because from the outside I felt like—I was worried about you. And I have a lot of experience with alcoholism. I’ve had two very serious boyfriends that are now sober and when I was with both of them they were very into their addiction, and so I was concerned about John and how, you know, his drinking and feeling like he was self-medicating. And it felt like, I guess, I felt like I had to hold back my feelings because I felt like we were on different planes kind of and I so wanted to force him or help him, but it’s like I’ve tried that.
John: You, for the longest time you were my second mother.
Megan: Oh yeah?
John: You’d say—you’d give me thought of what I should be doing—
Megan: Little kind of—
John: Very little authority, because I didn’t respect that.
Megan: Yeah, and if you, you know, ever had—if you mentioned you were interested in working on aircraft or something, I would research it and send you information on it. Like any tidbit of me like—of potentially like helping John—like how I see—how I saw like what would help my brother, like I would go running with it and send him, I don’t know, send him articles. I guess I didn’t so that much.
John: Some.
Megan: But just any opportunity.
John: Absolutely, yeah.
Megan: Yeah, yeah.
Paul: And it’s funny cuz sometimes it’s what the person needs and they don’t even know it, they just need some arms to collapse into and for somebody to just say, “I love you. I love you. I’m so sorry you’re feeling this way. I love you.” And that’s it.
John: It’s the understanding that you’ll still be there after.
Paul: And you’re not gonna have to go through it alone.
Megan: I think I had to work on a lot of acceptance—I guess a few years ago I was thinking—there’s definitely been different times when I’ve talked to you about therapy, right?
John: Oh, I mean for the past, really ten years or so, “You need to get help.” “Yeah, I know, but I’ll be ok.” I mean, coming from Megan or friends or whoever. And I realized that I did need to get help but there was something there, I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t reach out, I couldn’t—
Megan: And you have to be internally be ready.
John: And yeah, you do have to be ready. You have to want it. You can’t just be told that you need help. You have to make that effort yourself and be willing to put in the work.
Paul: So how does a loved one who can see from the outside, oh this person is suffering from depression, how can they—what can they do for that person. Should they just say, “I’m here for you. I love you.” Should they say, “I think you should see somebody because this is too big of a thing for one person to handle on their own?” I mean how do you phrase that because it can be a tough thing, because sometimes the wrong person telling somebody, “You need to go do this,” can take that thing off the table forever for that person. So how do you—how would you suggest somebody—
John: Well what Megan actually did for me when I called her was immediately, the next day, look for doctors for me. And make an appointment for me. And all you have to do is show up. And I did. And then—that’s my treatment from there on out, is I showed up to that first appointment, immediately made another after that, and I was on my way. But to actually—
Paul: You asked her to make the appointment, or she made it on her own and said, “I’ve made an appointment for you?”
John: She said she would, and I accepted that.
Paul: Oh, ok.
Megan: And I don’t know if this is the way you felt, but I felt with the situation with this summer that my—so I’ve helped—I hate it, but I have a lot of experience with health insurance and finding different, you know, from my experience with it, and I know, like I can’t—it’s been hard enough for me to figure it out and I’ve put a lot of effort over the years into it. And so I guess at least what I thought I was doing was trying to provide resources, like here’s—ok, health insurance is a bitch, like, let me—I’ll handle it. Get me your, you know, number, and I’ll deal with that part, like just trying to make as easy as possible for John to look into getting some help if he was interested.
John: And that was a big step, was I didn’t want to have to research all that stuff. I didn’t want to have to call a doctor or—
Paul: It’s overwhelming when you’re depressed.
John: It’s overwhelming, yeah.
Paul: It’s overwhelming when you’re not depressed. That’s really loving of you, that’s really beautiful.
John: Yes. And I will thank her for forever for doing that for me.
Megan: Yeah.
Paul: How did that make you feel to hear him say that?
Megan: It feels great. I mean, it’s—John’s done such a huge transition, I mean like since, you know, August when all this happened, it just—I feel like we’re—I mean, this sounds mean, but I feel we’re on the same page now and we can talk about things and we can support each other.
John: Well we’re here right now, which is kind of mind-blowing.
Megan: Yeah, I mean his insight—just recently I was having trouble with a friend of mine and just his insight about, you know, taking—is he taking his medication at the same time every day? And I was like, “Oh, shit, good point John.” You know, just these, these very, not even basic things, but just John’s—how new he is to this and how, like, how much he knows about it and how, I guess, how much he’s like diving into it and like figuring it out. Like I think—it’s nice to have like someone to kind of go through it and like, yeah.
John: A friend of mine who’s very analytical asked me, and it totally threw me off, “What is the purpose of your depression?” And looking at it that way, it was very interesting, because I could research it without my own complications, without my own emotional input. So I’ve been doing a lot of that, just you know, watching YouTube videos of doctors giving lectures, watching—or just reading about people’s different cases and what they’ve done for themselves. And then relating to it that way. And that’s helped me a lot, it’s kept—it keeps—excuse me, it has kept my focus a lot towards working on myself.
Paul: Does it help you not take your depression personally?
John: Like I said, the medical aspect is huge for me. Because it’s not personal, it’s something that people go through.
Paul: Yeah.
John: And I think it’s probably been said on here before, but relating it to diabetes, you know, you’re not gonna tell that kid to, you know—
Paul: Buck up and make more insulin.
John: Exactly, you can’t—you have to have expectations for yourself that are very reasonable.
Megan: I think for me I know a lot of, you know, people in recovery and I’ve been to a bunch of support groups over the years, and just there’s this instant bond, and there’s this instant respect and seeing someone’s beauty, just if you have any kind of, you know, if we can relate to each other, it’s like there’s trust, it’s like I get it, and it’s amazing in some—in all of the support groups I’ve been to, you know, there’s people, you know, all shapes and sizes and just as they’re talking and sharing their story and being so mean to themselves sometimes, I’m just seeing like you’re incredible, like how are you—it’s just so hard to not—how are these people not seeing this?
John: It’s that mindset that I learned from you. Just having that outside eye to—other people don’t perceive you the same way that you perceive yourself.
Megan: Yeah, totally.
Paul: And the bonds that are formed when you—when you put the effort into a support group, and go there regularly, and you’re maybe even of service at that support group, so you feel truly a part of it, and you get to know other people’s stories and they get to know yours. There’s a bond there that is so much deeper and it’s different than the bond between you and a therapist, though that can be a fantastic bond, and it’s certainly, I think, is necessary for certain parts of us to heal as well, but to me, it’s the difference between—you know, the therapist to me would be like the bond that I would have with maybe the sergeant at the boot camp that I went through, and the bond that I have with people in the support group would the bond that I went through with somebody in combat. It’s just—
John: We’ve been through the foxholes together. We fought the same demons.
Paul: And that’s kind of the first casualty of mental illness and addiction, is perception. That’s the first thing which is like—it’s like in a war, the first thing you do is you knock out the communications center. And that’s what those diseases do to us, is they hurt that communications center.
John: They put that wall up, for sure.
Megan: I always say like I led two completely different lives. You know, and I think from past relationships, dating someone that had extreme drug and alcohol abuse, I looked so together. You know, first of all just trying to fix him. This was, you know, the perfect relationship for me, and our behaviors worked really—I mean, they just kept us sick, and that like Friday night he would DJ, he would stay out until 4 doing coke, I would binge when he was out. And you know in the morning I would go to the gym because I was so mad at myself from the night before, and it worked in this extremely dysfunctional way. And I was so busy trying—I thought I was doing well at that point. And I was so busy trying to control his illness and later just him telling me that, you know, I would watch, I would check the alcohol in the fridge, like how much has he drank, and always trying to control him, later him telling me that he would fill up things with water and put them back in the fridge. And I had—I couldn’t control it, you know. And, yeah, part of my plan in life at that point was just to look like I had it together. And on the inside I was absolutely torturing myself.
John: I guess letting go of that control here and there can really help too.
Paul: Yeah, but it takes trust and faith.
John: Oh, absolutely.
Paul: Cuz sometimes just that faith and trust that the process has worked for someone else. You don’t necessarily have to believe that it will work for you. You believe that it worked for somebody else and so then you do what is suggested.
John: That’s huge. For me that’s enormous.
Paul: Do you feel like doing a fear-off and a love-off?
John: Sure.
Paul: I thought it would to have you guys just trade back and forth and I’ll just be a spectator. Maybe I’ll heckle.
John: Yeah, the visitors’ gallery.
Paul: You wanna do fears first?
John: Yeah, definitely.
Paul: Ok.
John: I’m afraid that I’ll never find a real passion to attach myself to.
Megan: Well, when you’re talking about fears, the first thing that comes to thought for me is everything. Lots of irrational but rational to me kind of fears.
John: I’m afraid that I lost my creativity through getting help for my depression.
Megan: I have a dog that has had a huge impact on me and I’m always afraid she’s gonna die.
John: I’m afraid this will be the lowest-rated podcast of the year. (everyone laughs)
Megan: I am afraid of abandonment in general and getting fired or just having something end without any reason, without any control over it. End immediately.
Paul: That is scary, yeah. That is a scary one.
John: I’m afraid of being chosen to throw out a first pitch and spiking the ball into the ground.
Megan: I—there’s a lot of things that I love and fear. So one is dancing. Like I—there’s a part of me of that obviously absolutely loves it in the moment, especially when around other people, completely afraid of it.
John: I’m afraid of having an unplanned kid.
Megan: Interesting. I am afraid of not being happy and finding what I really love to do.
John: I’m afraid of being happy, actually.
Paul: Yeah?
John: I don’t know that feeling. I don’t know where that would lead to. I don’t know the end game. And that makes me afraid.
Megan: I’m also totally afraid of that. Even more so than happiness is joy.
John: Like following my dreams and actually putting myself out there. That’s very—that makes me very afraid.
Paul: Is it because that’s fear of the unknown or fear that then you’re gonna be at a height which will make your fall greater?
John: Both I think. I’m scared of going backwards.
Paul: So if you were happy then the potential then to lose the happiness would make you feel—
John: Because I’ve had moments of my life where I was doing pretty well and then it just dropped off a cliff. And that is not a good feeling at all. And I’m afraid of that happening again for sure.
Paul: Because I know people when they first had that – I’m afraid of being happy – were thinking, “What?”
Megan: I was kind of surprised that you said, “What?” because people that I talk to that deal with mental illnesses to me it seems like a common theme, that we’re all—we’re afraid of being unhappy but that’s also so—
John: It’s what we know.
Megan: Yeah. It’s so safe, I mean it’s just a part of us.
John: It’s a blanket of comfort, it’s just—well, I’m depressed, I can just—that’s my reason for not getting out of bed.
Megan: That’s a huge part of my identity.
Paul: I know I just need to curl up with a nice documentary about a serial killer, overeat some butter cookies, and go to bed with a nice head full of shame.
Megan: Exactly yeah.
John: That’s what I know. So that’s what I’m good at, that’s what I’ll do.
Megan: Oh my God, being happy and being out in the world a lot of these having to live up to expectations, there’s a lot of fear.
John: Was it my turn?
Paul: Oh so do you feel like then expectations would be attached to being happy, so that is gonna come with—I have to get more accomplished because now I don’t have—
Megan: People see me, yeah, yeah.
Paul: Let’s move on to loves.
John: I love double fisting coffee and soda.
Paul: Nice.
Megan: I have an absolute love for self-help books, audio books on self-help, just any of that stuff, I just—yeah. By choice, I absolutely love it.
John: I love walking into a baseball stadium and all the sights and smells that accompany that – the greenness of the grass and the cooking sausages and the smell of the leather glove.
Paul: That first look at the green grass is just fucking amazing.
John: Especially the first game of the season.
Megan: I have a love of talking, as you probably have figured out.
Paul: You don’t strike me as overly chatty.
Megan: Really? Well I’m trying to be—John spoke to me about this before.
John: I think she’s done pretty well so far.
Megan: Ok, good, just not dominating the conversation and, yep.
John: Let’s see. I love—this is extremely nerdy, but I love my White Sox blog community and the support they’ve given me through this and the friendships I’ve made from it in person.
Paul: That’s beautiful.
Megan: I don’t know why that’s nerdy.
John: Well, Internet friends are—I guess it’s ok now, but can be looked down upon by certain people.
Megan: That’s how I met a lot of my previous partners. Not acceptable. I absolutely love organizing things. Anything—any opportunity to organize and make things like more situated, it’s—yeah, it’s like a huge hobby of mine.
Paul: That feels clean.
Megan: Oh yeah, and I think it’s a safer, you know, situation than others, and it’s a challenge and it’s tangible, and, yeah, it provides a lot of things.
Paul: For me, it feels like there’s a safe egress from stress when I’m organized, like, ok, it’s almost like a fire exit, of ok, if the shit goes down, at least my papers aren’t all piled up and I know where this is.
Megan: Well I don’t go to that extent. For me, my head’s always crazy and it just spins, so I think making to do lists and just, yeah, organizing my room and anything I do.
Paul: Oh I see, so the act of organizing is comforting to you. For me, the part when I’m done with it because I fucking hate the—
Megan: There’s always more things to organize.
Paul: I need to hire you.
John: I love showing off my parallel parking skills.
Megan: I absolutely love—well, I guess I love dogs more than cats, but I love cats, especially this one that’s like around my neighborhood that John is going to meet that you walk to its house and then you call it, and it walks you home. It’s just incredible.
Paul: Really?
Megan: Yeah, yeah, Wally, yeah. He’s pretty amazing.
Paul: That’s awesome.
Megan: He’s completely like the opposite of any like how you’d think of cats.
John: I love that moment in the summer when the sky opens up and no one’s prepared and everyone is just caught in this ridiculous moment of being drenched.
Paul: That’s a great one. We’ve never had that one. That’s a great one.
Well John and Megan, thank you so much for coming by and opening up and I’m just really touched by how you two—how this has brought you two closer together and I just think that is—I just think it’s so beautiful. I’m glad I get to witness it. It’s pretty cool.
John: Thank you for having us.
Megan: Yeah, thank you so much.
Paul: Many thanks to John and Megan Brehman. I want to remind you guys that I’m going to be in Portland for the Bridgetown Comedy festival. I’ll be doing some satire as my character Republican Representative Richard Martin. So if you want to come out and see that I’ll have some more detailed information as we get closer to that date. But I’m also tossing around the idea of doing a live Mental Illness Happy Hour show. It kind of depends on what guests are available and what venues are available. But I will also be recording some listeners while I’m while I’m in Portland, so if you’re somebody that would be interested in being recorded, shoot me an email and maybe we can get the ball rolling on that. I don’t know how much time I’ll have available to record everybody, everybody in Portland, every single person in Portland, that’s my goal. I just lost my train of thought. So April 18th through the 21st is when that is happening.
I want to remind you guys that there’s a couple of different ways to support the show if you feel so inclined. You can go the website, mentalpod.com and make either a one-time PayPal donation or my favorite, a recurring monthly donation. I struggle with this because I want to ask more forcefully, more pleadingly for help with the monthly donations but I’m afraid of coming across as having needs. But I could use some help. I could use some help. Even with advertising I’m below the poverty line doing this show and I know it’s not up to you guys to support me, but I know you get a lot out of this show and if you got the money and you feel like it, it’s greatly appreciated. You can do a recurring monthly donation for as little as $5 a month. We have some people that donate $25 a month and God bless them. They’re five times better than you are. See what I do when I get uncomfortable? I have to make fun. You can also support the show by when you shop at Amazon, enter through our search portal on our homepage and that way Amazon will give us a couple of nickels, doesn’t cost you anything. It’s on the homepage, right hand side about halfway down. Not to be confused with the search box for our site. It’ll say Amazon on it. And I think—oh! And the other—you can support the show non-financially, those of you that are struggling to make ends meet, I certainly don’t want you to feel guilty. You can help spread the word through social media, that’s greatly appreciated, or go to iTunes and write something nice, give us a good rating.
All right. Done with that. Got a nice stack of surveys. If you want to bail right now, I don’t care. You let yourself out. We don’t need you. I know the hard core listeners are going to stay and listen to—I don’t know—two, three I’ve got—I’ve got six surveys and emails that I’m gonna read. This first one was filled out by—I read that one already. We’ve got five. This was filled out—this is from the Shame and Secrets survey filled out by a woman who calls herself Broken Inside Out. You know that’s not going anywhere good when that’s the name they picked. She considers herself bisexual, hetero-flexible, she’s in her 20’s, was raised in an environment that was a little dysfunctional. She writes, “Somewhere between a little and pretty dysfunctional. I don’t really know because I can’t completely remember. In some ways I know there were good times and my parents, especially my mum, did their best. At other times I’m so broken by it that I want to cut everyone but my mother completely out of my life.” “Ever been the victim of sexual abuse?” She writes, “Yes and I never reported it.” “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” “I was psycho-sexually abused by an Internet predator when I was 13 and raped when I was 14. But all the sexual triggers that get me off involve control, manipulation and rape. There are also a lot of incest triggers in there. When I watch online porn, which I wish I could stop, I always search for father-daughter setups. I can’t remember most of my own childhood and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to. I’m still scared of my father even though I’m not sure what about him scares me. I think I will only feel completely free after he is dead. I just got engaged to my boyfriend who is wonderful, but aside from him, I sometimes feel like I am really terrified of all men and what they can do to me and I hate that.” “Deepest, darkest secrets?” “My father hit me and my sister repeatedly as kids. Not violent beatings but very calculated slaps on the hands and face as forms of punishment. He would also shout at us and dominate us using his large frame to tower over us when we were very small. Sexually abused and raped, probably led directly to being hyper-promiscuous as a teenager, mostly with much older men. I carried on a frequent sexual affair with a man in his early 30’s when I was 13 and 14. Alcohol abuse since age 11. Drug use since age 13. Overeater since age 17. Constant fluctuations with my use of all three after the first time I had consensual sex. I coerced a boy my age to have sex with me because I thought that was the only way I could behave with guys. We had sex, but in retrospect I don’t he think he wanted to at all, I think I raped him? I can’t remember how many people I have slept with, most of their names, how we met, or even how it happened. I’ve often been so drunk that I only remember leaving the scene. My sister used to practice sexual behavior on me as a child and once brought me into my parents’ room to watch them have sex when I was five. I didn’t know what I was seeing until years later. I’ve had STI’s at five times and have oral and genital herpes to live with.” “Sexual fantasies most powerful to you?” “Rape, daddy-daughter control fantasies, manipulation of people under age.” “Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” She writes, “I don’t know. I think I could tell my best friend anything and he would accept me no matter what. My fiancé has a lot of issues about sex of his own, mainly from a very sheltered upbringing so it would take a lot of counseling before I could admit these things to him. Mainly though I don’t want to tell anyone because I want to not be turned on by them anymore. I want it to stop.” “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself?” She writes, “Of course. I fucking hate myself.” Well I’m sending you some—I don’t know whether you want it or not, but I’m sending you some love cuz I, I was just really moved by reading that, of how much pain you have inside you. And how much confusion you have inside you. And how difficult clarity and answers and comfort are for you to find and boy do I know that. Boy do I know that. You are not alone.
This is an email from a woman named Jo who writes, “I’ve always had a depressive personality, a.k.a. dysthymia. It mostly manifests itself as a pessimistic view on the world with mean self-talk. I’ve had major depressive episodes but always triggered by some trauma or loss, mostly personal or family illnesses, deaths or extra stressors like a shitty boss. Until this last week, I haven’t experienced an intense depression that was triggered by an insignificant event. It was a feeling of hopelessness and worthlessness without reason or warning. This hit hard, fast, and all my usual coping skills were not working. But I was prepared. You were in my head, “Talk to someone. Ask for help. You are not alone.” That is what I did. I talked to those around me, those that love me, a friend that had in depth knowledge of this disease and my fear of medication melted. My fear that this was permanent faded. The judgment of myself for not being in control of my emotions was lightened. I am for now comforted by the hope that my appointment in two weeks will help me get on the road to a more permanent sense of wellness. I’m still sad and on the verge of crying every moment but I’m able to work. I’m able to move through my day, do my exercises, eat my food, and shower. It may seem like very simple things, but simple is all I can do right now. Your words are with me now and this kept my nose above the water. Thank you so very much and I thank every one of your guests that shared their stories. Without your show, I wouldn’t have found the strength to talk to someone. I wouldn’t have found relief.” That just—I live for reading stuff like that. And it’s not just that the—because it’s oh, like this show helps people, it reminds me like when people open up and her describing what she’s going through, that’s what I’m going through. That’s what I’ve been going through. And this show is as much me talking to myself as it is talking to you guys. My depression has been kicking my ass these last two months and it is all I can do to sometimes—I haven’t been able to open mail for the last month. I know I have to. But it’s like the mail is at the bottom of a dark, cold, 30-foot pool, and it’s at the bottom of it, that’s what it feels like going to open the mail. And my brain tells me you’re just a baby, you’re a pussy, suck it up, do it, you would have died in the old pioneer west. I probably would’ve. I would’ve laid in the field and shit myself and cried and buzzards would have eaten me. And right now somebody’s jacking off to that image. Oh, I made myself laugh.
This happened. I feel like I should share it with you guys. I lost the vision in my left eye for fifteen minutes two nights ago. I was sitting watching TV and I don’t know if it’s because I played hockey a couple of hours earlier and I’d screwed my neck up, but all of the sudden everything on TV looked really weird and so I closed one eye and then the other and I was like, “What the fuck?” I literally could not see anything out of my left eye and I got my wife and I was like, “I think we need to go to the emergency room. I’m blind in my left eye.” And by the time she got changed and got some clothes on, it was just barely starting to come back, and after about 10-15 minutes, it was completely restored. But, so I’m going to see a doctor tomorrow, but it’s like really? On top of crushing depression I need to have the vision going out in one of my eyes? But I can’t go to that fucking self pity place, cuz it’s so, it’s such a trap to go in there, go to the place of why me. But it does help to talk about it and say, “I’m tired. I’m tired of this shit getting piled on.” And now I feel like a pussy for complaining about that.
This next survey is filled out by a guy who calls himself Sensui. He is straight, although he says really not sure at this point. He’s in his 20’s, was raised in an environment that was a little dysfunctional. Never been a victim of sexual abuse. “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” “I sometimes think about sex with teenaged girls.” Yeah, you and three-quarters of the globe. “I also think about sex with transsexuals and other men, of which I feel ashamed, due to being raised in a conservative Christian household.” We get this one a lot on the survey. “Deepest, darkest secrets?” “I once touched a girl’s genitals while she was sleeping. I used to lock myself in my room with 15-20 beers and drink in bed to reach oblivion.” That does sound actually kind of nice, just laying in bed. I never did that. I never laid in bed and drank but I gotta tell you right now that doesn’t sound like a bad call. When the buzz wears off, that sounds like a bad call. “Sexual fantasies most powerful to you?” He writes, “Being dominated by a fem dom, being abducted and raped by a group of men, women, or both.” “Would you ever consider telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” He writes, “Maybe. I’ve never had a romantic partner and I would look for one open-minded enough to handle the fem dom fantasy. I would never tell anyone about the rape fantasy because I fear they would think I’m a freak.” I don’t think you’re a freak. “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself?” He writes, “I feel like less of a man.” Sending you a hug, buddy. Stop beating yourself up.
This is filled out by—and if you’re keeping count, we’re on our second-to-last one. This is from the Shame and Secrets filled out by woman who calls herself This is Scary. She’s straight, she’s in her 40’s, was raised in an environment that was totally chaotic. “Ever been the victim of sexual abuse?” She writes, “Some stuff happened but I don’t know if it counts as sexual abuse. My father washing me in the shower when I think I was around six or seven and he was lingering a little too long with the soap on my genitals. He would also hold me down, pull my pants down, and bite me very hard on my ass. One last thing is when I was around that age, my brothers and these boys that were good friends of the family would go into my friend’s room and my friend would penetrate me and everyone else watched.” I think that counts as sexual abuse. Again I’m not a therapist, but I was on TV, and I did host a show where we showed Smokey and the Bandit and we made banana cream pie. And I was able to talk about the chemistry between Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason while rolling out a deliciously flaky crust. So I do think I have some expertise when it comes to knowing something about human beings. Now I’m sick that I was glib and this person revealing this stuff to me. I’m moving forward. Welcome to the roaring ocean that is my head. “Deepest, darkest thoughts?” “Killing my father.” “Deepest, darkest secrets?” “One time when I was somewhere around the age of eight, I pretended to be married to my brother who was probably about six. I didn’t do anything to him but we did have our pants off. Wow, this is horrible. I feel very guilty about this. I definitely never think of children as anything but children that need our protection and normal care.” “Sexual fantasies most powerful to you?” “I don’t have any. I obsess about my childhood and the pain from being verbally abused and viewed as an object or an extension of my father. I do not exist as a human being with any needs.” Oh my God, do I relate to that. I want to give you a fucking hug. I just want to give you a hug. You know what? I want you to give me a hug. “Have you ever considered telling a partner or close friend your fantasies?” She writes, “I’m scared to talk about it because I don’t want my husband to see how really damaged I am and leave me. I don’t have family to fall back on and no job so I would be on the street.” That breaks my heart. “Do these secrets and thoughts generate any particular feelings towards yourself?” She writes, “I am sad that I feel like I am nothing. I don’t even think of myself as a sexual being.” Well from what I know about my experience with being sexualized, and friends of mine who’ve experienced being sexualized or violated, one of the things that happens is your sexuality – you either become incredibly promiscuous or you shut down. There’s not usually a gray area in between. And I really encourage you to go see somebody. Google “low fee therapy” and the name of your city and you can find people often for as little as $25 a session and just know that you’re worth it and you are not alone. You are so not alone.
I’m gonna take it out with—this is from the Happy Moments survey. Yay! Happiness! This is filled out by a woman who calls herself Megan. And—is that our second Megan? Our third Megan if you count our guest Megan. Let’s call this The Megan Show. She is straight, she’s in her 30’s, and her happy moment, she writes, “As someone who suffers from depression, when I do feel good, I start to worry that maybe I’m just on the verge of mania. Oh yeah, it’s fun to second-guess feeling good as just another mental illness. Early this winter I bundled up, put on my headphones, listening to a new favorite album and headed outside. I laid in the snow and watched the black sky as the beautiful, fluffy, unique snowflakes fell down on me. I became so exhilarated I had to get up and dance around like a real crazy person. It was the first time in months that I felt like picking up my camera and making something. I took off my headphones so that I could hear the nature around me. I took my camera into a forest into a small clearing. I sat in the snow and took photos. It was wonderfully therapeutic because I had not had any will or energy to create anything in months. That night was a real turning point for me. I realized that I had been feeling much worse than I thought. I adjusted my meds and tried to make some lifestyle changes including getting honest with my therapist. That night helped me to start coming out of the latest fog I was in. It was a fog that didn’t seem so horrible because I was functioning. But looking back I realize I needed more help.” I love that because it’s not like a Disney happy moment, it’s like a real happy moment that even still has some imperfectness if you want to call it that about it. Some unresolvedness, that’s the word I was looking for. And I think sometimes we fantasize that happy is gonna come in this form where everything is resolved, and I think that’s kind of looking at the world in kind of an emotional OCD way that’s unrealistic and I like to be reminded that you can be happy and sad at the same time. You can feel fulfilled about a lot of things in your life and kind of empty about something in your life at the same time. And one doesn’t have to cancel the other out. But thank you, thank you for that Megan. Thank you listeners for being there for me. I’ve been corresponding with quite a few of you lately, and it really, really helps. It really helps to know I’m not alone and I hope you guys know that you’re not alone. Thank you so much for listening. I almost finished and I was like, “I think I usually say, ‘Thanks for listening.’” And then I was like, “Should I just leave it? No, I better put it in.” Ugh.
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