How to Work Through Fear and Depression with Paul Gilmartin

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Paul gil Martin, a stand up comedian, podcast host, and television personality best known as the longtime host of

TBSS Dinner in a Movie. Since two thousand and eleven, Paul has been the host and executive producer of the fantastic podcast called The Mental Illness Happy Hour. Hi Paul, Welcome back to the show party. It's good to be back. It has been a long time since we had you on, but it is one episode that stands out to me as a really really fun one and lots of good

laughs and lots of really deep stuff. And this is even better because I am sitting in your house in California, so I love when I could do these face to face. So yeah, it's nice. You know, we had briefly talked about having you on remotely, and I was like, now I want this to be face to face. I'm glad we wait. Last time we had the schedule, though I completely stood you up. Do you remember I totally forgot Oh,

I'm so glad. I was supposed to come to l A. We booked a time and a date and then I ended up canceling the trip and I forgot to tell you, and you called me. I saw it come up in the instant I did. I was like, and then my my first reaction, I'm not answering that, and I thought, come on, just as the phone. So anyway, I'm glad we got to do this. And did you realize in that moment that deep down you're a terrible person? I already knew it. It was just just to remember, yeah,

just a t rememberance that day. I was on the peloton bike at the time, though, so that sort of counterbalanced. I went, well, at least I'm at least I'm an exercising bos. All right, Let's start like we always do with the parable. In parable, there's a grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,

which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. Grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up with their grandparents as well. Which one wins, and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to know what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. I think everybody worships a god. Some of us are conscious of what that god maybe, and by that I don't mean, you know,

a conscious entity with a beard in the sky. But for me, from the time I started using drugs at fourteen until I got sober at forty, my god was self pleasure and I sacrificed a lot of things. My integrity, my faithfulness as a husband, my kindness as a person, All those things took a back seat to me getting what I felt I needed in the moment. Two feel okay in my skin. And so I was eating that

bad wolf. And it wasn't until I had to ask for help because I knew I was going to kill myself that I realized that I also have a good wolf inside me. And as I began to feed it, I began to feel like winning, as you know, as corny as that sounds, but for me, I had to expand my network of human connection. I had to learn how to become vulnerable, and I had to learn how

to tell the truth. And I discovered that through doing those things very imperfectly and certainly not a percent of the time, but enough at the time that I began to experience the comfort that I needed. I previously needed drugs and alcohol. Two experience and I realized, Wow, there's no bad side effects of being helpful to someone or telling the truth, or which the saying goes, just trying to be the man. My dog thinks I am what your dog is at our feet, and she clearly thinks

highly of you. She thinks highly of everybody. Her standard is very low. You mentioned everybody you know worships a god, and I think you're sort of pointing to like, we all have something that orients as the center of our life, you know, motivates our actions. Yeah. Yeah. What I wanted to start off by asking you is when did you get sober? Oh three oh three, so nineteen year or

something like that. It's been a while. I'm curious in what ways has your conception of God, or we could be more general than that, your your spiritual life in what ways has it grown and changed over the years, And in what ways is it growing and changing? Now,

that's a great question. I think in the beginning, and possibly because of my Catholic upbringing, was my idea of whatever ruling force in the universe has created everything around us, that it was a vindictive force, and that it was just waiting for me to funk up, to pounce on me, to punish me, and that at best it was tolerating me. And it wasn't until I started going to a second support group to deal with intimacy struggles that I began

to learn how to be vulnerable. You know even though I had experienced that in my first support group, I wasn't doing it as deeply because the first support group was great at helping me see where I had been an asshole. The second support group, if I could paint it in broad strokes, helped me see where I was being an asshole to myself and I was tolerating people treating me with a lack of respect. And it wasn't until I began to say, you know, I deserve to

feel safe in the world. I deserve to feel autonomy over my body and my decisions, because I didn't feel that as a child, and I was still looking at the world through that prism of I've got to be everything to everybody. Well, who's not going to want to escape from that mind frame is I began to say no to the things I didn't want to do and to not make plans with people who were toxic. I began to feel safer in the world, and I began to view my idea of God or a higher power

is much more benevolent. And even today, when I stumble in my support group, the first thing I try to go to now is Okay, you're not perfect, clean up your mess. If an apology needs to be made, make an apology, but you're still a human being worthy of love,

and you are trying. You know, I had a hockey game this past weekend and it got really chippy and heated, and this one guy was, you know, like ten yards from me and that you know, it was between whistles, and this guy was just barking at us, and it just triggered I don't know, trauma, childhood ship, I don't know, but I wanted to punch this guy. And so I started barking at him and we were nose to nose and he's like, come on, you know, let's go, let's go.

And of course neither of us wanted to throw the punch because the first one to punch would be penalized and then our team would be you know, that was so close to just taking my palms and jamming them underneath his chin and and just watching him fall backwards to the ice, and I could feel it in my body. It was like a volcano that wanted to explode and

I didn't. And you know, five minutes later, we're skating and I chipped the puck past him and he kind of gets in my way and I just grabbed him by the head and try to throw him down, and of course karma came in and I fell down right on my elbow, split it open. I had to have stitches.

But when the game was done, and this is where I can feel all the work I've done in support groups, working practically in my life is I knew if I didn't apologize to this guy for the things that I had said, I was going to carry that hate in my body for probably a day or two. And so I skated up to him and I stuck my hand out and I said I'm sorry. He said, I'm sorry to you know. I was really frustrated out there, and he's like, man, that's hockey. It's all good. And it

lifted and it was gone. And that is it, to me, a great example of I'm so fallible. I'm such a work in progress. I fail so spectacularly sometimes. But what I can do is I can clean up my mess. I can apologize where I'm wrong, and I can experience the freedom so that I am not so uncomfortable in my body. Then I want to get high again. Yeah.

I think that's been one of the biggest gifts of recovery for me, and particular part of that recovery, which was that encouragement to constantly be looking at that and sort of cleaning up messes as I make them. When I got sober, and I think any of us, we come in and we've got like a laundry list of things that he cleaned up. But ideally if we get that done and we sort of stay current, this is such a gift to me. It's a clean Yeah. Yeah. When I worked in restaurants, you just learned to kind

of clean as you go. If you don't, the kitchen is a dissats and then you don't even want to think about the kitchen, And yeah, you start looking for ways to escape. And it might not be drugs or alcohol. But my most recent struggle has been with video games. And I've been off on about three months now, and I'm having to face my comforts with being in my skin. I have to face the voice that says, Oh, you're so fucking lazy. There's so much more that you should

be accomplishing. You're gonna die, pour You're gonna die filled with regrets, and you're going to realize how much you've blown it. You just can't see it now, but oh boy, you are. You're going to see it in ten years. How are you able to not go right back to the video game? Right? That's a pretty uncomfortable It took me years. So what's different? What do you think? I

hit a bottom. I hit a bottom where I think I've been playing it for six hours and I just, you know, like the moment that you realized Heroin is not working for me anymore, something just told me you need a break. Whether it's forever or not, I don't know, but I knew I needed a break because one of the things that is, you know that happens to our brain when we are just pushing that dopamine of instant gratification, everything else loses its color. I had no desire to

go make furniture in the wood shop. I was not playing as much guitar as I would have liked. I was not working on my creative projects as much. Everything was just I'm uncomfortable. Let's go play Golden Tea or let's play Civilization. And it's an amazing feeling when you're pushing that dopamine button. It's a god in a lot of ways, because I feel instant relief. But as you know,

spirituality is not instant gratification. There's a lot of faith involved that if I do these things on a daily basis that I'm told are healthy and will help me, I'm going to trust it well. And it has been for nineteen years. Yeah. Yeah, it is interesting when we sort of encounter other addictions beyond our our primary one. I've struggled with pornography, collecting things obsessively in many ways, living a fear based life. So many of my decisions

were based out of fear. Fear of being bored, fear of not being enough, not having enough, not doing enough. And I think that's where the self compassion, the second phase of how I viewed a higher power, had to come in and to say, if I funked up, we'll do better. Make a mental note. Let's not obsess about ourselves, because that's not going to help you or anybody else. But let's make a mental note what triggered that. Let's keep an eye out for that next time we can

do better. Yeah. I love what you said a minute ago about your first support group taught you not to be the asshole yourself. The second one taught you to recognize the ways in which other I'm putting words in your mouth a little bit, but recognize the ways that others had harmed us, that the actions of others had impacted us in our development. And it really does seem

that we need both those things. I see people who only get one or the other, and I mean, it's better than not having either of them, you know, but both is a pretty helpful combination because they're both very true.

And one of the things that I discovered was when I stopped numbing myself with these high cattle prod shocking myself, pushing that dopamine button, whether it was looking at porn or obsessively playing video games, I began to get back into my body, and I began to feel the subtle things in life, and I began to reconnect with my body's instinct that would tell me this person's training. We not have to be around them. It's not your job

to be their savior. Let's keep our battery from being drained so that we can be the person that we want to be. Whereas before, when I was numb from the video games and the pornography or whatever, I couldn't feel. Yeah, that feeling I couldn't name it, and my only driving thought was, if you don't give this person what they want, you're a terrible selfish person. Yeah, video games or other forms of obsessive dizziness that sort of completely take us out of the moment, does take away any sort of

reflection time and ability. You know, I will notice if I'm really busy, which i I sometimes get, I'll sit down to meditate and my brain will be like I've been waiting for you, Like I've been waiting for you to give me any time because I've got a list of things we need to talk about, you know. Whereas if I've got a little bit more space in my life, I'm doing some of that reflection throughout the day, through you know, at different points, instead of like okay, I'm

actually still now and so here it all comes. And I think you bring up a great point about meditation that I think the instinct when we first start meditating is to judge the quality of our meditation and say, oh my god, you know, I stopped thinking about my breath for ten solid minutes, or I only said my mantra twice in twenty minutes. You know, got I'm a

shitty meditator. What I began to do was, instead of judging the quality of focusing on my breath or thinking of my mantra was I began to say, what are the thoughts that keep popping up? And that showed me what it is that I'm uncomfortable with or what I'm passionate about. You know, sometimes I'll just start thinking of a woodworking project and the joints I want to use for a table, and I'll get excited about it. I'll be along with it. That's awesome. Yeah, I think that's great.

I heard you say that recently on one of your episodes, talking about that, and I thought, you know, that's very different than the meditation advice that's often given, which is just don't attach to any thought, let them all kind of go. But I do think there is particularly in our busy world right where we just have so much going on that sometimes it seems to me the point of sitting down and stopping is not to get the mantra right, but is to see what's going on in

my exactly. Sometimes it points me towards the stuff I already know, Like you think that thought ten thousand times, like it's pointless. But sometimes it points to things that need attention. Yes, I couldn't agree more. You've talked about the difference between self reflection and self obsession. How do you tell the difference? How do you stay on the healthy side of that? How quickly I move on from

the thought? Self reflection rarely takes a long time for me unless i'm you know, maybe doing a writing exercise. Self obsession is endless and usually pointless, and it usually involves negative self talk. You know, I like to just think of make a note to self it. Maybe I need to sit and reflect for a couple of minutes to uncover what's really going on. Is it trauma being triggered. Is it a negative self belief I need to let

go of. Is it a mistake that I made where I need to understand how to better handle it next time? So it all kind of varies, but usually of obsession is just endless and pointless. Hi, everyone, I wanted to personally invite you to a workshop that we are offering at the end of October at the Omega Institute, which is in the Hudson Valley in New York, and it

is really beautiful this time of year. It's going to be a great chance to meet some wonderful people, recharge and relax while learning foundational spiritual habits that will allow you to establish simple daily practices that will help you feel more at ease and more fulfilled in your life. You can find details at one you feed dot net slash Omega. I'm really looking forward to meeting many of you there. One of my favorite ways of thinking about

thoughts is just the question is this useful? Yes? Most of us can tell that the point where a thought goes from being useful to ruminative, where it's like, Okay, up till this moment, I was uncovering some new ground, I was having some new insights, and now I'm circling the drain, same thing over and over and over. I love that, and I believe that ruminative negative self talk is really the other side of the coin of grandiosity.

They're both ways of keeping us stuck in self. Whether it's I'm the King or I'm a piece of shit, you're still wasting your fucking time obsessing about yourself in a pointless way. What are some of the strategies you have for Okay, I recognize have left self reflection land. I'm in self obsession land, what are some strategies you use? What do you do? Then? Is usually a fear underneath the self obsession, and it's I think, my primitive way

of trying to bring myself comfort. So I ask myself, or what are some more constructive ways that I can find comfort? Well, first of all, if I need to forgive myself or I need to apologize to somebody for the thing I'm I'm ruminating about, I'll do that. If it's because I didn't do something, I'll ask myself, well, should I make a list of things to do? As you talk about? If it feels overwhelming, can I break that down into baby steps? And can maybe I take

one of those baby steps right now? And usually that's enough to release that feeling of anxiety and being overwhelmed. So sometimes it's picking up the phone and calling somebody and saying, you know, I'm not in a good place right now. I'm just so in fear of the future and that I'm not doing enough. But I can't bring myself to do the things that my brain is telling me I need to do to have a good life in the future. And that's a tough place that I

often find myself stuck in is paralysis of perfection. Yeah. Yeah, that is a really deeply uncomfortable place to be when you sort of go well, like even rationally and reasonably, I realized, like, these things need done for my life to be good, and I can't seem to get myself to do them. You know, there's times where we're putting unreasonable standards upon ourselves, but there are times where they're

not unreasonable. Some part of us knows like that's an important and useful thing to do, and I can't get myself there, you know. I know. One of the things that you wrestle with still a lot is depression and the lack of energy that comes with that. There are times I hear you talk about sort of just letting it be that way and you just go back to bed, And then there are times I hear you talk about

sort of moving through it. Do you have any way of gauging when it's time to do which one of the things that I began asking myself when I'm feeling that lack of vitality, and I'm wondering, is it depression or is it fear of taking action? As I ask myself, the things that normally bring me pleasure, the good, you know, nurturing things, would working, playing guitar. Have I lost interest

in those? And if I have, that's generally depression. And if those things do seem interesting but I don't want to do them, is it that I'm afraid I'm not going to do it perfectly, that I have some unreasonable expectation myself. And so those are the things that I asked myself to try to suss out whether it's depression or the burden of perfectionistic thinking and setting too high

of a bar for myself. And sometimes I just need an app because I'm stressed about just the burden of living, the burden of returning a phone call, of making dinner. Sometimes it just feels like too much. And that's okay. I no longer tell myself you're weak for not being able to face it. No, I feel it in my body. And I don't even sleep when I lay down. I laid down because I don't want to face something for an hour. And I always feel better after I wake

up because I don't shame myself when I wake up. Okay, it's actually a strategy that sort of brings you out the other side. In a good place. Yeah, I take a break from the world. Yeah. One of the things I've started to think about more and trying to discern in myself, and I don't think I have it figured out completely, but I'm getting it a little bit is

when am I tired and when am I depressed? I think for a long time I just attributed it at all to depression versus going, well, maybe you're just tired and you're talking about mental emotional exhaustion or pure physical can't keep my eyes open exhaustion, because I almost never experienced the latter. I almost always berience just a feeling of being overwhelmed, not physically, not can't keep my eyes open,

just tigured of standing up. It's not can't keep my eyes open, but it is a decided lack of vitality for me. There's a difference in there of tired. And part of it is I don't know, you know, we're getting older, you know, we're in our fifties. I don't know, like how much energy should I have at this stage in my life. I've just started to ask myself a little bit more. Makes me think a little bit about the hungry, angry, lonely tired thing. You know that we

were advised early in recovery. Just okay, it seems like I want to drink, but is there something else going on? And so for me, I'm just getting better at going. Particularly in the evening, I'll find myself like feeling lower and I'll think, oh, this is depression. I'm be like, no, you wake up in the morning, You're gonna feel fine, Like just relax, And I would add scared to that list. Yeah, that's one probably that pops up more than any of

the other ones. Have you gone in and out of high degrees of fear in your recovery, It seems like you may be in a higher phase of it currently. I don't think so. I think since I've taken a break from the video games, just the act of facing the fears, and most of them are the fears of a bigger life, of the responsibility that might come with more success, more things to do in my schedule. As I created to do list of things I've always wanted

to do professionally. That fear is there, but there's also an opposing force, which is hope. Because I'm taking the baby steps as you talk about in your podcast, and so I'm kind of experiencing both at the same time. But it's better than there may be being less fear, but no hope for solving this per realysis of perfection. Yea, you say that The main mantra in my brain is you don't have enough because you don't do enough. And the things that you do do you don't do well

enough because you are not enough. How do you work with that? I took a nap. I can see why you feel like you need a nap With that thought, I look out for when I'm thinking that, and I realized that's the voice that was planted in me as a child, by others or by myself, or both, or by society. You know, the You're not a success unless you're living a big house and have power and notoriety.

And I let those things go, and I think about my higher power and am I acting in accordance with the morals that I believe that higher power stands for. That's the only way that I know to nnect to my higher power is to embody. Try to embody qualities that I believe a great higher power would stand for, showing up on time, being nice in the grocery store, that ship. We were taught in kindergarten, and so I say, that's what's important. The results of my efforts is up

to the universe, is up to my higher power. But what I can do is I can act in a principled way and let go of the things that I can't control. And that helps alleviate the fear because I'm reminded I'm not in control of the outcomes. I might be able to influence the outcome of things in my life, but ultimately, all I can do is put the effort in and really try to make sure that my efforts are in keeping with who I want to be. When you say morals that your higher power would bring, I

think that's another way of saying your values. Is that something that you feel like you have a pretty clear idea of at this point, or is that something that you periodically feel like it's useful to revisit. I think it's useful to revisit, and I'd say about I'm pretty clear on that. I think the only place that it gets a little fuzzy is honestly with the satire that I do. I do satire is a really right wing congressman who see my home state from Ohio. That's right.

Who embodies everything that I dislike, either about the world or sometimes even within myself, you know, a kernel of a part of myself, be it greed or or meanness or whatever. Sometimes I worry that I'm putting negative energy into the world, and I worry about that, but I also feel like I do this character well. I think it exercises the highest functioning part of my comedic muscles, and it's the most satisfying to me. I have no desire to do regular monology as a stand up anymore.

I enjoy this, and because some of the things he says are super fucked up and dark, because I'm satirizing that real element in our country, I question myself sometimes does this need to be put out into the world. Are you going to just create more animosity and contribute towards that which feels like a civil war on the horizon? Or does it bring relief to people who feel helpless and voiceless with the meanness going on around us, especially

by people who call themselves Christians. I have the same issue that you do, like with that from a satire perspective, but I do have that general thought about what's the right way forward with very radically different opinions among people. Is it to really just dig in and go, this is what I think is right and that's left up and or is it to try and broker some sort of conversation. That's when I wrestle with all the time.

I tried once on Facebook to broker a conversation and it was a ship show within five minutes, and I really have not spent any time on Facebook since then. I can't imagine that's the place to do it. My politics lean left words, but I've got a couple of people in my life who are fairly conservative but are also very thoughtful, and so I would like to be able to talk to them. But most people, I feel like it's it's a very good waste. Yeah, yeah, exactly,

And it's not our job to teach them. Yeah, it's up to us to embody the values we want. But to think that we are put here to change people is just going to make you an angrier person because you're going to see the results of doing that. I think the only change we can bring about in the world is through embodying the values that we think any God who possibly exists wants us to embody. I mean, I'm not a Bible reader, but I believe the teachings of Christ are a great place to start. Yeah, there's

a lot of beautiful things. All the wisdom traditions out there, you know, are all the religious traditions have their very beautiful aspects of them. I mean, there's there's a lot of beauty. Buddhism letting go. Oh yeah, you know, accepting that suffering is a part of life and not trying to not suffer, but say, how can I live in acceptance with the fact that there is suffering? Yeah, yeah,

that's my primary Probably spiritual lenion Is is Buddhist. But the Spiritual Habits program I created, I sort of went through and surveyed like a bunch of the traditions out there. It's like, what are the core things that seem like they underlie all these But I don't want to go there. I want to ask how often does traffic come up in your conversations with your therapist? Almost never. It comes up often when your your podcast. It does because I use it as an example of how my recovery has

benefited me in a practical way. It's pretty rare that I get upset by traffic, and if I do, it's usually short lived because I go to the work that I did in my support group, which revealed to me all of my fears and the ways I dealt with my fear in a way that was selfish and immature and didn't embody the values. You know, following somebody tailgating them, you know, rolling down my window and telling them they're

a piece of ship. That used to be how I would handle the fear that would come up when somebody almost cut me off. Today, I go, well, I've been that person. I've been so filled with self I don't even look in my side view mirror. I cut somebody off because it's all about me, and I'm afraid if I don't get somewhere on time, I'm not going to get something I need and my life is going to

be miserable. So in that moment when somebody cuts me off, I think to myself, well, they're probably filled with fear and self and I've been that guy, and I'm grateful at in this moment I'm not experiencing that, and I go from feeling angry to feeling grateful and feeling my higher power in the car with me. I want to talk about an important reflection you had recently that nothing will shatter love like a canoe ride. It's so true, man,

it's so true. I don't think I have stumbled as hard emotionally in the last five years outside of hockey that I did in that canoe with my girlfriend. I was so excited to be in there, but I did as you know, that thing that we do that sets us up for anger and resentment was that I had expected as about how well we were going to be able to canoe, and all of my character defects came to bear. My arrogance, my impatience, my feeling like, you know, it's up to me to teach people how to do things,

and we were just paddling around in a circle. It felt to me like it was all her fault. And when she said, how much longer do you think we're going to be across the lake and we get to you know, see that clear stream the person was talking about, I said, you know, I see it taking us hours and hours and hours, and there was a silence. Of course, you know, she was behind me, so I couldn't see how that was received until I heard sniffling about ten seconds later, and I just went, man, why did you

have to be such a dick? And I apologized to her, but I couldn't really feel the apology because I was still in that moment angry at her. It took me probably about an hour of really talking yeah and apologizing more deeply and more sincerely that we were able to kind of laugh about it, and we joke about it to this day. But it's a great example of be careful of expectations. You said something when I heard you

tell that that I really liked you said. I learned that when I set my mind on something, I can lose my sense of humor and become mean. That really hit me that when I get my mind set on something, the world narrows a great deal, you know. And and I'm generally, you know, not perfect and generally good at keeping my meanness internal, but I certainly lose my sense of humor, and internally I do get a little bit mean, you know, when I think not everybody's doing it the

way I think we should be doing it. And I find myself doing that in hockey, sometimes barking at my teammates because I've showed up at the rank feeling the absence of something in my life that I want to feel, and I look to the score of the game to fill that part of me. The feeling of winning, which is super fucked up, but it's been with me since I was a kid, and I don't know if it has anything to do with the fact that the only time I saw my dad express pure joy was when

I pitched a winning game against an undefeated team. You know, maybe that's stuck in my brain and so I associate winning with my value as a person. But it's still a battle, even though I can consciously be aware of that. So I have to ask myself when I hear myself telling people to skate hard or whatever stupid thing that I'm doing, to say, what is it that you want to feel in your life that you're looking for this

to provide? Yeah, you know, when I play a game, I definitely get competitive, but I really look for, like, how do I embody the parts of that that are enjoyable and fun. A similar thing as I took up the sport of indoor rock climbing primarily bouldering over the last year or so, and my nature is to be like and I'm not. I'm gonna get a trainer, and now I'm gonna like I'll turn something that should be

enjoyable into like work. It's really interesting that dynamic. The thing that I try to bring it back to is I'm going to take it one moment at a time in the game and just try to bring out my best and let the results fall where they may, and not focus on my teammates. Keep my mouth shut. If somebody doesn't want to skate, it's up to them to not skate, and maybe we'll lose ten nothing, But that's not a reflection of my value as a person. Yeah, hockey is a big part of your life. It is,

it is. I think it's great that you still play at you know, your advanced stage. I mean, I have a walker. I would a blade on it. Well, speaking of walkers, I went roller skating re sently. I'm terrible, so I would not be a hockey player. I'm terrible. They have invented this thing that was the most humiliating thing I've done to myself in a long time. They basically created, I'm not joking, a walker on wheels so you can learn. You could you could hold onto it

and skate around with it. It's a good idea, it's a great idea, but it really ridiculous, looks preposterous. You know, I've got elbow pads and wrist pads and I'm here though in l A because I'm surfing, being from Ohio. How did you discover surfing? I didn't until two months ago. My partner Jenny and I had been playing a long time a trip to Europe and she was going to be in some training part of the time, and so one of the places that I was going to go

was San Sebastian, Spain. And as I was reading about they kept saying this great for surfing, and like, I think, I've always wanted to learn to surf, but why not? And I loved it. You were able to get up. Yeah, that that is no easy feat. I'm learning how to practiced like I practiced in that ape and your skinny so you you're not battling extra pounds, yeah yeah, and I practiced ahead of time, but yeah, but I really

liked it. And so then I was like, well, I've got a good friend who lives here, and I knew I wanted to talk to you, and I thought, why not come out to l A. Do some surfing in the morning during the day. I did it this morning, So how was it? It was fun? Where'd you go? Santa Monica? Nice? All right? What ways do you feel like currently in your life, whether psychologically spiritually, you're growing. You mentioned sort of giving up the video games. I mean that's a big one, But what ways are you

feeling like you're kind of being called to grow? I feel like by putting the video games down, because I you know, I put the drugs and alcohol away years ago. I stopped looking at pornography. You know, probably I don't know, seven eight months ago. I am having to face my everyday fears of that thing that you quoted of, I

don't do enough because you know, etcetera, etcetera. And so I'm having to find practical ways to set goals for the things that I'm deeply afraid of committing too because either it's going to take a lot of time, or it's going to take a lot of effort, or I might fail, or I don't think I'm good enough, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. But the little nibbles, you know, I've been eating away at it with by actually doing things, recording things, writing things,

sharing things. I'm beginning to feel that it's maybe not as overwhelming as I thought it was. So I'm getting a sense of myself that I had actually gotten a taste of when I went glacier climbing twenty years ago. I was so amazed that my body was able to endure the pain that I went through that it made me realize I'm capable of so much more than I think I am. And it's almost all mental, you know.

An hour into this eight hour hike with an overpacked backpack that probably weighed eighty pounds, it felt like somebody was stabbing my hips with screwdrivers, and I thought, my only choice is to soldier through this or to have one of the guides take me back all the way to the parking lot and drive me all the way back into town and then they're going to have to hike up by themselves. And so I suppose my ego came to the rescue and said, you can't be that guy.

And I found a place in my head to go to to deal with the pain, and by the time we got to base camp, I realized, Wow, we are capable of more then we think we are. If we can find a way to deal with it mentally. Yeah. I love when we're able to do that, when we're actually able to sort of see, oh, I am able to do these things that my brain was telling me

I can't. And what you just described as of the strategies I often use, which is to remind myself of times I did because my brain will be like, well yeah, but then I'll be like, but actual facts, as we did. Yes. And I also try to leave open the option that I won't do it, Yeah, that I'll fail in doing it, And that's not a reflection of who I am as a person, it just is. Yep. Well, Paul, thank you so much for having me out and coming back on

the show again. It was such a pleasure. Yeah, and listen to eric guests on my podcast if it's out when this air. Tell people where they can find your absolutely wonderful podcast. I don't listen to very many, but one of the ones I do listen to is yours. It's the Mental Illness Happy Hour. Thanks buddy. Yeah, they can find out wherever you get your podcast, and the website for it is mental pod dot com and metal Pod. Also the social media handle you can follow us at excellent.

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