The One You Feed - Paul Gilmartin of The Mental Illness Happy Hour

Episode Date: July 29, 2014

Paul Gilmartin, host of the Mental Illness Happy Hour.Paul is a funny guy who hosts one of the most best podcasts on the market today. We have a great chat with Paul and we play a game at the end; borrowed from his show where he, Chris and I take turns exchanging things we are afraid of and things we love. It is certainly the most we have ever gotten from Chris on the air.The Mental Illness Happy Hour is an interview show known for it's candor, depth and intensity. In addition to the interviews Paul reads surveys about their lives filled out by his listeners that are in turn enlightening, horrifying and heartrending. However, the show is ultimately very hopeful. The combination of Paul's' humor, and the hope that is generated when people know they are not alone, gives the show an optimism that transcends the difficult subject matter.From 1995 to 2011 Paul Gilmartin co-hosted TBS’ Dinner and a Movie, and has been a stand-up comedian since 1987. His credits include Comedy Central Presents: Paul Gilmartin, numerous Bob and Tom albums, comedy festivals and the Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He is also a frequent guest on the Adam Carolla podcast, performing political satire as right-wing Congressman Richard Martin.  In This Interview Paul and I Discuss...The One You Feed parable.Forgiving ourselves for past misdeeds.The healing power of humor when used correctly.Not using humor to avoid feelings or intimacy.How we all have the lightest light and the darkest dark within.The cinematography of The Godfather.His battles with depression both present and past.Not being an expert.That there are no easy answers.That there are no fast fixes.When does positive thinking become denial.Accepting ourselves as we are, and working to change ourselves at the same time.Letting the mistakes of the past inform our decisions for the future.Apologizing without expecting something in return.How we think the way we feel now is the way we will feel forever.How evolution has made us fear based.Avoiding useless rumination.An unshakeable peace....sometimes.Treating depression like the emotional flu.We take Paul's show staple of Love Off and Fear Off and all three of us do it.Paul Gilmartin LinksMental Illness Happy Hour homepagePaul Gilmartin homepagePaul Gilmartin on Twitter  Some of our most popular interviews you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My bad wolf has a bib on. It's probably its knife and fork on the table. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. 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.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our

podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest this week is Paul Gilmartin, an American standup comedian, podcast host, and television personality best known as the longtime host of the TBS hit series Dinner and a Movie. Since 2011, Paul has been a host and executive producer of the Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast. The show examines lives affected by mental health issues, including depression, addiction, fear, anxiety, abuse, and gender identity. Here's the interview. Hi, Paul. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm a big fan of your podcast. It's one of the ones that I certainly think our show looks up towards as a show that's entertaining and yet provides some value to the world. Well, I appreciate that because that's what I set out to, to do. And, uh, it's always nice when I feel like they're, it's, it's doing what it set out to accomplish. Yep. Very much so. So our show is based on the old parable of two wolves where there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson and he says in life, there's two wolves inside of us. 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. And the grandson stops and he thinks and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. It's the basis of me trying to heal and find my place in the world. I absolutely believe in it. And in my first couple of years of sobriety, I heard somebody share that at a support group, and I immediately went, oh my God, that makes perfect sense. And that, that had been what I was experiencing because before I got sober, uh, I was only feeding the bad wolf as it were, or I should say the bad wolf is doing the

majority of the eating. And I, I couldn't understand why I was spinning into hopelessness and isolation and getting close to suicide. And then after I got sober and I started learning different principles to live by, not only different principles, but by different actions to take on a daily basis. Um, you know, which I guess you could, you, you could call spirituality. Um, it, then I began to feel a renewed sense of hope and the desire to kill myself, um, receded. And so I experienced that, I experienced that parable. And so today, I mean, that's, that's one of the things I try to preach on the podcast is it's all about energy. It's all about positive energy and feeding ourselves positive energy. So we have positive energy to give. Yeah. In our intro, one of our things is, you know, it's not just about thinking that our actions matter. And that

was such a revelation to me that I could act my way into feeling better. I didn't have to feel better before I could act a certain way. And that is, it's one of those things that's really easy to say and harder to do. But it really, for me, was the one of the keys that unlocked the door of just feeling better in life. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I think so because we live in a bad wolf society and the to, uh, to spirituality. And when the big wolf starts to eat, the bad wolf starts to eat. Ironically, the bad wolf gets hungrier.

Yeah. That is an interesting phenomenon. It's absolutely true. And momentum is, that's another thing we talk about a lot when getting started can be so hard, but once the ball is rolling, both positively and negatively, it makes such a big difference. One of the things that you talk about on your show a lot is... Myself. You do talk about yourself a fair amount, but you're going to get to talk about yourself even more on this show. Why do you think I'm doing it? Exactly.

Right now my bad wolf has a bib on. It's pounding its knife and fork on the table. You talk about the voice that a lot of us have in our heads and the way that we talk to ourselves, and for me that is a really good analogy. Or at least for me, that's potentially the worst wolf is the voice that goes on in our head. Do you want to talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. In fact, I just got done responding to an email I got from a listener who she filled out a shame and secret survey. Well,

where people reveal their sexual fantasies, things that happened to them that were traumatic as a child. And, um, and this, this woman, um, is filled with self hatred because she has sexual fantasies that are age

inappropriate. And some of them involve incest and she's not acting on these, but she just feels like the biggest piece of shit. And I wrote back to her and she had an incredibly abandoning, uh, childhood and, and some inappropriate stuff had happened to her. And I wrote back to her and I said, you know, you're, you're, and she has clear boundaries, you know, that she's not going to, to act on these things. And I said, you know, if, if you can just embrace your shadow self, that that's a part of yourself, but that's not who you are because your boundaries are clear. Um, that's going to go a really long way towards helping you heal. As you guys know,

Carl Jung wrote about the shadow selves, that we all have a shadow self. And it's about embracing that side. Anybody can embrace the good side of themselves, but it's embracing the part of ourselves that is dark, that's difficult. And I think as long as we have clear boundaries about where our fantasies end and where reality and other people's boundaries begin, who cares what you're jerking off to? Exactly. Can you say that again for Chris? He might need to hear that another time. Chris, you might need to hear that another time. I only masturbate to your podcast.

Isn't that weird? Well, you're just classy. That's just classy. Like Sarah Silverman joked, Ron, was it Ron Jeremy? Why does he stick his pinky out when he jerks off? Because he's classy. But, but those are the things where self love is really critical. Um, and you know what, and here's another thing that this

person shared that she had done something that, um, when she was 15 and there was a five-year-old girl with her, she had kind of silently brought herself to orgasm in the presence of this child. This child didn't have any idea that it had happened, but she just feels like a terrible person. And I said, you know, you were 15 when it happened, even though physically you might have been a woman. You were still a child. And you saw afterwards that that was not an appropriate thing to do.

And you haven't done it since. So forgive yourself for it. And these are the, these are the things that I think are really important. You know, I think it's important to separate saying, okay, that's not something I want to do again from I'm a piece of shit. I don't deserve to live. You know what I mean? It's like a, there's an area between that, you know? It's a hard area to find. Yeah, it is. Because I think we, especially if we have that bad wolf in us, it wants to eat from us. It not only wants to eat from other people, it wants to devour us.

That seems to come up a lot on your show. And maybe for a quick second, so tell, maybe you could give in your words a little bit more what your show is and what you do. We cover some of it in our introduction to you, but I think for our listeners, it might be good to hear some more detail from you if they're not familiar. It's a one-on-one conversation between myself and a, and a guest about all the battles that we have in our heads, uh, past, uh, present fear about the future. Um, the parts of ourselves that we want to hide, uh, either from ourselves or, or other people, um, you know, maybe fantasies that we have, maybe things that we've done or were done to us that fill us with shame or anger or regret. And I stress that I'm not an expert, that I'm as fucked up as anybody,

that I'm not a therapist. It's not a doctor's office. It's more like a waiting room that doesn't suck. One of the things I realized when I got sober was the power of hearing your story come out of somebody else's mouth and realizing you're not alone. And I wanted to take that approach to mental illness. And when I first started out the show, it was really just focused on mental illness and mostly depression. But as I began to hear people's story, I began to realize that you can't separate it from childhood trauma. You can't separate it from, um, sexual fantasies that, that bring you anxiety. Um, and all of these things need to be talked about because it's a

big tangled bowl of spaghetti. And, um, and so that's basically the, the nutshell of it. And sometimes why the, why an interview will go an hour and a half, sometimes two hours, because sometimes people have a big bowl of spaghetti to, uh, to talk about. And you use the surveys also, which is where your listeners and people have, you've built a real community over there, go out and fill out these various different surveys and you usually start and end the show with reading those. Yeah, and they're essay style. They're not meant to crunch numbers. It's meant to hear somebody pour their heart out anonymously so that they can really, really let it fly. really let it fly. And, uh, there's probably about a dozen different surveys we have on a variety of, of subjects. Um, but the one that seems to be the most, um, uh, kind of interesting and fruitful for understanding, um, the core that we struggle with is the shame and secrets survey.

Um, but some other, you know, favorite ones of mine are the struggle in a sentence survey because, uh, somebody who has a way with words can so eloquently describe their struggle with, you know, having a bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder, um, or any, or being diabetic, you know, any variety of, of things. Um, so that's, that's one that I really like reading, especially at the beginning of the show. Um, but yeah, the surveys are, they're kind of the third guest in the, in the podcast and they helped me, the surveys helped me, you know, I've, I've had epiphanies reading the surveys. I've come to understand myself better after interviewing guests and, as I said, hearing my story come out of somebody else's mouth.

Yeah, some of the surveys are, it's alternately, they're, they're amazing. And yet sometimes it's really hard to listen to them. They're very, there's a lot of pain that gets expressed there. And, and, and I can tell sometimes even you're, you're not even sure how you, what do you really say? You know, how do you express to somebody? I think you do a great job, but I think it's, some of that stuff is just, it's heartbreaking. Yeah, it is. And it's funny, I just got emailed back from that woman. I, I emailed her right before I contacted you guys on Skype. And she just emailed me back now. And, you know, I won't read the whole thing. But she just said, Oh, my goodness, I'm so relieved you responded. Um, and, uh, you know, I can tell she's feeling

comfort from knowing that she's not alone. And that's, that's the podcast in a, in a nutshell, you know, and sometimes it gets a little, um, uh, draining is too strong of a word, but overwhelming because it's such heavy subject matter. And sometimes I just need to go, you know what? I'm not going to read any emails today. I'm not going to respond to stuff because I just need a day free from thinking about trauma and abuse and depression and suicide. Yep. Well, a question I had for you because you you you are, you're, you're a comedian.

The show is very funny. I mean, there are points in there that and I think it's some of it's just, you know, comedy, sometimes just juxtaposition is so good. You know, it's something just comes out of nowhere. And there's plenty of opportunities to kind of come out of nowhere with something funny. But what I think is interesting, and I wanted to get your thoughts on is that I believe on one hand that humor is perhaps one of the most healing things in the world. And, you know, levity is a, I think it's a spiritual virtue. And at the same time, we can use humor to sort of deflect from uncomfortable moments and deflect from intimacy. And I'm curious, I would imagine you've thought about that to some degree

because you've got to walk that line pretty carefully in your show. Absolutely. I like to say that humor is great in addition to vulnerability, but not in place of vulnerability. And that's what I say to my guests, especially if they're comedians and they're coming on, uh, the, the podcast, I'll say, um, humor is absolutely welcome, but the most important part is, is that we get vulnerable and we get deep about the stuff that we, that we want to hide. Um, and, and then I think the humor is so much more effective because it's like this buildup of attention and then this great release where not only we are reminded that this stuff's not really as heavy as it is in our mind, but that, that, that we can laugh about it. Um, you know, I've had some, I've laughed

harder and cried harder hanging out with my friends and my, and my support groups than I have at my favorite movies. And both have been incredibly cathartic, both the laughter and the, and the tears. Um, and so that's what I try to, to have the podcast be is that full experience. You know, that's why I love the Beatles so much because the breadth of emotion that they brought to their music is, you know, it's from alpha to what is it? Zeta? What's the, what's the last one in the, in the grief, Greek alphabet? Zimmer maybe. what is it i said zimmer it's my last name zeta yeah um that's and could that have been a a more uh pompous example why i had to go to the greek alphabet instead of a to z and you know that

moment right there is a perfect moment of like oh oh, God, I'm taking myself so seriously. Let's let the air out. But that breadth of emotion is really what I strive to get in the podcast because that's who we are. We're from the lightest light to the darkest dark. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts his stuntman

reveals the answer and you never know who's going to drop by mr brian cranson is with us hello my friend wayne knight about jurassic park wayne knight welcome to really no really sir bless you all hello newman and you never know when howie mandel might just stop by to talk about judging really that's the opening really no? No, really. Yeah, no, really. Go to really no really dot com and register to win five hundred dollars, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. That's something that I love in anything that I think is, I consider art, is that ability to sort of span both those things. And sometimes the closer they are together, the better they both are. I mean, it's why The Sopranos was so great that, you know, Tony Soprano was this animal lover who would then go beat somebody within an inch of their death.

And I think we all recognize that we have both of those things in us and it's what we do with them really that, that matters. I know, uh, here's another, uh, uh, pretentious thing I'm going to share with you, but, uh, you know, the Godfather is one of my favorite movies and the cinematographer, uh, on it, um, his name is Gordon Willis and he is, you know, his work on that movie is considered one of the greatest achievements in cinema history because he shot it so dark. It was almost it created this mood that was amazing. And he said, one of the things I try to have in every shot that I shoot in a movie is a part of the frame be overexposed, a part of the why that movie is so comforting to see in addition to it being amazing and all these other aspects. But visually, I always get so comforted by looking at that movie.

And I think it's because it has all of those things in every frame. It feels like a life visually. Yeah. I'd never heard that. That's really interesting. It feels like a life visually. I wrestle with depression, but that you've been struggling with it more recently. And I wanted to explore that a little bit more and also explore, is it at all challenging for you to not, do you find yourself wanting to slide into the, I'm the host, I'm the expert role and I should be better than this by now? No, I don't. I try to really be honest about what it is that I'm feeling because when I set out to start the podcast, I clearly said I am not going to be an expert. I am not going to be a guru and somebody that has this all figured out because one of the things I love about my support groups is the people I'm drawn to are not the people who pretend to have everything figured out. Yes, they have recovery and they have experience and hope and strength to share, but they also,

their path is not linear and they backslide. And I wanted to be a, um, model for imperfection, uh, in that, because that is comforting to people. You know, I've never been comforted by an Anthony Robbins or, you know, Tony Robbins, whatever his name is, because I can't do that. You know, there's days where I can't get out of bed before two in the afternoon and watching Tony Robbins would just remind me that I can't keep up, but it's, it's embracing that, that part of myself and being gentle with myself and having compassion for the fact that, uh, I'm struggling. That is, that is important. So, um, I, and yet I, when I'm having a great stretch, I want to share that too, because I want people to see that we do have periods when we get

out of this. And I think both are the light and the dark and the success and the quote unquote failures are both equally important to, to share. I think that's so important because we do tend to want, um, you know, there's, is a guru complex or an idea out there. I think it stems from we want easy answers. Absolutely. And there aren't any, which is initially can be slightly disconcerting. But I think once that's internalized, it's sort of a relief to be like, well, there isn't any easy answer. And yeah, of course, I'm struggling with this thing or I haven't figured this out because it's hard. of course I'm struggling with this thing or I haven't figured this out because it's hard. And these people that say that they can solve it in three paragraphs or a book or 10 tips to do this, it's nonsense. It is, and it makes me angry because it sets people's expectations too high, and then they wind up feeling like a failure instead of realizing that this person is a charlatan.

Right. Well, and it's a great business model for the charlatan though, because then you still need whatever they're providing. And it's exploitation to the nth degree in it. And it's one of the reasons why I created the podcast, you know, because I felt like this stuff was being talked about in only two ways in the condescending, I got it all figured out. I'm an expert way. And the new agey, precious, you know, sacred, you know, the Sedona kind of cliches of we're all going to wear, you know, robes and, you know, we're going to look at the moon and, hey, if that works for you, God bless you. But that is never, that has never worked for me. And I felt like there was a middle ground that was not being

embraced. And my support groups were the template for that. Yeah, I think that's a lot of what we really, you know, we really try and do on this show, too, is find a middle ground where we can talk about spirituality and living a good life and a life that's worth living and the challenges and not be either a really flaky about it and not be sort of the opposite of that and just find that middle ground because it's hard to find. But when people do, it's so great. And that leads me into one of the things that we spend, I, uh, it's a paradox that comes up a lot and I'm just curious to get your perspective. And it's, it's this idea of, um, you could frame it in terms of positive thinking is as one is that,

you know, when is it, when is it positive thinking and when is it outright denial? That would be the first paradox I guess I'd ask you about. That's a great question. Um, you know, I find that the more I break things down into their most basic component, the more that truth is revealed. So for instance, you can say, you know, I want my podcast to get a million downloads. You know, yeah, that's possible, but, and that's a positive thing to head towards. But if I break it down into what am I going to do today to increase the listenership of the podcast? Oh, I'm going to email somebody that I'd like do today to increase the listenership of the podcast? Oh, I'm going to email somebody that I'd like to have on as a guest who might help bring more visibility to the podcast.

That's a positive way of thinking it as opposed to just dreaming that I hope that this Um, let's say another example, a relationship, let's say you're in a relationship where you're feeling, um, a certain amount of emptiness and lack of satisfaction, um, to say to your, you can, on the one hand, you could say to yourself, well, look at what this partner does bring to the relationship. You know, they, they do all of these positive things. And yes, then there are these negative things that I don't, that I don't really like, um, versus saying, I should just be happy that I, that I, that I have this person and not look at any of the negative stuff. You know, I think we have to realistically look at the positive and the negative all the time

and try not to dwell too much on the negative, but you can't ignore the negative. Because what if that person's toxic for you? Yeah, it's important to be a positive thinker, but you've also got to self-advocate for yourself. And that I think is one of the most important things for not ignoring the negative, to listen to your body. Um, because there's a difference between identifying something that's negative and wallowing in the negative. And again, we're going to that gray area that we talked about. That's so difficult. Does that make sense? It does. That's a, that's a, the, the, that area between genuine sorrow and, you know, feeling what you need to feel and self-pity is a,

uh, it's a, it's a slippery slope. It is self-pity is a drug. It's its own drug. And when you're stuck in it, you can't see it, just like a fish can't see that it's in water. But when you get out of it, when the fish gets out of that water for about five seconds, it can go, oh, wow, I didn't see that I was in that. And that's why it's so important to connect to other people because we need that perspective. If we isolate and we're stuck in our heads and all we ever think about is ourself, we don't realize we're feeding that bad wolf and our perspective is eroding. But when we're going to support groups, when we're talking to trusted friends, when we're praying and meditating and being of service, our perspective is widening every single day. And it's easier to see the bad wolf and easier to see the good wolf and to know, oh, this action I'm about to take right

now, I can see clearly which wolf this is going to lead me towards. And that's what it's all about. You know, it doesn't matter what we did in the past, where we're going in the future. It's about what principles am I bringing to this decision that I have right in front of me right now? Something even as simple as somebody just cut me off on the freeway, you know, or maybe a friend is treating me with what feels like disrespect. You know, contemplate it. Do I need to set a boundary? Do I need to let this go? I don you know, contemplate it. Do I, is this, do I need to set a boundary? Do I need to let this go? I, I don't know. Shit's complicated. Shit is complicated. The other paradox would be when are we, when should we accept ourselves the

way we are and when should we continue to try and change the way we are? I think, I think we need to do both at the same time. I don't think they're mutually exclusive. Um, I think have compassion for who we are at this exact minute and let the things that we've done in the past that we don't feel good about that we've done, let those inform the way we approach this stuff in the future. but it's really important to forgive ourselves no matter what we've done in the past, because to forgive ourselves for it doesn't mean that we've forgotten what we've done. You know, forgiving is not, is not forgetting. Um, and so in many ways, for instance, my, my personal, you know, things that I did in the past

was I was not a good, I was not a good husband. You know, I was emotionally withholding. I was very judgmental. Um, I was drunk a lot of the time. Uh, I was a nightmare on the roads, uh, how I didn't kill myself or somebody else's beyond me. And I forgive myself for having done that because I didn't have any tools to act any better. I was in a great amount of pain and going forward, I know that I need to keep healing. I need to keep, stay in my recovery because if I don't, I will go back to being that person. So I forgive myself, but I don't forget where I can go back to if I stop feeding the good wolf. Talking about difficult concepts, that one of forgiving ourselves and still taking responsibility.

And they're not mutually exclusive, but it is very... It's tough. It can be really tough, especially if we're self obsessive, you know, if we're ruminators, it can be really, really difficult. And another really important part is to apologize, uh, to the people we've hurt, our apology has been well thought out and, and comes from a place of genuineness. Um, but there will be some people that are so trapped in their self pity and their victimization that no, uh, apology, um, will, will be met positively from them. And we have to be okay with that. We have to be okay with that. You said something recently that I really liked, and I'm going to just paraphrase it because I won't get it right exactly.

But you say that one of the hooks that mental illness uses to imprison us is to extrapolate out how we're feeling now sort of into the future, like how I feel now, I will always feel. And, and you, you refer to that as a, as a, as a hook that it uses to keep us. Yeah. Share more about that. Um, you know, I don't know if it's just me or if other people feel that way, but, um, you know, I, I ruminate about the future. I should say I struggle to resist ruminating about the future because I'm a fearful person. And I think at our core, most of the stuff that drives us is fear-based. us in terms of evolution to survive. Um, it was good to be on guard. It was good to be vigilant. Uh, the society we live in today, I don't think we need as much vigilance as we do. And also I think back then they didn't, their vigilance was kind of kept to the day, to the moment, you know, the, the dangerous animal, um, was, was nearest. But today, because our antennae are still up genetically,

we then have to create things in our mind that are going to attack us. And I think because often it's not there in that day, we go to the future and we go, what's that beast you know, what's that beast? Where is it out there? And so we, we create it and it can take so many different forms. It can be that, you know, my business is going to flop. I'm going to get cancer. Uh, this person's going to stop loving me or I'm never going to find somebody that will love me. I'm on and on and on and on. Or I'm going to be depressed forever. I'm never going to get my vigor back.

That's the one that's really fucking with me lately because I have been in this kind of depressive trough. Not low, not low like it was before I ever got treated, but just kind of blah. before I ever got treated. Um, but just kind of blah, you know, where my, the things that used to bring me pleasure, don't bring me the pleasure they used to. And I'm afraid that I'm going to be like this forever. And yeah, I'll have enjoyment in life, but, um, things aren't going to really have that technicolor that I love when I'm feeling it. I hate the blah too. And I know what I've got, I know what it's like to have that technicolor that I love when I'm feeling it. I hate the blah too. And I know what I've got that I know what it's like to have that. Oh, it's all I'm always going to feel this way. Is it ever going to be different? And but one of the things that you talk about is that it's okay. You can be okay without

feeling joy without having life in technicolor. It's okay to have sad days or sad weeks. Yeah, because the thing that I have underneath almost all of it, and I think a lot of it is due to being in recovery and having experience and having ridden out these roller coasters, is a sense of peace. And peace with unresolved problems, peace with me not feeling the way that I want to feel. Um, I have an unshakable, um, nearly unshakable peace about where I am in the, in the world. Um, and that is comforting. So I can have the blahs and I can still also feel a certain amount of

comfort in it. You know, kind of like somebody walking, you know, being lost in the woods where, you know, yeah, I'm probably going to get out of here. It's a little bit of a pain in the ass. The sun's starting to set, but I'm not going to freak out. I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But it also depends on what day you catch me on, you know, there there's days when I pray in the morning and I just, I want to cry, you know, just this morning I was, when I was praying, I was saying,

you know, I'm just so, I'm so tired of not feeling vigor and, and not having passion. If this is the way I'm meant to be for the rest of my life, I guess I'm okay with it, but I'm scared. And it helps me to say that out loud. And the funny thing is I don't necessarily think I'm praying to a conscious entity, but I feel like I'm talking to the good wolf. Yeah, Setting intention. And it's hard sometimes to know if biologically it's your depression or it's situationally your depression.

Another reason why I started the podcast is to talk about that. I, I agree. I think that is such a, such a challenging, challenging thing. And I, I've just tended to sort of over the years start to just treat it like I would, I think of it as the emotional flu. I'm just like, yeah, I, okay. It's like, if I've got the flu, I'm going to feel crappy for a few days. I'm going to, I'm going to think that, you know, I'll be reevaluating the course of the entire course of my life. Should I be, you know, I'm like, when you're sick is not probably the best time to do that. Take care of yourself, right? I mean, and just get through it, get to the other side and see what things look like instead of suddenly making it about a lot more than it is. And I think that gets to what you were talking

about, about projecting it out into the future is, go ahead. I was gonna say, and the other thing is that layering of that, I shouldn't be feeling this way on top of that. You just layer all this extra stuff on top of. Yeah. Who beats themselves up when they have the physical flu? Exactly. Nobody, but people beat the shit out of themselves when they have the spiritual or the mental flu, which just adds to it. That's, you know, that's like when you have the physical flu saying, uh, I'm a piece of shit. Uh, I need to remedy this by going and running a marathon. It's not a good, uh, not a good strategy. And it seems like

being sick. Sometimes some of us give ourselves the, we are willing to take care of ourselves in that situation. Yeah. And you know, some people willing to take care of ourselves in that situation. Yeah. And you know, some people can will themselves out of situations, you know, they can just get up and get into action and they don't feel like going to the gym, but they make themselves go to the gym and God bless you. But, you know, I went to the gym one time and scanned my card and the woman went, I said, what? She said, you haven't been here in 700 days. And it felt like a week to you. You're like, I felt like I just was here. Yeah. Um, and I could beat myself up about that and say, I'm a lazy piece of shit. But I think for those of us that live with depression, it's not about being a lazy,

it's about feeling uninspired. It's about a lack of, of vigor. And, um, you know, getting back to what we were talking about earlier about, um, you know, thinking what the difference between thinking positively and being unrealistic about there being negatives in our lives. You know, I think it's important to identify the negative in our lives. Um, but then say, okay, what am I going to do about this? Is this something I, I have control over or not? And if I do have control over it, is this something I want to do something about, or is this something that I'm just going to let roll off my back? If we could jointly figure out how to answer that question for every person, that what can you control, what can't you control, And that wisdom to know the difference is one of the most precious substances on earth. It is, and it's hard to arrive at until you've done deep work on yourself because you don't know your fears and your resentments and your character defects.

You're filtering all of that through. So if you don't have the truth, how can you begin to move forward from there to know what you have control over? I used to think I had so much control, but then when I was forced with the reality that I can't even control how much liquor I drink, it was a lot easier to go, you know what? I don't have control over what people think of me. Oh, I don't have control over traffic. Oh, I don't have control over the weather. And then to be able to say, okay, I'm just going to enjoy my time here stuck in rush hour traffic. I'll get there when I get there. If I got to apologize to somebody, I'll apologize for not having left early. And that's what I do have control over is how I react to the things that I don't have control over. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden.

And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallyn, really. Yeah. No, really. Go to really,

no, really.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason bobblehead. It's called really no, really. And you can find it on the I heart radio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that you alluded to, and I, it's an interesting question for me, cause I think I've been through some similar things, and you talk about that in your 12-step recovery, you were really encouraged. that way too far, where, you know, my role in everything that's ever happened to me is, you know, and I'm looking at what my part is, and I'm not, and I'm not looking at anything outside. And I think that a healthy dose of that is important. But then the flip side of that, that as you've, as you start to explore more mental illness recovery or therapy type stuff is to begin to realize sort of what you feel and what things have happened to you. How do you balance those two things? I guess that's the topic of the podcast

so far, right? Balancing these things. Man, that's the hardest thing that I've come up against in my healing process because all my life I've doubted my integrity. I had a mom who was pretty gaslighting and she was manipulative and she had some great qualities too, but she was battling her own illness. And so I've grown up always just going, are you happy with me? Then I'm okay. Is the room happy? Then I'm okay. I'm sure it's why I got into comedy was a way to release tension for situations around me. But I began to lose touch with, um, is this my fault? Is this your fault? Or is this somewhere in between? Is this nobody's fault? And when you learn to ignore the cues that your body is giving you when you're a

kid, when you learn to stuff down your rage, when you, when you start letting somebody touch you inappropriately, um, and not saying anything because they're so fragile, you don't want to upset them. Um, you don't even know what your needs are. So you got to identify what you're feeling and what your needs are before you can even begin to say, is this, is this me or is this them? And even, you know, years into my support groups and talking about this, I still struggle with it. But the most important thing I think to have in my arsenal to make that decision is understanding what my fears and my resentments and my character defects and all of those other things are. Um, because I know I filter my reality

through them because I was so deluded when I was, when I was still getting loaded and a drug addict and an alcoholic, but it's hard, dude. It's the hardest, hardest thing. It's why I still go to therapy. It's why I go to support groups three times a week. It's why I talk to friends on the phone. Yeah, it is really challenging. How do you do it? Um, I think that I start with what my part is. I think it's just, it's a, it's a habit I've got at this point. And then I think I had to get to the point with certain things like a lot of, you know, common psychology says, right, a lot of what I've heard people say, you know, pretty much everything that matters happens to you until you're eight. And after that, you spend the rest of your life trying to clean it up. And I don't think I believe that, but there's a nugget of truth in that. And so you start getting back to, well, what happened to me when I was younger? And it seems that there's a real easy extreme to go towards being really angry at your parents or other people that were in your life at that point being angry, or really being self pitying about it. And then there's the flip side, which is we take all our own part and don't acknowledge that.

And I think what I've gotten to is a – it's nobody – what happened happened. It's, you know, maybe I need to work through being angry or different things, but I can't ignore the fact that those things shaped me and impacted me. And so it's not a blame thing. blame thing. It's not an excuse, but it is a key piece of information in trying to figure out who I am and what I'm doing and how I can do it better or differently. Um, you know, I like to say that hopefully we don't re-examine our childhoods to, um, punish, uh, our parents. We re-examine them so we can process the feelings we've been running from our entire lives so we can stop suffering. And that's important. But it's hard to know.

Am I stuck in this phase or is it just am I still in the process? And I think it goes back to then what am I feeling in my body? Am I doing my part? Am I talking about it? Am I being, you know, self-honest about my part in, in things? Um, and if you feel like you're working on it and you're really kind of reflecting on your part in things, um, then I think it's easier to go, okay, I'm still, I'm still angry. I'm still hurt. I'm still sad. Um, and then you can, you can have that compassion for yourself. I feel like I'm just now coming out of the sadness

and anger, um, about some of the stuff I confronted that happened to me as a, as a kid. Um, and, uh, I've been patient with myself through it. Yeah, it takes what it takes. It takes what it takes. Yep. So you have a nice way that you end your interviews. What do you call it? The fear and love off?

Yeah, yeah. We exchange a list of fears and loves that we have. And yeah, I love it. So can we do a quick one? And I'm going to surprise this on my co-host, Chris, who's usually silent and make him get involved. So we'll just do a three-way round robin. Now you're practice at this, Paul. So we're, we don't know what we're doing, but you want to, you want to get us started? Sure. Let's do fears first. My fear is that I talked too much, and at the end of this, people will go, Yay, see, you said some good stuff, but Jesus Christ, he's a windbag.

My fear is that, or I'm afraid that, I didn't do a good enough job of making the podcast funny this time. Wow. Mine won't be podcast related. What am I, what's my fear? I mean, there's like 20 of them every day. Um, I'm going to say that my fear is that, um, I won't have the enthusiasm for music in the future that I used to have for playing music specifically. My God, I have that one as well. I haven't touched my guitar in over a year. Yeah, I hate that. I have a fear that my darkness will eventually win and it will destroy everything in my life, including the podcast.

I'm going to keep all of mine related to the podcast. I'm afraid that, I guess I'll stay with the podcast theme too for now, that doing it doesn't make any difference. I fear that I'll forget to save the podcast after we... No, I'm kidding. That's no fun. Let's see. I fear that I'm not a good friend frequently. I fear that the horror of global warming is way, way closer than any of us think and way more horrifying

than any of us imagined. I fear that... And you should always say that to your kid right before they fall asleep. It's a little bit too abstract for my kids. I like to stick with the basics of the monster under the bed and the killer in the closet type thing. One of my friends used to, in his stand-up act, he said, right before, right as I tuck my kids in, I'll look to the closet and say, did you hear that? Oh, it's probably nothing. Did I have the last fear or are we done with the fears?

did I have the last fear or are we done with the fears I don't I think mine was with the global warming alright I'm afraid of my dogs dying yeah oh boy let's see

it's funny I have so many and it's hard on the fly to think of them that's because you're dead inside I fear yes that is kind of true that's the truest thing that's been said all day I fear that my drug use would ever come back

let's do it Fear that my drug use would ever come back. Want to go to loves? Let's do it. Yep. I love the feeling on a golf drive or a slap shot in hockey when the puck or the ball hangs on the blade for an extra half second and you know that you've hit it perfectly, and it almost feels like the puck or the ball weighs nothing, and it just shoots like a rocket. That is a good one. I love the first sip of cold water after I've been really thirsty.

of cold water after I've been really thirsty. I love when I'm at work and I talk to a customer and I'm actually in the mood to try to connect. This one's going to be a little gross, but I got to say it because it just popped into my head. I love taking shit that's so big, it actually makes me shiver a little bit. I'm not sure how to follow that one at all. Don't confuse

shivering with your anus actually breaking. I love a good unexpected laugh like that. I love Eric, my dear friend that I make this podcast with. That's awesome. I love hearing love being expressed between two people, especially men. I love kissing my dog under her chin.

And she just sits there and presses her chin further, harder and harder into my lips because she loves it. That is the fucking greatest. I'd be in huge trouble if I didn't say this, but I really do mean it. I love my girlfriend, Nicole. All right. Well, I think that's a good round of both those.

Who loves this podcast? Yeah, who does love this podcast? If you love this podcast, you should let us know. That would be wonderful. Well, I will express my love for this, at least being on it because you guys are great. And I've really enjoyed coming on here. You guys clearly care deeply about this subject. And I can always tell when somebody is doing a podcast for, with a greater good in mind or just doing it because they want to be in the public eye. And you guys clearly are doing this from a place of wanting, you know, to make the world a better place. And I appreciate that.

Well, thanks so much, Paul. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for taking the time to talk with us. Thanks, Paul. It was my pleasure. Take care. Bye. Thank you.