Her lifelong fear of commitment was masked behind an obsession with emotionally available men – Christina shares how she personally changed and healed her pain to be able to recognize and accept healthy love including self-love.

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More about our Guest

Follow Christina on Instagram @TinaComedy Find her videos on YouTube under the name Christina Joy Empowered.

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Episode Transcript:



Welcome to Episode 436 with my guest, Christina Howard. I'm Paul Gilmartin. This is the Mental Illness Happy Hour: a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads, from medically-diagnosed conditions, past traumas and sexual dysfunction, to everyday compulsive, negative thinking. This show's not meant to be a substitute for professional mental counseling. I'm not a therapist. It's not a doctor's office. It's more like a waiting room that doesn't suck. The web site and social media handles for this show are mentalpod. Also mentalpod.com and @mentalpod.

[00:00:35] The raffle for the Jordan Reid "Big Activity Book for Anxious People" workbook. As I mentioned, I have two of them signed by her. And it was, uh, opened to, uh, Patreon donors, donating at the $5 or above level. And, uh, the number that I chose was 454. And the two closest guesses were, uh, Patreon donors Jenna, uh, she doesn’t provide a last name and then, uh, she chose 456. And Angela Martarana (sp?). She chose 449. So, I'll be contacting you guys, getting an address for you and sending those workbooks, uh, out.

[00:01:21] Had a weird last couple of days. I ate a lot of carbs over the weekend. And, I don’t know if that's what depressed me. I was, it was waffles, it was pasta, it was biscuits. And, it's so funny how you feel so great when you eat carbs, and then the sugar crash. And then I had pasta again, was it Monday night? And I felt so shaky and sad. And … there was no one particular thing. But it was, I wouldn’t say it went as far as like suicidal depression. But it was, oh, I did … I was not happy to be awake and (laughs) living in the world. So, uh, I think that's where some recovery kicked in. And I, and I just went to bed early. I went and, and laid down. And that’s where it's nice, too, to have, to have Gracie, u, who just cuddled in bed and, uh, I must have kissed her for two hours. Gracie's my parole officer, and we have a unique relationship. (Laughs). She was sentenced to, uh, 200 hours of community service. (Laughs) And I don’t know how that—It was a weird court case. Don’t ask me to go into details. But, uh, I flew up to Sacramento, uh, to do a MC, uh, mental health rally on the capitol steps. And, I, I, I love doing the event, but I hate traveling. There's just something about being in hotel rooms. I don’t know if it reminds me of the loneliness of being on the road for 25 years, being a stand-up. But, I, it's, I can't get any work done when, when I'm in hotels. And, all, all I wanna do is sleep or get on a plane and, and get home. And … one of the things that I have learned in all my years of therapy and support groups and etcetera, etcetera is to try to get out of the future tripping. To try to get out of stressing out about, you know, what are the next four hours hold. Am I gonna fail? Am I gonna be overwhelmed? Is it gonna rain? Will I find parking? Will I miss my flight? And to just try to be present. Just try to be in the moment and … look around and see if … I can find anything beautiful or peaceful or … Just, just be present. And so, there was a break in the event, uh, a, a lunch break. And it was starting to, to turn sunny out. And it was, the weather was beautiful. It was like in the 70s, and I'm … The event was, uh, at the, uh, the capitol. And there's this big park. And so, I decided well, I need some exercise, cuz I also hadn’t exercised in, uh, probably four days. It was like the perfect storm of shit you're not supposed to do when (laughs) you, you battle depression and anxiety. And I was … I thought, "I'm just gonna take a walk and just be present." Just feel the sun on my face. And I almost immediately started feeling. And I just started observing the people. And, I dunno, there's just something … about it. And it's interesting, too. When … when I'm out and about and I'm just noticing people and trees and the sun and the architecture of a city, I, it's so easy to be present once I give myself over to that. I, I enjoy people watching. A guy passed me with, uh, with a dog. And he was that … I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but there is a particular guy and dog combination where the guy has the big beard—not the hipster big beard, but the "leave me alone; I'm on the fringes of society" big beard. And, and his dog always looks like there's, there's a story to that, to that, there's a story to that dog and that guy. And I don’t know what the guy's name is, but it just seems like it should be Otis, and his dog should also be named Otis. And I just found myself wondering, what, what's his life like? Is he … is he who I imagine him to be? Maybe he's super nice. Probably is. And there I am assigning some drifter quality to him and his dog. Anyway. I got home. Immediately started feeling better. And, and the other thing that I think might have (laughs), the other two things I might have contributed to my depression before I left was I watched the HBO show, Chernobyl. Holy fuck! (Laughs) Talk about dark. It's—I don't know who pitched that show, but they, they prob—The pitch was probably, "What IF … we could have the feel of the Holocaust, but instead of Nazis, it's caused by people misusing science?" It, it, it's REALLY well done, but (laughs) not upbeat. Holy fuck! And the other thing—and I think this might have been … a really big contributor was—I have a friend, Charlie, and he had a really, really tough childhood. And … he … relapsed on crack. And … there's a lot more that’s going on to his story, but he … he is in the process of going to prison on something unrelated. And, it's, it's obviously been stressing him out. His relationship fell apart, and that was not a very healthy relationship. And, he wound up not having a place to live and relapsed on crack. And I had been holding his guitar equipment because he was gonna be in jail for a while—he's still fighting the case. But he showed up on my doorstep, and I had the feeling this was gonna happen, uh, that he would come for his equipment so he would sell it. And … he … is such a fit guy. Just, I, I've always been envious of how fit he is, how healthy he looks. And in the course of a week, he must have lost 20 pounds … and looked exhausted. And has such shame in his eyes. And the only thing I knew how to say was, "Charlie, I love you, man. I love you. You know that I can't help you out with money. You know that … I can't have you here while you're actively … using. But just know that none of this changes how I feel about you. I love you." And, his eyes welled up with tears, and, and he said, "I just wish that I could love myself." And it was … ugh! You talk about a feeling of powerlessness. God, there're some days that I just … hate addiction so much. So, so much. So I'm, I'm rooting for him. I'm rooting for him. He's been through, he's been through worse. And he, deep down, is such a SWEET, sweet guy.

[00:10:07] On a lighter note—and what notes wouldn't be lighter than that—uh, Ron, uh, my dog Gracie's running partner—the, the stray that she was found with—uh, got a home. I forgot to mention it, uh, last week's episode. But he has found a loving home about a … about an hour from here. And I've been in touch—He's been renamed Giuseppe. And, uh, his new owner would like to get him and Gracie together to play. So I'm SUPER excited to see them back together. And, I'm still just so loving having, having Gracie. The other night, I've, I was sleeping, and I'm sleeping on my side. So, I'm sleeping on my left arm, and then I like to sleep with a ton of pillows. And my right arms is kind of outstretched … laying on a pillow. And Gracie came into bed and kind of worked her way under my right arm and squeezed her nose in between my chest and my left arm and, and slept like that. And it was, oh! It's the best feeling in the world. It's just … it's so good. I'm so grateful for her.

[00:11:36] I wanna read a couple surveys before we get to the interview with, uh, Christina. And this is not the Christina, uh … my girlfriend, Christina; this is a different Christina. This is a happy moment filled out by a woman who calls herself "My Skin Doesn’t Fit." And, she writes, "After close to a year and a half of probably the most debilitating bout of depression, which ensued a lifestyle of compulsive eating and complete lack of exercise, I finally on a whim went to a yoga class tonight! No promises or commitments, but there's a flicker of self-love and hope that maybe at some point I can go back to normal. Hey, I didn't spend the whole evening in bed. I moved my body a bit, and it wasn’t even so scary." I love that, because, you know, as I say often, so much of recovery is just taking that first baby step, and then we get a little (dogs barking in background) ... and you hear Gracie outside—we get, um, we get some, some momentum.

[00:12:39] This is an awfulsome moment filled out by, uh, a woman who calls herself "One Of Many." And, she's a teenager. She's 18 or 19. And her awfulsome moment, she writes, "I've been listening to the podcast a lot in Kenya. One evening, as I'm waiting for water to boil, my friend's mom asks me if I'm listening to the radio. Painfully impaired by the limited language at my disposal, I tell her it's a place where people talk about 'diseases of the brain.' She's shocked that there are such phenomenons, to which I start trying to explain the concept of mental and emotional health. She lets me talk for a while, until I make the point that, despite being privileged, many people in the West have mental issues due to stress, isolation, etcetera. At this, her eyes light up and she gives a serious, energetic nod. 'So that's why—and I've seen this on TV—white people spend the whole day running around killing one another.'" (Laughs) You can't make it up.

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[00:14:55] This podcast is also sponsored by our longtime, betterhelp.com online counseling. If you’ve never tried it, I'm a huge fan. Love, love, love not having to leave my house. I love the help and the guidance that I get my, uh, from my, uh, counselor; She's, she's just awesome. So, uh, if you're interested in trying out, go to betterhelp.com/mental. Make sure you include the "/mental" so they know you're come from this podcast. Fill out a questionnaire, and they'll match you up with a betterhelp.com counselor, if they one that they feel is a good fit for you. Then you can experience a free week of counseling to see if online counseling in right for you. And you need to be over 18.

[00:15:38] All right. And then, this is a happy moment, uh, filled out by our, uh, our friend who filled out the previous survey, uh, the, the person, uh, staying in Kenya. And for this, she calls herself "It's My Fault My Worst Fears Are True." And, her happy moment, she writes, "Sitting on a log under a pink sky with my friend in the home of one of her church's congregants in southern Kenya. I'm asked to say prayer for the tea we've been prepared. My Kenyan friend knows I HATE being given this task, but there's no way for me to get out of this one, so I awkwardly stutter a few unholy lines in my hesitant Swahili and apologize as we start sipping our tea, explaining that I was a bit stressed. My friend turns to me, seriously, looks deep into my eyes and softly asks, 'Stressed about what?' I give her a smile, still embarrassed and unsure which part of my prayer anxiety she doesn’t understand. 'Failing.' 'Failing what,' she asks next. And now, I'm almost laughing, 'The prayer.' It's at this that I, too, notice the tears in my eyes. Tears that can't have much to do with the messed-up prayer. It's my friend's gaze, as if it had the power to pierce through my positive, high-functioning extroversion and into my inner emptiness. Her eyes hold mine, and the feeling of being seen is as touching as it is terrifying. That evening, she comes into the room as I'm laying motionless on our bed, losing myself in the spirals of freezing, hopeless panic. She wants to know what's up, and I summarize my state of mind by telling her that I don’t understand myself. She looks up from her phone with a compassionate frown and asks me if I know what it says in the book of Genesis. 'God created you in his own image. What is there not to understand about yourself?' A part of me is principally not willing to be instructed or consoled by Bible references. Bu the longer I think about her words, the more I'm able to see the core of what they mean. That I a worthy and deserving of love due to nothing but my mere existence. I reach for her hand, and she squeezes it without letting go, making sure I, too, know I'm not alone. Despite every difficulty to self-express and gain access to religious argumentation, I find comfort in her simple, striking reactions to the emotional distress she senses in me. Today, we're hardly speaking in the same language, but our souls are in touch and at least, for a moment, I feel like the universe might have unconditional love for us after all." That's so beautiful. And that reminds me of … a saying that heard in recovery, and I don’t know who to attribute it to. But, the, the saying is that religious is for people who are afraid of going to hell, and spirituality is for people who've been there.

Intro

[00:19:49] Paul: I'm here with Christina Howard, who I heard speak at a support group meeting a couple of weeks ago, And you talked about … love and, you know, "love addiction." And, um, and then it evolving into your … idea of what healthy love looks like. And I just thought, "Man … I want the listeners to … to hear this." So, share your story, if you would. And I'll interject if I have any questions. But if you would, just maybe kind of start with your childhood and, um, just, just kind of move forward.

Christina: Yes. Great! Hi! (Both laugh) LOVE and love addiction, uh, it's—I kept, I keep thinking of the Robert Palmer song …

Paul: "I'm Addicted to Love—"

Christina: "Might as well fact it, you're addicted to love." It's something that, you know, we—I feel—I was a child of the 80s, first of all. So, I was born in 1980. And, I remember the John Hughes movies. I remember the, um, you know, the teenager movies. So, I was always—

Paul: Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club—

Christina: Pretty in Pink, Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles. OH, that was the one! Sixteen Candles was the one because she pines for the guy for the entire movie. And he's completely out of her league, and she feels completely, um, invisible to him. And then, at the end, she gets him. And that was what I thought life was about. It was about pining and suffering and, you know, finding the couple of fun sidekicks who were, you know, privy to your pain. And then, eventually, you would get it. (Laughs) And I didn’t know … that that's actually not what happened (laughs) a lot of the time. I grew up in a VERY volatile household. That was a huge, uh, awakening for me, was to realize that that was volatile, that that was—

Paul: Did you know if was volatile at the time?

Christina: No, I didn’t know enough to know that, you know—I mean, obviously it wasn’t like on television. It wasn’t a sitcom family. But, um, I, you know what I do remember? I do remember when Roseanne came out. That was the first time I thought, "Oh, wow! This is, that's my fam—" You know, I didn’t—It's weird. I didn’t live in the Midwest. It wasn't like Chicago. I actually grew up in a very cosmopolitan environment. My parents were … my father was a government official. He was working in DC. He was working in San Francisco back and forth. We had money. But the, the quality of the conversations was always very base. Does that make sense?

Paul: It, it wasn’t about, uh, emotion?

Christina: No, it was just very (dog barks in background)—Oh, puppy!

Paul: Gracie.

Christina: They were very, my parents were very (dog barks in background), um … vulgar, in terms of—

Paul: Gi-, give, give me some snapshots—

Christina: —their language. Like, for example, uh, they would swear a lot. There was a lot of swea-, we weren’t a religious house. We, I did not grow up with religious. I did not grow up with, you know, any, um, type of community. We were very isolated. And my mom is Vietnamese, and English is her third language. And she's like super smart. She spoke French before she spoke English. She comes from a long line of teachers, and she's very high-brow Vietnamese. And so, it's almost like the two of them got together. And they didn’t meet (laughs)—It's funny. They didn’t meet like because of the war. They didn’t meet because my mom was a hooker and my dad was a GI, right. My dad was in Vietnam for a long time working. And my mom was a, um … a college student in, in the United States. And she ended up coming back to Vietnam to make money and do whatever she did in the 60s. And they met, and they had this very volatile relationship.

Paul: And was it during war time that they met?

Christina: It was during wartime, yeah, but my dad was much older. He was born in, her was born in 1933. So by the time the Vietnam War broke out, he had already been to war in Korea and come back and lived to tell about it. And so, what he was doing in Vietnam was higher up. And what my mom was doing in Vietnam was smuggling gold. She was actually going—She was a flight attendant for Air Vietnam. And she was flying to like Cambodia and Laos and Thailand and buying gold up on the black market, bringing it back into Vietnam and selling it.

Paul: For her, her own gain, or to—

Christina: Yeah, to make money.

Paul: Okay.

Christina: You could do that kind of stuff in Vietnam in the 60s, you know. I mean, especially when you're a flight attendant, you pretty much do a lot of—

Paul: And who would she be selling gold to?

Christina: I'm not sure who she would sell it to. I think it's kind of like drug dealing. Like you would just know who to bring it to. You would, you would be the carrier, you know. My dad said she would bing, bring back big bank rolls. And she was making way more money than he was, and he was working for the US government, you know what I mean? (Both laugh) But she was, she was good with money. And she was really smart. And, uh, but she was INSANE. Her love addiction, I think, what I recognized to be her love addiction, was, um, manifested as, uh … the narcissistic kind of love. You know she, she wo-, she should love, shoe would love bomb. I think, are people familiar with love bombing?

Paul: Talk about it.

Christina: I think love bombing is, you meet someone and immediately you, you bond. And, and there's a lot of, uh … connection. There's a lot of immediate, intense feelings and emotions. And then you get … you get enmeshed with a person.

Paul: And, and there's a high—

Christina: There's a high! There's a sense of "Oh my gosh, I know you! I've known you forever. We're perfect for each other." You just—

Paul: There's kind of no boundaries.

Christina: No boundaries—

Paul: No independence—

Christina: She and my dad were—Yeah, yeah, yeah! And she and my dad were that. You know, she really, she just kind of claws into you. And my father was EXTREMELY avoidant. Very emotionally unavailable, but—

Paul: Which was catnip to her, I'm sure.

Christina: Exactly. Very charming. He's very charming, good looking. You know, he's passed now, but looking at pictures of him, you know, he was tall and very strong and smoked cigarettes and, you know, was, had that kind of 1960s—

Paul: Out of a John le Carré novel—

Christina: Sam Spade, you know. (Laughs) So, yeah. I think the two of them … I think the two of them had a very trauma-bonding type relationship, where she was from a messed up background, and he was from a messed up background. And they met in a war-torn country in the midst of, you know, a lot of high emotions and high anxiety. And people like that thrive in chaos. And they raised me to thrive in chaos, because when they got mad at each other, it was epic. It was screaming, cussing, you know, swearing, accusations, I just—hearing stuff about their marriage that I didn’t really need to hear about.

Paul: No boundaries between the kids and—

Christina: None! Didn’t even notice the kid was there. Like, there was no kid in the room. They were not talking like there was a kid in the room. Nowadays, I have friends that are parents, and they're so conscious about what their kids were hearing. And the only thing—

Paul: Plus, the kids have got their nose in the phones, so (laughs), they're, they got the parent tuned out anyway. (Laughs)

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, they … I just think it's ironic that the only thing my mother was very conscious of me being shielded from was sex. Like, "Do not watch anything graphic." No sexually explicit material. But violence—you can have all the violence. I could watch all of the violent movies with my dad: war movies, you know, um, Dirty Harry, um—

Paul: And you're how old at this—

Christina: Since I was like six, seven, eight, nine.

Paul: Oh my god!

Christina: Like I was watching violence on television—I remember The Godfather, watching the last scene of The Godfather, where, you know, he murders all the heads of the families. And, you know, there was not, if there was a sex scene on television, it was like, "Close your eyes! Go into the other room!"

Paul: Isn't that amazing—

Christina: Yeah!

Paul: —that, that, that we … It's okay to see people destroy each other. But don’t show them bring each other pleasure.

Christina: Right. Right. So, that, yeah, there was a lot of shame around that. And, and, yet violence was something that I was very, um, comfortable around. So I didn’t know that it inappropriate. I just knew that if you push people too far, they will snap. And that was a lot of my childhood, was being brought up in a volatile house and that, you know, the fighting would be epic. But at the end of the session, the screaming session, everyone would go to their corner. It would be silent for maybe weeks on end—

Paul: Ooh!

Christina: Maybe they wouldn’t speak to each other. Maybe I wouldn’t be spoken to by my mother, because I was always inadvertently involved in her drama. Maybe it was my dad wasn’t hard enough on me, for something that I had done. Maybe my dad was babying me too much and not raising me to be, you know—Cuz it, Americans, to a Vietnamese culture, Americans … according to my mother, were just spoiled rotten. Like Americans were entitled. Americans were, uh, like a lot of what you hear about white entitlement and white oppression. It wasn’t about white people in my family; it was just about Western culture as a whole. It wasn’t a racial thing; it was a cultural thing. Americans had everything. And Vietnam, obviously, was completely ripped apart at the seams. And so, for her to raise a Vietnamese child—and I'm only half, but … you know, I did know what that meant. Am I, am I Vietnamese? Am I, am I Caucasian? Am I America-, like what, who am I? But I wanted to be what she wanted me to be, which was respectful and aware and obedient. You know, a good kid.

Paul: And be able to throw a good punch. (Laughs)

Christina: Well, yeah. Definitely be able to stand up for myself, because she taught me that the world was going to basically take everything from me, if I wasn’t careful. Constantly look over my shoulder, constantly be aware. And, um, yeah, everyone's out to get you except Mommy and Daddy. Mommy and Daddy will be the only ones to protect you.

Paul: Who, ironically, are some of the most unsafe people in your life at that, at that point.

Christina: Very unsafe. Very, very, very unsafe. And so, I, as an only child, I kept that in, and I didn’t talk about it to teachers. I didn’t, I didn’t even speak about some of the violence that I had witnessed in my house until I—

Paul: Physical violence.

Christina: Physical violence, yeah. Fighting, um, weapons. I mean, it sounds like a movie. But it was only, it wasn’t all the time. You know, it was enough that I could, that I felt it. But, we had … (laughs) I would say 85 percent of the time, we did normal family things. We went on vacations, we watched movies, we went out to dinner, we wrapped presents. But it, it's just living with that. You never knew when the shoe was gonna drop. You never knew when the raging was gonna happen and what was gonna trigger it. So, I learned to be incredibly hypervigilant. It was basically like growing up in an alcoholic family. From what I understand about, um, people who grew up in alcoholism, it w-, it's ex-, it's the exact same thing, but take out the alcohol.

Paul: Right.

Christina: So, yeah, that was my childhood.

Paul: Wow.

Christina: Yeah.

Paul: It, the, the mind fuck, too, of the environment where there were long periods of calm, uh, it's so easy to use that to minimize what, what we experienced in—And, if you think about it, in a lot of ways, it's like saying, uh, why am I making a big deal about getting stabbed? Three hundred and sixty-four days a year, I didn't get stabbed. So, why, why am I making such a big deal?

Christina: Well, and when you're steeped in that culture and you're steeped in that as, this is just the way it is and every now and then, Mommy gets mad. And, you know, if, if you didn’t make Mommy so mad, Mommy wouldn’t have to react that way. So there was always this onus that I was taking upon myself as a child. Like, man I wish I hadn’t—

Paul: You're responsible for other people—

Christina: —messed up—

Paul: —feelings and happiness.

Christina: One hundred percent! Not only their feelings and their unhappiness, but I am responsible for the chaos because if all I—All I had to do was just do what I was told.

Paul: To be perfect. (Laughs)

Christina: Right. Right. So I didn't have—

Paul: How could that set you up for, for difficulties—

Christina: —what—Right?! That's why I relate to people that grew up in really restrictive religious households, because I didn’t—And that's the thing: I didn’t have religion. I didn’t have the god thing. It was just Mommy and Daddy were god. You know, do what we say to do, because we are the rule.

Paul: Yes. And there was also no healthy example of reconciliation.

Christina: Right.

Paul: With you, it was the, it was the silent treat. Because, couples, parents are going to disagree. They're gonna make mistakes in front of kids. But, for me, the really, really, important thing is how they come back together, and that there they can model for kids, that people make mistakes. But it's how they clean them up and how they take ownership of them that matters.

Christina: Yeah! Yeah, there was none of that. There was, uh, usually long periods of silence. Long periods of tension. And then, eventually, Mommy and Daddy would be talking again. And, it would, it, cuz they are, they were very close. They ha-, they were married for fifty years. And, they had this lovely friendship. You know, I mean, I know, when I talk about the bad, it paints a very, very DRASTIC kind of epic picture. But that's not the whole story. You know, the whole story—and that's what, I think, messes with love addicts so badly when we've been raised in that, is that it's NOT the whole story.

Paul: It's not.

Christina: It's, it's only the bad stuff. And the good stuff is SO GOOD. And they were really good friends. I mean—

Paul: It's intense, it's exciting.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and they trusted each other. And they did have each other's backs. You know, what the really needed was some fricking therapy.

Paul: Yeah, some tools to communicate—

Christina: Some tools. Some kind of moral compassing that held them accountable, not just to the morals that they believed were appropriate, but the morals that they might not be comfortable adhering to. That's the thing with moral compassing and morality. You know, it's not always convenient to, to consider other people in the room. You know, you might wanna act out on your feelings, and you might be feeling passion, and you might be feeling this needs to be said right now. It's a very selfish, you know, it's like I don’t like to do that until I've checked in with several people. Do I need to say this? Do I, do, do I personally say, say this myself, and does this need to be said at this time?

Paul: Yeah. I have a friend who says, um—speaking about himself—he said, "My reactions are always instantaneous, excessive, and inappropriate." (Laughs)

Christina: Yeah. That's pretty much, you know—And I, you know, I don’t know if that's because of my background or if it's because I am an alcoholic. You know.

Paul: Oh, you're sober, too?

Christina: I'm sober.

Paul: Yeah. How long you been sober?

Christina: You know, it's funny. I've been sober for 35 days after a slip.

Paul: Oh, yeah?

Christina: Oh, yeah. I had three years.

Paul: And, and how you feeling?

Christina: Amazing!

Paul: Yeah?

Christina: We just talked about this today in, in, in, uh, in one of my recovery groups that, you know, sometimes, it takes a slip to really understand what this disease is, so that you can—

Paul: The powerlessness of it.

Christina: Oh my gosh! It's like, I didn’t know that my resentments were so deadly, because—

Paul: Oh, they'll kill you.

Christina: Yeah, and it's funny. It ties into what we’re talking about, because—And, I dunno, I think people may, might be able to relate to this that have grown up in traumatic childhoods. You disassociate way before you get drugs or alcohol.

Paul: Oh yeah! (Chuckles) Yeah, it's so true—

Christina: You don’t need pot or alcohol when you're seven.

Paul: Oh, yeah. You, you are locked into fantasy and just going someplace else. Your body can't leave, but your mind can.

Christina: You just go to your room and close the door. And there's no lock on the door, but you know what? For now, I’ll just close the door, and I have my books and I have my television shows. And I would just wait it out, man. I would just wait it out. And eventually, someone would come knocking on my door and telling me it was dinnertime. And nobody would address whatever had happened. It would just be like, all right, well let's—And then I would just shove food in my mouth. So dinner was like the best time. I loved dinner because nobody would talk, we would watch television, and I would just shovel food in mouth. And that's how I would cope with whatever had happened or transpired. And even if it was a nice, normal day, it was still a nice time for me to just be comforted with something.

Paul: So food was a soother early on.

Christina: Food was the first soother.

Paul: And what, what became the other soothers—

Christina: Oh gosh!

Paul: —and how did that happen?

Christina: Let's see! (Laughs) The first soother was food. The next, the, the—In high school, the soother became, um, acceptance and validation from people. You know, getting—I remember as early as sixth grade, because we moved to Sacramento. We moved from San Diego to Sacramento and I was in sixth grade. And, it was different, the kids in Sacramento—I moved to a very urban part of, you know very, South Sacramento, was a very urban demographic. And, it was because we didn’t have the money anymore to sustain the lifestyle that I had been bred in. I had been like raised and bred in upper-middle class, East Coast, suburb of DC. Then we moved to, um, San Francisco, and that's when my dad was working a lot. San Francisco: very upper crust, very white bread. Right around The Presidio, like that was, you know, the flat that we were renting. And then back to DC and then Ha-, Hawaii. We moved to Hawaii when my, uh, my dad retired. And I lived in Honolulu. So I was like, my background was very cosmopolitan, very well-traveled. And then, it like, you know, it all hit the fan. I dunno, people just bottom out. My parents financially bottomed out, and we couldn’t, she couldn’t get a job, my mom. And so, we ended up moving up to Sacramento because there was opportunities up in Sacramento for education. She could get a job there more easily. But we didn’t know, my mom didn’t know where the next paycheck was gonna come. My dad was getting a pretty nice, um, retirement from the government. He'd been in for decades. But, we were just sort of like … destitute in, in, in their … you know, interpretation. Cuz, you know, it's like everybody, it's all subjective. You know, one, one, I had a woman that was talking to me on the phone freaking out because her husband's only making $1350 a week right now. And, you know, like as a server, as, as a restaurant—which is what I still do—that's like a lot of money. But you don't know until you're in that person's shoes. Like she's got a house to worry about. She's got kids, she's got bills, she's got—You know, it's all relative so it’s really hard to do the compare and despair thing, because you just don’t know what that person's dealing with. So for my mom not knowing like how she was gonna pay for groceries and knowing she had savings and bonds, but like there's no income coming in. So, we moved to Sacramento so she could try to get some income.

Paul: Was your, was your dad blowing money on, on things?

Christina: No! Not at all—

Paul: It just wasn’t a big pension?

Christina: It just was only enough to pay the mortgage on the house. That's always what I was told.

Paul: Yeah. For, for the career that he had, that, that … I dunno. That, I, that, that sounds puzzling, uh, to me. Was, he wasn’t like a gambler or—

Christina: They weren’t gamblers, no. I mean, they would go to Vegas every now and then, and they would spend large sums of money. But no, it wasn't, I'm not sure what exactly—I think just because of the recession, you know, in the late 80s, and, um, I think … he was just not willing to work after he retired.

Paul: I gotcha.

Christina: And my mom was used to coming from, he worked and worked a lot and she didn’t have to have a job. And now they're, they're just juggling. They're basically doing what me and my husband do now, which is double-income. We figure it out. We kind of go month-to-month. We have some small savings, but not a lot. Something major happens, we're kind of screwed. You know, it's like that kind of thing.

Paul: Okay. So, so you're, uh, going to high school or, or grade school in Sacramento—

Christina: At that point, it, at that point it was sixth grade. So I went from sixth grade to high school in Sacramento.

Paul: And validation became—

Christina: Very, very different environment. Yeah, the kids were much, much more hard, in terms of, you know, wha-, like what my idea of what cool was. It was just a more urban lifestyle. So, basically, you were looked up, people were, it wasn’t like about jocks and cheerleaders. It was about like who could fight (laughs) if you, if you got jumped, could you fight. Cuz kids got jumped a lot. And, um—

Paul: Jumped into gangs or just jumped for their—

Christina: Just jumped on the playground. Just jumped—

Paul: I got you.

Christina: —like that was something that would happen. Like so and so got jumped. Cuz kids were violent. There was a lot of, you know, there was a lot of single-family homes. There was a lot of, um, drug use. There was a lot of, you know, it was ghetto. We lived, we, we—South Sacramento's ghetto.

Paul: And did you get jumped.

Christina: I've never gotten jumped, no, cuz I was very nerdy-looking, to the point where I—I mean, not, not like a bully type. I was just not in that scene. I had to learn how to do that. So the older I got as I came up in seventh, eighth, you know, ninth, ten grade, I started learning how to wear that. You know, I learned how to smoke pot. I learned how to, you know, roll joints and drink malt liquor and smoke Reds, Marlboro Reds. And it was very much putting that on, cuz I didn’t come from that. I was very, very sheltered and very, you know, babied. And, and now I'm like trying to learn how to smoke cigarettes and drink Olde English out of a paper bag because that’s what you did in South Sac in the ghetto in the 90s, you know. (Laughs) And you listened to gangster rap. And you cussed, and you cussed out your teachers. And you skipped school. And you kind of like put the middle finger up to authority.

Paul: Are there any, uh … snapshots you remember of you getting that validation by being somebody who you wer-, weren’t authentically inside—

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. I remember the rumor going around in ninth grade, Christina Howard smoked pot. Christina Howard smoking weed now. And it was like, what?! Christina Howard? She's like a goodie two-shoes. She's, you know, in the drama club. She's the—And I just didn’t want that. I didn’t, I didn’t get validation from that. People didn’t validate you for doing esteemable acts, where I came from. They value—

Paul: For, for doing theater?

Christina: Yeah, for doing anything good. For, you know, getting on the honor roll. Or, I mean, I was on the student council in seventh and eighth grade. I was the vice president; I would plan all the honor roll lunches. I would plan the dances. I was, you know, always working the door at the dance, and nobody gave a shit. Like (laughs) … I wanted to be known for, you know, beating the crap out of somebody or for, um—I did, I did get left at Great America in, in eighth grade for the eighth-grade trip because my watch stopped. And so, me and my best friend, Cheryl, and this other girl, we were in Great America, which is theme park for people that don’t know. It's like, you know, Six Flags. And, um, apparently, we just stayed at the park way after all of the eighth-grade students were supposed to meet. And the buses had to leave without us. They had like, the whole, they had security called, they called our parents, they were FREAKING out. And they thought that we were just screwing around. And really, my watch had just stopped. And that was probably the most popular I got in eighth grade—

Paul: (Laughs)

Christina: —was that we were to-, we were almost suspended. We were almost prevented from graduating, like walking, you know for eighth grade. It was amazing! I got so much attention.

Paul: (Laughs) So, when does, uh, love enter the picture? When do boys, uh, enter the picture?

Christina: As early as I can remember. Five years old, crushes, you know. Having these deep, emotional attachments to, um, what I saw as characters in movies. I didn’t have deep personal relationship with people. I didn’t have close friends. I didn’t have a lot of family. So everything I interpreted through a filter of, uh, literary relationships, you know, like "The Boy." Like, like Sixteen Candles—

Paul: So you would assign magical qualities—

Christina: Yeah.

Paul: —to who you imagined he was. And then, pine—

Christina: Yeah.

Paul: —for him in a fantasized way.

Christina: Yeah. It would start with something small, like maybe I would just like his shirt or maybe he would crack a joke or maybe I would like the way he looked in a certain article of clothing, like a jacket of something. And then I would fixate on it. And I would start to fantasize about that boy liking me back. And it would become like a little mini obsession. You know, it would be exciting for me to go to class, if he was there. It would be exciting for me to pass him in the halls. I would reroute the way that I would walk through the class, through the, through the school campus to see if I could pass him and catch his eye, you know. And—

Paul: The biggest high was getting seated in home room near somebody that you had a crush on—

Christina: Yeah!

Paul: That, to me, was the gold mine.

Christina: Oh, yeah! Cuz your classes would change every year. And so, it would be like, oh, are they gonna be in my, you know, are they gonna be in any of my classes? I could remember every single crush. Every single crush that I had through school. And, um, it would rotate, too. You know, I would fixate on one, and then that one would not go anywhere. Maybe they would get a girlfriend. And then I would add another one in the rotation.

Paul: In, in, in your imagination, what would play out? What, what was the …

Christina: The fantasy?

Paul: The fantasy.

Christina: It never went farther. It never went far enough for me to even know what to do.

Paul: Just you being in their presence and looking into each other's eyes or spending time or—

Christina: Yeah!

Paul: —was it, was it that you would look cooler in other people's eyes? Or that that person would see you? Or that you could tell them your problems? What, what …

Christina: You know what it was?

Paul: From what you can remember.

Christina: It was that someone would break through the wall that I had put up that nobody knew was even there. Everybody had an impression of who I was. You know, Christina Howard was, uh, in the band. Christina Howard did all the plays. Christina Howard was really smart, did really good in school, and she was little bananas. Like Christina Howard's bananas. That was kind of what was, followed me from sixth, seventh, eighth grade into high school. I was manic, you know. I was, I was wild, but I was a good student, so I could pull it all together. And nobody knew that inside, I was, I was … terribly suicidal. Very, very, very depressed. My highs were high when I was up and upbeat. But my lows were dark. You know, I would go home and I would journal, and I really wanna die. And, I wanted someone to see me. I wanted someone to see past the persona that I brought out at school and with my family. I hated my family. I mean, I felt so bored at family functions. I never felt Vietnamese enough. I never felt like my mom liked me or was approving of me, even though she would brag about all of my accomplishments to people. It was like I was just a shell of a person, and I didn’t think that anybody really saw ME for who I was. So in the books that I would read and the fantasy novels with like vampires, you know, The Vampire Diaries, it was all about these people with secrets. And then that one, that one secret, you know, um, that hero that had a secret, and the secret was that he was a vampire, would (laughs) like be discovered by the heroine of the book. And the reason why he would fall in love with her was because she could see past the mystery. She could see into his soul and she would know that he was really a good person, even though he was a blood-sucking monster. And she would fall in love with that, and he would fall in love with her. And he would like, treat her so gently in his, you know, clawed hands, he would hold her like (laughs), like a baby bird. (Both laugh) I wanted to be that baby bird that was being held by the monster—

Paul: You wanted to be nurtured.

Christina: Absolutely.

Paul: And have a heavier pain validated.

Christina: And be taken away! I wanted to be taken out of the situation. You know, I didn’t want to stay in—I hated Sacramento. I hated living in this urban ghetto. I wanted to be back where all the fancy people were. Not, you know, shopping at Food For Less and, you know, like not being able to afford going to the camping trip. And I just didn’t want that anymore. I wanted my old life back, or the fantasy of what I thought the old life ba-, was.

Paul: Right.

Christina: And, um, that was really the root of my love addiction. That fantasy.

Paul: And so, then, how did it … take—This is how it took root. And then how did it, uh, grow from there and, and become …

Christina: What it became—

Paul: Unmanageable to the point that you, uh, obviously, sought help?

Christina: So, I came to UCLA in '98. That was the year that I graduated. And I immediately got accepted into UCLA in the thre-, the theater program. And it was very prestigious. It was a BIG, BIG deal that I got accepted at 18. So, as soon as I left Sacramento and I came to Los Angeles, it was like … the … the bondage was released. I was OUT. And I had done it on my own merit. You know, like nobody, nobody … gave that to me.

Paul: So, it was a form of validation.

Christina: HUGE validation, that I really was worth something. That I made it. I got out of my parents' house. They were so worried about me. Because, little did I know, I was very innocent and very naïve. I was not capable; I was not street smart. That's what my mom would always say: "You're not street smart. You don’t know the difficulties of the world." And I was like, "Yeah, I am! I'm from Sacramento!"

Paul: I smoke Marlboro Reds, lady—

Christina: I smoke (laughs) Marlboro Reds and drink Olde English. And if I get jumped, I know what to do. But I wasn’t. I really wasn’t that hardened girl. That's not how my parents raised me to be. They tried, but it, you know, I was, I'm a very, very sensitive creature. And so, I come to UCLA, and I could just pretend. I could just pretend like I was worldly. I could pretend—I remember I told—this is the craziest thing. So, there was this game, this drinking game called "I Never." And, um—

Paul: I've played it.

Christina: Yeah, right? Where you drink if you’ve done the thing that someone announces. And so, I remember specifically being at a frat party, but it was like a pre-, it was like before school started. It was like in the summer time, and I was doing the whole campus tour or whatever. We were at this frat party, and all the frat guys were there. And I really wanted to—I was a virgin. So, I'm 18 years old; I'm a virgin. And I wanted to impress them with how, you know, raunchy I was. So, we played "I Never," and I specifically said, "I never made my own porn." And I drank, ad though I had. COMPLETE fabrication. Never even close to doing anything like that. But I wanted to say that because I wanted the guys to look at me like, "Oh shit! She's cool." And that was just an old pattern of mine. Like, like where this, where this—You know, now it’s like I'm so different. I've changed so much. But that's not what I thought was wanted of me. I thought I, I thought people wanted me to be that girl.

Paul: It's interesting how, how kids … don’t really have a concept of the difference between immediate attention and lasting attention. And, especially, classically, girls.

Christina: Right! Oh my good-, I had no idea. I was SO naïve. So the guys that were in my theater program that were at that party told everyone. I had no idea until years later, that that was what my reputation was, was that they, that, that's the girl that like made the porn. And she's, um … a freak. And she's from Sacramento. And people that know Sacramento knew what school I went to, thought that I was like, why was I not pregnant or a chola? That's literally what was said about me. Like, how's she from that school and she's not pregnant? Or from, or, or like a Mexican, you know, gangster? (Laughs) And, and so, I, I was able to overcome that, obviously, cuz that's not who I am. I mean, as soon as you meet me and you hang out with me, you know that like, oh, that's not who you are? You're totally (laughs) not that. So, I also kind of got off on that a lot, about being sort of a chameleon and fitting into whatever group I could fit into. And, when I finally fell in love for the first time, which was when I was like 18 or 19 … it was very short-lived. It was a relationship where I met this … adorable, sweet guy, just a year older. Had like, just about to turn 21. And I fell madly in love with him, because we did have that connection. It was real. You know, at 18, 19, that was real at that point. And, um … I turned right around and I made the choice to have sex with two friends who, I think, were gay. I'm pretty sure they're both gay. And we did like a, we did like a threesome. But, it was, it wasn’t intimate. It was like a joke almost. Like we got drunk and we had sex. And I did it on purpose.

Paul: Be- … This was with the, the, the boyfriend?

Christina: No, the boyfriend wasn’t even involved. We had just fallen in love. And I didn’t—

Paul: Why—

Christina: —wanna lose my virginity to him.

Paul: OH! Okay.

Christina: I was scared to lose my virginity to him, because he would then have the power to destroy me.

Paul: Hmm.

Christina: I didn’t wanna give my virginity to someone that could destroy me. It made absolutely no sense, but it's the—

Paul: To the addict mind, it makes perfect sense.

Christina: I'm so glad (laughs)—

Paul: To the, to the, to the trau-, to the traumatize person afraid of intimacy, it makes perfect sense.

Christina: Oh, good! Because—

Paul: It's like y-, it's like you're hiding the jewelry because you're letting somebody in the house.

Christina: Right! Because virginity, it was supposed to be saved for marriage. That was what I was told. Not taught; told. And nobody—

Paul: And that it's taken from you—

Christina: It's taken from you—

Paul: —rather than it’s something that's shared.

Christina: Right. Right. And so, and so I did not, I really, really, really wanted to be sexually active … because I, I wanted to, I wanted the validation and I wanted the, um, the satiation of the physical desire, right. To be touched and to be … I mean, when you're 18, 19, you know, your hormones are going. And everybody around you's having sex. I mean, it was the 90s, and it was—

Paul: And these were two male friends of yours?

Christina: Two male friends, yeah, who I felt so comfortable with. I mean, I LOVED these guys. One of them was definitely gay. And the other one was still kind of in the closet, but, um, that was probably one of his first sexual experiences with a man. And I was there, but like I wasn’t really … it wasn’t an intimate thing. It was almost like performance art. In, in college, we were very much about performance art.

Paul: And, and, and theater kids are so—

Christina: Theater kids are creeps! (Laughs)

Paul: I was a, I was a, I was a theater, uh, student in college. And it's …

Christina: Freaky!

Paul: It was like Woodstock.

Christina: Oh my god!

Paul: It was like Woodstock. It was just, everybody get naked at the drop of a hat—

Christina: Totally!

Paul: —and it was very liberating. It was exciting for, for me, for a kid that was raised Catholic. But, uh, I did not learn anything about intimacy.

Christina: NO! No, it's—

Paul: It was, it was like performances. They were like performances.

Christina: They were like performances. And, and I wanted—You know, and so I had to go back and tell my boyfriend. Because when we met, he knew I was a virgin. And, but I didn’t see him every day. He, you know, he didn’t go to college with me. He kind of lived in The Valley. He was an actor. He was doing his own thing. And, and I mean—I just wanna make this very clear, I was very, very in love with him. I was not, I was not just infatuated him, with him as an obsession. Like I genuinely had these deep, deep feelings for him. But I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know how to take it slow. I ran right out, and I basically like completely acted out sexually, so that I could be safe acting out with him.

Paul: Hmm.

Christina: Cuz I wanted to. You know, I wanted to have that sexual relationship with him. But he couldn’t be the first. I had to have the control. And that, uh, that didn’t destroy the relationship at that time. But it, it really did put a cramp in my … spiritual, psychiatric health. (Laughs)

Paul: And, and, and I love, too, that you then had an awesome "I Never" (laughs) …

Christina: Yeah, right! (Laughs)

Paul: I lost my virginity in a threesome!

Christina: (Laughs) It was almost like a self-ful—Yeah, we filmed it, too. Is that crazy?

Paul: Did you really?

Christina: We totally filmed it. We fi-, I mean, we're totally crazy. We filmed it, we played Mozart's Requiem Mass, we were—

Paul: Oh my god, what theater students!

Christina: Totally! And we like dressed up—

Paul: Oh my god! You pretentious asses—

Christina: Oh my god! We were SO ridiculous! I like, I was dressed up, I wore sunglasses and like an evening gown. It was (both laugh), it was just so bad! I can't believe I'm even tell-, I don’t tell people this, you know. But, but I have no shame over it. It's just, it is what it is. And it's just too hard sometimes to unpack it for people, you know. So I hope anyone listening to this relates, because this is what it is. This is the disease. You know, I thought I knew what I was doing. I was just really creative. Bu that wasn’t me; I was playing a part.

Paul: Oh my god. I just love the idea of somebody in the midst of a threesome, stopping and like doing a Bertolt Brecht monologue. (Laughs)

Christina: Exactly! That's exact—Because I had to strip it down.

Paul: And what became of the, the footage? Did—

Christina: Oh my god! I'm sure we deleted it. I'm sure we erased it. It, it was, it was a rumor then that went around that we had done it. And it was, I knew it was so crazy that people, half the people wouldn’t believe it. Half people would like, "There's no way that happened." But, a lot of people did believe it because they knew how crazy we all were.

Paul: So, uh, the relationship survived.

Christina: But, through that, it did. Yeah, it survived through that—

Paul: Through that it did—

Christina: But here's the thing: He had been molested as a child. So, obviously, he had his own issues. So sexually, coming together, his sexual experience with a, with a woman that was, you know, not with a, an older kid that was molesting him, my first sexual experience was with this insane, you know, performance art thing. So when we came together, it was the blind leading the blind. We, we couldn’t function sexually. He, literally, it was difficult for him to be sexually aroused. And that was the first time I had ever experienced that. It brought back memories for him … of being molested. And it made him nauseous. And I was per-, I was, he didn’t project it onto me purposefully, but when you want to, when you want your partner to get excited and you wanna have this beautiful thing and they can't cuz they wanna puke, right. And, and I'm so selfish and I'm so, you know, of course I make it all about me. And it's, it's why, you know—

Paul: Why I'm not attractive enough—

Christina: I'm not good enough. I'm not thin enough. I'm not—It's just bonkers—

Paul: Which, which … is, puts then added pressure on that person. You may think that you're taking the pressure off of them, but you're actually putting more pressure on them because then they feel this burden of having to convince you that it's not about you.

Christina: Right!

Paul: And so, it's just another hurdle of, this is so fraught. And then, the next time—Because I have experienced that as, as well—and then the next time, the anticipation that you won’t be able to perform, and you'll have to go through this WHOLE thing of you convincing them that it's not about them, then adds even more pressure to it. And so then, it's just like, well, I would rather just, uh, you know—

Christina: And when you don’t have the tools to be patient and to be loving and to, you know—You, you, you immediately just go to the, the black and white, which is, "This isn't working. I can't do this."

Paul: Or to take baby steps to just say, "Hey, you know, we’re not gonna take our clothes off. Let's just watch a, a movie tonight and kiss. And then, maybe the next time we get together—"

Christina: But see, we were both so stoned, that like, how do you know, how do we know what to feel or think—

Paul: No. No. And, and nobody's gon—

Christina: We were super high, and yeah—

Paul: No, and nobody's gonna come up with that on their own. Even people in their 30s and 40s, with, you know … They have to go to counseling and have it suggested to them, because we don’t see that modeled. We don’t see fear of intimacy modeled. We, we don’t see how these problems are solved, as, you, you, you know. It's, uh, "Oh, the guy that can't get a boner!" And so, she's angry and she yells at everybody—

Christina: Exactly!

Paul: You know, some trope that—

Christina: Ugh, god! It's just such a shame, you know, that we’re not taught this at an early age. We're taught the antithesis of this, We're taught to just sort of troubleshoot. And we learn through watching other people, but nobody ever sits us down and, and, and really teaches us, um, about emotional-sexual sobriety.

Paul: Yup. And about fear.

Christina: Right.

Paul: Fear around sex. Fear is pervasive, for most people, through sex. And it's never talked about. It's never talked about. There were many times that I had sex that I didn’t want to, and, and there was just a tuning out and just going through, literally, the motions, wanting it to be over with. And not even realizing that … I didn’t have to. That, that didn’t make me—

Christina: Yeah. You have a choice—

Paul: —a bad partner or—

Christina: No, the pressure is immense. The pressure is just insane. And drugs and alcohol is what I used to cope, so that I could perform, so that I could … keep going forward. And, and, and I thought, mistakenly, that if I just kept trying, if I just kept finding a new partner, doing it this way or doing it that way, you know, that I would eventually find the right fit. I would find the right person, the right situation, and it would just work out.

Paul: And what was the fear that you needed to numb? Or was there fear?

Christina: It was, uh, it was the fear of being present. It was the fear of being present. Cuz now that I'm married, now that I have someone in my life that, uh, is a husband, you know, not, not someone that, that I'm dating or that I'm seeing or that I'm … you know, living with, I mean, it really changed for me. Marriage really changed me. I feel like no matter what, he's there for me.

Paul: And, and that it's safe to let all the walls down.

Christina: It's completely safe. And it's, it's secured. Like, it’s also like, you know, when you don’t know if you locked the door or not. Like, "Did I lock the door?" It's like I know the door is locked, even though divorce is always, you know, people get divorced. That's not in our, that's just not in our, uh, reality. We, we, we knew when we got married, that this was going to be a life commitment. And, uh, I have to have that kind of safety, because my addict mind will find an escape route. And so, it’s a very spiritual thing, what I entered into. I, I entered into a decision that this was completely safe.

Paul: How did you get to that place where you went from, "I can't be present because love is com-, combustible and chaotic?"

Christina: I had to find a higher power. I had to find a power greater than myself, that was greater than parental love, that was greater than lust and romantic love. And it's something that I think about that, you know, the Greeks have several words for love. It's not just love. It's, uh, they have eros, which is romantic love and lust. They have phileo, which is brotherly love between friendships. And they have storge, which I don’t remember, I have to Google it. But I thought—

Paul: Love of stores?

Christina: Ha! Yes. Storks, actually. No, I think it's love of children. But I have to look it up. And they have, um, the last one, which is agape, which is the spiritual love of god.

Paul: And does that also include love of self?

Christina: I dunno.

Paul: Because I would think love of self—not in a narcissistic way, but in a, um … I suppose in a spiritual way because it, to believe in a higher power or a benevolent force in the universe, you know, be in conscious or not, um … there, in, in my opinion, there has to be kind of a connection between the two. Because where, where did we come from? Even if you take it to an ana-, uh, an atomic level, we came from somewhere, stardust, whatever. But, but what created that stardust, and is there—Where does love come from in the universe? And so—

Christina: You know what it's like? I, I feel like it, it's a reflection. So, when I, because—You know when you, it's like when you don’t know the sound of your own voice. You just, you speak it, and you know you're speaking. But then you hear your voice reflected back at you and you're like, "Is that my voice? That feels so disembodied." That's what I feel like love of my higher power is for me. When I'm in myself, I don’t know what love is until it's reflected back at me.

Paul: Give us some examples where you experienced that. How, how you began to experience … a sense of your higher power, love, self-love, safety. Where there moments, was there work involved in getting to this place? Were there things that you did on a daily or weekly basis that increased your sense of safety, connection, you know, whatever—How did you get to this healthier place? Because I don’t imagine it was an intellectual thing, where a light just switched on and you went, "Yeah, there's a higher power. Hey!" You know.

Christina: So, I, I had to meet other people that were on the same journey as me. I really had to connect with people that were on this path, not the path that I was on—which is where everybody was just kind of bumping around, like bumping into walls in the dark and thinking that they knew what they were doing. Basically, I had to find people that had NO FREAKING CLUE what they were doing and were being honest about it.

Paul: And before we get to that, what did your bottom look like?

Christina: I had several—

Paul: What do, what do remember when you, when you decided I need help? What brought you to that?

Christina: So that man, that boyfriend of mine that I was in love with at 18. I did not let go of the idea that he was my soulmate well into my 30s.

Paul: Wow.

Christina: It was devastating to every relationship that I had after him. Because anytime something went wrong in that relationship, in the new relationship, I would think back to him and I would think, "I messed it up with him. He's who I'm supposed to be with. How do I make that work? The person that’s in front of me that's love me, that's trying, is really not the guy for me. The guy for me is in the past, and I need to bring him back and resurrect that." And it got to such a … It got to the point where I couldn’t believe I was 31 and still trying to make it work with him. I knew there was something wrong with me. And them, 'member how I said I had a—

Paul: The, the, the guy you fell in love with at 18?

Christina: Yeah, that I was still trying to—

Paul: You were, were you still with him at 31?

Christina: No, no. But we had reconnected. We, we never left each other—You know how Facebook is. I mean, people are, you're, you're never really that far from your ex.

Paul: When did you stop being boyfriend/girlfriend?

Christina: Six months after we dated in 1999.

Paul: Oh, oh my god.

Christina: We, and I, I was absolutely beside myself for a year after that. And—

Paul: And did he know all of this.

Christina: He knew. Yeah, he was like, "She's like Stacy from Wayne's World; she doesn’t get it. We broke up; it's over." And then I dated his best friend for two years, because his best friend was in love with me. So, not only did I … not work with him, but I picked the worst possible person to rebound with. Destroyed their friendship. And again, I think an addict will understand, right.

Paul: Yeah. It's the closest way you can get to him.

Christina: Yeah, and he liked me. And really, what I needed was someone to love me. So, if he wasn’t gonna love me—because it was too complicated because we couldn’t be sexually intimate because he was really, really into pot. He really cared about his band, really, more than he cared about having a relationship at 19. Which duh! You're 19. You have a band. You're a stoner. Do you band! You know (laughs) what I mean? Can't have a lasting, intimate relationship. But I took it so personally. And then his best friend, who had liked me the whole time, was like, "Well, you know, he's just not good for you. And I'm here, and, you know, I love you." And it's just like great! So that's the love addiction. I'll take it where I can get it—

Paul: It's the fear of being alone.

Christina: Yeah! And I couldn’t, I couldn’t comprehend that it was a bad choice. All I wanted was the goods. Gimme the drug, gimme the validation. Gimme the attention. Gimme the romance.

Paul: And do you think part of the validation from him was the, the catnip quality that, here was a guy that was keeping me at arm's length so that … if, if he's not fully present, it's a, it's almost like a task to try to—You can never be satiated. Your addict—

Christina: Well, I just, I just thought that the only reason why he wasn’t coming back to me was because he was angry at me. And I'm now, I'm realizing that that triggered my childhood. In my childhood, horrible things would be said and done in my house because of anger, but they would always some back. There would always be the lowering of the drawbridge, or raising of the drawbridge, as it were. And, uh, and everything would be okay again. And I was just waiting for him to just get over it. (Laughs) Like, no, this isn't broken irreparably. We're gonna get back together again. I mean, I know I'm fucking your best friend, but, you know (chuckles), like that's not real. You know I'm doing that just to, because … (laughs)

Paul: And, and, and the … belief is that the love addict is also a love avoidant because they fall in love with people who are love avoidants. So, it's safe to them because they know that person' not gonna smother them. That there's a distance that feels safe to them and that's intoxicating. And so, I guess my question was, do you think that that is part of why it was so easy to stay in love with this guy, was because he never really became present in a healthy sense. There was always one foot out the door with him. And, there wasn’t the, the, the fear that, you know, he wasn’t gonna come into your metaphorical house and—

Christina: Well, I believed he would. I, I am the love avoidant, just as much as I'm the love addict.

Paul: Right.

Christina: I had an idea, and the only reality I wanted to accept was my reality. And he wasn’t following directions. You know, his soul was mine, but his mind was trapped. So, it, it was, it was, yes, it was a challenge in thinking that … that this was unattainable. And, and, but that—But I didn’t really believe it was unattainable.

Paul: Oh, no! No, no addict does. That's why it’s so delicious.

Christina: Yeah. So like—And, and, and I honestly think that if that wall had come down and he had come back to me, we would not have worked out, obviously. Because I'm a love avoidant. As soon as I got what I wanted, I would've realized I didn’t really want it, which I did many, many times with many men after him.

Paul: The magical qualities would have disappeared. He would have shown himself to be a, a flawed human being—

Christina: Exactly.

Paul:—like everybody is—

Christina: Exactly.

Paul:—and you wouldn’t have had a fantasy to check out with.

Christina: Yeah, we did. We hooked up later. We hooked up in like, you know, what, 2011. Right before, right before I was really actively seeking recovery for this. And that was, uh—It wasn’t like such a low bottom. It was just that I recognized I was still digging. You know, I'd never really come up from my bottom. It was just, I was digging and digging and digging and not really getting anywhere. Hooking up with him—Not, it was terrible. It wasn’t this dream come true. It wasn’t this fantasy. It was like, I had to get stoned first so that I could even, uh, be naked with him, right. Nothing had changed. I was still 18 years old in a 31-year-old woman's body. And, uh, and that was—AND, I was also juggling other obsessions with men in my life. There was this one that, you know, was, was married, you know, that I couldn’t have. And there was another one from, you know, in a, in a group of work colleagues. You know, it was just, it was just endless. It was constant, inappropriate choices on my lazy Susan of addiction, and—

Paul: (Laughs) It's such a great sentence.

Christina: It's … it just—I finally called a psychic. And I was like, "Look …"

Paul: That's your bottom.

Christina: That's my bottom.

Paul: (Laughs)

Christina: No, but I … (laughs) it wasn't my first psychic. She had. She had talked to me for several years. And she was finally just like, you know, "I think you need to get help for this." And I did. So I did. I started to, you know, enter into recovery for love addiction.

Paul: And so, give me some snapshots where you began to feel … uh, a new sense of hope, and new sense of self, and a new view on what real mature, healthy love looked like?

Christina: It took a LOOONG time! (Laughs)

Paul: It's hard. It's peeling away years and YEARS of negative self-beliefs and bad modeling of what—

Christina: Do you remember when the towers fell, when 9/11 fell?

Paul: I do-, I don't.

Christina: (Laughs) Well, this thing happened. It was the rubble—Do you remember all that rubble? I remember thinking, "How are they gonna clean up all that rubble?" That was just HUGE! That's what I felt like. I felt like those towers, you know. And, and they had stood for so long. And then when they came down, it was just absolute catastro-, catastrophic destruction. That was what, on an emotional, spiritual, psychic dimension was happening to me.

Paul: When you began to go through the withdrawal of, of not going into addictive relationships—

Christina: Well, of realizing that everything that I had thought to be true was not true.

Paul: Right. And feeling the pain that you had buried as a child, cuz now you didn’t have something to numb yourself with or distract yourself with.

Christina: Well, cuz I had tried to do it with food. You know, I'd gone into food recovery and eating disorder recovery in 2000. I had gone into, uh, codependence recovery in 2000 as well. The, the, the real bottom for me, the real actually, you know, the real, actual bottom for me was, um, when my, a relationship that I, that went real fast, real furious, real, you know, zero-to-sixty in like two seconds, I thought that was it. I pretty much risked everything for this one relationship when I was 30 years old. And it collapsed. He ended up literally jumping off of, uh, the balcony at the House of Blues, cuz he was that trashed, and knocking his front teeth in on New Year's Day 2010, 2011? New Year's Day 2010. And I ended up at Cedars Sanai at three in the morning, waiting for him to come out of his induced soma that they had to induce him. They had to sedate and induce him into, uh, and intubate him because of how combative he was, because of all the alcohol. I had NEVER seen anything like this before. I was in LOVE with this guy, as every addict knows is like, he's the one. And he wasn’t the one, man. He really wasn’t the one. And I was in absolute ruin. That was it; that was my bottom, when I realized, yet again, I have made the wrong choice. I have picked the wrong guy. And I don’t love this guy. And I don’t wanna sit at the hospital with him.

Paul: Sure.

Christina: I don’t wanna take his ass home. I'm PISSED.

Paul: Not only he unavailable, so are his teeth.

Christina: His teeth were gone! His front teeth, or one of his teeth. It was like one tooth, but … I remember sitting—he was an actor—I remember sitting there with his manager at my kitchen table and just being like, "I ca-, like this has happened so many times." And he was like, "Do you think maybe it's you?" And I was like … "Yeah!" That's how broken you have to be, because so many people have some to me in the past with problems and issues and crying and this and that, and I've said that to then: "Do you think, maybe, it's time to look at you?" And they're not broken enough, and they get mad at me. "How dare you?! It's not me! Who do you think you're talking to? It's I came to you for advice, and you're telling me it's me?" And it's like—

Paul: I came to you for the advice I wanted to hear, not –

Christina: Exactly.

Paul: Asking for help means being willing to accept whatever form it comes in, despite it being scary. And that, that leap of faith when it does begin to take hold is—That, for me, was when I began to believe that there was something in the universe helping me. For you, give me some moments when you began to feel like you were moving in the right direction as, as, after you … got into recovery.

Christina: Um …

Paul: And any things, any exercises you did or routines you had that were helpful.

Christina: So, I did the morning pages for years from the Artist's Way. That was something that I, that I used in my recovery pretty much obsessively—

Paul: Journaling.

Christina: Every single morning, I would get up and I would write for half an hour, cuz it takes 10 minutes per page to write a college-ruled piece of binder paper. And I would fill up notebooks. I mean, I did it for years. And I started noticing, after a couple (chuckles) of years, that a lot of the writing was, uh, optimistic and hopeful. You know, I had to, I had to clear a lot of rubble. I had to get through a lot of rage and a lot of abandonment—

Paul: Is there sadness?

Christina: —and fear and despair and, yeah. Yeah, there were times when I would just drive around and I would make voice recording in my car. And these voice recording were HEAVY, you know. And then like an hour later, I would make another voice recording, and I would literally, "I really, really hope that when people feel suicidal, they know that it is going to pass." And I was really resistant to going and seeing a psychiatrist, because I didn’t wanna go on medication. I didn’t wanna accept that I might actually have a chemical imbalance. I was so sad. Recovery withdrawal was so painful. And I just—And that's why I didn’t get sober from substances for a long time, until, um, I realized that I had that issue. Because when you go through withdrawal from love addiction, when you realize that validation's not the way to go, it, it, the loneliness is palpable. It's …

Paul: It's crushing.

Christina: It's absolutely crushing. And I needed substances, like pot. Like I smoked a lot of pot. So I never really recovered. I think a lot of the reason why my recovery in, um, in love and sex, you know, addiction, compulsive relationship pursuit, was, it took so long, was because I really wasn’t willing to put down everything and get to ground zero.

Paul: And to feel, to feel all your feelings unnumbed.

Christina: Yeah. And tell people, and, and let them hold you. I had this weird psy-, psy-, psychiatrist. She was great, but she's really famous, too. She wrote this book called "Toxic Parents." Susan Forward. And I sought her out. I drove out to, um, I drove out to like past Thousand Oaks. Is it Westchester, or where is it out there?

Paul: I dunno.

Christina: I dunno. I drove way out there for like half a year and paid her exorbitant amounts of money, so that she could tell me not to talk to my mom anymore. You know, and I remember (chuckles) there was this one part where she was (laughs) like, she like came over and sat with me on her little leather couch. And she was like tiny. She was, I felt like she was a hundred years old. She was like, "Do you need me to hold you right now?" And I was like, "I don’t want this woman to touch me!" (Laughs) But she came down and perched down next to me. And I, I just like sort of sat awkwardly next to her. And she kinda wrapped her birdlike, stick arms around me and just kind of lightly petted me. And I remember thinking, "This is not comforting at all. This is so weird!" But it was nice. It was like the first step towards acknowledging that I needed something like that, you know. Cuz that's not what I wanted. I wanted … I wanted, you know, the movie, I wanted, we see each other. Our eyes meet, and the … sparks go off. And then we make passionate love on the hood of a car, you know. That's what love was to me. Love was not this weird, awkward, kind of mildly felt, mildly inappropriate. Because the appropriate feels inappropriate … when you're unhealthy, when you're sick.

Paul: Oh, that's such a great, that's such a great way of, of putting that. And, and we never think of love as possibly beginning with coffee after a support group meeting with, uh, half dozen people, two of whom annoy the fuck out of you. But for a lot of us, that's, that's how it starts.

Christina: Yeah. Feels inappropriate to like start off slow and makes friends with people that you're not comfortable with. You, you don’t want that. You wanna see, you only wanna pick who you wanna pick. Cuz we're selfish and we don’t wanna risk being mildly uncomfortable even for a second.

Paul: And to begin to understand the difference between uncomfortable … in moving towards health, and uncomfortable and staying in toxicity and not listening to your body. That is a hard thing to, to navigate that just takes time.

Christina: Well, cuz you know how uncomfortable and inappropriate it felt for me to tell a man I don’t want you to pick me up from my house on our first date? I would like to meet you in a public place. And I'd like to start with coffee or juice or tea. That felt so inappropriate. Like how dare I exert what I need? How, how dare I be ungrateful, you know what I mean? Or, or controlling or whatever—

Paul: Or change the trope of what dating looks like.

Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And then I had to be honest, cuz I remember one guy, one of my other sober dates—I, I dated soberly. It's what we call sober dating. I did some sober dating. And I remember being like, "Can we start with coffee," and the man saying, "I don't like coffee. How about cocktails?" At seven at night. And my first dates need to be very, very G-rated, you know. (Laughs) Like no cocktails, no sexy bars. I remember one fist date I had before I was really sober. I was, I was supposedly sober dating. But like my sober dating looked like, uh, Don Julio on the rocks at the Peninsula at like 11 at night, you know, (laughs) with like a guy with a black Amex who was like down, D to F. (Laughs). That was, that was a sober date, but not. So my new sober dates after that like were, "Okay, well you don’t want coffee, but here I just need to share with you that I don’t feel comfortable going out at night just yet." You know, I get to be honest. I get to say, "What about juice? Do you like juice? Doesn’t have to be coffee if you don’t like coffee. But it's gotta be in the daytime."

Paul: And you're giving that person an opportunity to reveal their character—

Christina: Exactly!

Paul:—when you express your needs.

Christina: And they, and they do. People reveal their character—

Paul: Very quickly.

Christina:—when you—Exactly.

Paul: And do you feel like you're in a, in a good place to-, today with, uh, your, your husband and the ability to be present and intimate and, um … Give me a snapshot from, from your life with your husband or a friend or some moment love, where you can look at it and say … "I've changed."

Christina: My husband is … so … right for me. He, he is quite possibly my favorite human being on the planet. And, what he, what it looks like is … It looks like we don’t … We don’t speak to each other in a way that's not loving. But when we're brutally honest with each other, I take time to ask, "Can we have a conversation about this?" That's really what recovery looks like for me in this relationship. Because he's a man. He is a red-blooded American man. He messes things up. He is not perfect, by any means. When I say he's perfect for me, it's because I did a lot of work and know what I need in a man, what I need in a partner. And he checked off all the boxes, right. Like we talk, we talk about that. He checks off all the boxes; she checks off all the boxes. But when I get into my trauma zone where I'm afraid, or he's done something that I don’t like. You know, we need to talk about something. Like, okay, for example, he didn’t work a long time. He needed to get a job, and he was doing a lot of not doing job searching. It, it wasn’t … I wasn’t acting out in anger and saying to him, "Why aren’t you doing this?" It was, it was more like, 'Hey, when can we have a conversation about something that's a little sensitive, and I'm a little scared to bring this up?" And him saying, "Anytime," you know. Cuz like when you come to people with love, when you come to people—

Paul: And vulnerability.

Christina:—and, and vulnerability, and sobriety, people are willing to help. So he sat down and we talked. And I said, "I really want, you know, I really feel like, I'll feel better if you … were more …"

Paul: Proactive.

Christina: "… proactive." And he got a job right away. I mean, he just … I think a lot of people don’t realize how effective vulnerability is. That is a loving choice. People don’t want it. They, they, they, they say they're in love. They say they love this person. And then the person does something they don’t like, and they get mad, right. How you act, how you react to that is the love.

Paul: Yes! Yeah. Re-, communicating with then in a way that minimizes the potential of them getting defensive is a very important form of love.

Christina: Right. Loving him so much that I don’t want to go into my old trauma. He had nothing to do with that. He wasn’t there when I was 10. So, when my dad didn’t work for a long time, my mom … shamed him over it. Criticized him. Yelled at him. Asked him, "Don’t you care about your kid? What are you doing? Get off your ass! Literally, get off your ass." And I guess, I just, I think I would have repeated that. Absolutely. I'm not a saint. I'm, you know, I think that if I had not been so active in recovery, EVERY single day participating in a program of recovery for myself, spiritually awakening to who I'm really supposed to be, not who I put on, but like really who I am inside, I think that I would have repeated that exact same pattern. That's my default. My default is to shame, blame, attack, and defend.

Paul: And would it be fair to say that part of that sense of a higher power … working in your recovery is that … it's released you from the idea that you need somebody, that you need a partner to be whole or to have, um, any, any quality in your life—

Christina: Yeah, you know what's cool about, about the, about my part of the journey—at least in, you know, for me—is partnership became separate from me. There's me Christina, and then there's my marriage. And I'm a part of that marriage, and I participate in that marriage. But the marriage is not me.

Paul: That's such a great way of putting it.

Christina: And I believe that my higher power wants me to participate in that marriage. But … first and foremost, I have to be aligned with him, my higher power. I have to be, I have to be in a place where my marriage is just like an offshoot of the work that I already do spiritually. I wasn’t ready for marriage. I wanted this thing. (Laughs) It, it wasn’t my time because I hadn’t done the work. I could have married several people on that list of (laughs), of messed-up—There were plenty of opportunities. And I, and I, I just, I'm so grateful. The thing I'm most grateful for is I'm really grateful to know what the truth is. When I know when I'm lying, I know when something doesn’t feel right, you know. I know when like something's a knock-off—a bag or shoes or like, I just know something; this isn't real. This isn't the real deal, and I have always wanted the real deal. I have never been willing to settle for less.

Paul: It, it is one of the greatest things to works towards. And to begin to feel is a sense of our … our authentic self, because it guides everything. It guides every decision. It's, it makes, uh, you know … the times when we're alone that much better. Everything, everything. Yeah.

Christina: You just, everybody wants that. Have you noticed, everybody wants that.

Paul: It's so hard to get there, but it, it is doable.

Christina: They just want peace. The want real, genuine peace. And it's not, it's really not what the media and what the world shows you is peace, you know. It's not gonna come in a pill. It's not gonna come in a person. It's not a house. It's not a, an award. None of those things bring peace. If anything, they disrupt it. (Laughs) So …

Paul: Well, Christina, thank you so much for coming and sharing your story. I'm very, very thankful for—

Christina: Thank you!

Paul:—people like you in recovery.

Christina: Oh my gosh! This was wonderful. I'm very grateful for you, too.

End of Interview

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[01:32:28] Before we get to a couple of surveys, uh, I wanna remind you guys that there are couple of different ways to help support the podcast. You can be a monthly donor via Patreon or PayPal. If you do it through Patreon though, then, uh, I can give you occasional, uh, freebies, bonus content, uh, enter in to a raffle. I post pictures of … Gracie and other stuff. And, there's way to support the podcast non-financially. It would mean a tremendous amount to me if you went to iTunes, wrote a nice review, gave us a good rating, uh, and especially subscribe. That a huge way to help support the podcast. Just to be, just become a subscriber. Click that subscribe button. That increases our download, and that help attract more advertisers.

[01:33:25] This is a struggle in a sentence survey filled out by a woman who calls herself "Myopic Thumb." And about her anxiety, she writes, "I hate my hometown so much, that the only reason I haven’t killed myself is that I can't stand to be buried here." (Laughs) Oh, fuck! (Snorts) Oh my god. Any comments to make the podcast better: "Can you have a listener who has lived within more than one culture or continent—and I've lived among three vastly different ethnic groups and cultures, and I didn’t manage to assimilate into any of them. It would be kind of comforting to know that there are other people like me. Thanks for the show, Paul." We have done episodes. I don’t know if they are still on the free feed or if they are in the back catalog, which is, is currently unavailable. But, you know, that … kind of sparked an idea in my head, which is that, uh, I think what I'm gonna do is occasionally put a link up to an episode that I think would be helpful to somebody enquiring like you are, uh, for Patreon donors. And I'm gonna do it, uh … at the, starting at the $3-a-month, uh, donation level. So, uh, there is an episode that I can think of. It's, it's between one of two, one of two episodes that I have. But I think it, it would fit what you're, uh, what you're looking for. And I wish I could have the whole back catalog, uh, up. But, uh, financial … There are financial considerations that, uh … have to be taken in-, into account. And that's the reality of, of doing this podcast full-time, is that I have to find, uh, ways to, to, to keep it going. So … I think you understand. So I will put a link to that. By the time this episode airs, those of you on Patreon, I will have a link for you to download that from a Google drive. So you can either download it or you can stream it. But their player isn't, isn't the best. So I recommend just downloading that MP3 file. And if you're having trouble playing it, uh, you probably need to choose an application to play it, like iTunes or any, any podcasting platform that you, that you have.

[01:36:04] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a woman who calls herself "Naked Online, Afraid Everywhere Else." About her anxiety, she writes, "Everyone hates me, so I guess I'll bite all my cuticles off?" About alcoholism and drug addiction: "Weed is the hug I never got as a child." About her love addiction: "I get paid to need men's validation, and I'm scared," "I get paid to need men's validation, and I'm scared healing this part of myself will make me bad at my job." About her sex addiction: "Tingly hands, a dead vibrator, and an empty brain. Bliss." About being addicted to Twitter: "Twitter is my abusive boyfriend I keep trying to break up with, but miss when I'm lonely." About experiencing sexual bias: "If I'm going to be reduced to meat, why not use it to finance a car?" And about being abusive: "My ability to manipulate others scares me. I'm afraid I do it unintentionally." And then a snapshot from her life: "Paying $10 in bank fees for my money orders, when it would have been a couple of bucks at the grocery store's customer service desk. But the people that work the counter are much nicer at the bank and don’t scare me as much." Thank you for that. Thank you so much. It's amazing that like one survey, how … we can get such a deep, deep look into somebody's inner life. I'm just endlessly, endlessly grateful for … what you guys pour out into these surveys. And if you never filled out a survey, just go to the web site. Click on surveys, and there's about a dozen different ones that you can fill out anonymously. And we don’t record even the IP address that it comes from; that's turned off. So you can share ANYTHING. Anything.

[01:38:08] This is an awfulsome moment filled out by a woman who calls herself "Cloud Brain." And she writes, "I recently went through a few weeks of intense suicidal thoughts. I've been reading Calvin and Hobbs before bed to calm myself down, and one night I read a strip where they're talking about not knowing what happens after death. I felt a jolt go through my body, as I realized that in all of my obsessing about my own death, I completely forgotten that I have no idea what happens after we die. I've been so afraid of living that I'd somehow forgotten to be afraid of dying. Even in the moment, the absurdity of that thought made me laugh. Also, as I was writing this, my inner monologue was speaking in your voice, Paul, as I imagine you potentially reading it on the podcast. I thought you'd enjoy that." That, that is such a funny dichotomy. The fear of dying … at the same time, the fear of living. It's like, I'm afraid that I'm gonna be hit by a bus. But I am afraid that I'm gonna die before I ever get to see what the underside of a bus looks like. (Laughs) I'm afraid of falling off a cliff, but I'm also afraid that I'll never get to feel what it's like to fail at flying.

[01:39:23] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a trans man who calls himself "Very Tired, Dude." And, uh, he writes about his depression: "Being stressed because you have too much on your plate, which makes you work late and sleep like shit, which makes you tired, which makes it harder for you to get stuff done, which adds to stuff to your plate which stresses you out, which …" Ah, that's such a good description. About difficulty expressing himself: "There is a concrete wall that separates my internal world from what you see. I desperately need to tell you I'm not okay, but I'm only able to drop hints that you can't see, because I'm able to just go about my day." Snapshot from his life: "I had a moment the other day that perfectly summed up my depression. I finally got up the energy to clean my kitchen after a couple of weeks because I was having a relatively good day and the smell was getting horrendous. I went to put on a pot of coffee while I worked and noticed there was about a half a pot left … from a month ago. I'm not sure what appalled me more: the fact that there was something growing in my coffee pot, or the fact that I caught myself curiously examining it trying to determine if it was mold or a spider web. Either way, I didn’t have that pot of coffee." (Laughs) Oh my god, that's fantastic!

[01:40:44] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a guy who calls himself "Dutch." And about, uh, his body issues, he writes, "One day, waking up and believing I'm fat and waking up the next morning being pleasantly surprised that I'm not fat. Rinse, repeat, three times a week, I'm the skinniest fat fuck I know." (Laughs) That is a T-shirt. "I'm the skinniest fat fuck I know." Snapshot from his life: "I'm currently living on my own for the first time, and all the demons I escaped by having people around me are back. I actively believe I have to be hypercritical of myself or I won't be a functioning member of society or be worth living. If I'm not my own worst enemy, I won't have a reason to exist, as an insult to existence itself. I am riddled with fears and I'm neurotic. I'm in therapy now, and I'm trying a new form of EMDR to actively engage my future tripping. On that note of future tripping, I've joined a workshop where I'm being taught how to think about my career and who I am. It’s mostly fine, but my pessimistic answers are somewhat off-putting to some. Every time someone asks about my future, I lock up, and all I can think about is me under a bridge with a bottle and a needle in one arm, and a gun in the other. Either that, or a desk job somewhere." (Laughs) Thank you for that.

[01:42:15] This is a happy moment filled out by a guy who calls himself "Maine Coon Kitten For Sale." And he writes, "Today I realized in a support group that I didn’t have to get hung up on the word 'god,' because my higher power is obviously gonna be specific to me. I have the freedom to define and change my mind in regards to what exactly my higher power presents itself as. This is an invigorating and powerful idea that's breathed a little light into me during a dark time. I felt like a veil had been lifted." That's beautiful, man. That is beautiful. Thank you for that.

[01:42:52] This is a struggle in a sentence filled out by a woman who calls herself "Warrior Wounds." And … snapshot from her life and her codependency: "I was unable to hold back my tears in a restaurant, so I gave the restaurant a five-star review on Yelp so the staff would know if wasn't them." (Laughs) Oh, that is fantastic! I love it.

[01:43:24] This is the "I shouldn’t feel this way" survey, filled out by a gender-fluid person who calls themselves "Sad, But Not Rad." How would you like to be remembered? "As someone that created something meaningful: art or a positive change for the world." How does it feel writing that? "Terrifying that it'll never come true. Very overwhelming." How would you use a time machine? "I can't stop reliving this memory of walking my dogs with my grandfather in the pouring rain when I was 11 and they were all alive. So I'd probably go back to that time just to experience it again." "I'm supposed to feel happy about seeing my favorite artist tonight, but I don't. I feel suicidal and that I'm going out of my mind. I'm supposed to feel grateful and lucky that I have family that support me, but I don't, as I constantly feel depressed and anxious, and that, to me, feels like being ungrateful. I'm supposed to feel curious and hopeful about my future, but I don't. I feel apathetic and tired, feeling that things will only get worse. I feel like a bystander in my own life." That was like a little poem to those of us who struggle with depression … and anxiety. That, when I read something like that, it helps me feel less alone. How does it make you feel writing your real feelings out? "Better and worse. I feel authentic, but I also feel guilty." Please don’t feel guilty. Said the pot to the kettle. Do you think you're abnormal for feeling what you do? "Maybe. The feelings aren’t abnormal themselves, but I imagine that if other people were in my position, they would be better." That is a myth. That is a myth. Would knowing other people feel the same way make you feel better about yourself? "Yes. I feel I'm in a mental illness feedback loop, where bad feelings make me feel bad, which makes me breed the bad thoughts. I feel I am lazy and ungrateful, then sick." I think they meant to put the word, uh … 'more than sick.' I'm not sure. "So knowing others feel the same would reinforce that my brain may be lying to me." I can ASSURE you so many of us feel that same. I mean, you described in the "I shouldn’t feel this way" paragraph, you described how MILLIONS of us feel. And I'm just referring to my very crowded living room. Did I mention that I have a million people staying with me? And I have thre