BREATHE N BOUNCE

polarlinesUSA

Real conversations about starting over, mental health, relationships, mistakes, and figuring out who the hell you're becoming.

  1. Oct 25

    FRUSTURATION, F**K UPS, AND FORGIVENESS: This is what the battle in my head looks like in real time

    I guess I can say I woke up on the wrong side of the bed or someone pissed in my wheaties.  At least I woke up right.  I take you into a huge episode in my brain to show you the fight I take on every single day and how exhausting it is.  And how I talk myself down and then try to move forward.  It is extremely difficult.  TW: SUICIDE   HIGHLIGHTS Three years, three years. I've been doing this show. You would think that people might have caught on by it by now, but they don't. They don't. And is it what? Is it because I'm annoying? Is it because I'm too loud? Is it because I'm something wrong with me? Is it because of the speech impediment? Let me say something, okay? And I had this revelation in therapy, and I think therapy is really f*****g me up lately because I am really getting deep and dark in the weeds of Michael, and I am telling you, it is not a good place to be. And the reason why it's not a good place to be is because it's bringing up a whole bunch of f*****g self-esteem issues. It's bringing up a whole bunch of insecurity. And then when I take a look at what's going on in my life day to day right now, I see all that insecurity playing out. I see those patterns that I might have been stuck at as a child. I might still be stuck in. I am sitting here telling the world, please f*****g notice me. Please f*****g like me. Please, please, please, please.   And some people have let go of me because they think I'm too f*****g crazy to be around. And then I have to start asking myself: Am I really crazy? Should I go into a sylla? Should I be taken out of society? I have to ask these questions of myself, right? I am positive of myself that there is an angel, but I know for a fact that there's definitely a devil in I, and I keep working on trying to find a way to work with it, and somehow it always gets the best of me. All the bad thoughts that come in my head, all those suicidal thoughts, all that shit is part of that devil. How do I get rid of it? How do I stop it? I just want it to go away. Is that too much to f*****g ask?

  2. Oct 19

    ACCEPTING DISSOCIATION AND DESPAIR: What to do when it feels like you will never become stable and better

    One of the worst truths I have had to learn how to accept over the last year or so in some intense therapy is that I am not like other people.  There are things wrong with my programing and it all started when I was young.  Maybe I was set up to fail, or just full of bad decisions.  I hurt people.  I have hurt myself and I need to know why and the paths to those answers start here.   HIGHLIGHTS FROM THIS EPISODE Now people that meet me say, "Oh, Mike, you're not that f****d. No, I am f****d up. Let me tell you, I am f****d up, and I am f****d up because I've experienced a lot of b******t in my life, and my brain has processed that shit to be 10 times heavier than it actually was, and that comes with the territory of having you know behavioral disorders and mental disorders and having sickness and all that other shit. It all comes with the territory. It's all about the same thing. It is. It's all that, and you know, it's like a light bulb went off for me, right? Hence, this first song, see the light, because I saw the light, and the light unfortunately blinded me. It blinded me so bad it hurt. It made me really take a hard look at who I am and what I do. And there are so many different ways I can go with this. However, one of the themes that I've always had a problem with, and I've been very up upfront and open about this on the show, is I've talked about the loss of identity, the really knowing of who I am, and it's a struggle that I've had for the last five or 10 years. Is trying to really figure out who I am because I really believe before I got my BPD diagnosis, I felt like I was living in a dream world. I was living in a matrix. I really didn't have all the tools. Now, the happiest time of my life before that was when I was creating shit. When I was going to Columbia College. When I was creating production. I was doing stuff on the radio, and that was a very happy time in my life. The other happiest time of my life was being a father for my children when my children were getting big, because I really wanted to be with them. And I had two people in my life who really didn't know the real me, and they loved me for me until they got to know the real me.   We have to sit down. We have to get to know ourselves, and we have to just embrace who we are-past, present, and future. We gotta love it all, just like you would in any relationship. You love the good parts and you love the bad parts. I have to learn how to love the good parts and bad parts for myself, and that is going to be a m**********r to deal with.   That's another story of my life is that I would realize that I f****d up when it was too late because I already f****d up. I wouldn't stop myself from f*****g up. I wouldn't do any of that shit. So I let a lot of people down. I hurt a lot of people, and unfortunately, this is all the shit I've been carrying with me my whole life-the guilt. 50 years, I've been carrying guilt about how I treated people, and I think about how I was treated and how angry I've been about that. And it's like some days you, sometime you have to put the bag down. Sometimes you have to understand that you just want equipped to learn how to deal with this shit. You just have to give yourself that grace, and you have to just own it, and just try to accept it and move on. I became that son of a bitch, and you know what that guy did to me? Abandoned me more times than I could count. Gave up on me more times I can count. Pretty much told me that I didn't have it to make it in this life more times than I could count. He was so proud of my brother. He was so proud that my brother could do anything and I couldn't do shit. He just he made me feel like a f*****g loser, and then he would come back in my life. I'd be all excited. I'd be like, "Yay, my dad likes me, and they would leave again. Then he disappeared for like three years, and he just called me randomly out of the blue. And he stopped talking to me again.

  3. Oct 11

    MY DISORDER IS MY SUPER POWER: How I change perspectives to help to make my mental illness easier to live with ECLXXII

    I talk about my mental disorders in some detail and how I have been able to see the positive things that came from them in order to get to the "next level" of life.  We can change perspectives of what is happening, despite we can't change what is happening.  I guess it goes back to that Tony Robbins shit when he say "life isn't happening to you, its happening for you." But I will take the for you part because at the end of the day, shit just happens.  Also a nice little PSA for mental health professionals that don't want to take on BPD clients. HIGHLIGHTS FROM SHOW I hope you are feeling great. I know that I have my vanilla cortados sitting right next to me, and I just feel amazing. It takes Starbucks, a corporation, to make me feel amazing. Oh my God, I am just feeling it today. I am feeling the love, the love of the caffeine and the espresso and the slave labor going through my veins. Yes, yes, I am.  I talk about my mental disorders in some detail and how I have been able to see the positive things that came from them in order to get to the "next level" of life.  We can change perspectives of what is happening, despite we can't change what is happening.  I guess it goes back to that Tony Robbins shit when he say "life isn't happening to you, its happening for you." But I will take the for you part because at the end of the day, shit just happens.  Also a nice little PSA for mental health professionals that don't want to take on BPD clients.   So we have to find ourselves in the fury of the storm, and learn how we're going to withstand it. Learn how we're going to be able to look at the eye of the tiger with the fear that the tiger can rip us apart, but knowing that the tiger really can't and the tiger won't. Being in that storm, it's not always about running for shelter. It's about looking the storm in the eye and trying to get through it because maybe there is no shelter. Maybe shelter is not readily available at the moment. You're fighting through the storm, there's wind, there's rain, there's thunder, there's lightning. It's f*****g scary. You just saw a tree 200 feet away from you get struck by lightning, and now the m**********r's on fire. And you're standing there like, "What the f**k am I gonna do? So you have two choices in life. Your first choice is you can stand there and probably get consumed and die, or your second is you try to find safety, and yes, finding safety may not be easy all the time. Finding safety is a challenge within itself, but you can find it if you are looking for it.

  4. Sep 27

    DEEP DIVE: Trying to make sense of the conflicts of my life ECLXX

    I really take a hard look at myself to see why I have had people abandon me.  What is my role in all of this? What have I been doing?  When do I let my emotions take over?  I struggled to find peace because I have always been super angry and just don't know how to crack the nut.  So today's episode is trying to break things down and move on a better path.     Highlights from this episode   And I think a lot of times when we're analyzing why we're not feeling good about something, first thing we do is we look at the environment, we look at other people, and we look for excuses. Those are the three things I think we look for, and I'm going to tell you the truth. I have been doing that. Oh yes, I have. I have been blaming my bad feelings on other people. I have been just feeling down for the last month. I've been in a depressive episode, and I think I understand why, and I think the one thing that I've learned that I forgot about is everything is my fault. The reason why I have been in this bad place is because I have allowed it to be. So, one of the things that I'm going to have to do today is I'm going to have to be really honest with you about me, and about all my shortcomings, about my faults, about my character defects, about you know some of the things that I have done in my life, and some of the things that have brought me to where I'm at right now, and that's going to be a very difficult process. People really get scared to talk to me because of the way I react to things. I don't always react good. I sometimes can be sarcastic. I will name call. I'll be angry. I will yell, and those are nuts that I haven't been able to crack pretty much my whole life. So I think what we have to do, obviously, is if we're going to start to do better, we have to really start to take a big look at who we are. We have to stare into the eyes of our reflection in the mirror, and we really have to look. We have to think. We have to be willing to accept the things that we have done, and we have to really accept who we truly are. And once we do that, once we immerse ourselves with that, then the work can happen. There's been so many times in my life, where I've stood by and I've I have done nothing, and I'm at a point right now in my life where I don't believe in standing by and doing nothing anymore. I feel like if someone does something to hurt someone that I love, I I gotta say something now. Um. I, I think I really look for people's approval a lot because I think for so long I felt that I was a piece of shit, and the funny thing is, some people will give me approval. Some people will give me praise, and I won't believe it because of me

  5. Sep 20

    THE LOST AND FOUND OF ME: The quest to find ourselves when we give it up for others ECLXVIV

    Now lets get back on track here.  I talk about how I am going to rebuild myself from the setback last week and move forward.  I talk about the quest to find what worked for me before and getting back there, and making sure nothing or nobody stops me,   HIGHLIGHTS Last week was a terrible episode, and I mean, some people are gonna say it was so vulnerable. You you were so vulnerable. No, it was f*****g Disgusting. It was disgusting because I sat here and I wanted you all to feel sorry for me, because I was feeling sorry for myself, and I don't know. Maybe I didn't want you guys to feel sorry for me, but the truth of the matter is, I was like a, I, I don't know why I'm gonna say this, but I'm just gonna say probably because I'm full of caffeine and piss and vinegar right now. I was like a little f*****g whiny bitch last week. I was, no, no, no doubts, no questions, no nothing. I just was sitting there worrying about a bunch of shit that I put in my mind. I was worrying about a bunch of shit that just kind of, just kind of popped into my head, right? And I think, I think I've been carrying a lot of depression because I think I realized a few things about my life, and one of the things that I think I learned about my life is I have given up any kind of forward motion that I was in the process of doing. I think I lost myself. I think I lost a lot of what I was doing, and I think that I was feeling sorry, maybe some sorrow, because maybe a little part of me was dying. And I think the thing about mental health that we always forget is that it is a process.   Well, I felt, and I think that's what I've been feeling like. Is I feel like I've been getting taken advantage of by quite a few people, and some of those people are people that are close to me. So that's hard. That's that's a hard thing to deal with. No one wants to be played for by a fool. No one ever wants to do that, you know. No one ever wants to be in that spot where they feel like they're a fool for someone's loving. No one wants to ever feel stupid And I think, at the end of the day, we have to understand that everyone in life plays the fool, whether we like it or not, and we just have to understand that's just the way it is. Sometimes you can choose not to, or you can play along, but it's going to happen in your life, and you just have to deal with it.   I want people to see me because of who I am. I want them to feel me because of the energy I bring, and I want them to recognize me. I want them to recognize me because I want them to know that if they see me, they are getting someone who is for f*****g real. That isn't phony. That isn't a fake. That isn't here just to f*****g do things for a reaction. Granted, that has been my mo for most of my life, but right now, I just, I just got shit to say, man, and I've got a story to tell, and I've got bad parts of that story where I did heinous, f*****g unbelievable shit to people, and I have good parts of that story where I really pulled people out of the dark. I found ways to help people, and that's the thing that's beautiful, is your story always finds a chance to restart. But sometimes in life, when you know that people are just not who they are, and they're not going to appreciate you, and there ain't freaking jack shit you can do about it,

  6. Sep 7

    THE REGRET YEAR: How to deal with messing up with your life ECXLVII

    I talk about how I screwed so much stuff up that year and it was the beginning of a slippery slope of doom with people who knew me, loved me, and the vomit of lots of anger, sadness, and guilt I was carrying for so long.  I think we all have years like this when we were at our worst.  How can we recover?  Did I make everything better? Was I able to grow and learn from it? Can you? Can anyone?  Time heals, but we must help move that process along.   HIGHLIGHTS you think about all the things people said to you when you were at your weakest, and it hurts because then you start feeling that way about yourself, and then you start to act in a way that you probably shouldn't. And I could tell you that definitely was the case for me. I started acting up because I started keeping score of all the shit that was said to me by family members and things that happened in my life. And that is never a healthy thing to do. Is keep a score sheet. You want to play golf and keep a score sheet? That's fine. You want to play bowling? Good. The game of life never good to keep a score sheet. Never. There's so many reasons for that. But in the reason that we're talking about today, we're just talking about how all the things that she may have said to you might have led to downfalls. We have to also understand that sometimes our partners are angry, sometimes our family, our kids are angry, sometimes our parents are angry, and people don't mean what they say. And I'm not giving anyone a license to just say or do whatever they want, react however they want. But I'm saying it's just something that we all have to think about it as people is that sometimes all the things they say make us a little bit nutty, and we just have to kind of remember it's not always meant, but it's said, and we have to deal with it. All the things they say can drive a person mad. You listen to how much. If you listen to enough noise in the world, then you start to lose yourself in the process. You start to just feel kind of icky.   I still do a lot of things that I don't like to do, and you know, I'm 50 now, and I've been living many years in these survival patterns where I don't know how to treat myself well, and then there's there's that thing sometimes where you do treat yourself well, and then people start accusing you of being selfish, and that shit's really hard to deal with as well. But sometimes what we have to learn how to do in our life is sacrifice. We have to learn how to sacrifice things that we want for things that we want, or things that we think might serve us, but they really don't   we make bad choices. Sometimes we don't go the right way. So we have to start asking ourselves, what do we do to stop? And for me, I wanted to stop so many times. I didn't want to be angry. I didn't want to go off. I didn't want to get mad. I didn't want to yell. I didn't want to scream. I didn't want to do any of this shit. But I ended up doing it, and then I had to suffer the consequences of my actions, and the consequences for my actions were just really deep. I was in mental hospitals for three times that summer in 2016. I went three to three different hospitals, I was in four different programs. I saw at least four different therapists. I had so many medication changes, and quite frankly, I think the medication was really the what was really the linchpin. See, I did the fear factory thing there. The linchpin of everything that happened because I did not think I was uninhibited, and I was taking so many medications. I had I had a nurse practitioner that thought they were giving me tic tacs and skittles when they really were giving me medication, but I I made it through. But I still carried so many years of guilt with me, so much. On top of all the guilt before that, before when I was younger, I really f****d up and I really was angry and I f*****g did a lot of bad shit, and I f****d up. And I mean, we get in these patterns where we start feeling shame, when we start feeling bad about ourselves, when we start wondering what is our what what is our mean? Are we are we good enough? Are we okay \

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Real conversations about starting over, mental health, relationships, mistakes, and figuring out who the hell you're becoming.