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Laura Riordan knows that feeling "too happy" can be dangerous. Most people don't have to worry about feeling too happy, but, when you live with Bipolar 1, that euphoric feeling can be a very real and very nefarious signal that you are slipping into mania. Once that slide happens, it is very difficult to course-correct and you may be flying high on a terrifying ride heading towards the inevitable crash of severe depression. This is what it is to live with the bipolar beast, as Laura calls it. She's learning to tame it.

Laura navigates life with bipolar disorder; she and her partner, Chris, are watchful for signs like losing sleep or spiking confidence. They know that coincidences can lead to magical thinking; they check in with each other. It is a delicate dance and finding that content, peaceful middle ground is part of the key to success regarding disease management.

Today, Laura is in training to become a Certified Peer Specialist so that she can help other people living with mental illness by supporting them, sharing her own story, and walking beside them as they navigate the complex and fractured mental health system.

Laura has benefitted from peer support and and Depression/Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA) online support groups, which she writes about in the essay she wrote for us a few years ago, "How Bipolar Support Groups Helped Change My Life", which Laura reads aloud in this episode of the show.

Laura is open about how stigma can inhibit help-seeking and can encourage people who are suffering to mask and hide their symptoms, which can be catastrophic. Laura also shares her personal experiences about trial-and-error medication management, side-effects, spotting triggers, setting boundaries, and taking care of herself.

If you’re searching for bipolar disorder support, DBSA resources, peer support specialist insights, coping strategies, or an honest conversation about non-linear recovery, this one is for you. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and be sure to leave us a review!

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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Casey Cannizzaro is a mental health and addictions clinician and three-time Recovery Diaries author, but he's far, far more than that. Casey's writing on our site-- we encourage you to voraciously devour each of his essays, findable via the links to come-- is exhilarating; his voice is unique, roving, insatiable, and unlike anything else we've published. Casey is just like Recovery Diaries itself: the perfect antidote to AI slop and Chat GPT sterility. His writing will knock your socks off, and make you forget your feet are cold.

But we're not just here to brag about this really talented guy; we sit down with Casey to talk to him openly about his path from his last stretch of treatment into the work he does now, including substance use counseling, LGBTQIA+ focused care, and admissions for a fully virtual intensive outpatient program. Casey talks about his sexuality, his family, his ups, his downs, and he does it with integrity and flair.

Maybe one of the loveliest things about this interview is that it's an opportunity for two men who live with mental illness and aren't afraid to be vulnerable about their emotions to connect with each other, and share their mutual appreciation and respect for the other. A little love-bombing is healthy!

During the show, Casey reads his beautiful essay “The (im)possibilities of Love with Bipolar,” a story of devotion, medication, relapse, and grief told with Casey's signature wordplay and vivid imagery. "Recovery is possible. Recovery is fucked," Casey says. Who could disagree with that assessment? If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people can find these stories. And after you've listened, check out Casey's other two, fabulous essays on our site: Six Days on the Good Unit: Hospitalized and Alive and After I Destroyed Myself: Fast and Furious with Bipolar Disorder and Addiction; you'll be glad you did.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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Natalia Aiza, LPC, is the founder of Kairos Wellness Collective in Boulder, Colorado. She is educated, well-informed, articulate, empathic, and aware. She's just the kind of person you'd think would be perfectly well-suited to quickly identify and address a mental health challenge in herself, right? Well, not so fast.

Natalia believes now that she was living with OCD since age seven, but she didn't recognize it for years; even while training and working as a therapist.

Natalia describes her early experiences with motherhood, plagued by incessant, intrusive thoughts about harming her baby, but even though she managed to get through these thoughts, soon, another nagging obsession took that one's place: she needed to control everything about her child's (and later, her children's) eating. For her, it was just a concerned mom being mindful about “healthy eating” In reality, this was uncontrolled, untreated, and unidentified OCD running amok, resulting in food shopping trips taking multiple hours, methodically scanning labels on every possible food item, and placing unhealthy ideas about food into her children's minds. Natalia openly describes the shame, guilt, grief, and other negative consequences of what she now calls orthorexia-by-proxy; a disordered obsession and compulsion with the healthy eating of others. A few years ago, she wrote a wonderful, open and honest essay about her particular form of OCD, and she reads it aloud here on the show.

Natalia, now successfully managing this mental health challenge (with grown children who are able to joke about it with her) discusses with us why reassurance-based talk therapy can unintentionally enable the OCD brain, and how exposure and response prevention (ERP) helps you stop responding to intrusive thoughts with rituals and safety behaviors. Natalia discusses SSRIs, what it means when OCD gets quieter instead of disappearing (it may very well never disappear, and Natalia still has her moments of struggle), and why access to proper OCD treatment is still a significant public health problem.

It is so easy for OCD to get missed, even by a professional, and that's why our conversation with Natalia Aiza is so important; so many people out there are struggling with something they may not understand; a mental health challenge that presents itself under the guise of something "good" or "healthy", but one that actually has the potential to cause harm. Subscribe for more Recovery Diaries in Depth, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review if you enjoyed our conversation with Natalia.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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They thought she was "just an anxious kid" growing up-- that, other than that, there was nothing really "wrong" with her. But writer and translator Giovanna Errore was suffering in silence; trying like hell to be a functional teenager and then young adult while something was happening in her body and her mind that she didn't understand. She was masking, feeling psychic and physical pain and, finally, a fibromyalgia diagnosis turned the key and unlocked the door, helping her heal. Chronic, unrelenting pain isn't just a physical malady; there is a psychological component to it-- the ceaseless patter of self-eroding doubt, isolation, and allowing the external doubt of your own reality to slowly become your own internal monologue.

Giovanna shares enthusiastically during our interview about her fascinating and hopeful research from her graduate work in psychological communication on chronically ill people in online communities, and why participation can increase self-determination, belonging, and satisfaction with life; perhaps that's why she likes Recovery Diaries so much! We are, after all, our own online community of vulnerable, capable human beings telling their stories and supporting each other.

Then Giovanna reads her essay “How Severus Snape Saved My Life,” exploring how this intense, cloistered fictional character can mirror the parts of us we keep hidden. After all, Snape had something going on inside which he couldn't share with anybody. Giovanna openly and freely talks with our host, Gabe Nathan (who thoroughly enjoyed editing Giovanna's essay several years ago) about therapy, stigma, work, accommodations, and the challenging, but necessary, choice to stop keeping secrets.

Subscribe to Recovery Diaries in Depth for more earnest, honest conversations like this one.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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A film is a snapshot in time. When we first met this extraordinary young woman, it was eight years ago. Back then, she was Lilah James, an extraordinarily talented fashion and conceptual designer creating a bold, beautiful collection for her final project, "Anxiety Descending." Each look represented a different facet or symptom of her CPTSD diagnosis and she and her work are beautifully represented in our film about her, Recovery on the Runway | PTSD, Mental Health & Fashion.

So much as changed since 2018, for Lilah, for the world. She is now Lilah Velez, happily married to her devoted and safe go-to support person. She is still living with and navigating life with CPTSD, finding healthy ways to cope with triggers and panic, trying her best to notice when things aren't going well before a crisis emerges so she can make a plan to take care of herself and her needs.

Lilah is open and honest about her experiences with mental healthcare, including her participation in intensive outpatient program (IOP) programs. Lilah, in her vulnerable and disarming way shares about how needing different levels of care at different points in her life, and knowing what she needs when she needs it, is not a sign of failure, weakness, or some kind of setback; it is simply meeting a therapeutic need. Lilah knows the foolishness of comparing your struggles to somebody else's and about the true cost of carrying secrets.

Lilah also discusses, in our candid and thoughtful interview, about how, to someone with CPTSD, finally getting what you've always longed for: a peaceful living space with a safe, supportive partner, can be a shock to the CPTSD brain, a brain that is always on high alert, looking for the next betrayal or unsafe situation. She is learning to calm that part of her brain and accept her safety, while continuing to create and take care of herself.

This episode is a must-hear for anyone with CPTSD or anyone who loves someone who lives with this mental health challenge. Lilah is hopeful, brave, and honest, and we hope you share this conversation with someone in your life who needs it.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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Someone once turned to our guest, Coli Sylla, and said to him, “Keep that mental health crap to yourself.” Thankfully, that bullshit didn't fly.

Award-winning screenwriter and director Coli Sylla talks about what happens when creativity, bipolar disorder, trauma, and ambition collide. While the entertainment industry has changed significantly over the last few decades, as Coli can attest there are parts of that world that still punish vulnerability, and encourage people with mental health challenges to shrink themselves.

Coli opens up about bipolar II disorder, ADHD, generalized anxiety, and how he manages depression, especially when grief and life stress hit at the same time. Coli talks openly about how living with mental health challenges as a Black man is different, and how many of his peers simply lack the language to express themselves, or know what to do when one of their own opens up. Coli reads aloud his powerful essay, “The Death That Gifted My Purpose, Living and Writing with Trauma and Bipolar Disorder,” recounting the night his college roommate Troy died and how a 3 a.m. wake-up has haunted him for decades.

Coli talks about the practical side of recovery: therapy, medication management, sleep, sleep, and sleep, and building a creative life that can survive mood shifts. Coli is working on a new film, f.31.9, the diagnostic code for bipolar disorder. We celebrate his creativity, his ambition, and his recovery in this compelling interview you won't want to miss.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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It's hard to imagine what you'd do if you're a touring musician whose primary instrument is the guitar, and you start to lose the use of your hands. It may seem like an incongruous response, but Paul Curreri chose to stop drinking. And it wasn't exactly an intentional choosing of sobriety. It was more, "I'm not drinking today and I'm probably not going to drink tomorrow either." And that has turned a choice that he makes every single day.

Like so many in the music industry, Paul felt connectedness to the life that alcohol gave him; the clubs and bars where everybody congregated, the vibe, but Paul knew that alcohol was taking away far more than it was giving him. He knew he was making up stories about "sober people" and what they were like, and he knew he needed to make changes to help his marriage and to help himself.

While he is still struggling with his hands, and the relatively recent diagnosis of tension myositis syndrome, he is trying to be and stay in the moment. He very recently returned to the stage for the first time in a very long time, and our conversation on Recovery Diaries in Depth is a vulnerable, emotional, sincere return to Paul's essay he wrote for us when he was five years into his sobriety from alcohol, an essay Paul had not returned to since it was published. His reading of that essay and our conversation are as genuine and as gentle as it gets.

Our conversation wanders like a contemporary folk song Paul may well have written himself; covering sobriety, relapse prevention, anger, ambivalence, chronic illness, identity loss, grief, recovery, the soothing noise of music to the din of modern life; Paul and our host, Gabe are two men living with mental illness who connect intimately and sincerely, and it's a conversation you won't want to miss out on.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

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Recovery Diaries in Depth guest Nick Emeigh and our show's host Gabe Nathan are old friends, both of whom live with mental health challenges. They're both passionate, compassionate, vulnerable, and unafraid (while simultaneously being afraid of pretty much everything). That's a lot of what makes them good friends, and so much of what makes this interview a must-hear.

Right out of the gate, their conversation goes right towards suicide. And it's no accident that it happens that way: Nick just came to this interview from a Bucks County school that recently lost a young man to suicide. Nick helps people in Bucks County every single day who are contemplating suicide, have attempted, family and community members who have suffered a suicide loss. He lives and breathes mental illness and suicide every single day as Executive Director of NAMI-Bucks County, PA. Nick has survived multiple suicide attempts, he is in addiction recovery, he is a peer, an advocate, a mental health superhero (watch this film to be acquainted with the coolest guy in tights since Peter Pan) and he never stops urging politicians, changemakers, and community members to pay attention, to listen.

To listen to stories. To his story.

Nick shares that story with refreshing honesty: a tale of intense bullying and early suicidal thoughts, an eating disorder shaped by control and approval, addiction, psychosis, trauma and grief. But what makes recovery sustainable or even possible? Therapy, medication, self-care, peer support, and the work of building NAMI Bucks County into a network that reaches tens of thousands through school education, support groups, and a warm line; and it's so, so much more. It's Nick's irrepressible personality that is heartwarming, sincere, and worthy of attention. So pull up a chair alongside these two old friends and listen. And share. And feel.

Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com. If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please call, text, or chat 988.

https://recoverydiaries.org/