Welcome to episode 265 with my guest Monica Hernandez.

I'm Paul Gilmarten. This is the Metal Illness Happy Hour, a place for honesty about all the

battles in our heads, for medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas, and sexual dysfunction

to everyday compulsive negative thinking. This show is not meant to be a substitute for

professional metal counseling. Not a therapist. This is in the doctor's office. It's more like a

waiting room that doesn't suck. The website for this show is mentalpod.com. Go there, check it out.

You can join the forum. You can read blogs and guest blogs. You can support the show financially.

You can fill out surveys, which we may read on the podcast. We get thousands and thousands of

people filling out these surveys every year, and it's a really, really big and important part of

the show. If you guys stopped taking these surveys, it would be sorely, sorely missed. I've learned so

much about you by you filling these surveys out. I'm just talking to one person in particular. The

rest of you have been wasting my time, and I'm a little pissed off. The person that did a good

job filling the survey out, you know who you are. Thank you. High five, up top. I hate myself.

Up top.

When I make it, I made it for a minute and 18 seconds before the self-loathing kicked in.

A lot of people have a time release, self-loathing, but mine are fast acting.

Sorry, those of you with misophonia, drank my tea a little too close to the microphone.

The, I'm very proud of this episode we have today. It's with a young woman named Monica Hernandez,

and she's 23 years old. I was talking about the surveys a little bit earlier.

I've learned so much from the surveys, particularly about women in their teens, 20s, and 30s.

Monica's, as I was editing her episode together, I thought to myself, this is like in many ways,

a classic episode of the trials and tribulations of an American girl.

...