Welcome to Back from the Abyss. I'm Dr. Craig Hecock.

This is a place for stories of hope, for psychiatric stories of healing. And today, I'm going to tell a couple

stories that came out of some letters that I found. Now, for those of you who know me, which is some of

my listeners, you know that I am a perjurer. Whatever is the genetic makeup of a hoarder, and it clearly

hoarding has major genetic component. Whatever that is, I have the opposite. So, for example,

one of my favorite things to do is to go through the garage, find stuff, and just put it out

on the curb and watch and wait, see how many minutes it will

take for someone to take it. And it's just shocking to me because it doesn't matter what I put

on the curb. Old skis, broken dresser, hula hoop painted some strange color. It's gone within minutes.

And clearly the people that picking up are full of joy. And I'm

shocked. I'm happy for them. And I'm getting a little vicarious joy and how much joy they're getting,

but I'm a perjure. You know, sometimes I think, hmm, maybe I'd be happier if I just lived in a little

house with my road bike, my cruiser bike, my running shoes, a frisbee, an LED frisbee for nighttime,

some music, my guitar. And that would be a simple, happy perjure life, but that's not how our

house has got a lot of stuff in it. So, but one thing I do hold on to dearly, because I have a huge sentimental part of my heart,

is I hold on to letters and I hold on to cards.

And the other day I was going through a file of letters of patients because anytime I get a letter

from a patient over the last 20 years I keep it and it was mind-blowing because the first letter

in the file was from the woman who I talked about was a couple months ago in the countertransference sadism episode.

So if you haven't listened to that, stop right now.

It's very short.

Well, it's half hour, but I think this story will mean much more if you go back and listen to that.

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