Paula Poundstone on the healing power of humor

Diagnosed with OCD

Poundstone believes she may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder when she was in fourth grade, but was not officially diagnosed until about 25 years ago.

“I would often find someone I was obsessed with and call that person,” Poundstone said. “I had the same thought over and over again. For example, I had a friend, Martha, at the school I went to, and all day I thought, ‘Martha doesn’t like me.’ When I finally asked her, she said, ‘That’s not what I thought.’ And I felt a huge sense of relief,” Poundstone explained.

“But the moment I hung up the phone, I thought, ‘Martha doesn’t like me.’ I would think that over and over again,” Poundstone said.

After receiving a diagnosis from a mental health professional, Poundstone said just knowing why she had these kinds of obsessive thoughts helped her to some degree.

She was prescribed medication to help with her OCD, but it developed a whole new problem.

He continued, “It was my fault because they told me to be careful when taking this medicine,” and “I was too careful, but the two things don’t seem to work well together.”

In Poundstone’s case, mixing the medication with alcohol made her OCD worse. She began experiencing many more symptoms than before.

“I had a day or two where I felt like I had to walk like a chess knight. I could take two steps forward, but then I would take a step to the side. It took a long time to pack up to go on tour. It was terrible,” Poundstone recalled.

When she stopped taking the medication, her symptoms disappeared. Although she no longer has OCD symptoms, she believes she is like a sleeping tiger that may resurface at some point.

For people who don’t understand what OCD feels like, she likes to reference movies. Type 3 Close Encounters.

In one scene, the Roy Neary character, played by Richard Dreyfuss, begins shaping mashed potatoes for dinner into the shape of Devils Tower National Monument. His wife and children are upset and crying. He says, “This is important. This makes sense.”

“And no one understood it. They had no idea what he was doing or what he was saying. Even if it made any sense, why did he have to make it out of mashed potatoes?” Poundstone said. His compulsion to create that shape is like what OCD can feel like to some people.

Dealing with Depression

Over the years, various therapists diagnosed Poundstone with depression.

“I think I’ve probably had it my whole life. I mean, it’s a biochemical problem,” she said. As she wrote her book, she discovered what helped her the most. A completely unscientific study of the human pursuit of happiness; She published in 2017. “The purpose was to make a joke, but the premise was pretty serious. The whole premise was that I was experimenting, doing things that I or other people thought would make me happy. Each chapter was a different experience.”

The first experiment she did was the “Get Fit” experiment, which introduced exercise into her life.

As it turns out, that’s exactly what worked for her.

“Exercise is one of the things that triggers the release of happy chemicals,” Poundstone said. When you exercise, your body can release feel-good endorphins that help relieve depression and anxiety.

“I was hoping it would just be sitting in a chair eating Doritos, but it wasn’t,” Poundstone said.

Poundstone walks whenever she can because she finds it helps with depression. She walks when taking the dog out, doing household chores, or going to appointments.

She also jumps on a pogo stick and adds one jump each day. At the time of the interview, her jump count was up to 55.

Poundstone is talking about mental health and people are listening.

On her podcast, “No One Listens to Paula Poundstone,” which just recorded its 400th episode, Poundstone often talks about mental health.

“‘Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone’ is a guide to life in comedy and it’s important because almost everyone has some form of mental health,” she said. “The biggest problem with mental health problems is the feeling that you are the only one who has them, and I would say that is not true.”

In addition to being a comedy, Poundstone said the podcast has a backbone of real information and likes to share what he believes is important for listeners to know.

Poundstone also jokes about mental health in his comedy routine. This not only helps you, but your audience as well.

“Comedy is a coping mechanism that nature gave us,” she said. “One of the things about comedy is that there’s this kind of laughter that I call ‘cognitive laughter.’ People laugh not because what you said is so clever, but because they think I have that in me. I do. A lot of times (topics) are things we don’t normally talk about, and mental health definitely falls into that category.”