Go Help Yourself: A Comedy Self-Help Podcast to Make Life Suck Less · Misty Stinnett & Lisa Linke

More Than Comedy: On People Pleasing, Mental Health, and Self-Discovery with Jim O'Heir

·19 min·1 clip

Jim describes a 1996 depression, panic attacks, and starting therapy after doctors found nothing physically wrong.

1. Go Help Yourself, the comedy self-help podcast to make life suck less, centers this episode on self-help, mental health, and Jim O'Hare. 2. Lisa Linke hosts with Jim O'Hare as special co-host and guest, and Misty Stennett is away on a work call. 3. The episode asks whether self-help books matter when a person already relies on friends, family, and therapy. 4. Jim says he does not typically read self-help books and has never picked up titles like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. 5. He names The Secret, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and “how to be an alpha male” as examples he has seen but not used. 6. Lisa points out that self-help has historically targeted women, while some books now lean into toxic masculinity and “alpha male” branding. 7. Jim says his family and friend circle are his system for talking through career ups and downs. 8. He describes being in a “workflow” and assuming that after each job he might never work again, even though the phone still rings. 9. Lisa says that mindset led her to conclude that Jim’s pessimism can make room for the best-case scenario. 10. Jim says his mother told him, after he started therapy, that “we don’t do that” and that you should “go out and plow the field.” 11. He recalls going to a doctor first, getting tests, and hearing that nothing was physically wrong even though he was “flop sweating” and his heart was racing. 12. Jim says he had panic attacks during a CBS meeting for a Harvey remake with Perry Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Jessica Hecht, and Suzy Kurtz. 13. He says he got through the meeting while “jumping out of” his skin and then dealt with panic attacks during the shoot. 14. Jim explains that he was put on Zoloft and went to weekly therapy sessions. 15. He says the therapist suggested he had not fully grieved his father, which he initially resisted. 16. Lisa relates her own pandemic panic attacks, agoraphobia, and head-only sweating, and Jim says the fear can spiral for days afterward. 17. The conversation turns to therapy as a form of self-help that gives someone an unbiased person who listens and asks questions. 18. The episode is loose, joke-heavy, and openly confessional, with the hosts riffing on Midwest habits, illness, and work anxiety. 19. People interested in people pleasing, panic attacks, and therapy. 20. Skip it if you want polished advice over personal digressions.

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