“I shouldn’t do that?” I asked her.

She shook her head. And together we watched Reinita learn to stand up on her own.

I am so grateful to Dr. Oz for giving me the chance to go to Walter Reed, let alone to be a part of his core team. I always love appearing on his show, because I genuinely believe he’s having a hugely positive impact on his viewers.

When the producers approached me about being a regular guest, I thought it might be fun. I had seen Dr. Oz on Oprahand liked his bedside manner. But it’s been even more fulfilling than I anticipated. He has genuine warmth and a very clear and articulate way of communicating. He doesn’t dumb things down, but the way he speaks is accessible (his producers have suggested that I with my fancy vocabulary don’t always manage this …). He’s not an alarmist, which is so refreshing.

I love the part of his show that teaches the audience about what is and isn’t normal when it comes to their bodies. The audience has placards with normal written on one side and not normal on the other, and they vote on topics before he explains the truth behind them. I learned that snoring was not normal, for example. There’s a lot of content packed into his show. And I’m not surprised that he has one of the top daytime TV talk shows in America.

Dr. Oz was the one who wanted us to go to Walter Reed to take a look at the place and see what we could do, and it really did change my life. I am tempted to rent a bus and drive a bunch of self-involved New Yorkers down to D.C. to see the physical therapy wing. “We’re going to take a little trip, people! Come with me, all you mopers!”

Can’t you see Martha Stewart standing there in the middle of Walter Reed? She’d kill me for saying this, but I like to imagine the pre-Camp Cupcake Martha surveying the scene and then saying, “This is nothing compared to the disappointment of a room-temperature nut.”

NOW I WANT TO talk seriously about people who aren’t just depressed about their nails, but who are truly depressed or who are going through hard times without a staff of military doctors on hand. I have been there, and I want to reassure you that I know how impossible it feels. I promise you that things will get better if you are committed to climbing out of whatever hole you find yourself in.

First of all, there is no shame in undergoing therapy. I know there’s still a stigma in much of the country, and I think that’s too bad. Here in New York, the questions you hear most often are, “Where’s your apartment?” and “Who’s your therapist?”

I don’t think everyone needs to go all the time (nor can everyone afford to), but I do think everyone at some point or other can benefit from a little chat with a psychologist, whether it’s when the kids leave for college or when you’ve lost your job or when you’ve had a painful breakup or when someone close to you has died or when you’ve for no discernible reason lost the joy in life.

I think people are afraid to admit to problems, because once they admit to them, then those problems become real. But everybody has problems. If you think you don’t have any, then you do have a problem. Being in denial or feeling you can’t talk about things is so dangerous. You have to do somethingabout whatever your struggles are. It’s what gives us resources to move forward. It’s what life is.

People get very defensive if they think you’re saying what they’re doing isn’t normal. I don’t think it’s about normal. It’s about acceptable. When we talk about a situation that we need to change, it’s better not to think about whether or not it’s normal, but instead about whether or not it’s acceptable. Some things are contextual: People blow their noses on the street in India with no tissues. If you’re over there, you can do that. But if you’re on an American main street, you’d best break out the tissues.

Other things are never okay. It’s not acceptable to be abusive to a family member, or for a child to behave destructively, or for a job to make you miserable. You need to figure out what to do about those things, and there’s no shame in admitting you need a shrink, or your pastor, or your family, to help you out. It can make all the difference in the world just to have someone impartial to talk to once a week.

I say ever so glibly, “Go get some therapy,” but the value depends on the quality of the therapist. There’s a huge difference between a good one and a bad one. When I was young, my parents sent me to a lot of doctors, and some of them were far crazier than I was.

You have to shop around for someone who suits you. I think a therapist of the same gender sometimes helps with empathy, but you know when you’ve found someone you click with.

After trying a bunch of duds, eventually I wound up seeing a truly wonderful therapist five days a week—Dr. Phillip Goldblatt in New Haven, Connecticut. His sense of caring was palpable. He didn’t have to say anything; I could just sense his goodness and concern. I had the maturity of a gnat and a lot of issues. He made me deal with them. It took a long time. He would keep returning to things that came up. He absolutely gave me my life back.

Why, you may be thinking, did I have to go to therapy five times a week? Well, it wasn’t my idea, I’ll tell you that. It was an intervention that was thrust upon me. I’ll come clean: When I was seventeen, I made a serious suicide attempt. I was at yet another boarding school—I must have cycled through a dozen schools in as many semesters—and was ever more miserable. I had a debilitating stutter. I had no friends. I was incredibly lonely and depressed. I just wanted to end it all.

In my dorm room at Milford Academy I took far too many pills, then lay down to die with a sense of peaceful resignation.

Then, much to my frustration, I woke up the next morning. This wasn’t supposed to happenwas my first thought when I opened my eyes on a new day.

I hear that people who survive jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge report thinking on the way down that they want to live after all. When they survive, they feel so grateful. But I didn’t have that feeling. I was disappointed that I’d failed.

Now, of course, I’m glad the pills didn’t work.

I learned how to cope. I matured so much. When I got beyond my stutter at the age of nineteen, it reminded me of how I felt about the world when I was given glasses at the age of twelve. Everything changed. I hadn’t known that you could see individual leaves on trees, or that you could read road signs from a car window. Similarly, when I could speak clearly, my world opened up. I could actually be comfortable talking to people. It was like being more fully whole. I realized I had been living only a partial existence.

Going through all that helped me be a better person and a better teacher. I feel so much compassion for what young people go through. It is very hard to grow up, especially when you’re sensitive. You’re so vulnerable at that age. I worry about my friends’ children, and I try to be a good uncle.

The Megan Meier case, in which a teenager hanged herself after being tormented online by her friend’s mother posing as a teenage boy, is an example of the worst kind of inhumanity. That case made me want to unplug the Internet.

Of course, you can’t do that. You have to let young people live their lives. But you also have to do everything you can to show them that their teenage years are going to end and that there’s a world of possibility out there. We all need to do anything we can do to help children realize that they have value and gifts to give the world.

Sometimes people ask me when I figured out that I was gay. Well, for a very long time, I didn’t know whatI was. I knew what I wasn’t: I wasn’t interested in boys, but I reallywasn’t interested in girls. A lot of it was denial, but it was also that I didn’t feel unsatisfied. I’ve always loved working and have made that my priority. For many years, I described myself as asexual, and that’s probably still closest to the truth.