My adventures "across the pond" ... (part two)

This is the continuation of my post on Tuesday. It's about what happened as a result of my early morning curiosity getting the better of me and my overwhelming desire to broaden my perspectives on mental health and wellness... beyond North America.

You'll recall that I've been feeling claustrophobic. Itching to go beyond North America and join up with other non-profit agencies in Britain challenging mental health discrimination and "Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

Here, there are too many barriers to change, too many old stereotypes, too many unfounded fears. There is still too much discrimination and prejudice. It's time to start dismantling them in a way that's healthy and productive. To look beyond our own borders to other countries and learn from them. We can be a global community.

To be honest with you, I'm not convinced that turning mental illnesses and mental health issues into brain diseases is the way to go and that's the direction we're going here.  

You will remember, on Sunday morning, I awoke after a wonderful night's sleep. I typed "mental health recovery" in the BBC news search engine and found myself on BBC's Mental Health page.

I ended up on Skype, clad only in my pink nightie, talking to the renown social and business entrepreneur Robert Ashton. Let us say that when he appeared on my 24-inch iMac screen in full-colour, live and staring back at me, barely awake, and barely covered-up, my face blushed to matched the colour of my pink night gown. 

Here's Part two...

Robert Ashton and I had a good chat, despite my embarrassment. He smiled a lot, but he's going to help me to join Rethink, a 30-year-old charity dedicated to "working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

He's also linking me up to other British mental health charities that for decades have been fighting discrimination and prejudice, fear and ignorance while helping the one in four of us who live with mental health issues every day.

I discovered that Rethink – one of the largest of these charities – only allows Brits to join. So, I'm hoping Robert will help me join, as a Canadian. That will give me and you, too, a totally different perspective on Mental Health and Recovery. Robert has important connections with the British mental health community because he's involved in "spreading the word" – one of his social entrepreneurial passions. He also lives with depression.

Robert's definition of "entrepreneurship" is very enlightened:

"I'm a business writer, speaker, broadcaster with a passion for all that enterprise can deliver," he wrote to me in a Facebook exchange. "You don't have to start a business to be entrepreneurial, just get it into your head that you are in control of your life and stop letting others lead you where you don't want to go!"

One of his connections is British mental health activist Dawn Willis, Vice Chair, Regional Committee, at Rethink, Mental Health Services.

Robert arranged for us to meet on Facebook and we've already become "friends" – we have 13 mutual Facebook "friends", I discovered. The international community of activists and advocates is remarkably small. I'm hoping Dawn will help me and perhaps, I can help her. We can help each other. Communicate and collaborate. Share our ideas and learn from each other.

Synergy. 1 + 1 = 3. You know. Two heads are better than one. 

We have to do something, here, on this side of the Atlantic. Talking Therapies are big in Britain. There's more to mental health there than PILLS. I'm getting very bored and increasingly upset with the neuroscientific approach that's overpowering psychiatry here in North America. 

ENOUGH! We've got to make some changes. How to go about that process? We have to voice our concerns. And if not us, who will? We have to raise our voices. Collectively. We have to start agitating for changes. Healthy changes that include all approaches to mental health, including group therapy and peer support. 

Like a thoughtful and careful and prolonged period of diagnosis and a 60-minute hour psychotherapy session instead of 15 minutes – The McDonaldization of Psychiatry, according to my friend, Tufts University author, poet and clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ron Pies. He's also Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric Times, the world's largest online psychiatric journal with more than 41,000 readers worldwide.

Pies is sounding a call for the survival of his profession. In Great Britain, there's a strong post-psychiatry movement afoot with psychiatrist Philip Thomas at the helm. I attended several sessions with Dr. Thomas last June at a Toronto International Alternatives to Recovery Conference.

Even my York University "friend" Julie Gazzola is excited about this prospect of my linking up with the British Rethink movement and other British organizations committed to change through education and communication.

Here's her reaction via Facebook – "Good for you, that's great! I worked as a social worker on a children-with-disabilities team. I loved my time in England. And yes, talking therapies are much bigger there. It's an interesting place."

So, I await word of my pending membership in Rethink. In the meantime, let's move forward. Let's branch out and expand our community here at Coming Out Crazy. Let's see what's happening 'across the pond'. Let's go global. Isn't that what blogging is all about? Social Media for Social Change to benefit the greater good of society. Community.

We can learn so much from each other. It's about time. Don't you think? Let me know! Comment, please! 

(In all honesty, I cannot answer all your personal emails, though I'm thrilled to receive them. I wish I could. That's what the comments on this blog are for. If you wish to remain anonymous – and I understand why – create a special email address, or a different username or identity. But, please, comment and keep on commenting.)

I want to hear your voices! Your ideas and perspectives. How else can we become a strong community and a force for change? That's what must happen. That's my vision for this blog! 

Change through the exchange of information, ideas, suggestions, experiences. All are valid when it comes to healthy recovery and healing. It's called "talking therapy"!

Thanks so much, in advance, for your support.

Speak soon!

sln

Comments

[Julie]

Thank goodness for the internet....it makes this kind of working together/collaboration/synergy possible!

I think one of the key differences between Great Britain (and indeed, the rest of Europe) and North America is 'our' (North American) cultural ideals of work work work work work!

Having lived and worked in a number of countries (England, Canada, US, and Australia), I can say that our focus on work to the exclusion of all else is soul-destroying.

In England, my experience was that 4 weeks of vacation time is standard (with many people moving up to 5 or 6 weeks after a few years in a job) - and people TAKE all 4 weeks and go somewhere and relax and enjoy themselves.

Here in North America, we wouldn't dream of doing that because we are too worried about what might happen to our jobs. We have a constant anxiety about all the work we might have to do when we get back - so we don't take time off (or we take a week of vacation but spend it running around doing 'errands'), we don't recharge, and we burn out in a million different ways.

When I worked in England, we had about 10 bank holidays (civic holidays) a year - and my fellow workers used to complain that this was too little!

Can you imagine the outcry here if we tried to add more holiday Mondays (remember all the fuss and muss about the 'lost productivity' of Family Day?)

Point being - we here in North America don't know how to relax. We don't know how to work to live - instead, we spend our time living to work.

Whether we have 'mental health issues' or not, this constant working means we don't spend time in our LIVES because we are 'too busy'. We don't spend time doing what inspires us (gardening, painting, writing, cycling, whatever!). We don't spend time with family and friends, laughing, loving, being together.

These are the type of activities that keep us grounded, connected, and 'recovering'. But we don't do them (or if we do, we certainly don't do them enough!) because we are too busy trying to keep up with the rat race.

I see this especially in our young people.

My friends from England and Australia finish high school or university, and often take a 'gap year' - where they often travel the world. Volunteering, working at summer camps (where I met a lot of my now life-long friends), meeting other people.

Especially in Australia, it's a cultural expectation that young people WILL get out and travel and see the world. So off they go. Seeing things, experiencing, living life, not worrying about starting on the 'career path' that we North Americans are obsessed with.

Our young people are pressured to choose a life-long career at the age of 13 or 14, being told if they don't decide in Grade 9 what they 'want to do', they won't get into university, and they won't accomplish anything in their life (I only wish I was exaggerating, but this type of pressure is very very prevalent for our young people).

Why all the expectation and pressure?? They rush through university and/or college, taking extra courses to graduate early, so they can 'get a good job' and start making money.

I'm not suggesting that working hard is always a bad thing, that we should all drop out and sit around all day doing nothing.

Nor am I saying that we should discourage our young people from wanting to develop long and illustrious careers.

Only that we must have balance. We must branch out beyond the rat race. We must step off that treadmill long enough to catch our breath, know what our life purpose is, and 'recover' our health (mental and otherwise).

So I think it's time we all slowed down a little.

[Sonia]

Hello Sandy & Julie,

There has been a social movement developing in th US the focus of which is "slow" living. I met one of the people who is actively involved: a retired youth detention educator/social worker. She and her husband are both retired, enjoying thei time sharing slow time with young people seeking a healthier life path.

If we want off the treadmill, we must be prepared to face consequences: greater peace of mind, lower income, walking to neighbourhood shops rather than driving to the mall, chatting with neighbours in front/back gardens, parks, playgrounds, volunteering at the local library, local school's story time, etc.

In other words: we choose to believe in the rat race, for the most part; we choose to worry about work, and the list goes on.

or ...

We negotiate a working contract that gets work done, allows for meals with family every day, and take our holiday with a clear conscience.

Seems easy; it isn't. I work at this every week, striving to balance achievement with satisfaction. Not too long ago, I heard someone say, "enough = wealthy: enough food, friends, sunshine, rain, work, hobbies, etc."

When I feel the pressure of deadlines, and the work is piling up, I stop and focus on "enough": do I have enough time, energy, concentration, patience.

Then, I focus on "enough": have I done enough work to meet the deadline AND please myself (treat, walk, nap, etc.).

Then I focus on "enough": there is enough work to last forty lifetimes, so I'll do my bit and leave the rest in the hands of others to carry forward.

Sonia

[Sandy Naiman]

This comment/question came in from Felix Bloomflied in Australia.

Felix was having technical problems posting it, so I'm posting his comment for him:

Felix asks: "Ok, it's clear that you don't like the neuroscience approach, although I'm not exactly sure what that entails. Is that CBT? (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) Or are you talking about Pharma? And if you are protesting that these are overrepresented, what change are you advocating. What voice do you want to be more heard?"

My response which follows in three (3) parts addresses Felix's question as well as Olivia's comment and the comments by Julie and Sonia.

Thanks for your patience.

[Sandy Naiman]

Here's the first of my three-part response to Felix Bloomfield's comment. That's only way I can manage it. My response is long.

Part One:

Good question, Felix. With a complex answer. Bear with me! And thanks, in advance, for your patience.

The voices that I believe need to be heard are those from all people with all kinds of mental health issues, emotional problems, mental illnesses and psychiatric diagnoses – who aren't happy with their lives and the way they are feeling – physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

Here, 75% of us never ask or seek help. There are far too many people who are not happy or healthy or satisfied with their lives. They live with psychiatric conditions, yet the way they've been "treated" by medical professionals, never involves the option of full recovery.

Recovery!

Real recovery. Which can be living meaningful and satisfying lives. So they can go to school, have active social lives, become gainfully employed, build on their achievements and develop self-esteem and self-confidence and self-worth, have FUN, live in loving relationships, and participate actively in their communities – outside the ghetto of "mental illnesses". Give back. There's more to life than "survival". There's flourishing. There's happiness.

There's hope. What's life without hope?

That isn't an option for most of us ensnared by the biomedical approach to the "treatment" of mental illnesses on this continent and in Canada.

Healing, which is different and involves the whole person – mind, body, soul and spirit – in most cases isn't an option here.

And that's because the drug companies (greed-driven) and the American Psychiatric Association, which is in the pocket of the drug companies, for the most part, rule. (And that's another story.) The American Psychiatric Association publishes the DSM-IV and soon to be released DSM-V.

The best source of information on the drug companies and their activities is on Philip Dawdy's blog, Furious Seasons:

http://www.furiousseasons.com

Philip is a journalist and the leading U.S. watchdog of the major American drug companies – especially those that manufacture psychotropic drugs. In North America, neuroscience rules, at the moment. Philip has a bipolar disorder diagnosis but he is now drug-free. There are other bloggers in the U.S. He is by far the most reliable and accurate, though he has a bias. He's pretty angry. However, he is a journalist with an excellent track record. Right now he's fundraising. He writes his blog independently.

[Sandy Naiman]

Part Two of my response to Felix Bloomfield's comment/question:

Here, in North America and especially in Canada, recovery from a mental illnesses like schizophrenia or a bipolar disorder or severe depression or any number of psychiatric conditions or disorders is practically unheard of or even considered possible in medical circles. Symptom-control is the order of the day.

People can and do recover. That's another story. Google Patricia Deegan, Mary Ellen Copeland, Dr. Daniel Fisher.

Doctors – most psychiatrists, other than psychoanalysts – cling to a THEORY that "chemical imbalances in the brain cause mental illnesses."

This theory has never been scientifically proven. See http://chemicalimbalance.org

It's overly simplistic. A ridiculously popular assumption. Too many people with emotional problems/mental health issues are given psychiatric diagnoses because that's the only way they can receive "universal" health insurance coverage in Canada. (Other options are very costly – upwards of $100 per hour.) They are told that they have chronic illnesses, like diabetes, that need to be treated constantly with medications, like diabetes is treated with insulin.

Bad analogy. Not true. Very popular here.

Many of psychotropic drugs are proving to be ineffective and deleterious. They have severe side effects and are extremely difficult to stop taking. You can't go off them cold turkey without becoming very sick. You need to wean yourself off them very, very gradually. They're very powerful drugs that affect the neurochemistry of the brain.

But what's missing here? The psychotherapy that should accompany the prescribing of any of these powerful psychotropic drugs. Most psychiatrists give 15-minute appointment and a prescription.

As I've often said, you don't get insight from a pill bottle. That's where the "talking therapies" come in. They're crucial to real mental health recovery. There are many different approaches – psychotherapy, cognitive therapy, behavioural therapy, psychoanalysis, group therapy, and I'm sure many others.

They're not big here. Drugs are. Drugs have overwhelmed the "talking therapies" – which, after all, a major investment of time. Here, we're a very speedy culture, as you've read in comments above.

Yet, drugs are just tools that treat symptoms. (Only one set of tools among many approaches.)

Drugs affect the chemistry of the brain. They often control symptoms, but have side effects. Sometimes serious ones. They numb the brain, the mind. You don't feel like yourself on many psychotropic drugs. That, in itself, is depressing.

Therapy heals the mind. Two very different approaches. Sometimes both are needed. (I use both, though the drug I take, for me, is completely innocent. No side effects. And it's an anti-convulsant used in the treatment of epilepsy. Been around for years. For me, it's magical and I've been taking it since 1988. The moment I started taking it, my major manic episodes stopped!)

There are all kinds of other supports and approaches to reaching mental health recovery. Especially peer support. It's hard to find all these other supports here because they don't have the resources to advertise. There's the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario. The Krasman Centre. Family Outreach and Response Program. Others. But their splintered and scattered across the country. We don't have agencies – like Time to Change http://www.time-to-change.org.uk/ or Mind for better mental health http://www.mind.org.uk/ or Rethink http://www.rethink.org/

These groups advocate. They are activist groups. And they are challenging discrimination, which is the real problem.

We have to start CHALLENGING DISCRIMINATION, Felix.

That's the root of this whole problem.

Challenge though education. That means "Educating the Educators." That means, the doctors, who aren't listening! How can they hear what we're saying in 15-minutes?

TO US! And one in four of us are affected by mental illnesses.

We have the Canadian Mental Health Association but it's splintered, too! And it's structured differently.

[Sandy Naiman]

Part Three – FINAL PART – of my response to Felix Bloomfield’s comment/question:

The terms "mental health" and "mental illness" are not interchangeable. Nor is "emotional health" – like stress, self-harming, bereavement, suicidal feelings. All of us can learn coping techniques, too. Ways to help with day-to-day ups and downs. Thought diaries, anger management, and ways of managing negative thoughts.

These skills are available, but here, they're not easily or always freely accessible. They are in community health centres – which are few and far between and are always struggling for resources. Can't afford to advertise.

Also, there is little support for those among us who are caregivers. So what happens? A whole family can get really overwhelmed if one member is struggling.

In short, Felix, in this country, when we are stressed, we're given a prescription, in most cases.
When we're having any emotional problems, often we're given a prescription for that, too.
When we're diagnosed with a mental illness – and these diagnoses are often done in half an hour. "The McDonaldization of Psychiatry." Quick Fixes. We're given a medication for that, too. And sometimes, not just one, but two or three medications.

We demand quick fixes!

Our healthcare insurance system only covers medical doctors. Not psychologists or any other counsellors or therapist or therapies. Unless you opt to try another approach and go to a Community Health Care Centre or to a branch of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

It's all or nothing.

Not all psychiatrists take this approach. Yet it takes months to get an appointment with a psychiatrist.

When we're in absolute emotional distress or severely mentally ill, and someone hands you a pill and says, "Take this, you'll feel better."

What would you do?

Here, that's the standard approach. Julie and Sonia are right. This culture is speeding up all the time. Faster and faster. Everyone wants stuff. More of everything. They work harder and harder because they want that stuff. They think they need it.

I have enough. I'm rich. To know you have enough is to be rich. But over here, Felix, that's the exception, not the rule.

I'm 60 years old and I'm very lucky. I've worked all my life in spite of a serious mental illness. In many ways, my working and achieving has healed me as much as my 49-years of psychotherapy. A drug destroyed my kidney function. In 1994, after two years on dialysis my sister donated a kidney.

I am very lucky. Almost 10 years ago, I married a wonderful "rock" of a man. We have a great marriage. I have it all. I take a medication twice a day for to stabilize my mind. I can easily become manic. I have the best psychiatrist in the country who gives me a 60-minute hour. Sometimes more.

I've also been hospitalized 20 times for mania and had several courses of ECT and my mother was told there was no hope for me. She chose not to believe in those psychiatrists back in the 1960s. She chose to believe in me.

I'm very lucky. I've worked hard to be where I am today. And timing is everything. I grew up in an age when drugs didn't rule.

Here's one of my favourite lines.

"Stop the world – I want to get off!"

It's the title of a remarkably prescient 1961 Tony Award-winning British musical.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_World_-_I_Want_to_Get_Off

Maybe it's about time we considered taking action. Hell, here, in North America, we don't know how to relax, as Julie and Sonia so accurately point out.

I am asking that people, all of us to rise up and begin agitating politically for change by asking questions and organizing and mobilizing – not out of anger, but out of knowledge and information.

We have information if we branch out and explore what other countries are doing about mental health issues and in their mental health strategies – New Zealand, Australia, and Great Britain.

They offer hope. What are we offered here? Ask yourself that question. Start writing to the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

info@mentalhealthcommission.ca

Explore their website and see if what they're doing is going to address your concerns.

http://www.mentalhealthcommission.ca/English/Pages/default.aspx

Speak out! Make your concerns known.

WE NEED HOPE. I'm here to offer hope, but I'm just one voice. The more voices, the better. Your tax dollars are funding the Mental Health Commission of Canada.

Start asking them questions.

We need hope.

That's what's missing here in Canada! Hope.

How can we exist without hope?

I hope this answers your question, Felix.

[Carolyn]

There is so much to say that I can not articulate.

I feel the problem with the recovery movement has been the focus on what the Government can do, what organizations can do and not enough on what we can do in a real fashion.

Of course there is the take care of yourself mantra. We will criticise doctors for hashing out pills like pez but not a mental health patient for eating fried food (which effects the brain chemistry).

The word isn't find what you need to make a job and life work, but get a psychiatrist to tell you what you need to make a job and life work.

What no one wants to say is that one of the largest problems has been the removal of individual responsibility, because its unPC.

If I'm manic and I spend too much money that is my fault hands down. Now, when I feel symptomatic I hand my husband my cards.

Its not that I don't agree more can be done to help but in the recovery movement I believe 50% of the message should be: routine, exercise, healthy eating, stress/time management, taking your meds (if that's part of your treatment plan)and proper sleep. We can't expect doctors to cross the whole bridge.

I know if I do my part I am better able to receive the services the recovery movement talks about. Part of recovery is constant recovery, always sleep on schedule, always exercise, trying the best you can.

I'm in remission as I call it right now, it may be another 6 months before I go into another episode. When I do, I know I will be able to recover because I know what I need to do. If we take away personal responsibility and say "if only there was more therapy..." we take something away.

In summation, the recovery movement is important, our Gov't and culture need to wise up in several areas but WE are also important and crucial to our own recovery movement. If I do my 90% I know I can make it.

[Sandy Naiman]

Carolyn,

Thank you for your thoughtful and perceptive comment. I think what I should clarify is what "Recovery" means in terms of mental illnesses/psychiatric diagnoses/emotional trauma/mental health.

Let me tell you a quick story that might clear up what appears to be some confusion.

In October 2007, I was gave a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Psychosocial Rehabilitation Association of Ontario. http://www.psrrpsontario.ca/

I wasn't the keynote. That was given by Marianne Farkas of Boston University's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation. http://web.bu.edu/cpr/about/profiles/mfarkas.html

I was the opening act.

After my talk, I had to go right back to Seneca, where I was teaching but I spoke for a few minutes to Marianne and to another psychiatrist at the University of Western Ontario. Most of the people in the group were psychotherapists, social workers – very few were medical doctors. All were working in Psychosocial and Psychiatric Rehabilitation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_rehabilitation

Not unlike physical rehabilitation, when someone has broken a bone or had serious physical injuries.

Psychosocial/Psychiatric Rehabilitation helps people who have been emotionally and mentally traumatized or whose lives have been destroyed by mental or emotional illness/psychiatric diagnoses, regain their ability to function in their communities.

These therapists work provide a variety of services, combining "pharmacologic treatment, independent living and social skills training, psychological support to clients and their families, housing, vocational rehabilitation, social support and network enhancement, and access to leisure activities" – to help empower people. Is it recovery? For some people it is. Just like the Clubhouse Movement is recovery.

It depends on the individual.

There are many way to interpret psychiatric or psychosocial rehabilitation.

After that meeting, I realized, that I wasn't just rehabilitated. I was in recovery from my very severe mental illness. Had been, for years.

No one had ever suggested it to me. I was always told I had a chronic illness like diabetes that had to be treated with medication, like people with diabetes need insulin. Even though for nine months, during 1999, I had gone on a "drug holiday" and was fine.

After that October 2007 meeting, I informed my psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, that I was in recovery.
We discussed what recovery means. He was a little dubious at first, but now he's come 'round.

Psychiatrists aren't really sure what recovery means either. They never learn about it in their training. They're taught, most of them, that mental disorders are like physical illnesses. The latest notion is that their "brain diseases" – but that's all the neuroscience talking. And neuroscience isn't psychiatry. It's just a trend, here in North America, right now. And I think it's a trend that can be potentially hurtful – or more hurtful than helpful.

For me, Recovery means that I do not and never have considered myself to be "dis-abled" by my mental illness/psychiatric diagnosis.

I work. I'm financially independent. I pay taxes. I am, now, happily married. I have a very rich life.

Before I was married, I had a very rich life, too. I didn't know it could get better, but it did. I've worked very hard for my recovery. Primarily through years of psychotherapy which has given me insight. Medication helps. It's secondary. By far. Just a tool. Psychotherapy is the main act!

I started my psychotherapy before we had OHIP in 1960.

I have been in many types of therapy, including:

• One-on-one psychotherapy with several psychiatrists (besides all the psychiatrists I saw during my 20 hospitalizations).

• With social workers – "Family Therapists" – I saw two at one time and this therapy was covered by my private insurance through The Toronto Sun and then, by me.

• Group therapy with a psychiatrist.

• Peer support therapy, with my husband, when we were dealing with his 14-year-old daughter, my step-daughter, shortly after we were married.

My mother and my family have been very supportive. My husband is a rock. I have several very close and supportive friends, whom I support, too. Reciprocating support is very therapeutic. I have had dogs since 1990 – also very therapeutic. Very healing. One of my dogs, Murphy, was a St. John's Ambulance Therapy Dog.

Recovery means taking responsibility for your life and taking action. It means working towards having a meaningful life, whatever that life is, for you.

In January/February issue of The Walrus magazine, I wrote a story about one program called "Pathways to Recovery" – http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.01-health-getting-it-together/

In that story, Tanya Shute, the executive director of The Krasman Centre for Community Mental Health in Richmond Hill
http://krasmancentre.com/?page_id=2
describes Recovery as “a person’s ability to self-actualize, with or despite one’s mental health experience.”

Elaine Amsterdam of Toronto’s Gerstein Crisis Centres defined Recovery this way: “It’s about living well. The meaning of that is different for everyone and can include a range of different approaches.”

According to the Krasman Centre, Recovery can be summed up in the following five key concepts: hope, personal responsibility, education, self-advocacy, and support.

Hope is probably the most challenging of all these concepts.

We are all unique. So recovery means different things to each of us. But, I think, rather than waiting for governments to do something, each of us has to do something for ourselves. Try to take baby steps towards our own recovery.

Even if the first baby step is getting up in the morning, a beautiful sunny morning like today, get dressed and go for a walk in the fresh spring air.

You do your 90% or 80% or begin with 10% and don't depend on anyone else. It's self-determination.

Like Nike says, "Just Do It!" Whatever that "it" is for you! Make a small start.

Constant. You bet. Like eating and breathing and living one moment at a time.

I don't know if this helps. I'm not a routine kinda gal. That's not my style. Everyone is different. But I don't think about Recovery. I didn't even know I had recovered until I spoke at that meeting on October 5, 2007. I didn't know Recovery was possible.

It was a real epiphany for me. All these years, I was living to the fullest while believing I had this chronic illness that would never get better.

It's all in the way you look at it, Carolyn. I don't have a chronic illness. I'm just fine. The doctors are brainwashing us into believing we're chronically ill. We're not. Even if we take a pill or two every day. Lots of people take a pill every day. For high blood pressure. Any number of things.

They're just fine. Well, we can be just fine, too. It's not seeing is believing. It's believing is seeing.

Now, after I told him, Dr. Bob knows that I'm in recovery from my mental illness, my severe mood disorder, my "unipolar mood disorder with a vulnerability to mania." I know how to handle it and I do.

Insight is the key. I can tell when I'm becoming a little high and I can prevent it from becoming a serious problem. I know I need sleep. Perhaps .5 mg of clonazepam, which I take only when I need it.

I know myself.

That, for me, is recovery.