Hope and Recovery...

Tomorrow I have a 9:30 appointment with my psychiatrist Dr. Bob. It's been too long.

The last time I saw him was on Monday, September 1, almost two months ago. Before school started. Everything was going tickety-boo. 

Since then, it's been a rather rocky ride. Up and down. I'm overdue for a 60-minute session with him and I always feel 100 lbs. lighter when I leave his office. I'm counting the hours. He's been out of town and my killing teaching timetable this term at Seneca has taken its toll.

In exactly 24 hours, I'll be sitting in his plant-filled office across his desk, eye-to-eye pouring my heart out. Crying, too. That's how I feel right now. Fragile. 

Did I ever promise you that recovery was going to be a rose garden? Well, it's not. Mental Health Recovery has many meanings, depending on where you live on this planet.

For me, it's lifelong learning. Growing pain. The more I learn, the less I know. Wonderful.

For Elly Litvak "recovery is a self-directed journey, process of healing, growth and self-discovery that has its ups and downs while striving toward balance and enriched quality of life." 

For Priscilla Ridgway and her former University of Kansas team, it's a Strengths Recovery Self-Help Workbook called Pathways to Recovery.

For Mary Ellen Copeland it's a Wellness Recovery Action Plan called WRAP.

For psychiatrist Daniel B. Fisher, in recovery from schizophrenia, it's his National Empowerment Center.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. 

For everyone, anywhere on earth Mental Health Recovery is an individual journey. Unique. Your personal story. We all have our own recovery stories. They're ongoing. All different. So perhaps it's healthy to start talking, because as you talk, you learn as you go.

That's what happens to me in Dr. Bob's office.

Mental health recovery is ever changing and evolving. Everybody defines it differently. For me, it's sleep, psychotherapy and gaining insight. 

What is it for you? Let me know. Let's share our definitions here!

I haven't been sleeping well lately. So my mind isn't clicking along as it usually does. 

I cannot focus. All I did yesterday was walk my dogs. Riley and Lucy and I went for a 90-minute walk to check out the Halloween decorations in the neighbourhood. It felt good until the guilt set in because I knew I should be doing other things. 

Recovery is hard work. It demands one thing. HOPE. Without it, we cannot heal! 

Despite what one of my favourite writers Barbara Ehrenreich asserts in her latest book – Bright-Sided – How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America – which I have not yet read, only read about, I still can't help being a cockeyed optimist – "stuck like a dope with a thing called hope and I can't get it out of my heart."

Does that mean I wander about in a golden haze of mindless bliss? Please. I'm too passionate, too driven, too obsessed to see a better world. To help make it happen. I'm too impatient.

I'm sure my positive outlook would make Ehrenreich cringe. I consider my psychiatric history a gift. It's given me a raison d'etre. A passion. A cause. You. Coming Out Crazy. My craze for change. It hasn't really stopped me.

I'm innately positive. Resilient. I've learned to be. Without optimism or hopefulness, the foundation of mental health recovery – not anger, which I think is too toxic an emotion – there can be no recovery, no healing.

Without anticipation for a better tomorrow, without believing there is a chance for a better life, I wouldn't be here.

Why else get out of bed every morning?

The promise of a little more learning, new experiences, meeting new people – even if all this knowledge is acquired through my genius for making mistakes – I learn from everything and everyone. 

It's exciting. Painful sometimes. With indelible lessons.

Too many mental health professionals deny their patients hope by doling out dire prognoses and prescriptions. Not much opportunity for talking. "You'll have to take this medication for the rest of your life because you have a chronic mental illness, a disease – like diabetes."

Talk about dashing hopes. People report this all the time and it infuriates me. It's not necessarily true.

We deserve the right to choose our own pathways to recovery. It's tough but hope paves the way.

Recovery means hope! Hope leads to mental health recovery.

So here's to hope for a better day. Do a little something for yourself to make it happen.

Speak soon!

Comments

[mjane]

I think you'll find this interesting...from a UK organization called Elemental...

One more perspective:

The difference between recovery and thriving:

http://www.elemental.org.uk/html/differences1.html

Hope you feel bouncy after your time with Dr. Bob!
I need a nap myself.

[Josh Schmiedchen]

You hit things so on the head with that bottle of V8. It's true that a lot of mental health pros as well as doctors i've seen in the past say that this is like the end of your life. You have anxiety and stress problems or something, you will have to take these pills for the rest of your life.

I agree that we deserve to choose our own path to recovery indeed. I suffer with anxiety and stress problems and I met a stand in doctor at the clinic I go to in my small NW Ontario town. I can't remember her name, but if I could see her again I would. When everything was caving inwards on me, she suggested options for me but let me choose what option I wanted to go. She didn't force pills on me or some weird test. She gave me options and informed me on them and I was left to decide which path I wanted to walk. It felt good to know that there were options and that I had choices and something wasn't just being forced down my throat and it being just the one path, take it or leave it.

I will agree before that day a couple months ago I had no hope things looked dim and dark and that my life would not change and I would be stuck in this endless loop. Have that option of choice gave me some Hope that maybe there was a light at the end of the tunnel and I have seen it.

[Sandy Naiman]

First. Dear MJane...

I've been looking into EleMental and the differences between Recovery and Thriving and I think I'm going to devote a whole post to this fascinating British perspective and blog. It's remarkably gentle, thoughtful, perceptive and not angry, though political. I'm very impressed though on some points, not entirely in agreement.

But... I am always happy to respect another point of view and to agree to disagree in a spirit of civility. This whole pursuit, after all, is part of my education.

Thank you for bringing EleMental to my attention. I'm very grateful.

Also, I'll let you know how things go with Dr. Bob, tomorrow. I'll be surprised if a layer or two of my onion doesn't peel off, but who knows? We'll see.

You are generous and kind. I am very happy that you've joined our Coming Out Crazy community.

I send you hugs!
xox
sln

[Sandy Naiman]

Now... Hi Josh,

Wow, what a great compliment embedded in your comment. I like hitting "things" on the head. It's not often that people respond with such speed and agreement. I know what I know but I never know for sure what you know.

So, this is all a little bit of a gamble. I'm thrilled that you chanced on an enlightened "stand-in" doctor who helped you begin to find your own way. Would that more doctors would?

We have so much educating to do, Josh.

Especially in Educating the Educators... the doctors who teach and reteach doctors old ideas.

Hope is the answer. The first answer. It may lead to other questions, but without hope?

Honestly, I just don't know where we would be. Many psychologists, social workers and non-psychiatric therapists know this, but until the psychiatrists "twig" to it and begin to care about people as individuals again – until they see that neuroscience is one small part of the story and certainly not the main thread, we're going to have to fight to be able to be supported in our hopes and in finding our own pathways to recovery and perhaps thriving, if that is your bent.

Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel. Without hope, all is still darkness.

And you won't find hope in a pill bottle, either. Pills are tools. Hope drives us to mental and emotional and spiritual and even, sometimes, physical health and wellness. It never hurts. It helps.

Without hope, there is no life. Hope fights indifference. Hope fuels empathy, compassion and caring. Hope is energy that cannot be measured, but it can move mountains and change the world. Hope is trusting in yourself and believing in a better world and a better way.

I thank you so much and send appreciation and affection along with gratitude for your support.

You have no idea how much it means to me.

Hugs,
sln

[Robin Harvey]

Hope a good sleep creeps upon you soon SLN.
I have spoken with so many people who have found the "you have an illness for life and need to accept this treatment to get by" as a liberating message that I no longer think it is a bad thing.
They have told me it helps them by explaining and giving them an answer to a puzzle they may have struggled with for years. As long as it is presented as an option, without judgment, and treatment looks at the entire person, I think it can be just fine.
It may not be for me. Or you.
As always, I think the difficulty starts when judgment has crept in - bringing with it stigma and all its horrible limitations.
For me at least, and this colours my own personal prejudice for certain, giving us looneys the chance to maintain as much personal responsibility and ownership for our own recovery - whatever path any treatment takes - is the key to hope.
If we are not ultimately given control, no matter the approach or philosophy for treatment, we become dehumanized shells. I think talking, sleeping, a regulated life, exercise, eating, medication, meditation, really whatever I can throw into the pot so to speak - if it will help keep me strong, keeps me in recovery - as long as I am ultimately making the choices. Yes I need guides, I need to know when to reach out, but you are so right when you stress how important it is for anyone dealing with any mental health issue to be valued by the helpers. You are an inspiration. Sweet dreams.
RH

[Sandy Naiman]

Robin,

I have no energy to respond appropriately to your thoughtful comment now, except to say that there are times when I wish I was an inspiration to myself. This is one of them.

More later, sweet, dear friend and "Lil Sis"...

xox
s

[Monica]

Robin, I agree with your comment. When I was first diagnosed as Bipolar, my initial reaction was relief. For a year I had been diagnosed as depressed and anxious, but nothing they were giving me was helping. So I was relieved to be on a new promising track for recovery.

My psychiatrist at the time was a little surprised that I took it so well. He had another patient who also had just been diagnosed as bipolar, who was so enraged that she stopped seeing him.

Maybe if I had known how wretched all the drugs would be for my body I would have reacted differently. Still, it was that diagnosis of bipolar that eventually led me to the Truehope nutritional supplements that are helping me so much now.

Labels are a natural consequence of our need to communicate verbally. A lot of the time the stigma is in the mind of the individual, not the words.

[Sandy Naiman]

Robin,

It's me, back to try to respond to your comment. Especially to the "you have an illness for the rest of your life and need to accept this treatment to get by..." message.

I want more than "getting by," Robin. I want a rich, full and meaningful life. And I believe that we can have that life no matter what "psychiatric diagnosis" is applied to us.

I cannot buy it. Too many times psychiatrists have gotten that "diagnosis" wrong. Only within the last few years have I found the accurate one for me. AND I FOUND IT, ROBIN. Actually, my mother found it in an article by Benedict Carey in The New York Times.

I showed the article to my psychiatrist, Dr. Bob, and he accepted this diagnosis for me.

"Hypomania"!

As for Recovery, I told Dr. Bob that I was in Recovery two years ago. At first, he questioned it and then several months ago, he admitted to me that he changed his mind and said, yes, he did believe in Mental Health Recovery and he called me "the poster girl for Recovery."

We have to educate the educators and that means that we, "patients" have to teach our psychiatrists because they don't know how we feel inside. They're book-learned. Far too many still have an "us and them" mentality.

I guess where we differ is that I believe "the puzzle" to which you refer is inside each of us and it's different in each of us. It isn't one puzzle, but millions of puzzles, unique and special, like all human beings in their own way. It's wonderful, miraculous.

I find a diagnosis like a jail sentence. The opposite of liberating. And it never feels right. At least not until I found Hypomania.

Until then, no diagnosis described me. It described a prototype. Even hypomania is a prototype, but it's the closest and most accurate one for me.

Too many diagnoses are one-size-fits-all and life and humanity is exactly the opposite. Too many people internalize their diagnoses and believe it. That's sure to place them in emotional handcuffs. It's not freeing at all, as far as I'm concerned.

Label me human! That's it.

There are many difficulties in the realm of mental and emotional illnesses based on ignorance and fear, prejudice and discrimination. In mental health professionals and in the public they are supposed to serve. Not all mental health professionals, but lots.

And in the media and in medical schools and in history and in negative stereotyping and in hierarchies where there are vertical social structures and classes and castes instead of acceptance and empathy and compassion and attempts to embrace and celebrate all our wondrous differences – and we are all different from each other.

We just try to look like we fit in.

Whatever works for one person may not work for another. Choice is the answer. Options. Freedom in choosing how we wish to live and find meaning. Education. Learning. Talking. Openness. Honesty. Candour.

This is a huge subject. Enough for a separate post, which I may do, sometime.

I guess it all starts with "Coming Out Crazy" and admitting that we are all "Next to Normal" and that we can enjoy our uniquenesses instead of being "controlled" by others and their ideas about normalcy, whatever that is.

If you can tell me what normal is, I'd love to hear about it. I've never seen it. Ever.

See what you inspire in me, Robin? We inspire each other!

Thank you for sharing and opening up here so honestly and candidly. I feel very honoured that you commented in this forum, bringing all your wisdom and experience here to share with us.

And for your furthering this fascinating dialogue.

Thank you, deeply.
s

[Sandy Naiman]

Hi Monica,

You've raised some very interesting points that resonate very deeply with me.

I believe we can find other ways to communicate. That labels and diagnoses are for doctors and insurance companies. And for jars.

Not for people.

The process of Mental Health Recovery is often a process of undoing the damage that psychiatric labelling does to us. It destroys our self-esteem and shatters our self-concept. In some cases, a label can be more damaging that the so-called illness that it represents.

As for the way we have been branded? It's time to investigate and seriously consider a "language of respect" for those of us with psychiatric conditions. Yes, I say "patients" because patience is what one needs to heal.

Language, I think, informs the way we think just as much as the way we think colours our language.

You've touched a deep chord with me. I'm very sensitive to language and one word I try never to use is the word "stigma" because it actually only exacerbates the prejudice and fear and discrimination and ignorance that is it's cause. It's a linguistic praeteritio. A frame.

I really despise that word. I call it the "S" word.

Thank you for raising these issues. I haven't written about them here for a long time. Perhaps I should revisit them soon.

Take care and good luck.

Cheers,
sln