Author: Christina Bruni

Christina Bruni is the author of the new book Working Assets: A Career Guide for Peers. She contributed a chapter "Recovery is Within Reach" to Benessere Psicologico: Contemporary Thought on Italian American Mental Health.

New Year’s Resolutions

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I don’t ever make New Year’s resolutions.

One thing I like to do in January is spring cleaning. It’s the perfect time to donate a bag of items to the Salvation Army or charity of your choice.

A person should set goals at the time in their life that it makes sense to do so not because of a date on the calendar like January 1st.

For instance I joined a gym in March–at the start of spring. Spring is the season of rebirth and rejuvenation so if you ask me this is a great time to start taking action to achieve a goal.

Too often New Year’s resolutions are too vague or broad like “I want to lose weight.” Why do you want to lose weight and how much did you want to lose and what are the steps (sub-goals) you will take to accomplish this?

A goal should be SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-sensitive. You should give yourself what I call a “lifeline” for achieving a goal not an impossibly restrictive deadline.

It’s not the end of the world if you don’t achieve a goal by the time you wanted to make it happen. In this case you might have to change your goal or change what you do to achieve the goal. Sometimes abandoning a goal is what really makes sense.

For instance I wanted to take up running and I didn’t ever do this which is fine. I wanted to travel to Barcelona and I haven’t done this either.

One goal I absolutely did do when I was a young woman was to lose 20 pounds when I was overweight. You can click on my Nutrition category and Fitness category to read about how I did this.

I will talk about goal setting next in the context of mental health treatment.

Really any “treatment plan” should be a collaborative effort between you and your treatment provider not a goal that the doctor or therapist unilaterally foists on you.

A Practical Guide to Health IMHO

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Before you listen to me feel free to consult an M.D. or other professional.

I just wanted to write on the weekends about fitness and nutrition again. Like anything I tend to draw from my own experience because I want to uplift and inspire others.

Making positive changes is possible at any time along the road in your recovery and your life. A lot of time making a drastic wholesale change isn’t warranted unless you’ve gotten to the point of being in dire straits with your health.

I wanted to give some hope to readers and talk about what I think makes sense.

A bone density test revealed that I don’t have osteoporosis. This amazes me because I don’t consume 2,000 mg of calcium per day. It totally mystified me. Yet I think it’s proof that everything in moderation is really the way to go.

The older you get strength training becomes more important. I dead lift 175 pounds now because I do 3 sets of 10 reps. With lower reps I can dead lift 180 pounds or more.

I have no scientific proof that strength training can give you strong bones. I should Google this before I go off leaping into telling readers things about building better bones.

Yet I thought I’d talk about this to demystify all the hype and hoopla about what a person is supposed to do to be healthy. Expert advice aside I think a healthy dose of common sense is warranted.

My calcium intake consists of 3 sticks of string cheese a day (different kinds) for 600 mg. calcium – plus 1 cup reduced-fat chocolate milk (300 mg calcium) – plus 8 oz of skim milk with cereal in the morning (100 mg calcium) – plus whatever I get from dark green leafy vegetables or broccoli or another source.

I found out that Buitoni wild mushroom agnolotti (a kind of pasta) has 150 mg of calcium per package.

This all adds up to about 1,000 to 1,200 mg calcium per day. Plus I take a 2,0000 IU Vitamin D3 gel cap in the morning. If memory serves Vitamin D increases calcium absorption.

To prove a point I can prove without Googling because it makes sense to me: cutting out all dairy from your diet doesn’t make sense.

The anti-psychiatry crowd will recommend not consuming dairy. The health faddists will recommend not consuming dairy. At all.

Yes I’m living proof that there’s a happy medium. See this Mediterranean Food Pyramid for the details:

mediterranen_pyramid

You can have eggs, cheese, and yogurt on this beautiful “diet” which isn’t actually a diet just a sensible and healthy and yes delicious eating plan.

I really don’t eat white food like potatoes, french fries, regular pasta, and white rice. Nor do I eat a lot of whole grains either as a rule though you’re supposed to. Nixing refined grains is a must so I don’t have any of this kind either. High-fiber whole grain cereal in the morning is more my style.

The Mediterranean Diet has been written about in books since 1993 and this “diet” has been around forever as practiced by Italians in Italy and in other Mediterranean countries.

Really now. I don’t even think you need to exercise 5 times a week for an hour a day. Like some experts insist you need to do.

Tamara Allmen M.D. (certified menopause doctor and author of Menopause Confidential) and Lindsey Vonn (Olympic gold-medalist skier) and Miriam Nelson (Strong Women,  Strong Bones founder) all recommend strength training 2X per week and mixing in bouts of cardio.

That’s all folks.

The cardio can be spinning or Zumba or the treadmill or walking at a brisk pace or any kind of aerobic exercise you want to do for cardiovascular fitness. For maximum benefit to your bones and your body and your mental conditioning I recommend lifting weights as your primary exercise routine.

I’ll end here by also recommending the Mediterranean Diet as a good eating plan to follow 80 percent of the time. Striving to consistently eat healthfully 80 percent of the time sounds right to me.

2017 Blog Topics

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Each of us needs to be able to advocate for ourselves.

We need to dialogue with our treatment providers and to research, research, research our options.

In January I’d like to talk about goal-setting in here: the effective antidote to making New Year’s resolutions that don’t stick.

Setting treatment goals and setting life goals is something under our control.

It makes sense that we’re the only ones who at the end of the day have command over the goals we set.Our family our shrink and our therapist can and should be our most integral allies in helping us achieve our goals.

As peers too we should all be cheering each other on.

We should be happy when one of us is successful and sad when one of us has a setback. Yet either way the goal is to offer feedback and encouragement and–always–hope.

What zings you as something you’d truly passionately want to do and to achieve in 2017?

I recommend that all the ladies out there  buy the Michelle Phan book Makeup: Your Life Guide to Beauty, Style, and Success Online and Off.

Her book is written in an inspiring and down-to-earth voice. She’s still younger yet I’ve enjoyed reading her book.

I’m going to quote Michelle Phan so that hopefully you’ll go out and get the book:

“I didn’t want a safety net under me. I wanted to force myself to make this work.”

Working longer and harder to achieve a goal is often necessary for those of us living in recovery. Yet giving up or not even trying to begin with isn’t the answer.

We can give each other the hope that with courage, strength, and confidence we’ll be able to have our own version of a full and robust life.

For some of us that’s going to be going grocery shopping instead of going to McDonald’s. For others it’s going to be applying to college and taking one or two courses a semester.

Stay tuned for blog entries on goal-setting in January.

Confidence: Getting It and Using It

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The InStyle December issue features an interview with Cate Blanchett the Oscar-Award winning actress in its I Am That Girl column:

“How do you define confidence?

I think confidence is the acknowledgment of doubt. Fear is a natural state. You can’t truly achieve a creative life without it.” – Amy Synnott

It’s true that fear is part of being creative like Blanchett says. You can only achieve great things if you risk becoming uncomfortable when you do new things.

Failure is the cost of taking risks. Not everything you try to do will work out. I bombed out big time in the gray flannel insurance field.

Fear should be welcomed–not paranoia–the kind of fear where you’re not certain you’ll succeed but you have to try because the goal is too important to you to not risk trying.

All of us should be terrified to do something that has the potential to give us a better life.

Giving ourselves a challenge is the ultimate confidence-booster.

There’s no safety in playing it safe. There’s no triumph in conformity if you ask me. Sometimes you have to go out on a limb to see how far you can go.

Shakespeare wrote: “Cowards die many a time before their death. The valiant only taste of death but once.”

That’s not how I want to live: as a spectator in my own life.

Cate Blanchett is right: acknowledging doubt is the first step in taking a risk.

The more action you take, the easier it is to keep taking action. Taking action can cure fear.

I’ll end here with this: self-confidence is a natural high.

There’s no shame in acting confident and going after what you want in life.

Cannellini and Escarole

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white-beans-escarole

This recipe is quick and easy and healthful:

Buy a head of escarole and a can of cannellini and a head of garlic.

Rinse escarole thoroughly in water to remove any residual dirt and dry with a paper towel.

Cut leaves off and saute in olive oil for about five minutes until the greens are soft and not fried. Add chopped garlic. (You can use garlic powder if you don’t have fresh.)

Halfway through sauteing add the cannellini and cook.

I’ve used habichuelos here which are the tiny version of cannellini.

Voila–in under ten minutes you can cook a dinner for one.

Add a stick of string cheese for a complete protein.

 

Telling Our Stories

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At the educational conference I was the first person to talk at the session on: The Impact of SSI and SSDI on Going to Work.

My co-presenter detailed how to apply for these benefits and how to use the Ticket to Work and PASS Plan options to find a job so you can stop collecting SSI and SSDI.

At the start of my talk I quoted lines from the Anne Sexton poem “For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further.”

She is a famous poet who had her own mental health challenges and is no longer here. Sadly, like a lot of gifted artists, she took her own life.

Yet the lines from her poem are often quoted. She tells the reader that she has nothing else to give and that what she has to give can be hopeful in its own way.

After I quoted the lines I told the audience: “This is my story. It’s the only story I have to tell. It’s unusual and a little atypical. I tell it to uplift and inspire others.”

I’m here to say that what you feel can be healed. Pain can end. I’m a firm believer in using our pain as the catalyst for self-growth and finding out what our life’s purpose is.

I stand by the motto: “service above self.”

It’s true that you get what you give–plain and simple–you get what you give.

Other forums exist in which to spread hate of psychiatry, hate of people who are different from you, and any other kind of hate.

This blog will always be not just a hate-free zone it will be a healthy zone.

It comes down to this: my ethic is: “This is my story–it’s on the table. You can take it or you can leave it.”

In the next blog entry I’ll talk about the new dynamic of holding a job circa 2016.

Risking Failure to Succeed

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A little-known fact:

I was on the debate team in high school. I had to write a speech and memorize and present it as part of a team of students who traveled on Saturdays to other schools to compete.

Yes, I gave the speech from memory without looking at notes.

The students were ranked from 1 to 5–5 people the lowest–and the students with the most #1s took home the trophy.

I wasn’t an honors student at the time–I was in the regular classes. Yet I had gotten the ideas when I was a freshman in high school that public speaking was an important skill to have.

Readers, I routinely scored at a 4 or 5. That’s how I know that you can succeed at something even though you failed big time in the past.

As a junior in high school I got a job as a cashier in a supermarket using an old-fashioned cash register. I was fired five days later because I wasn’t any good at it. In college I had the chutzpah to apply for a job as a cashier in a supermarket again.

This time I succeeded.

I write about this because failure is often the cost of doing business in the real world. I write about this because it’s a reminder that for a lot of us success won’t come easy.

Giving up isn’t the answer. Seeing how we can do things differently or do different things so that we can succeed can be a better option.

The solution is to keep risking trying to do things.

Right now I’m writing fiction–my first novel. I have no idea whether it’s any good yet I want to perfect it so that I can start to publish fiction too.

I write about failure because often just starting out in recovery it isn’t going to be easy taking the risks to do the things you want to do.

Most of all, I wanted to be a cheerleader because I didn’t have a lot of cheerleaders when I was involved in the community mental health system.

There’s no shame in wanting to have a better life. There’s no shame in wanting to do better for yourself.

I cannot and will not be complicit in reinforcing that people with mental health conditions are helpless and that our future is hopeless.

So I dare readers: set a goal. Take a risk.

Believe in tomorrow because the future can be better.

Embracing Failure to Grow as a Person

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The quote on the upper right side of this blog I stole from a silver paperweight I bought in a museum gift shop. The paperweight has this Michaal Jordan quote on it.

That should tell you something right there about the validity of the quote when you know a champion athlete with great success in life is the person quoted.

“Don’t Be Afraid to Fail. Be Afraid Not to Try.”

At HealthCentral when I was the Health Guide there for close to nine years the editorial team wrote a news article that must have stole something I wrote elsewhere on that website.

The editorial team had the boldness to write in the news article that: “The only real failure is the failure to try.”

And they understood that for those of us with an MH challenge sometimes trying can be as simple as getting out of bed or taking a shower.

My take on this is that as long as we try our best there can be no shame in failing. Giving our goals our best shot counts more than whether we actually achieve what we set out to do. I bombed out big time in my first career in the gray flannel insurance field.

Failure is simply the cost of doing business in the real world.

Experiencing failure is necessary to grow as a person.

When you’ve lost your mind there is nothing else you could ever fear losing.

Thus people with MH challenges have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by risking achieving goals.

 

We need to fail to learn what not to do.

We need to fail to experience all that life has to offer.

We need to fail in order to succeed later.

Like Michael Jordan I too was always afraid not to try.

The alternative–not risking getting a job–was no option.

I didn’t want to be doomed to collecting SSI forever and living in a dangerous crack-drug-infested apartment complex on the edge of town the rest of my life.

In recovery as in life there are no guarantees.

Yet if we don’t take these kinds of speculative risks that involve the possibility of failure (the possibility of gain or no gain):

There’s only one guaranteed outcome:

No chance of potential success either.

My motivation for taking the risk to get a full-time job in 1990 was simple:

I sure didn’t like living in an apartment where my friend and I joked that we had cockroach races to see which bug got to the other side of the living room first : )

I’ll talk more in coming blog entries about taking healthy risks.

September 11, 2001 – 15th Anniversary

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Every year on September 11th I write a blog entry about the World Trade Center attacks.

A guy I love more than life itself was a first responder.

He was a New York City firefighter who rushed into those burning buildings to save people.

This guy and others who lived now have PTSD because of their involvement.

I’ve written in this blog recently about trauma.

In effect a person can have PTSD even if they haven’t served in a war.

Any traumatic event can bring on an ongoing hard time after it happens.

Each of us living on earth needs to “get with the program” as the expression goes.

Hate, violence, killing, racism, and any other kind of bigotry or senseless judging has to STOP.

I abandoned organized religion for good after September 11, 2001.

Being told that it’s OK to kill in the name of God–that it’s OK to hate and judge in the name of God–that’s it’s OK to view a woman’s role in life solely as a breeder–is NOT right.

I’m not attracted to women romantically. I’ve only ever had the hots for guys. Yet when the Supreme Court legalized marriage for every couple living in America regardless of sexual preference I only cheered this and was proud to be American.

I don’t have the inclination, temperament, or desire to sit around judging people.

I do align as a Christian though I’m no fan of organized religion.

God gave everyone living on earth this time around a divine purpose for being here.

Finding out your life’s purpose and going and doing that will make all the difference in having a healthy, happy, and prosperous recovery.

My purpose is not to judge anyone else. My purpose is not to tell people what they should do.

My goal is to use my experience living in recovery to help uplift and inspire others to dream of having a better life.

Today more than ever having a full and robust life is possible.

Won’t you join me in stomping out the hate and stigma?

Recovery and Pride

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I know plenty of security guards who have college degrees. I met a janitor who loved his work and had a big grin on his face when he told me he was a “custodial engineer.”

No kidding. Any honest job labored at with pride can give a person dignity.

You will not always like every aspect of your job every day. Yet finding a job where most of what you do is okay is possible if you ask me.

I’ve worked in offices and libraries and a law firm. I’ve been employed for over 25 years.

Starting in the fall I’d like to return to talking about employment.

First here I will take about each aspect of The Triangle of Mental Health: appropriate medication, quicker individualized treatment, and practical career counseling.