Category: recovery

September 11, 2001 – 15th Anniversary

Christina Bruni5 Comments

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.

Getting Real Help

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I had a job as the Health Guide for HealthCentral’s schizophrenia website for nine years.

What I wrote for HealthCentral was in the vanguard of mental health reporting. What I wrote was always five years ahead of what other people and organizations were writing about recovery.

Years ago at HealthCentral I would write a series called Family Members Forum. In one of those news article I gave ideas as to how to help a loved one.

Point blank I wrote this: “Ask your loved one: “What do you need me to do right now to help you?”

In this way everyone in society needs to “get with the program” as the expression goes in how they interact with people living with and impacted by a mental illness.

I always wanted people to see me not my pain. Jodi Picoult is quoted: “People are more than the sum total of their disability.”

The producer Mark. R. Weber understands that maybe we can’t end homelessness and we can’t always give a homeless person money. Yet we can stop for a moment to talk to them to ask their name and show we care about them as a human being.

In this way too people need to start breaking bread with those of us who have some kind of mental health challenge. It’s a Catch-22 because a lot of us don’t go around telling people “Hi, I’m so-and-so and I was diagnosed with ______________.”

So a lot of times no one else knows what we’re going through unless we tell them.

What is the solution? Brene Brown wrote about this in her classic book Daring Greatly. We should tell only the people who have earned our trust.

I understand what it’s like to not trust mental health providers.

I had to quite seeing a doctor immediately because of his unprofessional behavior. This is revealed in a humorous scene in my memoir. I fled his office one night and didn’t ever return.

This lack of trust has extended to mental health service providers like state employment agencies for individuals with disabilities.

For at least five years now I’ve realized there was a need in the marketplace for my second book–a one-of-its-kind self-help book.

In September I will start to talk about this book and about a new business I hope to provide to peers linked to this pressing need that has historically gone unfilled.

I ask you: when has any other person asked you: “What would YOU like to do with your life and how can I help you do that?” Instead of telling us: “This is what you should do and there’s no other option only the one I deem appropriate.”

VESID in New York City would send people who were deaf to a printmaking program long after jobs in that field became obsolete. Peers were disillusioned with this state employment services agency for years.

There’s a better way. In this regard I want to start my own peer-owned business to fill this need that has gone unmet. Stay tuned in September for more news about this.

 

Thinking About Recovery

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Bari Tessler quotes Jack Kornfield in her book The Art of Money. A gem like this justifies buying her book. I installed in on my iPad.

This quote sums up a great way to think about recovery:

“The true task of spiritual life is not found in faraway places or unusual states of consciousness: it is here in the present. It asks of us a welcoming spirit to greet all that life presents to us with a wise, respectful, and kindly heart.”

Jack Kornfield

Thinking of recovery in this way is a way to take back our power over our circumstances. Our pain doesn’t have to last forever.

Our lives can be hard not because we have an illness–they can be hard simply because they’re not easy. This often has nothing to do with the illness.

I will go to my grave crediting my mother’s one quick action to get me the right help within 24 hours as the number-one reason I recovered. Today more than ever when a person gets the right help right away there can be an ed after the word recover.

Thinking about recovery as a process and a way of living our lives that we can honor precisely with a “wise, respectful, and kindly heart” is the way to go now if you ask me.

I’m skeptical when I see links in my Google Alerts for schizophrenia information when the tag line is “Rachel (or whoever it is) talks about what it’s like to have schizophrenia.”

That is totally misleading. The tag line should read: “Rachel talks about what it’s like FOR HER to have schizophrenia.”

It would be unhelpful and disingenuous for me to claim that my experience is the mirror of what everyone’s experience is like.

Instead I’m pulled to talk about my experiences as a springboard for showing readers that with their own kind of creativity and resourcefulness they can come up with their own path in their wellness journey.

That’s the contention that I make that is revolutionary: stating it thus: that recovery is a wellness journey. At least it has been for me and I think too that others can achieve their own version of well.

This is why I keep the blog: because for the last 12 years I’ve so strongly believed in my vision that people can recover and flourish and live life well and whole after they have a breakdown.

Your version of well is not going to be the same as mine and mine is not going to be the same as another person’s. That’s what’s beautiful about living here on earth: we’re like snowflakes – no two of us is totally alike.

We share things in common yes we do. Yet I’m always interested in the uniqueness of each person I meet or interact with. That is a precious gift: the gift of the spirit of a person that each of us was given when we were born.

I’ll end here by saying it’s high time to think about recovery as yes a spiritual practice as well as a lifestyle.

There’s no shame in living life in recovery.

The Champion’s Comeback

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I’ve finished reading The Champion’s  Comeback: How Great Athletes Recover, Reflect, and Reignite by Jim Afremow. He also wrote The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive.

Buy these two books along with Fight Your Fear and Win by Don Greene. The three books are the winners in terms of self-help. The Champion books can be used to excel at the game of life as well as on the playing field in sports.

From The Champion’s Comeback: “Ask yourself, ‘What are my big-picture goals–not just in sports and fitness, but in life?’ Then establish some daily, seasonal, and career goals that are challenging and reachable.”

You can install the two Champion books on an iPad or a Kindle.

Afremow tells it like it is: instead of trying to lighten our load we should seek to have broader shoulders.

Life isn’t easy yet as long as we try our best there can be no shame if we fail. If we didn’t give it our best shot we have to accept the outcome.

The Michael Jordan quote on the top right side of this blog is so true.

I know something readers:

Like Freddie Mercury sang in Queen:

We are the champions.

Buy these books and you won’t be disappointed.

Their tactics apply to life as well as sports.

How to Be Successful

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I know of no other way to be successful than to work longer and harder at a goal that resonates with you as life-changing.

I was 46 when I started to work out at the gym like a madwoman in training for the prizefight of her life. Before that I hadn’t lifted even 5 pounds.

If you have a life-changing goal that you want to make happen I find it helps to focus on this goal with a laser-precision.

A lot of things you decide you want to do might not work out in the long-term or you might abandon those goals along the way.

Yet a life-changing goal is one that should be pursued with all the energy and focus you can drum up for yourself.

I’ve been strength training for over 5 years now. I added two new exercises to each routine I do. The benefits accrue the longer you keep at a goal. I’m fitter than I was 5 years ago. The longer you continue to strength train the better your body will get.

Engaging in a fitness routine is one foolproof way to be successful in life. Our bodies are workhorses that can help us accomplish our goals.

I have always exercised in some way ever since I was a freshman in high school.

I could only do 5 sit-ups in one minute in gym class back then. My goal was to achieve the highest score: 50 sit-ups in one minute. I kept at it until I was able to do 50 sit-ups in one minute.

You could say that was the first meaningful goal I ever set.

Ever since then I’ve done some form of exercise throughout my life.

Now I strength train 2 to 3 days a week with cardio every so often.

I think it’s a myth that success is ever quick and easy. It’s a myth that you don’t have to exert effort to be successful. Nothing worth having comes without effort.

I’ll end here by saying that sticking with an exercise routine is what counts. Think long-term. If you slip up here and there just recommit.

I recommend the Jim Afremow book The Champion’s Comeback: How Great Athletes Recover, Reflect, and Reignite. His first great book was The Champion’s Mind: How Great Athletes Think, Train, and Thrive. I have his first book on my iPad and will buy the second one soon.

Forget the Kardashians. Stop thinking other people have it easier or have it better. Find realistic role models who can inspire you.

It’s going to take years and years sometimes to get to where you want to be. Keep up a positive spirit. For some of us success might come quicker. Yet when it doesn’t the secret is to not give up.

The bottom line: if you commit to strength training for 5 years and then continue on after that you can continue to see even better results. Giving up on exercising after only three months is not the way to go. Even if you only train or exercise two days a week for a certain period that’s better than quitting totally.

I was just an ordinary person. I had no guarantee that I would succeed. The difference was I trusted myself to take action in the direct of my goals.

Not everything I did worked out (hello – gray flannel insurance career). Not everything you decide you want to do will work out.

It’s the process of trying your best every day that counts – not the result.

Using Self-Empowering Language

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not true

A friend and I talked over hot chocolate in a coffee shop. “Here.” T. reached into his wallet. “For you.”

“Thank you.” I accepted the black decal with white letters that read: This is not true—a slip like a fortune cookie.

“Joe Strummer gave these kinds of slips out. You like the Clash, right?”

“Sure do.” I thought the ticker would be a clever title for a blog: This is not true.

I’ve always had the idea to interview peers who’ve been through a hard time too—and post to my blog their talk about other things in their lives—without referring to illness or diagnosis at all.

This weekend I chose boldly not to use clinical terms—no diagnoses—going forward. First—those words scare people—and second it’s a trap. Identifying a person by their symptoms locks them into a no-win mental straitjacket.

Thomas Insel–the former director of NIMH–created the RDOC system to link research funding to clusters of symptoms not specific diagnostic categories like bipolar.

This inspires me now to take the bold leap into more positive language because in leaping the net will appear: a soft landing in recovery not on rocks and garbage. To be pelted with ignorance doesn’t have to be our fate.

So stand up and assert your rights. Tell others: “I’m a human being–treat me like one. You’re most likely not so hot yourself, so why do you think I’m less than zero?”

I’m going to continue to focus on today in the blog because today is the greatest day.

I’ll talk about health/salut and wealth/dinero and love/amore in ways that no one else is talking about these things.

Listen: what’s truly cray-cray is stereotyping everyone you meet because of your experience with one person or two or a few people with similar traits.

This is not true: that we’re so damaged by what happened to us that we can’t have a full and robust life.

This is not true: that we don’t deserve compassion and other people should cower in fear of us.

This is not true: that we’re so effed up that we’re beyond repair.

What is true: that how we live–what we do and say–has the power to make the world a better place.

 

 

The Top 100 Fitness Foods

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The Top 100 Fitness Foods is featured in this photo. If I remember the book costs under $20. It lists peanuts as being high in protein along with almonds and walnuts. Walnuts are a great plant source of Omega-3 fatty acids.

The green leaf lettuce came from the CSA box so as you can see you can get multiple servings from one box of organic produce.

The organic lime-pepper vegetable tofu soup is the Splendid Spoon offering.

I read in Self magazine about the woman who founded Splendid Spoon. I also like their lentil-kale soup. I didn’t like her cauliflower-coconut soup though.

Each 16 oz container of Splendid Spoon soup costs $6. You can spend close to $4 on Progresso soups which have chemicals. So springing for the extra dollar or two for Splendid Spoon offerings makes sense to me. The soup is organic and fills you up.

I had written in here about research that indicates poor nutrition can lead to depression.

From The Top 100 Fitness Foods:

Under beans and legumes section:

Lentils –

“Lentils are also crammed full of folate, an energy-boosting vitamin that plays a key role in the production of serotonin, the neurotransmitter in the brain associated with feeling happy.”

Food to improve mood: what better way to enjoy the day?

I recommend everyone buy a copy of The Top 100 Fitness Foods.

As you can see in the photo, it’s a short, compact volume. The book also features recipes and a food and ailments directory in the back.

Fifty and Beyond

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I turned 51.

Fifty and beyond can be beyond measure.

I’m confident when I tell readers that life can get better as you get older.

It’s time to discard the old, the outgrown, the outdated.

Life demands that a person is open to what is possible for us at mid life.

I have a guy companion now. He appeared in real life like a soul mate. Not by checking off a list of traits on an Internet dating website to see if a guy matched every criteria.

Those guys’ photos on OKCupid look like mug shots.

The point is not that your soul mate has to be a wife or husband or other romantic partner.

I’m writing another book and in it I talk about a book at a library that talked about women’s sexual fluidity. I haven’t seen anywhere else on the Internet or in the mental health literature or in any other blog or in a blog featured on PsychCentral or elsewhere talk about sex and relationships in this kind of detail.

What’s often commiserated about is the idea that so-called normal people you take on a date think you’re “crazy” when you reveal you have a diagnosis. That’s so over.

Sex and relationships and talk about these things doesn’t have to be brought back to relating to the diagnosis if you don’t want it to.

What’s not talked about and should be is how income limits a person’s options more so than anything else.

Some women judge men by their ability to take them out for a 3-course steak dinner that costs at minimum $60 dollars. A friend had a woman chew him out because he didn’t take her to a high-end restaurant that cost at least $100. She thought the $60 he paid was too cheap. How offensive is that chica if you’re doing that–I think very.

Finding someone who’s compatible is not easy for a lot of us and it often has nothing to do with having a mental illness. If you’ve browsed OKCupid lately you’re aware there’s plenty of fish in the sea however most of them you wouldn’t want to swim near.

Becoming obsessed with finding a boyfriend or husband and settling for the wrong guy is a mistake.

At 50 and beyond we have the power–and women too have the power–to choose to focus on our heart’s desire.

Which for some of us might be walking down the alter and for others might be staying at home knitting a sweater.

I was supposed to write altar in that last sentence. Though alter can describe the kind of life some of us live.

I have seen no one else talk about this fluidity anywhere else. I have seen no one else talk about how income limits a person.

I have only seen in one other place a writer make the case for finding your true soul mate.

It was in the March 2016 Oprah magazine where a feature article talked about how a soul mate can be a friend or even a sweater or other article of clothing or a work wife or work husband as the expression goes.

It is time to talk about these things. It’s time to dispense with the usual discourse. It’s time to talk about having the courage to do your own thing–whatever your thing is–without fear of reprisal.

And if you don’t want to talk about illness except in a bare-bones way to the people you meet I say: go ahead–be discreet.

Judging other people is a crummy thing to do yet all too often it goes on and more so against people with mental illnesses. For reasons that are totally arbitrary.

Which is why I think each of us needs at least one soul mate who gets us on a divine level even if it’s not a physical level.

Inspiration for Living in Recovery

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I have a friend/companion. We sit at an outdoor patio. We go to Starbucks. We attend poetry readings.

Wherever we go the talk often turns to recovery. Not a lot of people would be so open in places where others can hear you. It’s refreshing–and-life affirming–to have a companion in an almost soul-mate kind of way.

I firmly believe a soul mate doesn’t have to be only a wife or husband–a soul mate can be a member of your tribe. We talk about the Sonic Youth albums in our collections. Everywhere I go I’ve met someone entranced with the music.

I value that illness holds only a minor place–because I choose to focus on the life that is possible after a break. I’ve lived through the worst– I recovered.

A woman on the Internet who uses a fake name didn’t understand why I identified as a person diagnosed with schizophrenia. I identify as a person who had a breakdown–what’s commonly diagnosed as schizophrenia.

Yet the point isn’t that once you’ve recovered you should go your merry way. By all means: only if you want to go your merry way do so without guilt.

I decided to become a mental health activist because of the cost of untreated mental illness in America–upwards of $192 billion. I’m an activist because of the untold cost in wasted lives–in the loss of human capital.

Everyone deserves to have a full and robust life–not just a lucky few who get the right treatment right away. I advocate that you can have a full and robust life because no one who has crossed over should despair that they can’t come back.

I advocate–and I always will–for recovery for everyone.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is quoted:

“Everyone must decide whether to walk in the dark of destructive selfishness or live in the light of creative altruism. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”

My goal in this lifetime is to be an inspiration.

Your hell doesn’t have to go on forever.