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Serendipity

Christina Bruni1 Comment

I tried to enter therapy in the summer of 1996 with a guy who saw patients on Staten Island on the weekends.

The health insurance plan authorized only five visits because I had a preexisting condition: I was diagnosed with schizophrenia so the health plan wouldn’t allow me to see a therapist.

At the second visit I told Dr. B that I was in danger of losing yet another job in the insurance field. Miraculously, he told me he was a career counselor to upper level executives in Manhattan Monday to Friday. He told me he would do vocational assessment with me so that I could find a better job.

Dr. B gave me the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and gave me vocational quizzes to answer. By the fifth and last session he gave me career options to consider. That’s how I decided to go back to school to get a Masters in Library and Information Science.

Accepted at all three library schools I chose Pratt Institute and graduated in June 2000 with an M.S.

I’ll always be grateful for this random accident in meeting a therapist who turned out to be a career counselor.

This experience has influenced me to champion that a person diagnosed with a mental illness gets practical career counseling right from the start of their recovery.

Square pegs shouldn’t be forced into round holes:  This happened when the OVR state agency counselor in 1989 shunted me into training to become a secretary because I was female. No useful vocational assessment was given to me.

Imagine that: the health insurance plan told a person diagnosed with an emotional illness that she couldn’t see a therapist. You must remember that the Affordable Care Act guarantees that everyone can buy insurance even those of us with preexisting conditions.

I kid you not. I was denied therapy. And like I said miraculously I was able to get career counseling instead of therapy.

Ever since I started looking for my first job in 1990 I’ve had an unusual interest in creating resumes to help people get jobs. One guy I helped got a job as a dentist. A woman got a supervisor job. Another woman got a job as a secretary.

You should absolutely check in with your local neighborhood library to see if a librarian at a branch in their system helps people create resumes.. This is a free service that doesn’t cost you a dime. Check it out.

I would like to send a letter or e-mail to Dr. B telling him I’m eternally grateful that he was the catalyst in speeding up my route to having a better life outcome.

I will talk in future blog entries about finding the work you love and would be good at.

To Dare Greatly

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This is my all-time favorite quote. It’s a famous Theodore Roosevelt quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spend himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

– Theodore Roosevelt

Start Where You Are

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I read a transcript of the Colin Powell TED Talk 2012.

This guy is a genius. I thought I always remembered that Powell said he used to be a janitor and that even today he could mop floors with the best of them.

This story might be apocryphal yet I seem to remember it’s true and that’s why I was always impressed with this great leader.

In his TED talk he laughs about getting a “straight C everywhere” in school. It wasn’t until he joined the ROTC in college that his life took off and he found his true calling.

Take this from Colin Powell:

“And I say to young kids everywhere, as you’re growing up and as this structure is being developed inside of you, always be looking for that which you do well and that which you love doing, and when you find those two things together, man, you’ve got it. (my italics) That’s what’s going on. And that’s what I found. I tell young people everywhere, it ain’t where you start in life, it’s what you do with life that determines where you end up in life. (my italics)”

No kidding. You could most likely watch Colin Powell’s TED talk on YouTube.

Truer words couldn’t have been spoken. This is the real deal: that it doesn’t matter if you’re diagnosed with schizophrenia when you’re 22. The future can be better.

Indeed 30-year long-term studies show that individuals diagnosed with this illness are often productive members of society living, loving, working, and playing well alongside people who don’t have mental illnesses.

I’m confident when I say that no one who’s 22 thinks about what their life is going to be like when they’re 50.

Hey: I’m 50 now. And I can honestly tell you: the view from here is beautiful.

I’m also confident when I tell you not to give up and not to quit. My life took a detour early on yet I had the courage to go back to school to try something different.

You might not find your true calling until you’re 35 like I did and that’s OK.

The view from here is beautiful.

Healthy Habits

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The term is “laundry list” if memory serves for a long list of items that a person must have or that they require another person to have.

In the coming weeks in my companion Left of the Dial blog I will talk about stigma in detail and why I think it’s a mistake to value only jobs that contribute to the economic stream in society.

I have a short laundry list of what I require to be happy: books and writing, art, music, my apartment, and the gym routines.

Years ago I read a book whose author told readers to list their 5 Commitments in life and why they were the focus of your life.

Cut out the extraneous busywork that doesn’t mesh with your life values. Refrain from getting caught up in doing whatever everyone asks of you at the expense of doing the things that please your soul.

In recovery as in life the secret to success is developing a routine and streamlining the things you need to do. My motto years ago was: “If it doesn’t fit, I can’t commit.”

Julie Morgenstern–the organization and time management expert–uses the analogy of a closet. She likens the available time in a person’s week to the space in a closet: it’s only able to fit a certain amount of activities like a closet fits only certain clothes.

The corollary to getting the things done that you absolutely must get done is that developing habits to get you going helps you succeed. Twyla Tharp–the esteemed dancer–wrote a book The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.

She recounted getting dressed to go the gym; hailing a taxi to go there; counting out the money and paying the driver; and entering the gym.

I find that employing habits that make it easier to do certain things is indeed the secret to success.

The rituals we engage in before taking action can help us do the things we have to do.

This is one strategy I wanted to write about. I’ll write about other strategies in the coming weeks.

Goal-Setting

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The first goal I ever had was to achieve a perfect score in gym class when I was a freshman in high school.

I could barely do 10 sit-ups in one minute. The highest possible score was to do 50 sit-ups in one minute. Shortly after, I could do 50 sit-ups in one minute.

I make the case for engaging in goal-directed behavior when you’re newly-diagnosed with schizophrenia bipolar or another mental illness.

No one should have to languish for years and years in mental distress and emotional hell before they get better.

Hell-and-heartache doesn’t have to be the norm for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. You don’t have to keep revolving in and out of hospitals. You don’t have to spend your life on back wards.

Setting goals is the secret to getting your life back on track without any unnecessary delay.

I’m a fan of resilience: moving quickly into having as normal a life as you possibly can. To have a life where you can go to school or have a job and live in your own apartment. Not a life where you’re strung along for years and years in a day program with no progress in sight.

Indeed, time-sensitive rehabilitation has always been thought to be the better option. You don’t want to lose hope because there are endless hoops that you have to jump through higher and higher just to get halfway to where others are.

I’m grateful to the person who reviewed my memoir Left of the Dial for the NAMI Advocate newsletter that arrived in this month to members.

The reviewer noted I had “ambition.” As true as that statement was, I find though that if I didn’t have a mental illness, wanting to have a full-time job and live in my own apartment would be seen as ordinary not ambitious.

I hope that one day achieving our goals as individuals diagnosed with mental illnesses is seen as natural, ordinary, and possible. Not as an impossible feat.

I urge everyone reading this blog to shoot for the stars and settle for the moon if you must. Sometimes, getting to the moon is perfectly fine.

It’s 2015: high time-and the tide has come in high-for individuals with mental illnesses to take risks to do whatever it is we want to achieve in life.

Traveling to the South of France? Publishing a book? Becoming a tax accountant? Having a gallery showing in SoHo?

Yes. Yes. And Yes to all that.

I dream a day when all of this is hardly unusual.

The Way I See It

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In January I start my 10th year employed at HealthCentral.

In all this time I’ve sought to convey that there is hope and you can heal from schizophrenia bipolar or another mental illness.

Upwards of 85 percent of the individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia reach the stabilization, stable, and recovery phases of this illness. Fifteen percent have a refractory or treatment-resistant version.

In June at HealthCentral I will write about schizophrenia and anxiety as the topic for the month. This month I wrote about hearing voices.

I will not join in the hate in the world. I will not advocate for risky “treatments” like discontinuing your medication if you have schizophrenia or bipolar. Sometimes you can’t make it on your own. Trying to cope using your own coping skills and then failing isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a sign you need treatment that might include medication.

I’m an eternal optimist.

I’ve always believed people can recover from schizophrenia bipolar and other mental illnesses.

In the coming Fllourish blog entries I will talk about strategies that have helped me recover.

Succeeding By Acting True To Yourself

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Acting true to yourself is the best and I dare say only way to succeed in life.

I’ve talked here and elsewhere numerous times about my failed gray flannel insurance career as a young woman.

The longer you cut yourself off from expressing yourself, the longer you’re restricted from becoming who you are, you’re going to get ill and make yourself miserable.

This is especially true for artists and other creative souls who are told from an early age to do something practical that makes money. Yet why can’t we have a good life doing the things we love that also earn us income?

You can work as an accountant during the day and play drums in a jazz band on the weekend to find your thrill. Or you can save up all your money from working as an accountant, retire, and dare to devote your life to jazz drumming full-time.

Seeing the possibilities is a gift because not everyone will take the baton and run with it when another person passes us an idea for what we can do.

I see the possibilities, and I recommend each of us grabs the baton of an idea of what we want to do, and runs with it.

Years ago I read that the thinking shifted in experts’ minds: it’s now thought a person can grow and change throughout our lives, that our personalities are not set in stone like previously thought.

We have the gift of a lifetime–we have our whole lives–to set goals and reach for them. We don’t need to conform to what others in society tell us we must do or how we must act. That kind of judging has to stop and the sooner the better.

I’m an artist as well as a writer. I’m a fitness buff, and a cook when the spirit moves me. I realized long ago that acting false to yourself creates ill-health.

In my Left of the Dial blog on the WordPress site I wrote that I value what others bring to the table: that you don’t have to have an Ivy-league pedigree in my book to be considered successful in your own right.

Acting true to yourself is the best way to succeed in my estimation because constantly straining to go against your nature sets you up to fail.

It’s OK if a person has no ambition. It’s OK if she wants to rule the world.

Either way, I doubt any of us can be truly happy operating against ourselves.

Having the courage to like ourselves and be happy with ourselves just the way we are is the way to go.

If we’re not satisfied with our lives or with any aspect of ourselves, we can take action today to change things for the better.

Persisting Even Though It’s Hard

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Persisting in taking action will help you achieve your goals even though you’re going through a hard time.

You might not see the light at the end of the tunnel and that’s OK. Just keep taking action. The alternative is no option: giving up is not an option

Surviving a setback is easier when you have a goal to strive for: an image in your head of what your life looks like when you’ve arrived at the other side. Write down in a notebook where you want to be and what you want your life to look like in three years. Create a one-year goal, a two-year goal, and a three-year goal.

Often: it makes sense to write down your long-term goals as a guide. They’re not written in stone even though they’re written down. They can be changed or modified along the way. Yet having this clear vision gives your life a focus and purpose to look forward to when today isn’t so hot.

Have a long-term goal you can review every so often. Yet know that focusing on weekly goals and taking your life week-by-week can be the necessary and useful and positive solution when you’re going through a hard time.

I set weekly goals now that are simple and can be achieved step-by-step. Yet I also have goals I want to achieve in five years that are always floating around in my head.

Writing down your goals is the best option for reviewing them as often as you need to review them.

Make the goals SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-specific.

Yet also give yourself a generous time to complete certain goals instead of narrowly restricting yourself to thinking you have to solve things quickly.

“Quick” is often the antithesis of “Lasting.”

It takes time to create positive, lasting changes in your life.

Nothing succeeds like persistence.

I’ll end here by telling readers that persistence is simply putting one foot in front of the other to keep on walking.

It doesn’t even involve always having the faith that you’ll achieve your goal. It only involves continuing to take action even when you lose faith.

Action cures fear. Action leads to success. Hope coupled with action is the way to go.

Having Joy and Satisfaction

Christina Bruni2 Comments

It’s true that doing the things that give you joy and satisfaction can reduce the impact of your disability.

Too often, a person decides to do something because she’s convinced she wants to do it or she’s supposed to do it. This happened when I took my first full-time job in 1990 as an administrative assistant. I was female so decided to work in an office as an administrative assistant. No true career assessment was given to me to help me figure out what might be a better option.

In 1996, a chance meeting with a therapist turned my life around when he gave me vocational counseling and told me I’d make a good librarian. The health insurance only authorized five visits because I had a preexisting condition. He was a career counselor to high-level executives during the week and I met him on Saturdays when he was still doing therapy on the side.

My life wasn’t so hot from 1987 through spring 2000: the first 13 years of my recovery. I floundered through one job after another in the gray flannel insurance field. I kept being laid off and in June 1997 I followed through with my goal of going back to school even though I was unemployed.

A job might not give you total satisfaction so having a good life outside of work can tip the scales for your happiness.

I’m confident when I tell readers that taking any old job just to pay the bills isn’t the way to go when you have a mental illness. The good news is that if you take a detour or make a false start, you can change course at any time in your recovery or your life.

Those first seven years in the insurance field are long gone so you can see that your life isn’t over when you’re first diagnosed. And you CAN change your life and change the course of your life for the better at any point along the way.

Finding out what gives you joy and satisfaction is as simple as trying on or trying out new hobbies and activities to see which things boost your mood.

I’ll end here by reminding readers to remember what you liked to do as a kid so that you can find inspiration for your life’s work today. I was luckier than most because I knew by the time I was seven years old that I wanted to be a writer. I was also sketching and painting and reading books by the time I was seven.

Rewind your own life to see what used to give you joy and happiness as a young person. Rule out nothing even though you might be an adult now. You’re not ever too old to have fun doing what makes you happy.

Joy and satisfaction. Each of living with a diagnosis deserves to have joy and satisfaction in our lives.

It took me 13 years to find a good job. It might take you longer to find your life’s purpose.

Yet when you do I can guarantee you’ll be able to shift the needle to the left of the dial, achieve a calm balance, and have mostly good days instead of having only not-so-good days.

Daring to Dream

Christina Bruni4 Comments

The third value I espouse as an author in my books is this:

Getting off the SSI dole can allow you to have a better life than you thought possible.

Today in 2015: permanent disability doesn’t have to be the norm once a person is diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar, or another mental illness.

Instead, most people diagnosed with schizophrenia can and do recover. Upwards of 85 percent of individuals with schizophrenia reach the stabilization, stable, and recovery phases of this illness. Fifteen percent have a refractory version.

The good news is that we don’t have to suffer in vain or suffer alone. With the right treatment and support, it’s easier to envision having the kind of normal life that a person who doesn’t have a mental illness lives.

The SYMS clothing store TV advertisements in the 1980s boasted: “An educated consumer is our best customer.”

Educated patients are the best customers of medical services as well. Research with due diligence the treatment options available to you.

I’ve been employed at full-time jobs since 1990. I’ve been a public service librarian for over 14 years now.

Your own idea of what you want to do with your life is all that matters. Collecting SSI or SSDI and working part-time at Rite Aid might be an option for some of us. Others might be able to go to college and get a degree and work at a professional job.

I take this imperative stance:

No one on earth has the right to judge another person for what we’re capable of doing or not doing.

I regret that most people buy into the myth that a person is only successful and worthy of praise if they are contributing to the economic stream in society by working at a prestigious full-time job like a JD.

Finding your niche might take time as it did for me. The first 13 years of my recovery from the diagnosis in 1987 to finding my library job in 2000 were not the best years of my life. Yet I prevailed, and that’s the secret: nothing succeeds like persistence.

It can take time and it often more so than not takes time to find your niche in the world.

Yet once you do you will be a lot happier and achieve emotional freedom and yes clarity of thought.

Collecting SSI the rest of your life is NOT a guaranteed outcome today in 2015.

You have options for what you can do and it all starts when you research the things you might want to do that you would like and be good at.

Giving up isn’t an option.

Numerous long-term studies of individuals with schizophrenia that review their recoveries at the 25-year mark or 30-year mark find that we are living in society with great success doing things that so-called normal people do with jobs, romantic partners, and satisfying lives.

Search for and seek out members of your treatment team who believe that recovery is possible and who wholeheartedly support you in your goal of living a full and robust life.

You don’t have to settle for less than full inclusion in society.

Next I’ll talk in here about the fourth value.