I will return to posting blog entries this coming week.
A year later I’m losing another loved one and have been preoccupied.
Will return on Monday.
Yes You Can
I’ve changed the quote at the top right of this blog.
Years ago circa 1989 when I was shunted into the day program a woman I met told me: “Not a lot of people with a disability could do what you do.”
It’s true that I took offense at this because I thought it was possible to do these things.
As of today the proof that Yes You Can really is that we are “individuals” living with a mental health challenge. Not “consumers” or “schizophrenics” or any other label.
Each of us has the potential to do the things that give us joy and happiness. Each of us has the potential to heal and have optimal mental health. Each of us has the potential to flourish doing what we love.
Harboring jealousy at other people isn’t the way to live our lives.
Today in 2017 I can adamantly rebut that woman’s decades-ago comment with this:
You don’t have to become an Ivy League lawyer or a famous writer to get on with a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life after you receive your diagnosis.
That’s the distinction I’ve always made in the various incarnations of my blog:
Often our internal roadblocks limit us more than external factors.
The goal I dare say is to be happy and healthy–that’s the true aim of living in recovery.
Each of us gets to define what happy and healthy looks like for us in our own lives.
Again it goes back to what I’ve written about self-stigma. If you’re trashing yourself or someone else because they’re a cashier in Rite Aid, that’s NOT right.
The woman who commented to me that way in the mists of time was an exceptional baker. She could cook like you wouldn’t believe.
So if you are a creative chef creating culinary wonders that’s your version of happy and healthy.
I thought about this woman’s comment today because I was talking with my literary agent who’s as visionary as I am in championing mental health.
Years ago when I first started blogging I had the audacity to claim that most people could recover and go on to have your own version of a full and robust life.
Frankly I’m tired of so-called experts claiming that no one can recover. I’m tired of getting attacked because I choose to focus on on the positive instead of dwelling on symptoms and lack and deficits.
The point is: if you can bake a souffle you’ve got that over me.
Any questions?
Self-Advocacy
You shouldn’t ever apologize for your existence.
You shouldn’t feel that your diagnosis limits you forever.
I coached a guy who found out one of his top forty careers might be a race car technician.
I’m going to be excoriated for telling readers that we can’t always listen to what so-called experts advise us is the right thing to do.
They haven’t met us and aren’t living our lives. Only you and I know what’s the right thing to do on any given day.
You’re an equal partner with your treatment provider(s). You deserve and have the right to have input into the decisions being made about your life.
Today circa 2017 we have more options and better options for what we can do in recovery. If no option exists, you can create an option for yourself.
The Aveeno skincare advertisement gets it right: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Each of us can create a life of our own design.
It’s our right to be self-advocates. You aren’t any longer relegated to being a passive recipient of services.
That’s why I always detested using the word consumer to describe a person. You consume soft drinks. You don’t consume healthcare.
I’m going to end here with this:
You diagnosis doesn’t limit your choices forever.
Yes you can.
Cigarette Smoking
We should each of us love each other and protect each other and our planet.
It’s because I care about everyone living on earth that I implore readers of my blog to resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.
I’ve always detested cigarette smoking. From the time I was a young kid–easily only nine years old or so–I’ve detested cigarette smoking.
My mother and my aunts–her sisters–smoked two packs a day for forty years. No surprise–they now sleep and travel everywhere with oxygen tanks and use inhalers.
I judge no one living on earth. Good people often make the choice to start smoking cigarettes. Illness doesn’t discriminate–it strikes good people as well as evil people.
You will become disabled if you smoke cigarettes.
You’ll have to sleep and travel with an oxygen tank. If you care about vanity, and choose to smoke, you’ll get wrinkled early and lose your looks and have yellow teeth. Chances are, you’ll lose your teeth at some point and need false teeth.
If you do only one positive thing in your life and nothing else quit smoking if you’ve already started. Only doing this–quitting smoking–is the best thing you could ever do.
I’m losing my aunt now after losing my father to colon cancer in 2015. It’s unimaginable yet true–a good person taken out because she smoked cigarettes for 40 years.
You’ll think it’s over if you’re 60 and quit smoking yet you’ll remain in compromised health forever. Fare better to quite smoking at 30 than to smoke for your whole life. Yet I implore you to quit now even if you’re 60.
I don’t take this lightly. I don’t care if a person wants to stay at home watching TV all day. I don’t care if a person chooses jealousy or hate over love. I don’t care how anyone else lives their life.
I do care about health. I care that everyone living on earth has the chance to be healthy. I care that good people make bad choices.
It’s because I’ve seen the perils in my own family of smoking cigarettes that I implore readers now: resist the urge to start smoking cigarettes.
You don’t deserve to be hooked up to tubes, comatose, and barely breathing after you have an operation.
You don’t deserve to have limited romantic choices because no one wants to date a smoker.
You don’t deserve to add a smoking-related disability to the mental health disability you already have.
You deserve to have a long, healthy, prosperous life.
You deserve to meet the man or woman of your dreams.
You deserve to save money on your healthcare.
After all, why not make yourself rich instead of making Phillip Morris rich?
It’s something to think about dear readers.
If you smoke, the people who care about you are living in pain watching you make yourself ill. You’re not the only one you’re hurting by making yourself ill. Those of us who watch you light up are in agony too.
We care a lot.
I care and I haven’t even met you.
I’ll end here with the hope that you can read what I’ve written and take it seriously.
Numerous options exist for helping you quit.
You might not stay quit and it could take a couple of times.
Yet now is the right time to try.
I’m rooting for you dear readers.
New Ideas About Goal Setting
If you ask me the best way to achieve a goal is to focus on the process not the outcome.
A lot of us will have to start from the premise that it might take longer and harder to get where we want to be be.
Just knowing this can help us feel better instead of expecting quick results.
That’s why I use the term lifelines not deadlines.
So I say–set a goal that’s within reach. As you rack up wins challenge yourself to do something slightly beyond what you think you’re capable of.
Jim Afremow in his book The Champion’s Comeback writes that the goal shouldn’t be to lighten our load–the goal should be to seek to have broader shoulders.
Living with a mental health challenge isn’t ever easy. We can have times when our lives ARE easier so we must appreciate these times when they’re here.
As is quoted: “You have two hands: one for helping yourself. One for helping others.”
In this regard I’ve become so inspired because of the Women’s March on Washington.
If you want to read about this March I’ll be posting a review and my impressions of it on Saturday to the Left of the Dial blog.
Drinking Plenty of Water
I’m on a big kick now to get people to drink plenty of water.
Divide your weight in half to get the number of ounces of water to drink each day.
I’m as guilty as anyone of resisting drinking water.
If you don’t drink enough water you could wind up needing to go to the ER for hydration via an IV drip.
Without enough water you could get so fatigued that you can’t get out of bed.
If drinking water doesn’t appeal to you, try using a bigger glass and filling it halfway so you’re not overwhelmed. Or use only a 10-ounce glass and fill it all the way.
I’ve ordered one of the Ellen DeGeneres Joy mugs to use throughout the day to drink water.
Drinking water flushes out toxins. Drinking water gives you clearer skin. Drinking water keep you hydrated. Thus drinking water helps you maintain your energy level.
What’s not to love about drinking water?
Continuing in Recovery
The older you get in your life it’s possible to have a better recovery.
My point exactly is that engaging in goal-seeking behavior can make all the difference in the quality of your life.
God didn’t put me here on earth in this lifetime to judge anyone else. Yet it’s my philosophy that watching TV all day and isolating in your apartment can breed ill health.
The term “actively alone” I’ve coined to describe the benefit of doing positive healthy things–whether in your apartment cooking a meal or going to a coffeehouse to read a newspaper and drink a latte.
Sometimes all it takes is getting out of your house and your head to improve how you feel about yourself.
The further along you are in your recovery you can make new strides along the way. The goal is to not stop growing and improving. If you ask me staying in the same place mentally will lead to a stagnant life.
It’s January–which in my book is the perfect time to do early Spring Cleaning.
The first article I ever got published was in 1990 in the Women’s Forum of the Staten Island Advance newspaper. My article in appeared in January and was titled Time to Start Spring Cleaning.
Indeed–over and over through the years I’ve made the case in the blog for doing spring cleaning in January, in the actual spring,or at any time of the year.
Clearing the cobwebs out of your head as well as clearing items out of your closets is to me the perfect technique to segue into taking new risks.
Go at your own pace. Recovery is not a race nor is it a competition.
My friend and I count down the weeks to spring not the endless winter days. Right now there’s just over only nine weeks to spring.
Spring will be here in due season.
Using Lifelines Instead of Deadlines
I coined the term lifeline to describe the time frame one should use when setting goals.
Too often wanting or expecting to do something quickly leads to failure and thus feelings of low self-worth.
That’s a crummy way to keep living your life over and over: trying to hew to impossibly strict deadlines that even an Adidas champion couldn’t live up to.
For all of us it’s possible that faith and doubt battle it out in our minds. Which one will win today? Which one will win tomorrow?
It’s natural to doubt that you’ll ever be able to achieve the goals you set. Then when you don’t achieve a goal it’s a crushing defeat.
Use your doubt as the catalyst for envisioning what is possible. Think of the times where you doubted something in the past and it worked out just fine.
Instead each of us can set a lifeline in which to accomplish what we set out to. I’m not a big fan of five-year plans insofar as most of them take longer and that’s okay.
Isn’t it beautiful to know that we can be victorious down the road–not just today or tomorrow or a year from now?–we can be victorious five or ten or fifteen years from now.
That’s the beauty of having a lifeline to measure our ability to achieve a goal: we don’t have to give up just because the end isn’t in sight.
Oftentimes we need to come at our goal differently or change our goal when the original goal is no longer achievable.
Instead of throwing in the towel and extrapolating that “I’ll never be able to do anything I want”–we can frame it differently–“I can’t do this and have this thing yet if I research what I can do and have I can take different steps to get that.”
Faith and doubt are well-suited to be lifetime boxing partners.
I say: acknowledge the doubt and use it as a springboard. Be grateful when you’re able to have faith. Doubt shouldn’t be feared.
In the next blog entry I’ll talk more about the different types of goals.
New Year’s Resolutions
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
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:
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.
Full and Robust Life Hacks 