Tag: recovery

Using Lifelines Instead of Deadlines

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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.

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.

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.