Category: Recovery

A Little Bit Every Day…

by Joshua, posted in Blog, Recovery

bicyclingI remember after the first time I was hospitalized, when I was in the depths of my first post-psychotic depression, the tremendous weight that I felt.  I was so depressed, that I could barely do anything.  My body was so frail and hyper-sensitive, that even taking a shower was difficult for me.  The changes in temperature were unbearably uncomfortable, and the task felt like a huge burden that I had to push through every time.

During that period I spent a couple of months mostly lying in bed.  The powerlessness, hopelessness, and despair that I experienced were indescribable, and I don’t thing anyone could imagine what it’s like without having gone through it.  I don’t wish that upon anyone.  One of the hardest parts was the loss of my sense of self.  Prior to that, I had identified myself as someone who was very driven, a high achiever (namely in academics), and someone with a lot of personal power.  Everything that the ego identifies with, a job title, influence, a nice physical appearance, and material possessions, etc., were stripped from me.

I was so angry about not being able to do the little things that I once could, such as setting a goal for myself and following through on it.  My friends were moving onward and upward, while I was stuck in the mud.  I was insulted by some of the advice that my therapists gave me, such as “set a little goal for the day, like going for a five minute walk, and just follow through on it.”  I had rowed heavy weight crew for hours a day at an ivy league school, and now my aspiration was a five-minute walk?  It was hard for me to accept.

One of the “blessings in disguise” of an illness like schizoaffective disorder, is that the suffering breaks down the ego.  There are two ways to grow in this life, through suffering, or through proactive choice.  While growing through proactive choice is the ideal way, suffering does the trick too.  It teaches us to let go, and to discover what really matters in life, as long as we are willing.  The personal growth that I experienced from having an illness has been an incredible gift for me.

While I don’t believe that we should lower our expectations for our lives (which therapists also told me), I do believe that taking it day-by-day, and doing a little bit each day, is helpful advice.  A trick that I learned from eating a healthy diet is to add in the good food as much as possible, and the bad food will fall away.  I think this also applies to life.  If we add in the positive actions and habits, as much as we can each day, the bad habits will fall away.  Little by little, over time, the momentum builds, and our lives begin to shift in a positive direction.

 

Letting go of Limitations

by Joshua, posted in Blog, Mental Illness, Recovery, Spirituality

believeThere was a time, early on when I was in the beginnings of my illness, that people told me that I may have to lower my expectations for myself.  Mental healthcare workers, even family members, thought that I would be limited by my illness and would not be able to achieve what I would have been able to had I not gotten ill.  I remember my counselor treating me as if I was not as capable as other people, as if she did not really believe that I would recover from schizoaffective disorder.

This lack of faith and lack of belief in recovery that some people in the mental health world share is unfortunate in my eyes.  Our beliefs affect our reality, and if we believe we will fail then we are more likely to.  Likewise, if we believe that we will heal, then I believe we are more likely to as well.  Belief is only the beginning, however, as we must take action.  The tricky part is that many of our limiting beliefs inhibit us from taking action.  I know that I have fallen into the trap of using my illness as a crutch many times.  I would start feeling sorry for myself or thinking that I would never get better.  Or I would start thinking that I would have to settle in my life.  This is a dangerous trap to let yourself fall into.  I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said “most men live lives of quiet desperation.”  I did not and do not want this to be me.

The thing is, mental illness is not a crutch.  It is not an excuse to be less than you are meant to be.  Yes, my life looks very different now than it would have had I not gotten sick, but that doesn’t mean it is better or worse.  I think I’m a much better person now as a result of my experiences with mental illness.  I was a pretty narrow-minded kid, and I am much more humble and compassionate now as a result of what I have been through.  It has done so much to mold my character.  Yes, from a linear point of view, I was on disability for eight years, and I may be “behind” in my finances, but from a spiritual point of view, we all take our own windy roads to learn the lessons that we need to learn in this life.  And to me, the spiritual lessons are more important than the material possessions anyway.

So, mental illness or not, we are no different than anybody else in the sense that we are responsible for our own lives.  We must hold ourselves accountable for our reactions to our experiences.  We may not choose all of our circumstances, but we can choose to make the best of them, to learn from them, and to move forward in a positive way.  And we can choose not to limit ourselves or put ourselves in a box based on a diagnosis.  We are all meant for great things, even in small ways, and if we do just a little to bring out the goodness inside of us, then the world is a better place because of it.