breakdowns

Breakdowns are inevitable. They happen for a number of reasons. Sometimes our coping skills are simply overwhelmed by stress filled circumstances. Sometimes our medication stops working and sometimes a myriad of events occur in just the right configuration to stop us in our tracks. What we hope we learn as we maneuver through our lives is how to spot the warning signs before we breakdown.

My first breakdown occurred when my son was very young, around the age of two. I had moved back to Buffalo and was living with my mother. I was working part time at a great job, but was under a lot of stress. At that time I had not been accurately diagnosed and my mental illness was not being treated. Looking back the breakdown had many warning signs. I was not equipped to recognize them and I had nothing in place to manage my circumstances. One day I took my son to daycare and then could not stop crying and shaking. I called my mom and she took me to the hospital. That was my first hospitalization for mental illness.

I was fortunate. The doctor on call was very progressive. He didn’t ask me what was wrong with me, he asked what happened to me. I told him about the racism I faced at work and the feelings of failure I had over moving back home. He told me to pull myself together and go home to raise my son. He was unconventional, but that’s what I needed to hear to get back on track. I spent seven days in the hospital, left with a script for an antidepressant and went back to my life.

There are a number of tools that we can use to bypass a breakdown or at least move through one with the least amount of trauma. There are Wellness Recovery Action Plans (WRAP). This tool assists in identifying triggers to a breakdown and warning signs. It’s a comprehensive document that can be used to direct care when we are not doing so well. It informs clinical staff and our supporters about how we want to be treated when things get hairy and we aren’t able to care for ourselves fully. It’s a living document that changes as we change and as our circumstances change.

There is also an advanced directive. This document lets your supports, including doctors, know how you want to be treated in case of a crisis. You can outline definitively which hospitals you want to be treated at, what medications are acceptable to you and who you want involved in your treatment. You can also specify who you Don’t want involved. These documents are effective, but you have to let your supporters in on them and you must keep them updated with current information.

Breakdowns are difficult for everyone involved, but they can be survived. In my darkest days I tried to focus on what I actually could control instead of all the things that seemed like they were spinning out of control. In doing that I felt less powerless. I've been fortunate because I have always had the support and love of my family. They haven’t always known what to do or say, but they have always been there.

Everyone doesn’t have this support from their family and that is where peer support comes in. It’s important to cultivate a circle of peers who can be there when you are doing well and when you are not doing so well. Some kind of support from others is essential to surviving a breakdown. If you are deep in despair and trying to keep your head up, don’t give up. Recovery is real and this is just a bump in the road. We can and do recover.

hope

Hope. It is the cornerstone of recovery. Without hope we view our lives from very limited perspectives. We tell ourselves that we can’t live a life of our choosing because we are sick. Without hope we define ourselves in terms of our diagnosis, our symptoms, and our dark days. We say things like I’m a schizophrenic instead of I live with schizophrenia. Without hope we succumb to the debilitating effects of our illness; we linger in sadness, hopelessness and regret.

Hope can be illusive at the start of our recovery. Like a firefly in the night we catch glimpses of hope out of the corners of our eyes. For me hope began with the birth of my son. In my darkest days I slept twelve or more hours a day. Only getting up to care for my young son. It was his laughter that gave me hope and it was his basic need for a mother that kept me going day after day.

In my darkest days of battling symptoms that I didn’t even know were symptoms, I worked hard to create a normal life for my son Joseph. I made sure his clothes were clean, made sure he got to school on time, helped him as much as I could with his homework and kept him busy with after school activities. My greatest regret is where I failed him. All parents fall short in some way and I was no different. Due to my illness I wasn’t always emotionally present for him.

Sometimes I was so caught up with taking care of the necessities that I missed things. He has a sleep disorder that began to manifest when he was around twelve. I missed the onset of it and chalked his complaints up to puberty. I was so preoccupied with making sure there was food in the house and that he had the latest popular video game. I was preoccupied with keeping my head on straight so that I could keep the rent paid and the lights on. Often times I just didn’t see what was happening to him and how he was affected by my illness and my sometimes self-destructive coping mechanisms.

But I always had hope because I had him. My hope sprang from my love for him and my desire to do something right. That something right was being a good mom. I couldn’t get lost in my delusions, go into the hospital, spend all our money in a fit of mania or engage in risky behavior because there was Joseph to think of. There was his present and future to consider before anything else. 

My son still embodies hope for me even as he moves into adulthood and needs me less or maybe in different ways. I work hard at my recovery for myself first but also for Joseph. I live my life now as a model of what is possible. Everyone has challenges; some of mine involve my mental illness. So I persevere for myself, but also for Joseph. I persevere to remind him that he can live the life he envisions for himself despite his own challenges. 

peer support

In order to talk about peer support I need to define what a peer is. Plain and simple, a peer is anyone living with a mental health and/or addictive disease challenge. So, in peer support we do just that; we support one another in our recovery. What does support look like. Support is an encouraging word, positive feedback, the sharing of ideas and skills and camaraderie.

Peer support can happen anywhere at any time between two or more people who are active in their recovery. What is recovery? Recovery is moving at one’s own pace towards a life of one’s choosing. Peers don’t have to be at the same level of recovery to support one another or be recovering from the same thing. They just have to be committed to moving forward and be willing to use their lived experience to help someone else.

In peer support we don’t really give each other advice. Rather we speak from our own very personal experiences. This exchange of ideas and experiences differs from a clinician patient relationship in that no one is the expert on anyone else. We are all experts on ourselves. We know better than anyone what works for us and what doesn’t.

The value comes from the discovery of our strengths, skills and talents. Together we figure out what we are good at, find the courage to pursue those talents and find meaning in our trials. Our trials and dark days really do make us stronger and better equip us to manage our lives. We come face to face with the truth of who we are and what we are capable of. We find personal power in the fact that we are more than survivors, we are thrivers.

We do this together in nonjudgmental environments where no one person is the leader; where there are no followers, only participants in the process. Everyone is accepted for where they are in the process and although there is no insistence that a person move quickly through their recovery, there is peer pressure. Pressure to be the best version of one’s self on any given day. This miraculous and life affirming exchange can happen in a fast food restaurant, a community center or in a formal peer program. It can happen at the bus stop or in someone’s living room.

In wellness centers in Georgia peer support happens individually and in groups. Trained and untrained peers can facilitate peer support. In clinical environments trained peer specialists facilitate individual sessions called peer to peer and recovery groups. In all these interactions, lived experience is used to transfer life skills to one another.

We are a tribe of thrivers who experience the world in very different ways. Some of us experience mood swings, some see things that others can’t and some hear things that others can’t. The thing we all have in common is hope. We hope for a better future, a future in which we live the best possible life we can. We hope for a future where we are seen as more than our diagnosis and dark days; a future where we can be fully mother, father, sister, son, CPS, peer, etc. And miraculously, we are all welcome in peer support. No one who hopes for a better tomorrow or is active in their recovery is excluded.

suffering

To be sure, having a mental illness means suffering. There’s no getting around it. However, it is worth noting that those who live with severe and persistent mental health challenges do not suffer in vain. I suppose this perspective depends a lot on one’s spiritual beliefs and one’s take on the notion of service to others. When we use our suffering to reach and free others from the misconception that we are victims of our illness we give meaning to it.

It has a purpose. It strengthens us and transforms us into heroes really. We save ourselves and others from soul crushing sadness and despair. The suffering we endure and survive is a measure of our personal power of perseverance. We survive it, learn to manage it, overcome it, and thrive in it.

People who live with serious and persistent mental illness suffer stigma, side effects of psych meds and of course the symptoms of their mental health challenges. The stigma comes from ignorance and fear. It doesn’t help that the media portrays us as violent, unstable and unreachable. The fact is, we are no more likely than persons without mental illness to commit violent crimes. In fact we are more likely to be the victims of crime. We suffer from being misunderstood and inaccurately categorized.

We suffer the debilitating side effects of the medications we use to manage our symptoms. We suffer the inevitable comorbidities that come with the side effects, like obesity, hypertension, diabetes, high cholesterol, sleep apnea and so forth. And of course we suffer from our symptoms, such as auditory hallucinations, mood swings, paranoia, delusions, etc.

However, there is meaning in our suffering because we survive it and thrive. When we are able to live a life of our choosing we model survival for others. We instill hope in the hopeless and often bring others back from the brink of despair. We become an example of what is possible. We don’t have to live a life of martyrdom. We don’t have to have tragic ends. We can and do thrive.