Stigma

This is a discussion board post I wrote for one of my classes. The question was how do I think society views mental illness?

As a whole, I do not believe that society views mental illness as a brain disorder. There is much stigma and lack of understanding surrounding mental illness. I like what my colleague says when speaking about mental illness: "It's ok to have a heart disorder - we call that heart disease - or a pancreas disorder - we call that diabetes; why is it not ok to have a brain disorder - mental illness?"

Mental illness as a medical disorder/disease is a relatively new concept for humankind. Centuries past, mental illness was often viewed as demonic possession, and treated as such, usually by exorcisms or 'laying on of hands', depending upon your religious flavor. These methods of treating mental illness have not shown great success. Therefore, to have a mental illness is to feel isolated and defective; the degree to which one who has mental illness feels this shame depends upon their gender and culture of origin. For instance, many more women are treated for depression than men; yet, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, "Men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women," and "White males accounted for 7 of 10 suicides in 2015." (https://afsp.org/about-suicide/suicide-statistics/) Men are less likely to seek help for depression because, I suppose, it is not manly to feel chronic low self-esteem, experience a decreased inability to function and to enjoy life, suicidal thoughts, and feelings of worthlessness and hopelessness. Men are expected to 'man-up'.

We are all familiar with the person living with schizophrenia who roams the streets, mumbling to herself or shouting out at imaginary figures. Those folks, most of us will say, have a mental illness, or at the very least, they're 'crazy'. How many of us, however, think that there's anything that can be done? How many of us have friends or family who we know are in recovery from schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorder? These folks are roaming the streets too! With the advances in treatment of all mental disorders and mood disorders, many people who are affected by these disorders are able to live relatively normal lives. But because we don't see them much or hear from them, we're not necessarily aware that these people in recovery exist. We only become aware of mental illness when we see the guy on the street shouting, or hear of a murder/suicide or an office shooting on the news. This negative publicity and stigma inhibits people with lived experience of mental illness from sharing their experience.

A very important aspect of mental illness in the United States is that we still are more apt to treat mental illness with incarceration. Because the symptoms of mental illness are often disorderly (and occasionally violent) behavior, our society locks people with mental illness behind bars. I can vouch for the fact that jails and prisons are not conducive to mental health recovery, so as a society we are mis-treating mental illness. However, if the person whom we don't know how to deal with is safely out of sight, they are also safely out of mind.

Fortunately, the tide is turning, albeit slowly. More people are experiencing greater recovery from severe mental illness, and these people, me included, are open and honest about their experiences. It took me nearly half a century to acknowledge and accept all of my mental health issues, and I could not fully recover until I did. I now share my recovery with others through speaking, writing, facilitating support groups, and working 1:1 with my peers. If I did not share with you that I live with 2 mental illnesses, you would not know it; yet I manage my illnesses every day through medication, therapy, support, and practicing healthy life skills. The more people who are in recovery share their stories, the more mental illness will be treated successfully, and the less people will suffer and die. 

Namaste

Ken

Designed for Success

An affirmation I learned while I was affiliated with Unity goes, "I am God's enterprise, and God doesn't fail."  It's kind of catchy, but I didn't take it to heart - it required more faith than I had at the time.

As many of my readers (3 or 4, at least) know, I recently took the plunge again (God no, not marriage!) and enrolled in school. I was getting cold feet toward the start of classes. I went to orientation, and one of my instructors explained how the blended options program in which I'm enrolled works.

A few days later, I realized that the program is designed for the student's success - why would a school set students up for failure? And then I realized that my idea of school is much like the old TV series with John Houseman called The Paper Chase. In it, John Houseman played a crusty old law professor (and he played it well), whose aim seemed to be to make it really, really difficult for his students to succeed. That was my belief, that schools make it really hard to do well. Of course, that doesn't make sense, but beliefs that run in our subconscious don't need to make sense.

Back to now. I realized, then, that all I have to do is follow directions, follow the program. I can do that! The only thing stopping me is me! 

When I go on long bike rides, my head often tells me I can't do it. It's too hard. I won't make it. When that happens, I switch to what I call physical mode - I know all that I have to do is keep my legs moving, and so that's all I do - I concentrate on the movement of my legs. And this is the truth - if I didn't have a mind that makes up excuses and runs off of doubt and self-centered fear, I could do a lot more - maybe anything!

So, as I began to think about all I've heard and read and learned, I realized that the human being is designed for success. The reason we don't experience unbridled success is we've created something called doubt and fear. All of the 'what if's' and 'I don't know if I can's' distract us from focusing on success.

When doubt comes about my ability to successfully complete school, I tell myself, all I have to do is follow the plan. What would happen if I used that same psychology or philosophy in every area of my life? That I am designed for success, and any thought that comes along that is contrary to this idea should be discarded immediately.

I might have mentioned this once or twice before in some of my posts, but most of my life I have felt and believed myself to be less-than, to be not good enough, and to be incapable of success. That's just Ken. But who says? I haven't found anybody in recent times that has told me I can't do something, that I'm incapable, that I'm not good enough. So I think it's time to discard the old Ken suit, and put on a new one. According to many faiths, I am the spitting image of my Creator, which means that I automatically have all the attributes of my Creator - just like I cannot deny the fact that I am my father's son, because I look just like him (I used to think I was adopted. No such luck).

One really good way to see the best in myself is to see the best in others. And I am practicing that (note the word practicing). When we uplift and encourage others, we uplift and encourage ourselves. Jesus claimed that to be the Truth when He said, "Seek, and you will find." A better way to understand that in our vernacular might be "Whatever you look for is what you're going to get." If I look for sickness and failure, I'll surely find it. And if I look for courage, strength, health, creativity, success, in others, and myself, I will surely find that as well.

Today I commit to setting aside doubtful, fearful thinking, and replacing it with visions of success in whatever I do. 

Namaste,

Ken

Always Hopeful

An essential ingredient in recovery is hope. Without some flicker of hope, recovery cannot begin. People who struggle with addiction and/or mental illness often spend years struggling alone before receiving any kind of help. We know that something isn't right, and we look for ways to make things right again. Often our struggling serves only to mire us deeper in our illness.

Most of us begin recovery after losing all hope of ever finding a solution on our own. It takes a lot of pain, a great amount of courage, and a huge amount of desperation to go to someone and say, "My life is out of control and I don't know what to do. Please help me." This is the general idea; usually, it's not so neatly packaged. Our journeys into recovery often involve police contact or time in locked wards. Rarely does one wake up and say, "I think I'll check out a recovery meeting today," or "Perhaps I'll make an appointment with a psychiatrist to help me overcome these suicidal ideations." Usually, it's the drama our unmanageability creates that pushes us toward those that can help.

After some time in recovery, we realize we were trying to fix what was broken (our brains) with what was broken. We gain hope when we see others who were in the same boat as us leading their lives without the interference of their disease. We gain even more hope when we begin living in the solution handed to us by our peers.

And then we find the greatest hope generator of them all - we share our experience, strength, and hope with others whose lives are spinning out of control. This is certainly a huge blessing, because we need to do things to maintain recovery, at least for those of us who don't pop back to 'normal' once our disease(s) is arrested. We work with others, we speak, we write, we put our recovery out there for others to see. This strengthens our hope of continued recovery.

However, (there's always 'however'), something can happen in the course of our sharing that might diminish our hope - the intended receiver of our gift doesn't receive it in the way we think they should. This can take many forms - a person gets hope for their own recovery, but chooses to use a different vehicle (recovery support group) than you, or they choose to try to recover on their own. Sometimes they die.

"We will never give up hope" is one of the guiding principles of NAMI support groups. I have experienced some dark moments in recovery - moments in which my hope for myself or for someone else (and sometimes for the whole planet) has been diminished, always due to my perception that some situation is hopeless. And what I'm really saying when I say something is hopeless is that I can't see the solution. I often, perhaps daily, remember back to the start of my recovery. Now that was hopelessness! I couldn't see my way out of a paper bag, and that actually turned out to be a good thing - it meant that I became willing to accept the vision, the hope of others. And through following the vision of others, I began to see results - I began to feel and act differently, and new opportunities opened up for me. Where I am today is miraculous compared to where I was a little over 2 years ago. 

So, in order to sustain and even grow my own hope, I hold the vision of hope for others who may not have much hope, or even none at all. We do not have to die from our mental illness. We do not have to die from our addiction. We can not only survive, we can thrive.

Underneath the situations, underneath the circumstances, underneath the illness is a human being, a human being created with the same stuff that created the Universe. So we look past the circumstances and we see the human, meet and greet the human, and make a connection. We say, "No matter what diagnosis you have, no matter what roads you have traveled, you are here now, and I recognize both the human and the Divine in you. I see you. And we are connected." And when we can spot the human and the Divine and acknowledge it and begin to focus on it, healing begins, and hope is renewed. To be a part of someone else's healing is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of being alive.

To you who might be reading this, if you feel your hope waning, give away what little you seem to have. Pass it on to the next person, and you will receive twice back (at least) what you just gave. 

Namaste,

Ken