Step One - Recovery

One step at a time, one day at a time. That is how we live in the world and life of recovery. The truth is that everyone is in recovery from something. We are humans, gentle humans, all the same, as we are born into this world, sensitive and fragile. Through great pain; trauma, abuse, neglect, hunger, and illness, we endure much in this life. I myself come from a lineage of abuse, and was told long ago that my mental illness was a chemical imbalance and was not caused by neglect or abuse. I had a beautiful childhood. I have had the best education, beautiful store bought and handmaid clothes from my mother, I traveled extensively, was well fed with homemade nourishing food, never struggled with hunger or shelter, and lived in a large beautiful home. My parents both came from blue collar homes, but worked at buying and fixing up houses, and pulled themselves up the economic ladder. My father was a real estate agent and my mother a stewardess. They worked hard, but we were very spoiled and had more than enough. So why the mental illness? Why did I develop strange relationships with my peers, became teased and bullied, and suffered with an eating disorder my first two years of high school? Why did I feel lost and vacant and so acted out with drugs and alcohol? Was it my intelligence? Was it my family history of alcoholism, and the emotional and physical abuse in my lineage? My sister and I were spared so much suffering, but as we both grew into adulthood, we knew that something just wasn’t quite right.

Despite your class, caste, or economic standing in this world, we all are exposed to suffering. It may be cancer, death, addiction, mental illness, disability, or the family disease of alcoholism. Years ago, when I moved to Lopez Island in 2007 when I was 28 years old, I was assigned a Meds Consul Nurse through Compass Health, and she took over my case and my medications. Later she left Compass and started Full Circle Counseling where I followed her to. I would take the ferry to San Juan Island or Orcas Island every month or so and check in with her. She became my therapist for a time as well, and helped me immeasurably. I owe Ann much credit for my nine years of work and stability that I achieved in her care. Among the validation I experienced with her, she shared a couple nougats of wisdom that have stayed with me throughout the years. First and foremost, she said to me, “Everybody takes something.” Early on in her care, I was still on a mission to be on the absolute minimum of meds. I learned while working at the Lopez Children’s Center, that taking more Lamotrigine, a drug that I went off of, then up to 100mg, then up to 200mg, made it possible for me to work 3-4 days a week instead of just two. I had been suffering with anguish and wanted to hurt my body, though only in my mind. When I took more of this medication, I was amazed at how much better I felt. I soon realized that I was not to blame for these symptoms and others. My life greatly improved and I was much happier on more medication.

The other nougat of wisdom Ann shared with me, was when she shared her first impression of me as I walked into her office in 2007 after my last and longest hospitalization, and the worst episode of my life. She said, “I knew when I first saw you that you had either been sexually abused or that your mother or father had.” This perplexed me greatly but also brought on great insight. There was both sexual and physical abuse in my lineage, pretty extreme at that, and I had learned this only recently in my adult years. I had been protected greatly from the truth, and exposer to my grandparents on one side of my family tree. Ann went on to explain that PTSD is very much passed down from generation to generation. She said that it had been proven that the children of Holocaust survivors, even if they lived protected lives, suffered greatly with residual PTSD. This is when I knew that behaviorally, I did have a reason for my symptoms, and that this rich and potent family history, as well as the childhoods of my parents and all that they experienced in life, was very much my story as well. I stand by the science that I do have a chemical imbalance and that medications are a huge gift and vital part of my recovery. I also believe in the science that stress, the stress I experienced in California at Mills College my freshman year of college, triggered a gene that resulted in my diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder. But it also was a long road of struggle before I ended up there. I had a blackout on alcohol when I was fifteen, dabbled in psychedelics in high school, smoked pot, had an eating disorder, had a panic attack, and suffered with major depression all before I was eighteen.

So what is the key? When do I become a whole person and seek holistic wellness? This is what I love about mental health. We treat the consumer, their whole person, and their whole life. In an ideal world, someone with a diagnosis such as myself would have a Peer Counselor, a Case Manager, a Therapist, a Psychiatrist or Meds Consul Nurse, many support groups to attend, and possibly even a Psychologist or Psychoanalyst. Us mental health consumers are often put together as a group in all of our weirdness. Unfortunately, I resisted groups and therapy greatly when I was in my early twenties. But I had a person, the love of my life, a family that I created myself, my painting, the mountains and rivers, my dogs, and my poetry. I survived, and I have arrived at a place today where I can participate willingly in wholistic care as a mental health consumer/patient. I am eternally grateful for all of the Psychiatrists, other doctors, my Peer Counselors, my Case Manager, my support groups, my Therapists, and my Meds Consul Nurse for helping me get to the place of enlightenment and acceptance that I experience today as I continue to pursue my recovery with a mental illness.