"My" Standard Time

You’ve heard of “Jewish” Standard Time. When people come fashionably late. You need to accustom yourself to the duration that recovery will take. Doing so will help you to see how well you adapt or have adapted to the lengths of time your “activities of daily living” take you. That is “your standard time,” and you can call it, “My” Standard Time.

Make a chart of how long you have been able to be patient for tasks that you have managed. It may take, you have found, a half-hour to beat eight large egg whites stiff. It may take, you have found, two hours--this time may vary significantly--for the effects of a certain medication to “kick in.” Just note with a timer’s stopwatch function the beginning of the event. It will then be easy to determine the elapsed time.

You will be developing a tool to see that you have succeeded in waiting for small victories. They are the launchpad for seeing improvements in your mood or accomplishments, in general those things that you care about more than the items you have clocked and placed in your chart.. “Slowly, slowly, wins the race!”

It’s Your Improvement That Counts

Happiness does not come from having things or from having money. It doesn’t even come from being in a relationship or having children. Happiness comes from being able to be satisfied when you are alone. (This is actually my own take on the Rabbinical injunction to be satisfied with your lot. “Who is rich? He who is happy with his lot,” Pirkei Avot 4:1.) This is because I have found that to live a good life as a person with psychiatric disability, my social life has to be relatively limited. I have many friends, but I have to work in solitude as I have difficulties interacting with other people—and I know it!

And such satisfaction can occur only once you can see that you have improved your character since the last time you thought about the issue. Perhaps only at the new year, perhaps weekly, perhaps daily.

The Jewish word for prayer translates to “examining yourself.” Of course, you may not observe Judaism or indeed any religion at all, but philosophically-minded people throughout the ages have made it their practice, perhaps following the Jewish tradition, to make an account to themselves of where they have improved and how far they think they yet have to progress.

Benjamin Franklin was the most famous American to recommend this practice. But it originated long ago among Jewish rabbis and scholars. It is in Judaism called, “accounting for the soul/chesbon hanefesh.” Perhaps the clearest early-modern version is in Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pakuda’s canonical Duties of the Heart. In essence, a person following chesbon hanefesh keeps a dedicated daily recording of desirable character traits—written on the vertical axis of a chart (or lines in a notebook.) The days of the month are written on the horizontal axis (or across the top of a page. Daily, the adherent checks those traits upon which he or she assesses that it was a successful day. At the end of the month or the quarter, the person tallies the results and competes with past accomplishment to see progress. (There is always some progress because a person using this system is thinking so hard about character development.)

Find a Regular Weekday Destination

If you are not working or in a program of vocational rehabilitation, you can always go to the library or to your place of worship without spending any money. (As a special treat, you can go infrequently to a cafe. Mr Trent Hamm of TheSimpleDollar.com blog, who lives in a small town in Iowa, finds it possible to go to the deli in his supermarket and simply nurse a bottle of water—costing 49 cents! for several hours. City dwellers are probably not able to reach such a bargain!)

A man who studies in a synagogue will always be available to complete the quorum of ten known as a minyan. He can feel good about his contribution and mitzvah.

Volunteering as a person with a psychiatric disability can be turned down if your disability is known. Volunteer or tzedakah/charity work that you can do off the premises of the agency—such as remote work on your computer—is a more likely prospect for most such people if they were hospitalized relatively recently.

 Are you under retirement age? Your US State’s department of vocational rehabilitation can provide you with counseling and financial assistance to set up your own business or go back to school. Your local Hebrew Free Loan Association or some gemachs (specialized free-loans, generally offering material goods such as wedding gowns) can provide the financial assistance, but you will lack the counseling, such as help with writing a business plan. There are Jewish Vocational Services in some localities that can provide the counseling and some training, but generally not the financial assistance. Any of these activities would provide a regular weekday destination for you.

Supported employment often leaves the participant worse off than when he or she began the program, in terms of self-image and the degree of disability. I do not recommend these programs—and anyhow the wages are by US Internal Revenue Service regulation permitted to be well below minimum wage in many settings.

Choosing a Better Sort of Friend

The sort of friend whom you should not encourage is a person you met on the psychiatric hospital ward, or during the experiences that had led up to the police having been called out to bring you to that ward. Such a person would only underscore your sense of yourself as being tainted with stigma.

You need instead someone more cheerful than you, a man or woman who reaches out because he or she recognizes the good within you. A person whom you have met while you were engaged in an activity that involved giving to others or praising the Good L-rd is that kind of man or woman. As an example, a person whom you meet while you are in your house of worship is ideal. He or she may be interested in helping you out with requests you might make, as an act of charity, and you have a common denominator to provide a subject for both initial and fall-bak conversations.