"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.)

Disclosing a Psychiatric Disability in the Context of Interviewing or a Job

While the Americans with Disabilities Act, and perhaps similar legislation in other nations, confers rights to be accommodated to people with invisible disabilities as well as those with visible, I do not suggest that you avail yourself of such rights. There is simply too much prejudice against people who are thought of as “mentally ill.”

The exception is in the governmental context, where in the United States it is the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that gives the authorization. Governmental jobs, being more subject to bureaucracy, also yield less bias in the workforce. Finally, sometimes governmental agencies actually provide affirmative action preferences in hiring to those who self-disclose as having a disability. Such agencies have systems in place to follow through with reasonable accommodations, not according to the letter of the law but in the spirit of righteousness.

In the Interests of Family Peace and Harmony, Show an Interest!

Now that you’ve said that you appreciate what your family had been doing for you during all those years of your challenging behaviors, what can you do to improve your relationship in the long term?

Make friends with each of your family members, each one in his or her own right and turn.

Show that you want to know details about their:

·         interests,

·         hobbies,

·         doings,

·         activities, and

·         problems.

What if they, or one of them, withdraws and will not give you any details about their lives? Just blithely go on expressing interest! “Once burned, twice shy,” they may feel. They don’t want to be vulnerable to your crushing their hearts again. Eventually, they may come around. Meanwhile, you can feel satisfied that you are doing all that you can.

Blossom!

Do not let your mental illness describe you. Be all that you can be. In my own language, become the person who G-d intended you to be. Just as any other person does, you have gifts. Just as any other person can, your character can shine.

Don’t compare yourself to others, especially in the area of character development. A quick temper goes along with several psychiatric diagnoses, for example. If you have managed to control yourself so that you are today less volatile than you were a year ago, that is all that you need care about. Just because a person without a mental illness may be today more even-tempered than you—it should make no difference to you. Applaud yourself for your own progress!

Many people with psychiatric disabilities tend to be harsh and judgmental towards themselves. Here is the antidote, the remedy! The character trait(s) that you excel at—such as generosity—can stand you in good stead even given your nosological (diagnosis-driven) weaknesses.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short if You Have a Psychiatric Disability

Serious psychiatric illness (other than a few developmental disabilities) entails, by definition, a reduction from earlier in the person’s lifetime of the capacity to think, in my observation both as insight into myself and as viewer of others (whom I’ve been thrown in with or see on the streets) who have the problems. The chief difficulty that the person faces in getting better, it seems to me as I look back and as I look around today, is that there isn’t from family and mental health clinicians enough trust that the person can regain autonomy. Yes, there is a recovery movement in full swing; yes, treatment today is deemed to be patient-centered, but the behavior held as potential and prospective for the patient is uninteresting as it is much less than she has previously achieved. Whatever that may have been.

The “human potential movement” of the Sixties had excesses like swimming with dolphins (which latter sounds hard on the hijacked dolphins, but fun for the people), but like many aspects of cultural history had a good point to make. People are more than they present with. Even patients with serious mental illness.

Yes, there is a certain reduction of autonomy inherent in being a psychiatric patient with such a level of disability, but no, that reduction should not be accepted and even colluded in by clinicians.

As someone with ten years of informal and thereafter 34 years of diagnosed status through 2018, I do know that there is “disrespect” given by the world--even by clinicians, as well as the actual provocations given by the patients. (And, yes, I’ve given more than my fair share of trouble, such as reneging on commitments and being hostile to my brother in particular,)

Things are far better today than in the early Eighties, when for example I was turned away from care at a dentist’s office due to having filled in on its medical history form that I had mental illness (the Americans with Disabilities Act and various anti-stigma campaigns have helped). But there is still too much painting today of people who are psychiatric clients as though they are unworthy of dignity.

One aspect of this situation that I believe should garner more attention is that hope for a return to full prior personality  (not for the patients to be obsequious, which seems to be clinicians’ desire for patients at least in hospital and clinic settings still today) should be what is most strongly urged for patients by clinicians, especially for depressed patients--and in my observations, almost all patients have at least episodes of depression. If the clinicians can’t give respect now, they should communicate that respect is around the bend for patients who can hang in there.

Empathy for Your Past and Future Self

Empathy refers to “feeling with” another person. “Feeling with” for who you were—who you can become again, but better (due to your intervening experiences and learning.)

But the person you were (before your mental health symptoms became bothersome) and the person you will be (once you mature into recovery,) these are both “another person” in comparison to the you who is before your mind right now. Empathy for our past and future self is not self-pity.

It would be self-pity to decide that, because you cannot achieve today what you planned to achieve yesterday, before your mental health symptoms began, that you never will be able to actualize yourself, to be all that you can be.

“Patience for patients” is what I so often advise. You will mature out of the worst of your symptoms. You will have another chance to use your special gifts.

Our skin protects the organs of our bodies from direct interaction with the world around us. Our human skin grows as we grow. Like a snake shedding its skin, sloughing or molding It off in one piece, human beings rid themselves of old skin—but in us, it is gradual, yet it is always happening. We lose 30,000-40,000 skin cells hourly! Dust mites eat the cells, and we notice the total debris as dust that we need to clean out of our houses.

In the same way that your skin renews itself, your brain will as well.

Just give time its chance to heal.

© Deborahmichelle Sanders 2018. All rights reserved.