It's the Small, Persistent Things That Really Wear Us Down. Learn to Direct Your Focus
Managing the Smaller Parts of Mental Health to Overcome the Larger Ones
Before I start today’s blog entry, I wanted to share something absolutely precious with all of you. Since I was a youngster, I have loved musicals, and there is one that stands out. I hope some of my readers can watch this video and get something positive out of it. I personally find it impossible to watch this one and listen to it and not have my mood greatly improved.
Well, I hope you had a chance to enjoy Gene Kelly. Quite often in my years living with mental illness, there were little things in my life that caused me to give up on some of the larger and more important ones. One of the first things I did when I decided to admit to having a mental health challenge was to sign up to go back to school. It seemed like I was waiting forever, but I finally started classes and it was enjoyable. Perhaps one of the bigger mistakes I made was to make friends with people I knew at school. There is one friendship I started though that I have absolutely no regrets over, even though it led to me dropping out completely.
One day, a few weeks into my time at adult high school, I went out for a cigarette and there was a cute girl there. I recognized her from my Biology class as one of the few really lovely women in the whole school. I had also seen her sitting in the halls, buried in a book. These were two qualities I really respected, and we started up a conversation. She had our biology teacher in previous semesters and thought he was amazing. I recall going to his class and him challenging us, even though this was our second and potentially last shot at getting a high school diploma. He really was an amazing man. Soon this young woman and I, despite the fact that she lived with her boyfriend, would spend a ton of time together, go to a local restaurant often, and walk to the mall where we looked at bookstores.
The funny thing was, right from the start, she was totally accepting of my mental health challenges, and even read the material I was given “for family members” that explained what I thought at the time was my illness. It was great, we were like best friends. But then she dropped out of school and I found it simply too boring to go on and dropped out myself.
What was amazing was that we formed a friendship that has stood the test of time over decades. I still talk to her every day, even though she lives in a remote community and is now married. Her husband has come to accept that we are best friends and actually I kind of like him too and never step on his toes.
There have been some bad times. Once I became very ill and said and did things I greatly regret, and for a time my friend was out of my life. It was a real challenge to wait until I was released from hospital to make the effort to rekindle our friendship. I wish I had more advice on how to do this sort of thin, I know that a lot of people with mental illnesses have people cut them out of their lives for reasons that are just not rational or valid. What I do know though, was that I never really started to recover from my illness until I went into a group home. The biggest problem is though, group homes can be so many different types of things.
The group home I went to consisted of five houses, with the largest one for people who needed the most care. It was also the house where all our meals were cooked, which also had the office where we would get our medications. We all took turns making supper and doing the clean up after supper, which I have no regreats over. I learned to make a great deal more dishes than I used to. But what was critical for my recovery was more than just cooking.
What was so important about going to a group home was that all of a sudden I had regular meals, regular sleep, regular medications. They would make sure I made it to my appointments and had meetings when my house mates and I didn’t get along. It was incredibly healing. For much of the first year I was there, I had the chance to get some wonderful reading done, mostly Steinbeck. The critical thing though was that in the group home, the other people there either also had mental illnesses or were trained to deal with people with mental illnesses. This meant there was very little stigma in the small community we existed among. The greates thing was that I lived in that place for a total of more than 15 years, and in that time I got to know and become close friends with my neighbours as well. This led to so many great things, from being asked to MC events, to being hired to do photography work.
This is where the little things started to come in. There were a few times that we had people move in who were very difficult to live with. I will never forget hearing a car pull up and someone come to the door with a pizza, and I leaned out my window and asked what kind of pizza the person had ordered. He said, “Not yours.” I was really offended by this, I had no intention of eating his pizza. I said something, then the pizza guy lashed out at me in defence of this jerk and I felt really humiliated. The thing is, it is critical for people living with a mental health issue to get on top of when they find themselves ruminating on memories like this and deal with them if possible, or if not possible, to forget them. I have a method I like to use that can be extremely helpful in such situations.
The method is one I like to think I developed myself. I first used it in my teen years during my first successful (for a few weeks anyways) attempt to quit smoking. What I did was become consciously aware of my thoughts, and when I thought about smoking or cigarettes, I would instead focus my thoughts on something very positive, very powerful. I used an image in my head of a young woman I was going to school with who I had. a really serious crush on. I only had to force myself to do this a few times until my brain automatically went into that mode. The same method can be used when a person feels as though they are thinking about things in the past that are actually trivial, but still upsets them. Of course there have been others who suggest a similar approach, and their methods do work, this is just one that I have developed for myself that I find I respond to well.
Well dear readers, I want to put out a request. I am going to keep this blog as a free resource for as long as I can, but I have to say it does take a lot of effort, time, and yes even some cost to keep posting quality content. I am hoping that there are a few people among my audience to whom a donation of $8 a month is not unreasonable. I appeal to these people to get a paid membership, not so they can get better content or so they can chat or anything like that. I want everyone who comes to this blog to be able to do these things, I just want to ask that those who can afford it step forward and sponsor this site because if it is all a one-sided affair I will eventually not see the point of making frequent blog entries. Having a few paid subscribers will benefit a great deal of people.
I also wanted to mention that I would love it if everyone who reads this check out the chat. This is your space to put questions, opinions, even new threads in about my writing in front of an audience. Thanks so much for stopping in today, it would also be cool if anyone who joined the chat could give their opinions on these blogs. Take care and have a wonderful week!