Dear Mental Illness

A letter to my mental illness....

Have I ever told you how much I hate you? Yet I love you for just as many reasons.

Reasons I hate you:

1) You've taken some of my family from me

2) You've helped me ruin relationships in more than one way.

3) you've helped ruin my life in many ways: example, self-harm, theft, jail, and even by messing up in school.

4) You've helped me ruin the lives of many.

5) You've even helped me hold on to relationships that I shouldn't

6) You've help me forget who I am.

The reasons I love you:

1) You've helped me bring back some of my family

2) You've helped me make over 2000 friends in the last 2 years

3) you've taken my life in a whole new direction (Thank You!)

4) You've helped me see that I am not Hopeless and that I am a good person.

5) Thanks to you I have made some great friends in life and experience some amazing relationships

6) You've helped me see where I belong

7) You've helped me see who I am and who I want to be.

8) Because of you I can make someone's life a better place, as well as mine

9) Because of you I can see clearly where I was and where I need to be.

Needless to say, I am doing great where I am now, even with all of your short comings. That being said, there are still 2 people who I want in my world but they aren't, my son and my father. I need their support, yet don't have it, yet I am grateful for this in my life who are my support systems. If your reading this, you know who you are.

To date, I have started school and am almost on to my Junior year while maintaining a 4.0 (who would have ever thought? LOL), I have certificates to teach 5 different classes, and am currently working on 4 more, and will reach my goal of starting a recovery college at the rate I am going and I owe most of it to you my mental illness. Thank you for helping to push me to accomplish these tasks.

Today I am grateful for:

1) My recovery

2) my friends and the many more I will make.

3) My new life.

4) The ability to overcome my fears.

5) My friends going through recovery and them making it...

Being a Peer Support Specialist

A few years back a wonderful job found me, it's called Peer Support. I had no idea what this position entailed nor did I even know how to go about finding this training. Then one day I ran across an advertisement for a class coming up to learn how to be a Peer Specialist, I was taken back.

Now to hunt down the man teaching the class and needless to say I did hunt him down. LOL. There was probably more then 10 calls a day and numerous emails asking to be in his class. It was while waiting to here back from him that I did all the research I could find and knew this was the job for me.

So after 20 plus years in the Restaurant Industry, I gave it up and walked into the unknown. Fear of the unknown is what stops many of us with a mental illness (and even without) from doing anything. But I knew that if I was ever going to get anywhere it was time to jump into the unknown. Jump I did and I am very glad I did as I never knew my life could feel as complete as it does now. Oh sure, there are still some things missing I am sure, however my life now makes sense as to where it didn't before.

For starters, I have learned that I can't nor do I need to save everyone. My dad and I have a very strained relationship. I have called monthly, sent him letters, ran up to Ohio when I heard he had a heart attack and then had to have surgery. If I would have to guess, I can honestly say my dad has depression and therefore has yet to want to come to reality that a child of his has a severe and persistent mental illness, let alone admit he has some form of one. I have tried is all I can say and I realized when I started this job that it is no longer up to me, but up to him. I can try and help, but I can't "fix" him. But yet I still adore my job knowing I can't fix or save everyone.

The position of being a peer support specialist has opened many doors for me: I have started going to college full-time to eventually become a psychologist, I have helped form a State-wide organization called the NC Association of Peer Specialists, started my own recovery education company (Recovery Can Happen), and have been trained in a variety of recovery concepts. Yes, my life seems full, but it's not. I still find the time to work as a Certified Peer Support Specialist, both on my own and for companies.

Yes, it is rewarding!

All to often we hear that people with a severe mental illness can't hold a job, they don't know how wrong they are. This is the perfect job. We get to teach people ways to help with their lives, get them motivated to find ways to live again, teach them interventions concerning self-esteem, hope, ways to rethink their negative thoughts, find resources that they may have never known about, and even maybe find them other services they might not have known about to get the help they needed. We do a lot more then that, but we show them what recovery is about through our own experiences.

All to often, when meeting a client, I hear them say" someday I want to be like you". Well, you can never be like me because you aren't me, but you can be similar to me and do what I do. Recovery is possible if you give it a chance.

Happy Blessings!

Mirroring

For many years I liked whoever I was married to or dating liked. If they liked a certain food I liked it. If they liked certain people, I liked them as well. If they were upset, sad, or angry I was as well, same thing with being happy and so on. They cried, I cried, and the list could go on and on. It's called a "mirroring effect." You pick up on the people around you and act or like the things they do.

I had to find a way to break habit as it wasn't me. Eventually I would stop mirroring and start rebelling, which just created problems since the person I was with didn't understand where I was coming from or what was going on. I made it easy to leave or for them to walk away from me. Funny thing is, I noticed that I'm not the only one to do it. People with a mental illness have a tendency to want to please everyone or we run them off. Many of us though for the wrong reasons. We can't keep someone just because we are afraid to be lonely, nor can we simply mirror them to make them happy.

We need to be our own-selves. After all, we matter as individuals. Never stoop to please someone else by giving up your love for various things. Be that individual that you were born to be.

Some ways to stop:

1) never give up on yourself to make someone else happy.

2) just because the other in your life likes something, doesn't mean you have to like it also (unless of course you truly do like it).

3) try doing your own thing once in a while.

4) remind yourself your an individual, separate from your partner.

5) remember what you like and express it so that you never forget it.

6) learn to compromise.

7) look into self-esteem classes or groups

8) tell yourself every day that you are a unique individual

9) try it once and if you don't like it or aren't into it then let your partner know. honesty is the best policy.

10) every week, you and your partner try something new that neither of you have done before.

11) learn to recognize your own TRUE feelings and emotions.

Try a few of these ideas and if you find they work for you, keep trying them, if they don't then learn something new that works for you. After all we can't keep hurting ourselves in this manner. Remember, we are all each unique individuals who deserve a chance at a happy and long life. After all mirroring someone can drain us of our energy and freedoms.

Lori

Encouragement and Hope

Your alone and depressed. You don't have an idea what to do with yourself and your afraid you might do something stupid (or you assume what you want to do is stupid). But in reality your not alone. There are millions of people out there who have felt or are feeling the same exact way that you are right now. The difference? Is how you deal with it.

For many people they get over issues fast, but do they really? Could it be that they are just better at hiding things from everyone? No matter how much you think they are over something, the truth is they aren't. They have yet to deal with the issues that are bothering them and eventually they will be in the same position again.


Find things to do that will aid you in over coming your issues....

1. Talk to someone who understands you but isn't going to validate everything you say or do. When you find someone who will validate everything that is going on in your life, they are just enabling you to sit and fester as you think about it. 
2. Join a Support Group. There are basically support groups for everything under the sun out there now, from drugs to shopping to bullying to eating. We all need a support system in place and what better way to find one then from those who are going through the same thing that you are.
3. Learn to let go. People with a mental illness have a harder time processing and letting go of information. But you have to learn to let go of what is hurting you so that you can move forward. You don't need all that excess baggage tearing you a part. That is what truly holds you back, your ability to not let go and push forward.
4. Forcing yourself. Sometimes you need to force yourself to move forward. Once you have done this a few times a week, you'll find your self doing it more and more often. I don't want to get out of bed most mornings, but I find that when I force myself to, I feel so much better about myself then I would if I had stayed in bed and not done my school work or not gone to this or that appointment.
5. Find a new challenge. Looking for a new and exciting challenge can help put you in a different frame of mind. Look for something outside of your normal interest range. Look at things that you would never even think of doing, then go for it. You might just find that you love doing this new challenge.