"Hit the ground running."
This is pure recovery-ese if it's anything at all. Or recovery propaganda of which the mental health system is full these days. Now don't get me wrong, everybody, I am completely absolutely and unequivocally in favour of mental health recovery. I believe in it, I have experienced it myself, and I promote it. Enthusiastically.
What I don't believe is that everyone is going to recover, or that everyone even has the capacity or potential to recover. I am lucky. I have been blessed with this capacity and I have been exploiting it to the max. When I had finally found a room in a shared apartment following nearly a year of homelessness (with a very eccentric Czech who appeared to have undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome) I knew that I wasn't well. I often felt tired, had difficulty focussing on finding work, and when I did find it had trouble focussing on my job and staying employed, and felt a tremendous need to protect myself from others. I was frightened. I felt disoriented and that I was missing half my soul. I also felt very wary and suspicious of others. I had post traumatic stress disorder.
Four years later I was seeing a psychiatrist, living in government subsidized housing, and working in a homeless shelter, mostly nights. The job was too much for me. I was fired just after a year and went straight to my faithful employment counsellor to whom I declared that I was going to hit the ground running. And I did.
I have done well with this approach, very well I'd say. This isn't true for everyone. Some never recover, never get over it. They never will. I used to want to believe that they would get better if they wanted, but no, some of us get so damaged and broken by trauma, illness and ill-treatment, that we simply implode, self-destruct, and can only hope for sufficient support and help from others that will slow and cushion the fall and even make the experience marginally enjoyable.
Sometimes when you hit the ground, the impact is so great that you end up making a crater, or a bottomless hole, and you are the one falling down through it. Other times you lie on the hard rock, too damaged and broken to ever heal or get up and walk again. Or you lie there, stunned, dazed, perhaps unconscious, and all you can do is stay there while others attend and take care of you and you wait till your eyes open, till you can sit up, then stand up, then walk unassisted. Then you learn to walk again, then maybe run, and then maybe you will be ready to move on with your life.
We are fragile, strong, delicate, tough, weak and so very complex that no single aphorism is going to define who we are or how we are going to handle tragedy or disaster. In my work as a mental health peer support worker, I work and have worked with individuals who live in and experience all of these different stages. Some do well in recovery, live independently, work, and lead full happy healthy and meaningful lives. Others need support, still suffer from delusions, depression, cannot live alone, or be left alone and can barely deal with the bare minimum of self care. Some get better. Some get worse.
Maybe it's something admirable that I have hit the ground running. This does not make me better or of greater value than those who through no fault of their own languish in illness and despair. But I can use and channel my strength and ability to support and walk beside them. And they are so kind that they accept my small offer of my self and teach me every day about the things that really matter in life and help make me more human.
No comments:
Post a Comment