FACE THE RAIN: Mental Health Essentials

I was a family member of someone with mental illness before I experienced mental illness myself. Yet when I think about it thoroughly, perhaps I was always ill in some way. I always felt I was in my own world. I didn’t want to interact with this world of grown ups. I wanted to continue to play as a kid. It felt like my timing was off. I learned to speak in full sentences as a toddler and then I went somewhat mute. I developed a bit of my own language that my sister could understand. She was four years older than me. One of my biggest memories from kindergarten is trying to speak and being teased by a boy from my sister’s class. He made up a name for me and he mocked me. I believe this contributed to a fear of bringing attention to myself. From then on my goal in school was to blend in. At least that was my internal experience. Soon after the mocking we discovered that it was my hearing that was causing issues and as it cleared up I was able to speak normally, if you can say such a thing. What is normal as we learn of all the flavours of human experience out there? My early speaking challenge contributed to a social awkwardness that wasn’t fully countered until my early twenties. I then experienced manic episodes that introduced me as a social extrovert, part time at least. It is a shame that we describe a human experience as ill or well. Are we not still human and deserving to love and to be loved? Does not each aspect of the experience portray a piece of being human? Our health is one of the most important aspects of our human being existence. I share with you a bit of my past to connect with you. You are not alone. We are each on a journey. My goal in this little book is to provide you with shortcut prompts that you can read and launch from to a better place. This is a book of encouragement. When I was twenty, I was hospitalized for the first time for mental health reasons. I went into Detox and went cold turkey off of street drugs and then I fell deeper into a drug-induced-psychosis. I had to be protected from harming myself. I found the first psychiatric hospitalization to be an extremely jarring experience. It was brutal, and I was hard on myself. Sometimes we can be so messed up that we need others to help us in these times of crises. A nurse gave me a book with a chapter on Abraham Lincoln and the troubles he faced when he was younger. He had to be protected from himself for a while. It really helped me to read a story of someone who was able to go on from suffering and to have a life of meaning. You may be down and out right now. Try to focus on a brighter future. You can do it a small step at a time. Your present situation is not locked in. You can and will change to your better existence. Keep trying. You are worth it. In developing a safety talk at work, I came across two important words that are seven letters long and start with “ch” and end with “ces.” One you make and one you take. They are choices and chances. We have to learn to calculate the chances that we take and be empowered with the choices that we make.