Recovery

I have finally got back to writing my book on recovery over the last few days.  I was itching to get on with it - I had been so busy with other projects that the recovery book had been on the back burner, and I started to resent the fact.  I printed up all that I have written so far, which made the task easier and clearer, and I intend to keep printing and reviewing every few weeks now. 

I just posted a comment on Rossa Forbes' Holistic Recovery from Schizophrenia blog - she had asked for opinions on something she wrote on a Mad In America Op-Ed piece.  I found myself not just answering her question, but then rattling on at length about myself and my experience of mental illness.  I suppose that right now I am in the mindset of writing about my experience because I have been engrossed in my recovery book today, but eventually I deleted the part of my answer that was not relevant to Rossa's question, and decided that I might as well expand on it here because I have not blogged for a few days.

Rossa had made the point (in response to the Op-Ed article) that it is not helpful for mental health professionals to blame family members, although she said it is ok for sufferers to blame their own family for their problems, as they speak from personal experience.

I think she is right, and yet I would say that the ultimate aim should be to move on from blaming your family to understanding them.  I found writing my book a very therapeutic experience - I could understand the series of events which led me to break down much more clearly when I had put them down in an orderly fashion.

I can honestly say though, that I do not regret or resent anything from my childhood or early adult life now - I see it all as a learning experience which led me to the point where I am today, which is a very happy place.   I might never have been as content as I am now if I had not experienced difficulties along the way - I have learned to appreciate the good things in my life all the more, because I was once mired so deeply in unhappiness.

However, in recent months, as I have completed the process of healing (which is not to say that I will never become ill again, just that at this moment in time I am better than I have ever been) I have distanced myself, emotionally, from my birth family.  They have probably not noticed the difference in my attitude (although they will know now if they read this blog!).  The reason they have probably not noticed the difference in my attitude is because none of them are remotely emotionally dependent on me (except perhaps my mother, poor old dear thing) - but I have been emotionally dependent on them for far too long. 

Even since I have had Paul and the children for security I still harked back to my birth family, perhaps feeling on some level that if I could find security there I could fix myself.  That was never going to happen - I became broken in that environment, and it was not going to be a place where I could heal.  In fact the perceptions of my family members - that I was vulnerable and weak, held me in that position, without them intending to do so. 

At a family wedding a couple of years ago, for example, I had a glass of wine.  A single glass of wine.  Now, I tend not to drink, but I have never taken a vow of abstinence.  I don't take any medication, as readers of this blog know - there is no reason why I shouldn't have a drink if I choose.  And yet I overheard some of my family members talking as if I was on a rocky road, 'Louise has got a glass of wine.  Is she OK?'  I felt humiliated, as though I was a forty year old child. 

It was nine years since my last breakdown at that point.  Why did my family persist in thinking that I was not normal?  How could they not see that having one alcoholic drink on a social occasion was no more a sign that I was becoming mentally ill than it would be for anyone else?  (And by the way I have never had a drink problem.  The reason that I tend not to drink is partly because of the spectre of having had an alcoholic mother, and partly because I am quite happy not drinking - I don't need it).   And why, in any case, were they talking about me, and not to me?

You could see that as concern on the part of my family, of course, and that is the construction that I always put on that sort of event over the years.  It is the only construction I could cope with.  For the same reason I have always been the member of the family that tries to keep the other members close.  I phoned one sister every evening for literally years even when she made it quite plain that she had better things to do with her time than talk to me about nothing in particular.  I couldn't bear to let go.  I felt that without the love of my birth family I would crumble.

Now that my self-esteem is restored, I have stopped trying to establish the regard of others for me.  Quite simply, I don't care what anybody else thinks - well, I do obviously, I have not become a psychopath - but I don't judge myself by the opinions of others, especially not family members.  I still love them, but without the need that they should love me back.

It is a very liberating feeling, this, which is why I have tried so hard to explain it clearly.  It is not very complicated, and yet it has taken me a long time to work it all out.  Love is the key, love holds the answer (as I wrote on my recent Amazon review of Jeanette Winterson's book, 'Why be Happy when you could be Normal?').  But to love is one thing, to feel oneself to be deserving of love is quite another.  And I wonder sometimes how many of us in the human race have the same problem. 

I have finished my course of cognitive behavioural therapy now, and found it invaluable - no matter how many books I have read about anxiety and self-esteem and how well I understood the principles (like the importance of positive core beliefs) nothing has been as beneficial as ten short sessions talking to somebody who is knowledgable about these issues and how to manage them.  So, let's hope I can keep applying those lessons I have learned.  I have a good feeling about it all.