Health and Recovery

I am writing again about health. I’ve been slacking off on my exercising and have gained four pounds. That is in about two months since I last was weighed. I just have not felt like exercising since I’ve been fighting with my landlords. After I was weighed again this week, I just had to start exercising again. I did tonight and the manager saw me and did not say anything. I am going to continue even if they do say something. I just have to get the discipline back. It did feel good to ride the bike again tonight. I have to lose what I gained and hopefully more. I also started buying more vegetables to go with every meal I cook. I am also taking fish oil capsules, but not everyday just in moderation. I had read that it stops other vitamins, so take it every once in awhile for the best benefit. I am also just buying fruit that is in season like bananas, oranges, and apples. Also I buy blueberries once in awhile, because they are expansive but good. Mostly though have to exercise at least three times a week. It does help.

Growth

When I was a child, I would wander into the gardens of my grandfathers’ small farm. In the spring he would begin to prune and plant, and turn soil, cut grasses and fix machinery. I wondered through the gardens as they began to grow, amazed by the sprouting of small seedlings, wondering how strong they were, reaching up through the soil and water, twisting and bending into the light becoming giants. The fruit on the trees remained a mystery to me for a very long time; there were no seeds, only leaves and branches. Then when evening began to set in as the plants grew, they would seemingly disappear into the darkness, and quiet would settle throughout.
As I grew older, I began to realize what human birth was, what growing and learning meant; and though we are not vegetables, fruits or grasses, we began to reach into the world as part of our maturity. Stabilizing my mental health after a draught was unbearable, yet I remembered the gardens.
If we want to grow beyond the illness’s we have harbored then we must heal; which means letting go of the fears we have and becoming involved with the mental health therapist and case managers, whether we have addictions, depression, or any of the other myriad of illness’ one might have. This is turning the soil and feeding it, so that planting can begin.
Some of us have to be taught to listen, this is planting, and when we become strong listeners we are then ready for growth. Our experiences we begin to relinquish are the storms of rain and sunlight we were nurtured with and we learn to leave this past behind for someone else to learn from. Our beliefs and experiences can be changed and as they change we become stronger in a positive way as we begin to see ourselves and what we really want to experience aside from the pain of our sufferings. We change our ideals and our beginning as our needs grow; we grow stronger and begin to show the fruits of our new beliefs.
As we mature, we seek motivation and become self sufficient and responsible, we cultivate ourselves from one step to the next; we have grown anew.
By Donald Sammons

Some excerpts are from:
Healing Stage One: Personal Growth
Written by Jerry Lopper

How do you define Recovery?

Doing research I came across articles talking about when a person is recovered. The articles mention that you are recovered when you have no symptoms, you do not take medication, and you receive no mental health services. Then you are fully recovered. They do say that you may be in recovery if you do only one of the three. I do two I take medication and I see my psychiatrist or get mental health services. I have had no symptoms for years. I do not fit the criteria for being recovered. Yet I feel I am recovered, because I am doing better than I was before. I believe if you had mental distress and do none of the three above. Will you ever mention that you had mental distress? Could that be one reason there is so much stigma, because no one say’s I once had mental distress and now I am recovered? Would anyone believe them if they are doing good?

Patches

Have you ever heard the word patches lately? Patches are pieces of material used to mend or repair a hole or open seam. There are quilt patches to create designs, there are patches that iron-on denim and various other types of cloth to repair holes and rips in the fabrics, there are even different construction material for building that are used for patches and there are transdermal delivery systems used to apply drugs to the human body; they are patches.
The children in grade school used to call me patches; only because I wore hand-me-down clothes with holes and tears in them. My life was lived in this manner, second handedly. I thought I would cover-up, overlay my emotions and fears, even the shame I felt of being a second-hand kind of guy in my teenage years by first drinking-that’s not transdermal. I tried smoking-that’s not quilting. I tried eventually to overdose my fears; my ability to construct was finally placed in a professional’s hand, not a preachers, my mind saw that they could only give me prayers and dissertations’ for my sins, and they wanted me to take off the sunglasses in order to see the light.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I was so covered over that the psychiatrist had to peel off the patches which covered so many parts of my mind of which I had sewn over with patches which re-designed the emotions and covered the fears by causing me to question only what I could answer, and helping me to accept choices which would help me to overcome the ignorance I lived within.
Trust develops with time; it’s not only a patch, its part of the wonder of miracles. Yet we still have to understand as people with a “mental illness” that we have to relearn or learn to deal with society and the social situations which arise—without drugs, alcohol, and questionable behaviors, not to mention recklessness. There will be a day with no more patches, yet someone else might carry on the name and that’s when you or I might be the one to help them through those rough times with our learned understanding of how we may achieve freedom through redesign.
By Donald Sammons

Psychiatric Survivor's?

I’ve been researching recovery and I keep hearing the phrase Psychiatric Survivor. What I have gathered from the research is that when you have mental distress, most people come through better than before they had mental distress. It brought the question to my mind: Can anybody go through mental distress and become better than before? I remembered a book I read about a man that was in a concentration camp and the techniques he used to survive. His name is Viktor E. FrankL and his book is called Man’s Search for Meaning, An Introduction to Logotherapy. He became a psychiatrist and I am going to use this quote from his book “After all, ‘saying yes to life in spite of everything,’ to use the phrase in which the title of a German book of mine is couched, presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any condition, even those which are most miserable. And this in turn presupposes the human capacity to creatively turn life’s negative aspects into something positive or constructive. In other words, what matters most is to make the best of any given situation.” He made it through, so we come back to the question can anybody do it? To me, mental distress is hell and a place I never want to go back to. As I wrote in previous blogs, I have become better before my life was hopeless in and out of jail. Now I’m working and building a better life for me, and hopefully to show my grandchildren the right road to go down. Is mental distress worse than a concentration camp? Does it make you give up on life or fight to become a better person?

Gravity

The world is filled with many wonders. Human kind is a wonder of the world. Yet we are a strange kind of wonder, which loves, hates, seeks joy and wanders throughout the galaxy after untold eons. Yet we have a weakness then again, of the heart and of the mind, the need for peace, or as many would say tranquility through solitude. There are extremes to this avenue of truth, and some people become lost to the distances unreached, never returning with sanity. Some people only want to be alone, left to the desire of their own choosing, never wanting love, nor achieving any role of greatness, the sadness without; only a question, only a word; why?
There are over achievers, work-a-holics, those who hide in drug use and alcoholism, people who cannot lift themselves over the hegemony of society, the dominance of one over another; being a reality of life for man. There are criminals and there are priest; and there are those that wonder unceasingly will the ribbon in the sky snap. Psychiatrist, psychologist, and many other scientist often join hands to find an answer to alleviate the woes and aches and pains of our perceptions, of our over indulgences, to help secure our needs so that we continue to live to enjoy what we should believe in. Where a doctor may have a word, or a number, or even some form of medication, we must also believe in hope, to make reality much more the pleasance beyond what ails us in our society, within ourselves.
I look in this direction because of what I see, because of the people I live amongst; most of all because of what affects me in my daily life. We as human beings live day to day, and most of us find that we argue within ourselves, not because we are not strong, but because we have not the peace of mind to find the answer which plagues us, handing those arguments to others and embellishing fear to keep from truthfully being real, from solving the real problem.
I take the time to close the door to the woes of many people, who have not taken the time to respect what the world is all about; again I find I have turned in a circle of my own hypocrisy, then again, only a worry of self, because I have not taken the time to understand and use what I have learned to solve that problem. When I begin to realize that I can make a step to better myself, then I know I can share that thought, so that another can better themselves as well; yet I am not a doctor, I am not a business man, I am in recovery and many don’t know that I am, seeking peace through faith as they may be.
Written by
Donald Sammons
2/28/2010

What is the right way?

Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe in. I believe in my case double. The reason is I am a paranoid schizophrenic, for that reason if I fear something. I have to double check that the fear is legitimate; I also believe you have to face your fear to conquer it. The spot I am in today is that I have to fight for what I believe is right. I have a legal battle going on with my apartment building management. The owners are three lawyers and their agent has a lawyer. I only talked to a couple of lawyers and they told me I have a good case. I cannot have fear; I have to go on if I lose the worse that can happen is that I have to move. I have no problem with that, because I am waiting for the case to be over. That way I can move to a better place anyway hopefully to a bigger place and one that has a pool for the grandchildren. If I win hopefully I can show people in my building that you can fight for the things you want and believe in. The case does not come to trial till the end of April. To me it is a matter of principle, besides the money. I had to decide a question do I stand up, let someone else or see if the problem will disappear?