Spiritual Emergency: My Definitions of Recovery

After any major physical "insult," as they call it, it's all too easy to see yourself as a collection of symptoms rather than as a total human being, including your spirit -- and thus to become your illness. Fear is powerful and contagious.

At first I allowed myself to catch it, worried that if I didn't do what the doctors ordered, I'd be sorry. But now I'm learning to take my healing into my own hands. Healing, after all, is not the same as curing; healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing "what is now".

~ Ram Dass

My personal definition of recovery is based on two essential elements:

You can say about yourself: I am getting better.

Those around you, those you identify as your support team can also say: You are getting better.

That's it. That's my definition. Note that I don't care who your support team is made up of. It can be a counselor, a therapist, your cyber chums, a psychologist, the cashier at the corner store, your god, your guru, your mother, your father, a psychiatrist, your bartender, a shaman, a religious or spiritual leader, a friend, your hairdresser, whatever. What matters is that they are the people you identify as helping you, they respect you, and if you're very fortunate, they love you. Often, we want those we're closest to -- our spouses, our families -- to be part of our support team. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not capable of it because they have been impacted by our experiences too. Depending on the individual circumstances, they may need their own support team.

Recovery is a process, and it's typically a lengthy one. My own recovery began with my experience of psychosis -- what I sometimes refer to as "The Story". Once that was done, it started with sleeping sixteen to twenty hours a day for about three weeks. That was followed by a honeymoon period of several weeks when I tried to reassure those around me that I was "okay" now. During that phase I quit smoking, I quit drinking, I felt very positive and upbeat. I very much wanted to believe that I was done, but I wasn't.

The honeymoon period was followed by a very, very dark phase of many months because at that point I was actually dealing with the trauma of having fallen apart in the first place, along with the content the experience had brought up. That's one thing I discovered -- everything that comes up is coming up for a reason. Everything is a piece of your personal puzzle and you have to figure out how the pieces fit and relate to one another so you can put yourself back together.

A few things were absolutely vital to my own recovery process:

I had a stable place to live and was in a relatively stable relationship. (Bear in mind, a schizophrenic break can rock even the most stable relationship and mine was no exception.)

I had two friends who allowed me to lean on them very heavily. They provided emotional support in the form of empathic non-judgemental listening, complete acceptance of how I was presenting myself to be in that moment, and a great deal of love. I have had no formal therapy, but those two people provided me with plenty of informal therapy via their friendship. I never would have made it without them.

I had a smattering of strangers who came into my life, offered a kind word or deed, and then they, or I, moved on. Like my friends, those strangers also provided a type of informal therapy -- other people were absolutely essential to my recovery.

I had the internet, which allowed me to do a great deal of research I never could have done otherwise. The net brought clinicians like John Weir Perry, David Lukoff and Maureen Roberts into my life and inner circle. It also brought me into contact with numerous others who'd been through an experience similar to my own. This helped me to "normalize" my experience and place it within context.

Eventually, I had a job. It started out as a few days a month and naturally morphed into five days a week. No, it wasn't planned that way, that's just the way it happened. No, I did not tell my employer that I'd had a schizophrenic break. No, they did not have any problems with my work abilities or ethics -- in fact, they frequently left me in charge of the shop for days at a time, alone. As of this writing I have been employed for a little more than three years.

It's worth noting that I have not had any form of psychiatric medication but I'm not willing to throw stones at those who have. If medication is what helps you get better, that's what helps you. It's your experience and your recovery; recovery has many faces. There's a lot of information out there on meds and a great deal of controversy. I don't follow it too closely because it wasn't part of my experience, but I am aware of it.

In regard to my own experience I'm glad I wasn't medicated. I don't think it would have helped me because I think it would have suppressed the emerging content, and that content would have kept trying to break out via repeated episodes. That said, I am a proponent of informed consent: you are entitled to know the benefits and full risks of your medication, whether it's absolutely necessary, whether a less expensive or alternative option is available, etc. For anyone who finds medication to be personally helpful, I would urge you to do your own research and make your own best choices.

I have had silence. I required enormous periods of time to myself. This might be considered withdrawal but it wasn't intentional. It was just that I had so much to think about, sort through, and process. If you're concentrating deeply you probably don't want to be interrupted either. The only difference is my periods of concentration lasted much longer than yours might. I was also in a lot of pain. Some people want to be around others when they're in pain. I needed to be (mostly) alone with mine.

I have had time. This process intitially began in 1998 although things didn't start to get too out of the ordinary until my mother died. With her death, it was as if something within me had cracked. Things that did not make rational sense to me began to "leak into consciousness", not only in my dreams but also via my daily actions and responses. I knew that these responses were somehow connected with my mother's death but I could not understand why, nor what the connection was -- I could not see the glue that bound those events, one to the other. From that point forward I was probably lapsing in and out of an altered state of consciousness without being aware of it. Those around me were aware, however, that I was getting a little "odd". Ego collapse came ten months after her death, after a series of cumulative losses and unexplainable coincidences. Even then, I managed to hang in for a few more months before I cracked wide open and launched into a six-week visionary state.

It's now May, 2006. Am I recovered? I would say that yes, I am. For the most part, I understand what happened to me and why it happened. I can speak of those events now -- I couldn't before, although I do so very selectively. I am still exploring the spiritual aspects of my experience and likely will for a very long time to come.

Those around me would also agree that I have gotten much better and continue to do so. But I'm also different now too. Some of the people around me have had difficulty accepting that, as have I, at times. I'm not the same person now as I was then.

Then again, none of us are.

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Music of the Hour: Change

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Spiritual Emergency, Shamanism, Mysticism, Gnosticism, Alchemy, Schizophrenia, Psychosis, PTSD, The Hero's Journey, Spiritual Awakening, Ego Death, The Dark Night of the Soul, Kundalini Awakening, Psychiatry, The Medical Model, The Recovery Model, Recovery from Schizophrenia