Mental Health Recovery Newsletter

Publisher

Mary Ellen Copeland, MS, MA
PO Box 301, W. Dummerston, VT 05357
802-254-2092 (phone) 802-257-7499 (fax)
copeland@mentalhealthrecovery.com (email)

The Mental Health Recovery Newsletter was begun in March 2000 and is published quarterly from the office of Mary Ellen Copeland. This free newsletter is for anyone who wants to learn more about mental health recovery. If you are not currently subscribed to this newsletter and would like to receive it, please contact the office (by e-mail is easiest). E-mail is best if possible, but the ground mail version is also available.

You may freely copy and distribute this newsletter, giving credit to Mary Ellen Copeland as listed above.

Contents

• Keeping Yourself Well When the World has Gone Crazy
  
• Working for Peace
  
• A Free Resource

Keeping Yourself Well When the World has Gone Crazy
Mary Ellen Copeland

When the horrible news broke on Tuesday the 11th, I was working with a group of twenty people from all over the country --and one from New Zealand--who are Mental Health and Wellness Recovery Action Planning Educators. Because there was no way for people to get home--to be with their loved ones during this hard time--we continued our work together while giving each other lots of much needed support.

We discussed at length 1.) what we were feeling, what we thought others might be feeling, and troubling symptoms that we were having or might experience, 2.) how we could help ourselves to relieve troubling symptoms--knowing that, given the circumstances, there is no way we can make them go away, and 3.) how we can be supportive of others through this hard time. I wanted to share this discussion with you. I hope you will find it to be helpful.

Let me preface this by saying that, while many of you may deal with psychiatric symptoms, the symptoms that you and others are experiencing in response to the on-going traumatic news events are normal. They are not an indicator that you have some serious illness.

Feelings and Troubling Symptoms

People at the training were having the following feelings and symptoms. You may be experiencing some of these same symptoms or others.

Helping Yourself

What can you do to help yourself relieve these symptoms? I have listed some ideas that people in the workshop shared. Try the ones that you think would be helpful to you.

Take very good care of yourself. Eat healthy food. Exercise. Spend time with people who treat you well. Attend to your daily personal hygiene tasks. Rest for 6-8 hours a day, even if you can't sleep. Avoid foods containing sugar, caffeine and foods that are high in fat or heavily salted.

Try to sleep if you possibly can. Some ideas for getting to sleep include: doing a relaxation exercise before going to bed, getting plenty of exercise during the day, avoiding TV in the evening, eating foods that are rich in calcium like leafy green and yellow vegetables and dairy products, ask at your health food store for a natural food supplement preparation that aids relaxation and sleep, ask your doctor for a sleep medication to use as needed.

Try to stay focused in the present--an admittedly hard thing to do at this time. Our tendency at this time is to focus on the past and the horrible things that have happened, or on the future when other terrible things might happen. Practice staying focused on what you are doing right now and what is going on for you right now. Pay attention to your food as you eat it, feel your muscles move as you walk, watch your dog breathe, smell the flowers, look at the sky, play with a baby.

Avoid catastrophizing--another very hard thing to do. It is natural for our minds to want to conjure up bad things that will happen as a result of what happened on the 11th. Many of us were very good at this even before that day. Replace these and other negative thoughts with positive affirmations and images. For instance you could imagine yourself resting in a beautiful garden with many beautiful plants and flowers. Or you could imagine yourself walking on the sandy beach at the sea shore. You could tell yourself over and over things like, I am doing the best that I can, there are many people who love me or I have accomplished many wonderful things in my life.

Express your emotion. Don't try to stop yourself from crying. Let the tears come. Others will understand. If they don't, it is their problem, not yours. If you want to yell, scream, holler, rant, rave, etc. find a quiet place to do this where you will not disturb others, or find a supportive friend or family member who will be with you while you express emotion.

Share your feelings with someone you trust--talk and talk and talk. Then do the same for them. You can decide how much time you have to do this and divide the time in half. Then one of you can talk for half the time and the other for the other half of the time.

Stay closely connected with family and friends. Spend lots of time talking to each other, working on projects, and sharing meals and other activities.

If you like to read, have a good book available that you can pick up anytime you find yourself obsessing about the world situation. For instance, I spent a lot of time the first days after the tragedy reading "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver. You could go to the local library or share books with friends.

Spend some time each day doing life-affirming things you really enjoy. Paint a picture, work on a quilt, work in your garden, bake a loaf of bread, sing, play a musical instrument, dance, play with some children, read them stories. Write in your journal, anything you want, any way that you want.

Keep busy. Clean that closet. Wash the kitchen floor. Play with the dog. Weed the garden. Make some soup. Paint the walls or paint the house. Learn a new skill. Study about something you are interested in.

It helps me to get involved. I have attended a peace vigil and other related activities in my community and I am searching for my niche in local consciousness raising efforts about peaceful resolution.

Avoid or limit watching television news, listening to the radio and reading newspaper articles. Or do this for short periods of time so you know what is happening and spend the rest of your time doing things you enjoy or keeping busy. If you are dependent on your television for company at certain times of the day, if you have a VCR you can get some videos to watch. Or invite a friend to visit.

If you have a Wellness Recovery Action PlanT, refer to your action plan for Triggers. However, if you are like me, the action plan for Triggers is not intense enough to help me get through this hard time. You may want to review your Wellness Toolbox and rewrite that section. In my own rewrite, I have included lots more meditation, exercise, time doing things I enjoy, connection with family and friends in addition to community involvement in activities which promote peace. Also I have to be absolutely sure I do everything on my Daily Maintenance List. If you don't have a WRAP, you can find the instructions for developing one on mentalhealthrecovery.com by clicking here.

Supporting Others

Just as you need support now and in the days to come, others will be looking to you for support. How can you be most helpful to them? The following tips may be useful to you.

LISTEN! LISTEN! LISTEN! Don't criticize or judge what the other person is saying. Don't interrupt with stories of your own. Just let them get it all out. That is the most helpful thing.

Ask them what they need. Is it a hug? Do they need you to be with them in silence? To fix them something to eat? To reaffirm your strong connection? To rub their back?

Join them in a fun activity--do something that both of you enjoy.

Remind them of how much you love them. List for them all the great things they have done in their life. Then ask them to do the same for you.

Give them space to express their emotions any way that they need to. Do not tell them that this expression of emotion is a symptom of an illness. In times like these, expressions of emotion like crying, sadness, and rage are absolutely normal and should be encouraged.

Avoid:

• Telling them to "get their act together".
  
• Telling them everything is going to be OK.
  
• Encouraging them to do things they are afraid to do.
  
• Nagging them or making them do anything.
  

Working for Peace
By Mary Ellen Copeland and Ed MaryRose Anthes

We both strongly believe that even a horrible situation like this needs to be resolved peacefully--that more violence will lead to more violence and more innocent people being hurt and killed.

Using violent responses to this tragedy will traumatize those who wield the means of violence, those who witness it and those who survive it. Responding with violence can't bring back those who have died. Using violence to combat evil encourages the idea that it's OK to kill or hurt others, even blameless bystanders, in pursuit of a cause. This kind of thinking, and refusing to feel the humanity of all people, led to the terrible events of September 11.

We strongly urge our leaders to work toward resolving this conflict through negotiation, diplomacy, the United Nations and the national and world court systems and not with weapons of destruction.

A Free Resource

The booklet, Recovering Your Mental Health: A Self Help Guide, is available free from the Center for Mental Health Services. I developed this booklet with the assistance of a focus group of ten people from around the country--people who are working on their own recovery. You can get free copies from the Knowledge Exchange Network (KEN) by calling 1-800-789-2647 or through www.mentalhealth.org. Refer to booklet SMA# 3504.

Also there are many free mental health recovery-oriented articles available on mentalhealthrecovery.com. Click here to visit my articles page

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