Healing and hope

We’re all mentally ill to some degree—no one escapes. All of us, at some time in our lives, feel desperate, hostile, unloved and unlovable, in response to actual occurrences or to what has occurred in our heads. We do not or cannot respond to obvious problems in our daily lives, have outbursts, incur wreckage. We can’t see the big picture; we submerge our humanity and are so very disordered that we don’t understand that we’re all, equally, in this together. Our brains get sick.

Sickness is a medical problem. As with any illness, if treatment is promoted in a timely manner, with compassion and intellect, there is hope, even expectation, of recovery and a return to health.

However, mental sickness is not viewed this way.

Profoundly affected and suffering are ourselves, people we love, people we have seen or known. At some point in their journey, these folks are misunderstood, disrespected, disparaged, discarded. They can be horribly difficult to deal with in their illnesses—but are just people, if only they were well.

No one wants brain-chemistry dysfunction, but it happens. No one wants trauma, but it threads through many lives and is indelible if not addressed. No one chooses mental illness as a career path. From a million different sources and for a million different reasons, it can happen any day; it can happen to anybody. All of us who benefit from the luck of the draw should be grateful. All of us who pursue recovery should be proud.

In my first year’s experience as a peer advocate with Working Innovations Network, I work with people who are in or are being discharged from psychiatric hospitals. These are compelling and often charming people who have had an egregiously rough time. A commonality is an ability to endure their ordeals without dying.

If someone attending to the mental-health crisis of another can communicate compassion and support, this crisis can initiate a process of recovery leading to a further understanding of identity and community. There is no escape from this kind of illness in all of our lives—but even with our fear, through practice and caring, we can help each other to a place of healing and hope.