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optimal experience
Wednesday, 28 November 2018 09:29 amI recently retweeted something about how mental illness has ruined [my] ability to focus, self-regulate, and form memories. This is true. Depending on which variety of mental illness one has, these can all be impaired for the duration of the mental illness.
Modern psychological thinking (say, from the 1970s-80s) struggled with reconciling older, paternalistic approaches to medicine and mental health. With Old Medicine, you get doctors who identify symptoms, present them in a pathological framework, prescribe medication and outline steps the patient should take to recover from injury. They treated mental illness like a bone break, and a lack of symptoms meant the patient was cured. But we, the sick, know that this isn't how mental illness works.
To challenge this "curative" model was the "recovery" model, which emphasized that recovering from mental illness did not necessarily mean a return to functional baseline that existed prior to illness. Rather, it recognized that after an episode of major mental illness, a return to previous functioning may not be possible. The objective of recovery should be to identify strengths, encourage the development of different traits which allow the person to feel productive, and to work within that person's expectations and the realities of their conditions to get them to a place where they are happy, without using the "previous condition" as a benchmark for this happiness.
This is a better model for the treatment of mental illness, but for those of us who have gotten through the heavy lifting, the hard emotional work, the CBT, the discomfort of coming right up against our limitations, we are often unsatisfied with the life that waits for us afterwards. I mean, yeah, I don't want to kill myself, but I still can't find a job, so how long is this 'upswing' going to last, really?
In the same way that physical therapy improves use of a limb after a bone break has healed, giving back strength and flexibility, I need 'physical therapy' for a brain that suffered an injury. What I need is to find a set of exercises that will make me more satisfied with where I am in life, and where I am creatively. Ideally, these exercises should:
Modern psychological thinking (say, from the 1970s-80s) struggled with reconciling older, paternalistic approaches to medicine and mental health. With Old Medicine, you get doctors who identify symptoms, present them in a pathological framework, prescribe medication and outline steps the patient should take to recover from injury. They treated mental illness like a bone break, and a lack of symptoms meant the patient was cured. But we, the sick, know that this isn't how mental illness works.
To challenge this "curative" model was the "recovery" model, which emphasized that recovering from mental illness did not necessarily mean a return to functional baseline that existed prior to illness. Rather, it recognized that after an episode of major mental illness, a return to previous functioning may not be possible. The objective of recovery should be to identify strengths, encourage the development of different traits which allow the person to feel productive, and to work within that person's expectations and the realities of their conditions to get them to a place where they are happy, without using the "previous condition" as a benchmark for this happiness.
This is a better model for the treatment of mental illness, but for those of us who have gotten through the heavy lifting, the hard emotional work, the CBT, the discomfort of coming right up against our limitations, we are often unsatisfied with the life that waits for us afterwards. I mean, yeah, I don't want to kill myself, but I still can't find a job, so how long is this 'upswing' going to last, really?
In the same way that physical therapy improves use of a limb after a bone break has healed, giving back strength and flexibility, I need 'physical therapy' for a brain that suffered an injury. What I need is to find a set of exercises that will make me more satisfied with where I am in life, and where I am creatively. Ideally, these exercises should:
- improve focus
- improve creativity
- greatly reduce jealousy/envy of those in a 'better' life situation than myself.
- satisfy my needs for competence, autonomy, and belonging.
I'm still learning about what this would look like, but already I am seeing signs that bad habits I picked up years ago (and didn't address in therapy because therapy time was for Heavy Lifting) have become a problem.
