Change Starts Today

At some point you really have to say:

“This is who I am. Take me as I am–or leave.”

We cannot control what other people think of us.

I’m learning this lesson now.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what people think of us. Seeking their approval is a no-win game.

Thinking you know what another person thinks about you is circular failed logic.

In effect, you’re judging that person without knowing the truth.

As a mental health peer I realize that holding so-called normal people up as valid arbiters of our worth is a form of internalizing the stigma.

Holding anyone else up as a judge in terms of how they view us is also not healthy.

We need to like ourselves first of all and in turn have compassion for other people.

Each of us living on earth is doing the best we can with what we were given.

Change starts today. Often if we want to change our lives we first have to change our minds.

I’ll be 53 in April–in just over 5 months. This is what I’ve learned so far:

Judging people isn’t the way to go. Stereotyping people isn’t the way to go.

The way to go is to understand that those of us living with mental health challenges are worthy friends, lovers, and support folk.

I for one have gotten over thinking that having a so-called normal guy as a boyfriend is the way to go. I’ve given up for good trawling OKCupid for a mate.

I don’t expect anyone who doesn’t have a mental health challenge to truly understand.

We need to seek love companionship and empathy from people who are able to give it.

We can’t expect to change the hearts and minds of people who are stones in how they treat others.

It would be great if people would come to their senses and treat everyone they meet with love.

While we wait for this to happen we can help make it happen by acting on our own to model compassionate behavior.

The older I get I’m trying to make a difference in the world.

I call this ethic placing “service above self.”

Acting with love will show others the benefit of acting with love.

One thing I know: people can change as their circumstances change.

People can become more loving and generous towards other people.

I’ve seen that this is true. It’s entirely possible for another person to wake up.

Change starts today. It starts today for all of us.

We have only today in which to make a difference.

God has given us this day. Let’s use it wisely and for the benefit of everyone.

Hungry Heart

In 1999 when I was an assistant in a law firm library I told a coworker: “I want to win a Pulitzer.”

She responded: “You have to write a book first.” In a tone that seemed mocking or incredulous that I could do this.

We shall see what happens.

I’ve known ever since I was seven years old that I wanted to be a writer.

Ever since I was only five years old I had been bullied by the neighborhood kids and the kids in school.

Coincidence? I think it’s not a coincidence that I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was only seven years old.

Run out and buy this book: Jennifer Weiner’s memoir Hungry Heart.

In it, the New York Times bestselling author boldly asserts that it’s the freaks of the world, the ones from f*cked-up homes, the outcasts, who are destined to become great writers.

Jennifer Weiner was strong enough to row on a crew team at Princeton University.

Yet all through her life before achieving this Ivy League feat the other kids and teens called her fat.

I’m engrossed in Hungry Heart totally. I”m going to continue reading it at the speed of light.

Easily nine years ago I’d go on Jennifer Weiner’s author website. I’ve revisited the website today. Her advice to aspiring authors is some of the greatest advice you’ll ever read for free.

Writers, click your pens and get writing. Those of us who are writers write because we must. We write because to not write we’d have a breakdown of the soul.

I stand in solidarity with Jennifer Weiner. Go on her website and read the articles she’s written for the New York Times on women and body issues.

Years ago–too long ago to count–I logged on to Match.com for about five minutes and quickly logged off.

The featured profile on the homepage of that dating website was that of a guy who wrote in these exact words:

“I won’t date a fat woman.” No kidding he used the word fat.

As soon as I saw that I refused to join Match.com.

That’s interesting, right, considering that I fit into a size 2 Petite not a 14 or a 3X?

I urge you to buy and read the book Hungry Heart.

Jennifer Weiner is anti-MFA. Like I do, she knows that if you’re a writer you don’t need to spend all your time in a classroom learning to write.

Those of us who are writers will do our editing of a manuscript on a crowded New York City bus we’re lucky to get a seat on.

We’ll write in a notebook on the subway, or at a table in a public library, or at any number of indie coffee shops in our neighborhood.

We scope out the layout of the living room dining room area when we want to buy a co-op or rent an apartment to verify there’s room for a desk and a file cabinet.

I’ve been remiss in blogging here because yes indeed I’ve started writing a third novel. This is the one I want to publish first within three years.

Jennifer Weiner tells it like it is.

I tell you this:

There is something about being bullied, about being called fat, about being an outsider in the Popularity Contest of Life that endows a person with great writing talent.

I’ve been listening to alternative music ever since I was in high school–long before I was a disc jockey on the FM radio.

I tell you this also:

I’ll go to my grave–a 90-year old woman–listening to the Beastie Boys.

Thirty years after my disc jockey career ended I’m still listening to alternative music.

Thirty years after having a breakdown I stand in solidarity with those of us who are outsiders–who don’t fit in–whose difference threatens to mark us with an externally-inflicted stigmata.

Listen up loyal blog readers:

You have nothing to be ashamed of or feel guilty about because you have a diagnosis of SZ or whatever challenge you have in life.

Let’s refuse to be hurt when a dude tells a potential lover he won’t date a fat woman.

Would he then divorce a skinny woman who gained 10 pounds because she was no longer desirable?

Think about this. Think long and hard before you submit to feeling guilty or ashamed because of who you are.

Honoring Our Individuality is a Human Right

The right of everyone living in recovery to have their own version of a full and robust life is a human rights issue.

Is it not an inviolable human right for everyone living on earth to express, embrace, and celebrate their unique Self–and to have others acknowledge and honor this individual Self?

Honoring and embracing each other’s individuality is the root of resolving human rights issues.

Too many people in American society and in the world judge others who don’t conform to so-called “norms.”

The solution to stigma of any kind is to be your Self, regardless of whether or not other people like and accept your Self.

Each of us must express our Selves freely and without shame. We have nothing to feel guilty about when we act true to our Selves.

The burden is on other people to “deal with it”–to deal with the fact that we don’t conform to what they think is an acceptable Self to promote in the world.

Make no mistake: we can’t live in fear of what people think of us.

We need to honor and embrace each other’s individual Self. Doing this is the foundation upon which all human rights are built.

It’s up to each of us to continue to act true to our Selves. It’s up to each of us to accept, honor, embrace, and celebrate the uniqueness of every other person we meet and interact with.

To not do this is to perpetuate a violation of human rights.

Yet at the same time, we cannot judge and seek to negate the Self of a person who does narrowly define what an acceptable Self looks and acts like for other people.

Hate looks good on no one. “Hating the haters” is not the way to live. Understanding and having compassion for everyone–even for those who hate–is imperative.

The bottom line: compassion is always in fashion. It starts with having self-compassion and self-acceptance. When we like ourselves and embrace and celebrate our individuality, it doesn’t matter if other people don’t like us and lack compassion.

In the next blog entry I’m going to quote a woman who has quickly become my newest role model. She tells it like it is in her own words. I’ve just finished reading her astonishing memoir.

Using Your Clothing to Speak Your Mind

It’s curtains for any stigma. The show of hate has closed down.

An image consultant wrote a 5-star review of my memoir Left of the Dial.

Now more than ever I stand by my assertion that the role of stigma is overrated.

Followers, everyone knows. And the kind people, the compassionate people, don’t care.

[You think it’s a secret but it’s not.]

The haters are jackasses. Do you really want to waste one minute of your life trying to get a jackass to like you and approve of you?

In the wise words of John Maxwell: “They can’t hurt you unless you let them.”

If you allow the haters to dictate how you feel about yourself, that’s a form of internalized shame.

You are kinder, you are stronger, and you are braver than that. You are wise and you are worthy.

Fight for your rights if you’ve been discriminated against in obtaining housing or other legal opportunities because of your mental health diagnosis. Put on your boots, because like Nancy Sinatra sang, those boots can walk all over another person.

Make no mistake: other than legal violations, wasting time worrying about potential stigma will rob you of having a full and robust life.

Repeat after me: the people who are kind and compassionate don’t care if you have SZ or BP or DP or whatever you have. Seek out friends and lovers who aren’t afraid.

The ones who are going to get spooked by your diagnosis have issues. You don’t need them in your life.

The only baggage I covet is Louis Vuitton. Better yet, make mine a Sac du Jour.

I’ll end here with this story:

I watched on TV as Letitia James–the first African American woman to hold the position–was sworn in as Public Advocate of New York City.

She now holds the second highest ranking elected office in the City.

She wore knee-high boots to take the stage at her inauguration.

Take a tip from Letitia James:

Use your clothing to speak your mind.

Any questions still about designing your life through personal style?

Dare to Be You

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Years ago for my birthday my dear friend gave me this card.

I wonder about the mental and physical toll of bottling up who you are–and bottling up the truth about the illness. Stuffing down your feelings can’t be healthy because one day the lid will pop off and they’ll explode.

So much has been written about how churches try to convert gay individuals to acting as heterosexuals. Yet I might be the first person to write about the folly of squelching your personality when you have a mental health diagnosis.

Pretending to be someone you’re not over the long-term only leads to illness.

Yet it’s a mistake to conflate temperament with symptoms. For a lot of people with mental health conditions though we do worry about betraying our illness to others in how we act–especially if we have jobs and degrees.

As a professional told me years ago:

“When you’re high-functioning you’re aware that you’re different so the pain is greater.”

Really, if you have anosognosia thus don’t think you’re sick why would you be ashamed to think the CIA is after you? You wouldn’t. You’d be oblivious to the slings and arrows of stigma.

As a woman put it to me: “At home and outside–with friends and family–I can be myself and don’t have a filter. Yet who am I supposed to be at work?”

I’m writing about these things because no one else is and someone has to.

In the end the ethic of my memoir Left of the Dial boils down to this:

Dare to Be You–and you’ll be happier and healthier.

Thinking Positively

I’ve found an effective solution to dwelling in the past: focus on the positive instead of the negative. Yes: it is easier to do this

Think: what was good about your past life even though most of it wasn’t great? A New York Times article revealed that people who rewrote their history to frame it in a positive way healed better and had better health.

Anais Nin wrote in one of her diaries: “You have the right to select your perception of the world.”

I think of this after reading an interview with Ice Cube in Rolling Stone. He founded NWA and now stars in movies. If you ask me he has a poor attitude: He in effect told the reporter: “I’m black so of course no one likes me.”

I’m not going to attack and judge a person for believing what they do. It’s just that as I read the Ice Cube interview and thought about it I realize each of us has a specific worldview. In this way the truth is always elastic depending on who’s doing the stretching.

If that’s what a person believes, it’s true for them. It’s their truth regardless of whether something really happened or didn’t happen.

I’ve been thinking about this also as it relates to stigma and how a lot of consumers perceive that stigma is pervasive and having a diagnosis is shameful because other people think they’re crazy.

I say: get over it.The more pressing concern is that blaming stigma or blaming other people–regardless of who or what you’re hating or blaming and why you’re hating or blaming–is not a healthy way to live.

The fear of stigma will hold a person back even when there’s no actual stigma.

I do wish Ice Cube would get over himself. He’ll certainly get Rolling Stone to sell thousands of copies of the magazine.

My stroke of insight was that focusing on the positive is the way to go. I have long railed against the time I spent in the community mental health system. This week when I chose to focus on the positive everything changed for the better.

Focusing on the positive–choosing to think positively–is all too rare in a society where people like Ice Cube and others make polarizing statements.

I say: find the good in your life and in other people. Keep an open mind that good people exist in the world. Take back control by deciding to focus on the positive.

If you ask me, focusing on the positive is the best use of our time and of our mental energy. To this end I will focus on the good when I post blog entries here.

I’ll branch out in this blog to write things that no traditional publisher or mainstream Internet website is going to publish. No other outlet wants to publish what I write because there’s nothing shocking or sensational about what I propose.

I’ll start by writing about right here right now because today more than ever it’s a great time to be living in recovery.

Recovery at 50

Fifty reminds me of the song “Freedom” from the 1980s.

I turned 50: And I could give a rat’s ass about what other people do and say.

Anyone who cares one minute for what other people think has too much time on their hands. That time is better put to using it to do your own thing in your own inimitable way.

So you want to wear polka dots and stripes at the same time? Go right ahead. Fifty is the time to declare a war on changing yourself to fit into a version of a person that other people will approve.

Anyone else who dares spend their whole life sitting in judgment of you or me isn’t worth worrying about. Forgive them. Pray they one day “see the light.” Then send them on their way.

Besides in reality most normal people are too obsessed with their own perceived faults that they have no time left over to worry about you or me. Capisce?

I make the case for getting to the point where you stop being paranoid about how other people act towards you. This is one of the benefits of being in remission or in having minimally intrusive symptoms–the paranoia doesn’t influence your thinking and in some cases the paranoia is totally gone.

Imagine that: getting to the point where you’re not paranoid.

I firmly believe that acts of discrimination (traditionally called “stigma”) should not be accepted or tolerated.

We need however to differentiate between when we’ve been discriminated against and when we’re merely “reading into” the actions or words of other people.

At 50 years old: I don’t care about so-called stigma. Our lives should not be focused on pleasing other people who can set the hoops higher and higher that we have to jump through.

I’ll be 51 soon–my how time flies. Our fifties if you ask me are the time to get things right: to once and for all throw off the shackles that make us fear “stigma.”

To live the full and robust life that we’re entitled to live.

Fifty is when we’re asked to do things we feel passionate about: buy a home, enter into a relationship, travel, take up a cause–whatever the most persistent and urgent thing it is that our souls demand take expression before we’re gone.

Each of us is going to turn 50 at some point. All hail those of us who are 50 now. Fifty is too late in the game of our lives to continue to sit on the sidelines and not dare to get into the ring to try to achieve a goal.

Read the Theodore Roosevelt quote that I posted here in the quotes section. It truly is not the critic that counts only the person who has gotten in the arena and fought to have a better life.

I’ll return here on Thursday with information about a life-changing book I’ve read that might just help others in recovery find the freedom to be ourselves and live our lives free of stigma.

Why I Detest Stereotypes

I abhor stereotyping people. As a writer, I wanted to publish a schizophrenia memoir where the illness was in a way almost secondary. I wanted to craft original characters that had real lives.

Long-term research indicates that about 15 percent of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia have a refractory form of this illness: unremitting symptoms. And 10 to 15 percent commit suicide according to the long-term studies.

This causes doctors and family members to extrapolate from the minority of patients and loved ones that NO ONE with schizophrenia can have a normal life or a better life.

I understand how a person can feel when their loved one has a refractory illness. I make the case for better research and better treatment for schizophrenia for individuals who have a severe form. I make the case for seeing who the person is as a human being not a mental patient.

My contention is that stereotypes are lies. Viewing everyone the same way because you interacted with one person who behaved that way is stereotyping.

And often it’s the mothers and fathers who stereotype their loved ones by saying: “My son’s a schizophrenic.”

Stop that. Right now.

Jill Bolte Taylor in her brilliant memoir My Stroke of Insight wrote that she needed everyone to believe she would recover when she had a stroke that paralyzed her.

Believe that your son or daughter can recover. Believe that individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia can recover.

Know that you don’t have, I don’t have, no one has the right to judge another person. We don’t have the right to write the end of their story before it begins. Neither do we have the right to think: “You were supposed to become a brain surgeon and now that you work at Rite Aid I’m disappointed in you.”

I abhor stereotypes of any kind. I’m writing a novel with an African American character so I’m set to read books written by and about African Americans.

My point I’m getting at is that no one’s a cardboard character. To quote Jodi Picoult from a radio interview: “People are more than the sum total of their disability.”

It’s a choice: we can focus on illness or we can focus on the beauty inside as well as outside of a person. And I think sometimes only seeing the symptoms and focusing on the hell blinds others to that beauty.

What I’m saying is two-fold: we can’t view recovery as the total absence of illness. Yet we can’t view the illness as the person’s identity in life.

I’m a writer: I’m interested in the contradictions inherent in everyone’s personality.

I’m a person in recovery: I’m interested in destroying stereotypes by writing about real people not about pathology.

And yes, I salute cashiers who work in Rite Aid just like I salute people who have other careers.

I’ll quote the title of an earlier blog entry that quoted the X song title:

“See who we are.”

See possibility in our pain. Break bread with us. Get to know us as people first.

There’s a word for this.

It’s called dignity.

Normal’s Overrated

A great friend of mine gave me his tee shirt because he didn’t want it. M. chose a size S and mailed it to me about seven years ago. It’s a black short-sleeve tee with silver letters that proclaim: “Normal’s Overrated.” It was a NAMI promotion tee shirt with the TV show House.

The one time I wore it outside in the Village in New York City people zoomed up to my chest to read it. “Rock on! So true!” everyone responded.

Wearing the tee shirt caused me to create a little earthquake in and around Washington Square Park where the art festival was going on.

I write about this because it’s a tendency for individuals newly diagnosed with schizophrenia to internalize shame about having this illness. The actions we take to avoid stigma often wind up having the opposite effect: we become ill.

In my twenties I was a creative quirky gal who ran n the opposite direction to work in the insurance field.

I do wish I could help others be spared the fate of making themselves miserable trying to conform to what other people in society have designated as “normal” or “not normal.”

The link between creativity and mental illness has been proven in research studies. It should come as no surprise that not a lot of us covet becoming tax accountants or trial lawyers. Most of us ARE writers and artists and dancers and photographers and other creatives.

In recognizing this and having self-acceptance the battle is won over the diagnosis.

It’s true that normal’s overrated.

The goal is to take part in your own life by acting true to yourself.

You might not earn millions at a job yet that’s not the point.

The point is to be happy.

Using Music To Power Through

I used to be a disc jockey on the FM radio in the 1980s.

This first career was a labor of love–I wasn’t paid to do it–yet it set in motion the events of my life in the future. I recommend all young people try to do something positive like this. It will power a person through to the rest of his or her life. It can be a kind of therapy when you’re faced with oncoming symptoms.

Even now, I recommend doing things that give you positive reinforcement. One guy watches sports games. Years later, I listen to music on the radio and iTunes. I recommend installing iTunes on a computer so you can listen to [mostly free] radio stations. Zeilsteen in the alternative genre is good.

In a flash one day it hit me to install Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” At first, I accidentally installed the Sex Pistols version of “My Way” and then I found out they re-created it with new lyrics that butcher the song’s intent.

The original version of “My Way” is the perfect antidote to stigma in my estimation. Listening to it can help us soldier on; to remember we’re beholden to no one else in society to prove our worth to; that we need not seek other people’s approval.

I recommend that you do things YOUR way–in your version of the “My Way” that Frank Sinatra sings about.

Old Blue Eyes was right on the money. Here’s to you, Frankie.

I’ll end here that about five years ago a New York Times article reported on the high number of “Sinatra-cides” that happened in the Phillipines when “My Way” was belted out during Karaoke. People singing this song were actually killed. Numerous clubs banned the use of “My Way” as a result.

Google the lyrics to this song if you don’t want to buy it. I find this song to be truly uplifting.

Music can be one of the joys of life. It can give a person positive reinforcement.

Take that, stigma.