This is Bev's youngest son, Kevin. Like Liana's portrait it is painted in gouache which is a more opaque version of watercolor. I really like the gouache and I enjoyed drawing and painting Kevin's portrait. His look is so open and so serious. He has very nice eyes. I particularly like the bandana he is wearing; there's even a yin/yang sign visible on the right side. I got in touch with Bev and will hopefully see her for lunch on Monday. I'm planning on trying to paint a portrait of her as well because I have a good photograph that I took of her several years ago. So I will give all the paintings to her when I see her. I'm looking forward to getting a photograph of her eldest son, Zach and also one of her boyfriend, Jeff.
I'm still eating sensibly, counting calories and getting nearly daily exercise. Last week I lost another pound and I'm hoping that I'll have lost yet another pound by Monday morning. The longer I stick with this, the more committed I'll be and I will lose the extra weight I've put on, most of it by this time next year.
I got my online support group cards today in the mail. I have to make card holders to put them in and I also want to make up fliers to generally explain the cards and draw attention to them. I've set a deadline to start posting them by this time next week. I hope some people respond and we can get a dialogue going. I can't be the only person who thinks that this is a good idea, but I'll have to wait and see.
I've been productive since I started the diet and exercise program a month ago. I've been reading more, painting more and even doing some singing and songwriting. The voices have also been more subdued. I don't know if that's because of the diet and exercise program, but it might just factor into it. When it comes to treating mental illness, I think a lot of it is about applying common sense to the problem. It's just sometimes it takes a while to get to that point. It's taken me ten years to get to this point. I think part of why it's taken me a decade is that I wouldn't take the medications (except Prozac) for the first three years which led to three breakdowns which led to taking the meds, but also to serious depression. If I had accepted my diagnosis right away and began taking the medications, if I had not only went to therapy, but had a mental health support group to go to online and offline, well maybe I would have gotten better sooner. But I didn't and we each have to go through our own trials and tribulations to learn our lessons and get to a better place. Which is why it's important to help others along the way by sharing your experience and giving some hope that things really can get better given the right attention and time.
One thing that bothers me is the gulf between those that are still caught within paranoia and delusions and those that are in recovery from them. This is why I am such a believer in support groups even though I've never been to a face to face mental health support group other than Al-Anon. I think people who are in recovery, whether just starting out or with many years of experience, really can influence those who are not in recovery, but the lines of communication must be open and readily available. Blogs by those who have mental illness are also a great way to spread the news that recovery is possible. If there ever is a face to face support group where I live I think I would want to keep a list of the various blogs I've found to pass out to newcomers.
Something else that is sorely needed is a simple daily reader for people with mental illness. I've looked online, in bookstores and I haven't found even one! I've even tried to start writing one of my own, but it's too big a job for me to do. I think it needs to be a collaboration between people. I learned from Al-Anon that a daily reader is a great way to organize a support group meeting. I've also found it to be essential to a daily recovery practice. Does anyone have any ideas? I'd also love to hear about your experiences with mental health support groups. How are they organized?
3 comments:
Kate,
Wow! It's been a while. I got caught up. What a gorgeous portrait! The colors are stunning!
I am so happy to hear all you are doing. You are a precious person and working so hard to help others! I think you are definitely right about there needing to be a daily reader for those who suffer mental illnesses. It is surprising that it doesn't already exist. I also agree that it's a huge task. I think Alanon could be used as a boilerplate and then the daily writings could be tweaked. I know people who shared that many self-medicate ith alcohol who are in AA. It would be interesting to find out if more people in Alanon also suffer from depression or schizophrenia or bipolar too. Probably...
Nancy
Hi Kate~
The group I started down here in Florida, DAISIES, had some specific things I wrote or printed out from others' writings or from Schizophrenia Digest magazine (which does donate magazines to support groups if you call and ask for them), and we would start out the group by reading these things. I also wrote group guidelines, which I would have preferred others helped me to write, but I didn't find a lot of interest in doing that amongst the people who came to the meetings. Because people who were currently hospitalized were brought from the hospital to my group every week, that changed the tone of the meetings as people in crisis are not dealing with the same exact situations as people who are at home and coping with their symptoms a different way. So if I had it to do over again - which I probably do, and will - I would do some things differently.
Anyway, I also looked for a book to use. I used some stuff from Hazeldon books and the "Just for Today" poem of Al-Anon, and some articles about stress, etc.....there are things out there to use, but there is no book that I know of specifically for people with mental illnesses to have as a daily reader. That is something I have thought about as well, and I think your idea of writing one makes a lot of sense. It would be very useful......
The other experience I've had with support groups was in NAMI meetings and - long ago - meetings of a Depressive and Manic Depressive Association, which is now the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. I specifically decided to try to use TOPICS in the group I started because those other groups didn't do that, and in comparison to the Alateen meetings I went to as a teenager, I thought the Alanon model worked better because they used topics. I also found that the people in my DAISIES groups didn't really want to initiate conversations, and I tried everything I could think of to get them to do so, but they weren't comfortable doing so or something, so it was chosen by the people in the group that we should go by topics or read something to first initiate the meeting, and then start out by talking about what we read. I am not sure this was a good way to go, because I always felt like I was given the responsibility to choose a topic or bring in a piece of writing, and I didn't want to be in that much control over the flow of the group - I really wanted it to be a "group" effort sort of group, not a group run by me. But, for whatever reasons, others did not take interest in helping to get the group going. I think it is useful to have help, and if I were to do it again, I would want someone to be doing it with me.
Those are just some of my thoughts on groups. Feel free to let me know if you want any more information.
Thanks for your email, Kate!
Take care,
Jen
Kate, I also wanted to leave the link to the DAISIES site, as it has a page called Inspiration where I posted some of the writings we read in our group meetings:
http://daisiesgroup.homestead.com
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