I began my career in the human service field as a case manager right after college at a local mental health center assisting individuals with developmental disabilities. We were a part of an initiative through a person-centered process of planning to serve as advocates to transition those individuals back into the community into less restrictive living arrangements.
I wrote my plans. I worked with treatment teams. I wrote those goals to increase this behavior or decrease that behavior with x number of prompts...ad nauseum. It was all about symptom management...medication compliance... and serving individuals from a distance...a professional distance. It was ME and THEM. With no heart connection.
I left the mental health field for a period of time to pursue a career in corporate sales. For seven years, I was successful but then I started to slip. One day my boss called me into his office and pointed out some glaring realities. I was missing appointments. I was not following up on leads. I was missing alot because I was missing in action. I was isolating for hours in book stores and coffee shops....scared to death. I couldn't pick up the 500 lb phone.
My thoughts and plans were all over the map. I was all over the map. I just couldn't pull out of this tail spin. There were spending sprees. There were car wrecks. I had become a train without a conductor. All of this came to a head and led me towards my first hospitalization.
Suddenly, I was face-to-face with the difficult realities of those I once served at a distance. I was now (for the first time) seeing up close...the crisis, the hurdles, the stigma, and the struggle that came with having to live and cope with a mental illness. My mental health challenges had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I allowed those challenges to shape my identity and it became for me...a proverbial "death sentence".
I jumped from med to med...from therapist to therapist...and from doctor to doctor. I slowly returned back to the human service field and worked as a support broker for the ARC of NC. I so appreciated the opportunity to assist individuals with mental illness and developmental disabilties towards self-determination and self-direction. It was a fruitful and rewarding time until my life experiences led me (again) in a different direction. I was led away from the human service field and a job that I so loved. I was hospitalized again.
While I was there, I found myself at the lowest point of my life. The guy I shared the room with was an ex-New York firefighter who had escaped death six times. He was on vacation during 9/11 and lost 19 of his comrades in the Twin Towers. All of it was too much and he stepped away. He would get up at 5 in the morning with anxiety attacks and I would sit by his bed and hold his hand, pray with him and provide words of encouragement and support.
That was my first experience with peer support...before I knew this kind of mutual support had an official name. I was discharged and I spent 5 years on disability.
I would stand at the window and watch folks pull out of their driveway. I had given up. But slowly things began to change for me. Through therapy, the right combination of meds and a strong set of supports I began to see myself differently and started to believe the truth. I started to believe the truth about me. About my diagnosis. About my identity apart from that illness. The truth that real change was possible.
I began to believe that my strengths and capacities could serve towards my own recovery. I became very intentional towards my own wellness and I was able to take charge and overcome that illness and my life improved all for the better.
I later discovered from a former colleague that there was an initiative in the US and in NC to move individuals with mental illness towards a wellness model of care and recovery in mental health. I discovered that peer support specialists were individuals that could bring their lived experiences (their story and their own wellness) to the lives of others in order instill hope and assist others with the same situation to move forward in their own recovery. Well I got my camper and headed to Western NC for training in Asheville.
My trainer (on the first day of training) told the group that we were no longer patients or clients...that we were...colleagues? A...COLLEAGUE!!! I hadn't heard that word spoken to me in over 5 years. That word was a skud missle of hope that pierced my world. That weeks training released those dreams (those forgotten and dearly-held dreams) like doves into the air.
My dreams were now running like a team of wild horses on the landscape of my mind. In this classroom..I was sitting among champions. Those who were now choosing to become more than their past and their challenges. I started to understand myself differently...my life differently...my career path differently. I realized now I was on a recovery journey. I was kissed by Mrs. Wellness and we have been dancing ever since.
I also struggled with an addiction. I had an eating disorder that led me to a detremental size of 410 lbs as of November of 2012. I had bariatric surgery December of 2012. I made this change due to a radical change that was needed in my eating habits. So I adopted a more active lifestyle and an outlook that was now towards focused on wellness and recovery. These experiences of overcoming an addiction and taking charge of my mental illness has led me to the present belief that recovery is real.
I am still a work in progress. I have lost 200 lbs. I am living proof that recovery is real. That wellness works. I am the evidence that Hope is available to all...no matter where you are at.
Joy to all of you as we share in this journey together. Indeed...Be well.
As I just wrote on Facebook: You are one of my new friends, and yet another warrior on the long road to holistic wellness. I feel grateful to be introduced to so many heros these days. Thank you Bryan
Posted by: Nina Collins | 07/26/2014 at 09:23 PM