The Spirit of Recovery

Descriptive head here.

Ed Knight's Tale

Waist-high pea green walls divide the large dormitory into six sleeping areas, six metal beds in each, thirty-six patients. A blue-gray cigarette smog clouds the entire room. Shuffling down the hall between the sleeping areas, a figure in State-issue clothing, a shirt crudely sewn from light blue plaid industrial-grade curtain material, beltless gray pants, stiff, too large. Barely able to put one foot before the other, he tugs on his sagging pants every third step. "The thorazine shuffle." The man knows it is not the thorazine. It is emotional pain so deep his skin hurts. As he has done many times before, the man is figuring a way to kill himself. He doesn't want to die. He wants the pain to end, to live without the constant agony. Silently, his lips breath, "Help." He speaks to no image, no divine principle, no inner notion of God. His is just a plea to someone stronger than himself that the pain will go down. He acts on the prayer. He shuffles to bed and curls up tight and falls asleep.

The next morning, awake, I am no longer a stranger, an alien occupying an unknown body. The pain had gone down just enough to allow me to get out of bed. My prayer had been answered. The rest was up to me. Looking around at the hopeless figures that surrounded me in that dismal State hospital ward, I made a decision: if I could help myself, I would find a way to help them as well. This time around schizophrenia would not be hopeless. Instead, it would be an illness with dignity. This time would be different.

Although I had in the past always needed denial in order to survive, to avoid suicide, this time around I was not going to deny my illness. Denial had served me well, offering some protection from the relentless furies with their secret meanings and messages. Denial had protected me from becoming one of "them," the feared, the hated, the disgusting, the loathed, "the mentally ill." I denied my exclusion from humanity. I denied the ridicule, the stain, the demon possession, the stigma, the pity, the silence. When screaming in pain I was dragged away by men in white coats to dark little rooms and stripped and left isolated in terror "for my own good," denial protected me from the anguish which was too painful to live with. In the twilight world of madness, denial protected against the recognition of where I was headed and the great fear of no return. As cyclic bouts of anger and despair began, denial enabled me to continue to live with anger at myself, with anger at God, and with anger at the system which treated me in such inhuman ways. Yet this time would be different.

Moving Beyond Denial

How do we get beyond denial? How do we deal with ourselves and heal in our own time, and at our own pace? Surprisingly, the antidote to denial is found in learning to relate with real hope to the anguish, to the pain and despair brought about in each person's life by death, aloneness, meaninglessness, and responsibility, that is, by the human condition, issues which manifest for each of us with the particularity of the death of a parent during childhood or abuse in one of its many forms. Anguish needs to be faced and lived through by each human being. Mental illness does not make me special in the realm of suffering. Many people suffer far more deeply than I do or have.

But how do we frame healing so that we may proceed to "do" it? How can we frame a task to be accomplished? Moving out of the emotional/mental or heart/mind chaos by finding a frame was the beginning of recovery to me. It was seeing that the universe had a center. For me the process of recovery began in a strip cell. Lying nude and cold on a cement floor, deeply ashamed, begging the "mind-shrinker" who enteredfor a cigarette. I recalled what I had heard of the great wisdom tradition of modernity, existentialism: "The situation is never the problem, only the relationship you take to it is the problem." At that moment, rebellion against madness and against the way we as madmen and women are treated began to take on a direction. It came to me then that my life was out of control, not because of madness, but because of my attitude toward madness.

Later, in a mental institution, I had the experience of walking down the hall in terrible emotional pain, planning to kill myself to end the pain, and praying "Help, G_d answered. The next day the pain went down. I continued to live, realizing that as terrible as it was, as impossible as it was, I could relate to the situation of being crazy in a society that equated humanity with rationality. I had prayed as St. Francis de Sales urged, "as if everything depends on God." Now, as the Saint insisted, I needed to act as if everything depended on me.

Shortly after this I had a vision, a waking vision, clearly not a hallucination. I saw Jesus coming to me in a valley of honey (healing) and mushrooms (humble but useful). I noticed he was in great pain. I approached and asked "Lord what is this pain I see in you." He said, "I carry the pain of all humanity. That is why you can all go on. I carry the load of the pain for what you do to each other." I said, "Lord let me help. Let me carry some of it." He said, "The pain is infinite. Just touch my shoulder and be careful." I touched his shoulder and was overwhelmed by intense pain such as I had never felt before. He said, "That is an infinitesimal part of it." Responding I said, "The earth is so beautiful I must help you as much as I can till the ends of time, till all beings are saved."

The Spiritual Alternative

After these experiences, I did not continue in the despair of denial, refusing to know what I knew in the depths of my heart to be true. Soren Kierkagaard, who spoke of Sickness Unto Death, called this the despair of naiveté. Nor did I entertain the despair of passive rebellion by becoming a victim or of active rebellion by attacking the mental health system and drug companies for my situation. Instead, by the grace of someone I couldn't conceptualize, I took responsibility for my situation. I constantly felt the presence of what I call "the Friend" during this period of my life. Without the grace of this Friendly Presence, I would never have had the strength to take responsibility for my life without knowing how to solve or even face these essential human problems.

The first truth that I had been avoiding was that I needed medication. I had tried that, and was indeed mad without psychiatric medication. My life had gotten way out of control and I could no longer deny this fact. I had experienced the despair of ignoring the problem. Attempting to live the life of the "chronically normal" en bouts with insanity, I found it to be the life of quiet desperation. When the madness struck, with each hospitalization, again and again, I lost everything: cars, houses, jobs, careers, families, books, graduate school notes. To accept this, I needed to separate medication from the "medical model" culture of "normality" and its ritualized segregation of the "mentally ill." In a pattern of segregation reminiscent of the Jim Crow South, the "chronically normal" don't marry, date, eat with or pee in the same bathrooms as the "mentally ill".

The second, and equally powerful truth, was that I could have a life beyond being a mental patient. Encouraged in passive despair by a mental health system which recommended "a low-stress environment," "realistic goals," "a sheltered environment," and taught, "Listen to the experts. You can't live your life without them," I had repeated my mantra, "Oh, poor me." It was a long time before I finally realized that I could accept their advice to take medication without also accepting their image of my potential.

Rediscovering Ancient Healing Wisdom

I assumed responsibility but still I was unsure how to proceed. I wanted to move beyond patienthood and madness, to do something else, to have aspirations. I mentioned to my treatment team that I would be interested in conducting scientific studies of the processes of insanity using my graduate degrees. I mentioned that I wanted to set up self-help groups. I mentioned I wanted to write about what I learned. They called each of these goals a "delusion of grandeur." I was behaviorally defined. I would forever function only at the lowest level. All else, the "mind-shrinkers" told me, was grandiosity. I lived on a whole ward of people who needed to be shrunk, in a whole hospital of people who needed to be shrunk, in a country where millions of people needed to be shrunk within systems designed to shrink them, that had a long "scientific" tradition of therapy on how to shrink them.

My choices seemed to be constrained; I could experience the despair of passive adjustment or the despair of passive rebellion or become a victim forever. I could choose the despair of active rebellion, try to smash the system, pour my drugs down the drain, and talk other people off medication. Or I could choose madness. These were my choices, but I felt there must be something else, some other choice that I just wasn't seeing.

From Despair to Recovery

Could I move beyond despair? How could I define my situation, and relate to it creatively, not out of despair, not out of denial, not by ignoring the reality of my circumstances, nor out of passive or active rebellion; but, with hope grounded in the reality of the problems I face and that my brothers and sisters face. How could I regain self-direction and not react out of despair to an impossible situation? How could I move beyond total reliance on expert knowledge to self-directed recovery?

I knew from experience that medication could help calm the "voices," as the "mind-shrinker" called my demons. But the fact that I heard voices that others did not hear was only a part of my problem. In a society where the definition of human is "rational animal," I was a madman. In a society that lived by being "cool" and by being the Insider in any way possible, I was the eternal Outsider. As my "mind-shrinker" put it, I was a schizophrenic and part of my brain was simply beyond socialization. I could not learn certain things, especially social things. He told me I would need to be supervised for the rest of my life. Facing encouragement like this, how do we get beyond denial? How do we objectify what is going on? How do we get beyond the mad commotion of our souls--not to satisfy some treatment plan, or some "mind-shrinker" but to heal in our own time, and at our own pace.

A psychologist, who was physically disabled and a recovering alcoholic, called me aside one day. He said, "I've read your chart. I read about your 'delusions of grandeur'--wanting to scientifically study mental illness, wanting to start self-help groups, wanting to write. Don't ever give up your 'delusions of grandeur,' those are your goals." This man, this professional, showed me the path to hope. He stepped out of his one-dimensional role, out of the scientific role of soul-shrinker. He practiced a psychology of respect rather than a psychology of adjustment and gave me a reprieve from my social death sentence. He pointed the way. He held up his finger and pointed, pointed to my path. But it was I who had to walk it. He could not walk it for me.

I remembered Murshid Himayat Inayati of the Sufi Order of the West. He taught me two things. The first is concentration. The second is to always carry through on one's decisions. The first gives power of mind, the second gives power of will. These were the tools I needed: I would use my soul, my awareness and my will to move forward toward recovery.

I began to practice by concentrating on a tree outside the window for a minute with my eyes open and then for a minute with my eyes closed. I slowly increased the time I spent in a state of concentrated awareness. I formed the habit of always making decisions carefully or postponing decision-making until I was fully prepared to decide something that I knew I could and would carry through on. Then I religiously followed up to implement my decisions. But what was the problem on which I needed to use the tools?

I was paralyzed by anxiety. I could barely live my life even when on medication. I talked about this in group therapy; I talked about it in one-on-one therapy. No one offered me any help. One day walking around the day room, feeling paralyzed within a full-blown panic attack, I approached a social worker, not mine but the one on duty, told him of my panic, and asked if I might talk with him.

"Are you suicidal or homicidal?" he asked.

"No," I replied.

"Well then you can't talk to me. I'm here for emergencies. You'll have to talk to your own therapist on Monday. It's Saturday. That's not too long a wait. In the meantime learn to tolerate it." He turned and walked away.

Not much compassion but strangely, ironically helpful. I decided to face my own anxiety and do something about it, to tolerate it.

I set about understanding my anxiety using the concentration techniques that my Sufi mediation teacher had shown me. I explored the images and memories attached to my anxiety. I located the anxiety in various parts of my body rather than experiencing it as free-floating. I found it extraordinarily difficult to pay attention to my anxiety. Everything in my being tried to drive my attention elsewhere. I knew I was engaging in a process that would take many painful hours over a long period of time. I practiced paying attention to anxiety and continued to strengthen my attention when not in panic by using the technique of focusing on a tree first with my eyes open and then with my eyes closed.

I used this skill to unearth my anxiety and to find out what it was about. Sometimes the memories or images that I saw brought on a flood of very painful emotion, and I would start to space out. I feared that if I became frightened of spacing out, or of going insane, that the panic would worsen. My fear of fear gave power to fear and increased it until I would find myself going out of control. Occasionally, I would hear my demons talk to me when the panic got bad enough. I rode that out by re-focusing as well. I would shift from my fear to a tree or a pattern on the floor.

By watching my own emotional and mental processes, I discovered my fear of conversation, especially with women, unless I was talking about abstract intellectual things, which living in a mental hospital didn't happen often. By paying attention to anxiety, I faced my fear of people. I practiced skills to deal with real life situations. As I walked around on the hospital grounds, euphemistically called a "campus" as if it were a university, I began to engage strangers in chitchat of the most non-intellectual sort. I became an expert at weather, weather about gardening, weather about fishing, weather about difficulties in getting to work, weather about swimming. I learned to socialize without being an intellectual. People cease to trigger anxiety. I had successfully intervened and done something about a very common trigger in my life. I discovered that I could use my concentration abilities to re-focus my attention away from anxiety, negative emotions and fearful images. I paid attention to the tree, or to my breath going in and out of my nose, and in this way I rode out the panic and spaciness.

I formed the habit of always making decisions carefully or postponing decision-making until I was fully prepared to decide something that I knew I could and would carry through on. Then I religiously followed up to implement my plans. If I didn't follow through and slipped, I reaffirmed my decision and tried again until I succeeded.

Many things can trigger fear or energetic action or anger. Reacting to anger with anger leads to rage. React to fear with fear leads to panic. Energetic action piled on energetic action becomes mania. We move from something that triggers us, to feeling, to intense feeling to overt "symptoms." We can re-focus, not focus on fear with more fear but on something else, a plant, or a spot on the wall, the fear subsides. Unfortunately, re-focusing will not lead to profound growth; it is after all a method of repression. We indeed need to know when to repress, but we can't do it all the time and expect to grow.

By practicing awareness, by being aware of feelings without reacting, just being aware of fear or anger or the tendency to energetic action, I found over a long period of time, that I could ride the wave of fear without reacting and without re-focusing. Focusing on my breath at the tip of my nose, I maintained body awareness. Maintaining contact with "the itch", I experienced the calm at the center of the hurricane, riding the waves of emotion until I became comfortable with the fear and anger and energetic action of my daily life.

I will never forget the first time that I lived through a panic attack without escape. I feared disappearing, a delusion that was none-the-less very terrifying. I stood in front of a mirror, did not re-focus by going home to my bed and covering up with my sheets until I calmed down. Nor did I go to the emergency room, or take more medication. Instead I watched myself in a mirror as the panic increased and I did not disappear, and then I watched myself as the panic subsided.

I became aware of situations and patterns that needed to be addressed, just as my fear of talking to people needed to be addressed. I found things that I had repressed. When I feel the first twinges of fear, what do I recall from earlier in my life? The death of a loved one, an emotional beating? I found that "my voices" come when anxiety is too great. Intervening before that point is important, and learning to feel anxiety without fear is also important. Later I learned that there is a limit to anxiety. It is an adrenal reaction. Once the adrenal receptors in the nervous system are filled they can't get more filled. Everything after that is the mind painting horrible pictures. The fear will not increase and drive me to do anything I don't decide to do.

Learning to tolerate feelings without being overwhelmed, one learns to control how one feels, one ceases to fear fear or despair over despair. We learn, as Epictatus did, that it is not things that cause us suffering, but how we view things. And we learn, as did Kierkegaard, that the situation is not the problem, the problem is how we relate to the situation.

Summary and Inconclusions

When I speak before groups, I am sometimes asked for my theory of mental illness or what I think causes it. I talk about biological elements, trauma, spiritual elements, social elements, and psychological elements. All of them are implicated and none of them fully explain my experience. Labels are for jars. I am still capable of creating panic beyond my control, one anxious thought leading to another. What will happen with my job? Is it safe to fly on September 11? Will I panic? Will I end up in the hospital? Will I lose everything I have? My panic and my paranoia are a reality that I create unconsciously. A world created by words. This does not mean they are easy to undue. And I also need medication. Without medication, the fear is too great for me to overcome. I experience the loss of rationality and am bombarded by screaming voices which become more and more real till they are my only reality. But medication doesn't do the complete job. Without meditation, I still suffer panic attacks and uncontrollable voices. After years of meditation and self analysis and now work with a psychiatrist who actually knows psychotherapy, I still need to constantly train myself in mindfulness and compassion and especially in the equanimity that comes from the "itch" meditation style called Zen.

To be aware of an itch from beginning to end without scratching it is a powerful lesson in awareness. We learn that the itch is a whole, which when we are aware of its parts ceases to have power over us. We find the itch when we are aware, is composed of many "tiny" feelings of intensity and burning and sharpness and so on. When we are aware of these sensations without acting by scratching, and without going somewhere else with our attention or repressing, we find awareness has a reward. We create a free space in which to just be. The experience is not what we thought it to be, unbearable, but rather is many tiny experiences that we find we can stand. With emotions and thoughts, to know when to scratch is also as important as being able to observe our itch without scratching. Awareness of this type can provide insight into the operations that go into panic, or mania or the onset of other psychiatric symptoms. When we fear fear, we increase it. When we despair over despair we increase it.

Today, I feel more joy, more love, more peace. Without the combination of meditation and medication I would be in and out of the hospital very frequently. I still panic but less severely and less frequently. Today, I am some 20 years from the pivotal point in my life when my mental illness introduced me to the spiritual practice which would empower me to face my anxiety. Along the way, I would learn that, as Kierkegaard points out, anxiety is the great spiritual teacher. I would discover that anxiety comes, as Christ says he comes, like the thief in the night. Over the years, anxiety has taught me the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, that all under the sun is vanity, all under the sun is passing, that nothing save G_d ( I AM THAT I AM), the ground of being, is lasting. We cannot really stand on the ground of being by clutching at, or clinging to, anything that is impermanent. I found that fear, and its free-floating form called anxiety, are caused by craving, or attachment to something or someone as if it will last in its present form forever. Along the way, I moved beyond reliance on professionals and "expert knowledge." Anxiety is still hard to face and feel, but I have come to know it as a great friend, or rather I have come to see it as an aspect of The Friend.

There are no conclusions on the spiritual path. Today, I know many of the knots I tie myself in. Many have become old friends. Only I can undo them. This is My Truth. Make of my story what you will. I share it because I think it may in parts be helpful for some others. Take what you need and leave the rest. Others may learn from it but each person must make their own choice for honesty, see their own powerlessness, and thereby discover their own power. May The Friend be with you on your journey.

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