Recovery – a challenge for service users: The Concept of the ‘Wounded Healer’

1. Recovery – a challenge for service users: The Concept of the ‘Wounded Healer’ Joanna Fox Anglia Ruskin University

2. 1. What is recovery? • Recovery is defined as a personal process of overcoming the negative impact of diagnosed mental illness / distress despite its continued presence. • NIMHE (2004) EmergingBestPractices in Mental Health Recovery

3. 2. Recovery – a personal journey • Breakdown at university • Friendship • Re-building • Faith – there must be a reason? • Family members • Mentorship • Something to do • Direction • Personal steel • Career

4. 3. Moving from a student to a practitioner • A struggling social work student experiencing: • Anxiety • Lack of confidence • Lack of self faith • Lack of experience • With a mental health needs diagnosis Question: Should this make a difference?

5. 4. Institutional failures • The institutional failure • No sense of belonging • (no seat / desk) • No time to tackle: • my lack of confidence • my sense of anxiety / being lost in the system • No real understanding of my ‘illness’ / disability • No belief in the potential of shared meaning and shared experience Question: Should my disability make a difference?

6. 5. What moved things forward? • Placement over the summer and second year placement with Professor David Brandon • Challenging • Empathetic • Time to address my issues • A desk to sit at • Flexibility to address my needs • Mentorship Statement: My disability did make a difference

7. 6. Reconstruction • Holistic understanding • Challenging at my level • Enabling with support • Looking at my strengths • Being positive • Being meaningfully occupied • Always stretching me • Full time education as a student then returning to further training as a social work student • Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to re-construct my ‘negative’ ways of thinking

8. 7. The Recovery model “a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills and/ or roles. It is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life even with limitations caused by the illness. Recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in one’s life as one grows beyond the catastrophic effects of mental illness”. Anthony WA (1993) Recovery from mental illness: the guiding vision of the mental health service system in the 1990s, Psychosocial Rehabilitation Journal, 16, 11-23

9. 8. What could I offer? Potentially competent – but how? • Able to show and experience real empathy • Able to think outside the box • Experiences of shared meaning with service users • Ability to relate to marginalised, socially excluded people • Able to understand what is not logical – but experiential Question: Should my disability make a difference?

10. 9. Elements affecting the recovery experience • Hope, confidence and optimism • Diagnosis • Self-acceptance, responsibility, belief and esteem • Self-efficacy • Self-awareness • Negative identity and low expectations • Stigma – spoiled identity • Thriving – growth beyond the label • Powerlessness – removal of identity • Reclaiming power and self-determination • Physical image • Sexual Identity • Creative identity • Cultural, social and community identity • Group identity – activism • Spiritual identity Brown, Wendy. and Kandirikirira, Niki. (2006). Recovering mental health in Scotland. Report on narrative investigation of mental health recovery. Glasgow, Scottish Recovery Network. http://www.scottishrecovery.net/content/mediaassets/doc/Recovering%20Identity.pdf accessed on line 27.10.06

11. 10. The Wounded Healer • Walsh (1997) quoted in Brandon (2003) “ A tradition no longer focuses on or even appreciates direct experience of the transcendent. Then what is left is an institution largely devoid of direct experience of the sacred… Techniques for inducing altered states then give way to mere symbolic rituals, direct experience is replaced by belief, and living doctrine fossilizes into dogma”. Brandon D (2003) ‘Shaman’ IUC Journal of Social Work

12. 11i. A Shamanic social work training • Wounds – using experiences to have a shared understanding and meaning • Empathy - the connections between us, to walk in the shoes of another man • Loving kindness - to experience the inter-connectedness of all things (Brandon 2003)

13. 11ii. A Shamanic social work training • Rituals – the preparation in the car before entering the house • Mindfulness – quietening the mind, turning the interview into a healing process. The Beginners Mind • Mutual transformation - the process where both are healed through the interconnectedness. (Brandon 2003)

14. 12. The Wounded healer • “At the base of all our healing is increasing self-awareness and compassion towards others –nothing very special. This asks that we are all increasingly gentle with ourselves and each other, that we surrender our different images of perfection as a deluded measure of the world and see it with honesty and love”. (Brandon 2003)

15. 13. Changes in social work training • Service user / carer involvement project • Systematic involvement in the training of all social workers • What promotes best practice? • What are barriers to best practice? • Statement: My disability does make a difference

16. 14.My road to recovery • Self management and ownership of my own recovery • Enabled to reach towards recovery with appropriate support • Respect for my experiences • Looking for the experiences of shared meaning with other disabled people • Statement: My disability does make a difference