A Journey of the Heart

1. A Journey of the Heart By Ashley Verheyden Adapted from Patricia Deegan�s (2001) work of the same title

2. Recovery as a concept The concept of recovery is rooted in the simple yet profound realisation that people diagnosed with mental illness are: Fully human subjects who can act and in acting change their situation. People who can speak for themselves. People who can become self determining. People who have much to offer because of their unique experiences. People who can make a stand towards what is distressing them (they need not be passive �victims� of an illness). People who have a right to take risks. People who can become experts in their own recovery.

3. What is recovery? It is not about mainstream opinions. It is about a huge expansive ocean that has room for all and leaves no one stranded on the fringes. The goal of recovery is to embrace our human vocation of becoming more fully human, to become the unique, awesome, never to be repeated human that we are called to be.

4. How does one enter Recovery? We will begin where many find themselves: In that place of being �hard of heart� and not caring anymore. A time of great apathy and indifference.

5. Pat�s Story At ten in the morning Pat forces herself out of bed. In a drugged haze state she sits in a chair, nicotine stained fingers, staring into space smoking cigarette after cigarette as if to prove to herself the passing of time. The monotony of the day interrupted only by the occasional meal time. Finally is the long awaited hour, she retires to bed and collapses into a drugged and dreamless sleep. The days, weeks, months pass in numbing succession. People try to urge Pat to do things for herself put her heart is hard and she cares about nothing except for sleeping, smoking and sitting� Patricia Deegan

6. �I remember people trying to make me participate in life. Food shopping on a Wednesday or help bake bread or to go on a boat ride� �But nothing anyone did touched or moved me or mattered to me� �I had given up� Patricia Deegan

7. A question What is this apathy, indifference, �hardness of heart� which keeps so many people in a passive mode of survival and prevents them from actively entering into their own journey of recovery?

8. Is it merely the symptoms of mental illness? OR Is it a strategy that desperate people who are at the brink of losing hope use to survive?

9. Despair and hopelessness When we believe that all our efforts are futile. When we experience no control over our environment. When people no longer value us and what we have to say. When nothing seems to matter or make the situation better. When health care professionals give us a poor prognosis without the hope of improvement. When treatment goals are set by �professionals�. with little or no regard for the human experience. When people make us prisoners of our own biography. When people take over our lives and never trust us enough, to give control back again.

10. What would you do?

11. People with psychiatric disabilities do what other people do. Grow �hard of heart� and attempt to stop caring.

12. It is safer to become helpless than to become hopeless.

13. A Great Danger! Those helping people with psychiatric disabilities may fail to recognise the existential fight that the person who is hard of heart is struggling with and mistake �hard hearts� for the negative signs or symptoms of mental illness or worse dismiss the person as being lazy or unmotivated.

14. The Breaking Heart Being hard of heart and not caring are highly motivated, adaptive strategies used by desperate people who are at risk of loosing hope. Under the harden heart lies a breaking heart- how much suffering, how much loss can a human heart endure before it breaks? It is not a crazy thing to try and protect such a vulnerable heart by not caring anymore. To protect a breaking heart by becoming hard of heart.

15. Hope is not just a nice sounding euphemism Martin Seligman�s (1975) work in the field of learned helpless demonstrates to us that: Hope and biological life are inextricably linked

16. From Small Beginnings Perhaps the person will never risk to hope again. It is only the person you are trying to help who has the power to take the risk, to care about something� Something as simple as hanging a picture on their wall. The person who is hard of heart experiences all their power to be in the hands of others (an external loss of control). Those who are helping people with psychiatric disabilities have the power to create human interactive environments that reinstates agency by offering real choices, and by ensuring people are heard.

17. The Trap The person may reject time and time again these invitations to choose or to express their opinion. However the helper must not fall into despair, feel like their efforts are futile or grow hard of heart and stop caring themselves. Helpers must do what the person cannot yet do�.

18. �they must continue to role model hope and continue to offer options and choices even when these are rejected again and again.

19. GROUP EXCERCISE In small groups attempt to answer the following question: What creates a hope inspiring relationship? What needs to be present and absent for hope to exist?

20. DIMENSIONS OF HOPE-INSPIRING RELATIONSHIPS(from Repper & Perkins, 2003) Valuing people as human beings Acceptance and understanding Believing in the person�s abilities and potential Attending to people�s priorities and interests Accepting failures and setbacks as part of the recovery process Accepting that the future is uncertain Finding ways of sustaining our own hope and guarding against despair Accepting that we must learn and benefit from experience

21. Promoting Recovery These are the features of a human interactive environment which support the transition from not caring to caring, from surviving to becoming an active participant in one�s own recovery: Choice Options Being heard Access to information Resilient role models that provide hope and who do not give up on the person Developing and exercising a voice Opportunities for bettering ones life Faith Finding meaning in our experiences

22. �I cannot remember a specific moment when I turned that corner from surviving to becoming an active participant in my own recovery process. My efforts to protect my breaking heart by becoming hard of heart and not caring about anything lasted for a long time. They kept inviting me to do things. I remember one day, for no particular reason, saying �yes� to helping with food shopping. All I would do was push the cart. But it was a beginning. And truly, it was through small steps like that I slowly began to discover that I could make a stand toward what was distressing me�� Patricia Deegan

23. Hope is a precious thing The philosopher Martin Heidegger said, �that to be human means to be a question in search of an answer� One of the most essential challenges that faces us, is to ask, �who can I become and why should I say yes to life?�

24. Recovery Tools Our relationship is the most powerful tool that we have when working with people� There is also increasing evidence of the value of self-management tools in the recovery Process.