[emilygarland]

I appreciate and respect Stephanie’s willingness to share her perspective and to help others in their journey with insights that she gleaned along the way. In my experience, individuals living with mental illness find the most benefit from the approach that resonates most with them, that seems to best describe his/her experiences and to encompass a viable approach for living with illness. I do not think that pathologizing one’s experience or behavior is helpful to the individual nor is it helpful to society if we desire to normalize and destigmatize behavioral health disorders. I fully believe in a recovery-oriented approach, that take into consideration the unique and special differences of an individual and allows space for many to fit within a conceptual “framework.” I have worked with members of the peer support community and briefly oversaw a recovery community center in NH. I learner first-hand how powerful it can be for people to feel at home in a space that celebrates the person who being exactly who they are. I think it is healing to have to say little and to feel understood ad often this is the experience that was described to me- that just being in this safe space surrounded by others who were fighting their individual fights felt like a community and allowed for healing to occur.

For me, the most important take-away is to always consider the person as an individual and seek to understand what their experiences are and what they define their needs to be. I think most professionals think they do this and yet it is easy to forgot and to take a short cut r the easy way out (hand someone a list without investigating further) as an example. I appreciate the opportunity to consider the things that have changed in the current complex recovery system- it is certainly dynamic and there is always more to learn.

[emilygarland]

1) What are your general reactions to this exercise of identifying wellness goals and taking action to achieve them?

I enjoy using tools such as this with clients and feel it is useful to move into a more active phase- especially if someone is prone to overthinking. I find that I sometimes benefit from putting things onto paper- having the visual cues helps me to brainstorm in a more dynamic way. One thing I noticed about this tool is that is would be easy to create a large goal that could feel overwhelming without some guidance or focused attention to ensure that the goal is small enough to accomplish without overwhelming progress.

2) What did you discover about how your strengths, supporters, and or community resources might help you overcome barriers to taking an action step or reaching your goal?

This step really made me consider how challenging it would be to come up with a list of feasible resources if I were experiencing economic insecurity or other forms of social isolation or marginalization. It seems that one needs to perceive that these resources are available to them and/or accessible in order to accept them as a resource and a strength. This is a large barrier in many instances.

3) What are some strategies you would employ to help consumers develop and implement their own wellness/recovery plans?

I incorporate the insights gleaned from this exercise to both ensure that the individual creates goals that are meaningful to their life and their recovery and not aimed at pleasing others or “checking boxes.” I would also make sure I set up a frame work whereby initial goals could be as lofty as they want to ensure that all options are considered before explaining that the process of creating smaller more manageable goals would be the successive phases of the process. This allows the individual to experience smaller successes along the way to the overall goal. In addition, this underscores the importance of ensuring that the individual has a strong connection to community supports and, if not, to begin exploring what it would take to create this and what it would consist of. This would likely facilitate success and a feeling of belonging to a larger community network that would benefit any plan for recovery.

[emilygarland]

I found this exercise helpful in grounding myself in my own awareness of my strengths at this current moment in time. I recognized that they are different in reality than in practice and my actions presently do not fully reflect my perception or past behavior. As an example, I recently started a new position within a new company doing work that is familiar in some ways (leadership) and yet completely new in others (oversight of hospice care not psychiatric care). I often believe that I am aware of my strengths with regard to health and wellness and leisure and recreation and that I would, if asked, be able to describe them without much difficulty. When completing this exercise, however, I found that I have not been as attentive to these areas as I believed and that some of my “go to” strengths were not currently being employed at this moment- a casualty of dwindling time, energy and emotional resources. This exercise was useful in illustrating how this tool can help one to assess multiple life domains at a given point even if an individual feels certain that they “know” how they are doing or where their strengths “stand”. The opportunity for reflection allowed me to have valuable insight that I can use to reevaluate or reprioritize my actions and responses. I now have a more clear sense of the fact that I might benefit from attending to my own leisure and wellness activities as I move through this time of learning and growth. This awareness affords me the opportunity to assess whether changes are warranted and, if so, how to approach this and where to invest my energy. This same process would be valuable for a consumer and I have used similar assessments in the past. At times when one finds it hard to recognize strengths I often try to link them tangibly to a specific event or time that they identified as successful. Making this association can help them to access pieces of the puzzle even if they do not readily come to mind.

[emilygarland]

Hello- Sorry to write this here-just wondering if anyone else is having trouble moving to the second lesson? I am unable to successfully click on the mark complete tab and thus unable to move forward. I did email ccsme but thought I would ask the group. Thanks, Emily

[emilygarland]

I love to write although I have not kept up with it as a regular practice for many years. This exercise helped me to remember how much I enjoy it and how helpful it is for me to process thoughts/feelings and to begin to make sense of feelings that are not always easy to untangle. During challenging times, I feel that I rely on the awareness that I have previously been successful when hard situations arise- that each time I have been forced to confront a challenging time, that I have always managed to come through the experience despite the intensity of the feelings I may be experiencing in the moment. In addition to relying on trust and prior experience, I think that I also rely on my ability to be use reason to challenge thoughts that might be rooted in fear rather than rationality. I find that this helps me to rein in my thoughts when I begin to feel overwhelmed with worry.

I think my personal narrative of resilience is that I possess the capacity to survive challenging times- that I can and will withstand adversity and while I may not “feel” ok in the midst of it- I can still come through intact. I am able to trust myself to have faith in my internal resources to weather the proverbial storm. This makes me think about my past- and how growing up in a supportive and safe environment allowed me to develop this sense of trust in my own ability to manage through hard times. It provides a useful perspective when I consider working with others who were shaped by different experiences and influences that may not have offered them opportunities to hone these skills or to develop a sense of trust in their capacity for resilience.

[emilygarland]

Hello! My name is Emily-Anne Garland (Emily) and I am the Area Executive of Clinical Operations for Compassus Hospice. Prior to beginning this position in February I have worked for over 20 years in community mental health settings and inpatient settings with adults with severe and persistent mental illness, more recently including individuals living with dementia and other neurocognitive disorders. I am a LCPC and a RN and often reflect on my desire to pursue a nursing degree. At the time, I hoped to better understand the physical aspects of illness to better inform my clinical approach to the treatment of emotional disorders. In hospice I have begin to once again think of of illness and wellness and the intersection of the two- in a way that I never have before. Traditionally, I have thought about dying as the end of a process, however, a shift in my perspective has allowed me to understand hospice differently- as an active approach that is focused on palliation rather than traditional curative modalities. This does not mean that one must disregard the concept of wellness but to instead seek opportunities to understand a an ever evolving conceptualization of wellness that encompasses a revised set of expectations but still seeks to celebrate emotional and physical wellbeing, even in the face of incurable illness.

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