A medical article would wax technical over the metabolic risks of certain medications. The patients talked about how much weight they gained on Zyprexa or Depakote or some other drug.
On and on it went, one source reinforcing and amplifying (and sometimes contradicting) the other. If patients raised an issue, I was certain to read all about it in print. If I ran across something interesting in print, my conversations with fellow patients brought the topic to life.
If patients bring an insider’s perspective to the table, friends and loved ones bring a vital outsider’s point of view. They are uniquely placed to observe the best and worst in us, things that we may be totally blind to. One revelation that knocked me off my feet was that friends and loved ones kept talking about anger, as if our rages were the main symptom of our illness. Yet the DSM ignores anger entirely and there is next to nothing on the topic in the psychiatric literature. Clearly, those close to us are telling us something.
The other important conversation I had was with myself. Who am I? is certainly the most difficult question in the world to answer. I listened to patients. I listened to friends and loved ones. I acquired book knowledge. Then I had to run the information past myself.
Otherwise, it was just useless data.
Maybe I wasn’t as strong as I thought, I had to acknowledge. Maybe my genes made me vulnerable. Vulnerable, not weak. Vulnerable in the sense of being sensitive to life stressors. Vulnerable as in not being able to afford playing fast and loose with my sleep. Vulnerable as in having to deal with the consequences in pushing myself past my limits.
With the acknowledgement of my vulnerabilities, I learned to become wise. Wise, as in rearranging my routines to best accommodate stress. Wise as in sticking to a sleep routine. Wise as in knowing my limits.
At the same time, I learned in many ways that I was a lot stronger than I thought, and that I could attribute many of these strengths to my illness. If I were to blame my illness for everything that went wrong in my life, I reasoned, the least I could do was give it credit for some of the good things, such as my creativity. Learning how to use – and refrain from using – my strengths proved crucial in my recovery.
