Coping Skills Series - #1A - Monitoring Your Interactions with Others

On December 30, 2007, I submitted a SharePost about the bedrock on which all of my coping skills have been constructed and then went back to work on my most recent series of blogs called Choices. I've been asked to set the Choices series aside for a few weeks in order to write about some of the other coping skills I employ, which today are quite different from the norm. This will a miniseries entitled Coping Skills. For you to fully appreciate the nature of these coping skills, a little background would probably be helpful.

Therapists today have little baskets, each filled with a selection of coping skills, each appropriate for a specific diagnosis, type of crisis and situation. These are all well and good and have helped many of us. [The one I've always found fascinating is the snapping of a rubber band around one's wrist to deal with anxiety. It would seem to represent an attempt, through distraction, to substitute minor physical pain for mental anguish. I think this is a bit of a stretch even for a rubber band.]

When I developed schizophrenia over 50 years ago, these little baskets of coping skills didn't exist. Almost all psychiatrists in the U.S. thought schizophrenia was caused by bad family dynamics, especially those involving the patient's mother. [The title of "consumer" had not yet been adopted.] They even used the term "schizophrenogenic mother." No one back then really believed that recovery from schizophrenia was possible, and in the absence of effective medications, by in large they were right. This rendered coping skills superfluous.

No one believed in recovery, that is, except for my first psychiatrist, Dr. Sol Levy.

Dr. Levy had trained for psychiatry in Germany and Switzerland, and believed in the medical model of mental illness to which virtually everyone subscribes today. He employed both medications and therapy. We met for an hour each week. When I first became ill, there was only one medication, Thorazine, and it didn't work very well for me. Given this, he taught me coping skills to tide me over until the right medication was developed. Remarkably, the type of therapy he employed could today only be considered cognitive behavioral therapy. [Keep in mind that cognitive behavioral theory per se was not developed and widely employed as treatment modality until 25 or 30 years later.] As a consequence of all this, beginning in 1956 and continuing to the present, I have received what is today considered "best practice treatment."

In my early years, this was treatment very few received. [I have yet to encounter anyone else.] I am, therefore, an anachronism among my peers. On the other hand, individuals recently diagnosed with schizophrenia and their loved ones can look at what has happened to me and find reassurance that full recovery is possible.

All the coping skills that Dr. Levy taught me during these early years, one way or another, were designed to reduce stress. As we all know, stress can be dangerous for consumers. Once a medication that worked for me was finally developed, these stress-reducing coping skills morphed into guidelines, or aids, for living. When I first began using the skills Dr. Levy taught me, it required a conscious, deliberate effort on my part because it involved going about my daily life in new and unfamiliar ways. This process of change took years, consumed a lot of my energy, and was often frightening and sometimes painful. However, with Dr. Levy's encouragement, I have long since internalized my coping skills, which means these have become the norm for me, i.e., I no longer have to think about employing them, they now come naturally.