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The Power of One

     Never underestimate the power of one. You could be only one that a person confides in about suicidal thoughts. You could be one leader who stands up for people’s rights. You could be one, starting with yourself, and spread hope and wisdom you’ve learned over the years.

     NAMI SWI has enabled me to be “one” and flourish. I’ve been able to share my story to hundreds of college students thanks to the non-profit organization. Through “Tuning Out Stigma,” I try to serve as a stigma fighting role model and perform my original music while talking about my Dark Days, Acceptance, Treatment, Coping Skills and Successes Hopes and Dreams modeled after NAMI’s In Our Own Voice public speaking format.

     I hope my presentation reached the hearts and minds of the audience to realize that yes, one can live a productive life with mental illness. I’ve had lived experience with mental illness for more than 20 years, diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder with OCD and delusions. To this day, I’m on a maximum amount of psyche medications and raising a family of twins as a pastor’s wife in California. Through NAMI SWI, I presented at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville several times, at Greenville University and Lindenwood University-Belleville.

     I was flanked with support as NAMI SWI board members, volunteers and staff fielded questions from the audience after my presentations. I received a standing ovation in 2017 before an audience of 100 at Greenville University. Certainly, with one person, one dream and a vision, redemption in my story can be “won.”

Resilience is a Necessity

The idea of resilience brings about mixed feelings to me. There’s the dread of going through adversity. It feels unpleasant to say the least. Yet, this is only part of resilience. According to AI, resilience is “both a process and an outcome. It’s the ability to ‘bounce back’ from difficult experiences and maintain psychological well-being.” Therefore, resilience, inevitably applied to overcome difficulty, results in positive mindset–triumph to say the least. AI lists some characteristics of resilience: “problem-solving skills, strong social connections, survivor mentality, emotional regulation, and self-compassion.”

My life has been a continuous process of resilience with serious mental illness: schizoaffective thoughts disorder with OCD and delusions. I take 17 pills a day from seven psyche meds to treat my mental illness and manage symptoms. I feel it is a lot, but it’s what I must do to avoid tidal waves of anxiety, OCD tendencies, depression, psychosis, mania, mood swings and much more. I have no choice but to be in survivor mentality. There is hope because my condition was way worse during my four hospitalizations since 1999.

My pregnancy with twins on minimal medications was severely difficult, yet the first year especially of their lives was stressful as well. I was having panic/anxiety attacks every other day for 2-3 hours trying to block out their crying. I also had to keep up with mixing the formulas for their milk, cleaning bottle parts, assembling them, sterilizing their bottles and heating them up when ready to be fed and worrying in the process that my husband and I would fall behind and be unprepared.  

Who knew that four years later I would have a 14-day streak without anxiety attacks with the meds I’m on today? Life is much easier and the twin girls are doing well in transitional kindergarten. I try to apply emotional regulation and problem-solving skills by telling myself that worrying does not change the outcome of things. Today, I am able to have self-compassion with myself to know that I have it rough, but cut myself a break where possible.

My strong social connections with friends and church members who understand my illness and empathize for me keep me going. I have a dear friend with severe back issues and we bond and connect about our daily struggles by phone. The people I talk to are safe, good listeners and supportive. Their prayers and my prayer life are helpful as well.

Here’s a quote from a valentine written by a student I recorded down because it was so good: “Everyone wants happiness, no one wants pain, but you can’t have a rainbow without a little rain.” I say, in these circumstances, wear your umbrella of resilience—it is a necessity.

The Legendary Leading Example of Simone Biles

As a former high school gymnast who is now coping with mental illness many years later, I cannot express how highly I think of Simone Biles and how grateful I am for her example. Dropping out of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics competition due to the “twisties,” (a condition where she could not distinguish her movements mid-air) she claimed to have mental illness. As 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. experience mental illness each year, I must applaud her for joining the ranks publicly with people who struggle with their brain and face the stigma associated with it. Mental illness has become a far more open discussion in the news since my diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder in 1999 at the University of Notre Dame as a sophomore. I had no role models and simply followed my clinician’s protocols. Now, I am writing a book called “My Brain Makes Me Proud,” to give people hope and insight into my 25 years of experience coping with mental illness.

Simone’s scenario certainly created a lot of buzz as she is regarded as the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) of gymnastics. Many stepped up to defend her as she faced much criticism for dropping out. I remember reading that someone in politics whom I didn’t recognize called her a “loser” on social media. She responded with who is so and so? I’m asking for everyone, not just me. Simone even declared her decision to drop out of the Tokyo competition a winning one. Who knows? With twisties, she could have seriously been injured performing highly dangerous and difficult gymnastics moves.

Despite her struggles, she did not give up. She eventually went back into the gym and underwent counseling, became the oldest gymnast to win the national title at age 27, won the world championships, and claimed three gold medals and a silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics. To say the least, I was ecstatic to see her performing flips and routines that were unprecedented and more difficult than ever.

Simone, you made gymnastics greater than it could have ever been without you. You have written your story which is among the greatest in sports history. Bravo for taking care of yourself and working hard to win your championships in a splendid comeback no one could have accomplished but you.

Simone mentioned the morning of the individual all-around competition in Paris, which she won, that she talked with her counselor. For anybody facing difficulty, there is no shame in talking to a counselor. I’ve learned the value of counseling over the years as a lifetime commitment coping with my illness. I see counseling on a regular basis, and I do call in to my clinicians when I have to trouble-shoot a difficult situation or call in sick to my part-time work due to my occasional debilitating illness; and just like Simone in 2021, I have to call off from my duties and take care of myself.

www.mybrainmakesmeproud.com

End in Sight: How having Covid and facing down my mental illness demons saved my life

     Friday, May 14, I tested positive for COVID. With cold symptoms, anxiety attacks and suicidal thoughts, I came to a turning point that would save my life and completely improve my mental illness condition. Isolation for 10 days enabled the discovery. I have had chronic anxiety for more than 20 years every other day. My thoughts get disrupted with catastrophic thinking that are beyond hellish, and with OCD, my memory bank cycles with my catastrophic membrane in my brain with episodes lasting for hours. Not any more! Here’s the story.

     My husband was to pick up anti-viral meds for my worsening symptoms. I went down the laundry list freaking out in worry over things that could go wrong due to my mental illness. When they were out of supply at the nearby pharmacy, he traveled 45 minutes out to another in traffic. When he got there, it would take an hour to fill my prescription. I worried if he might call me with, “Honey I have some bad news. I got in a car accident.” Or “Honey bad news, the 2009 Cobalt broke down.” Also, my crazy fears for my children were thinking, the number of cries I hear my 2-year-old daughters, Lora and Mary, cry in one year is the number of cries I hear a baby starve to death. When it was past 4 p.m. and the girls were hungry and crying not yet having lunch, and Nick wasn’t home yet, I was going nuts in my head.

     For the next four days, I had hellish anxiety attacks, sweating in the heat of my room and getting stir crazy. I felt overwhelmed imagining irrationally that if I were in Nick’s shoes taking care of the girls alone, I would be screwed to handle all his duties. It’s difficult to function when I’m having an episode, feeling scared, helpless and useless.

     The fifth day, I realized I couldn’t continue this way, and figured out, if I simply do not go “there–” all the worrying– I can cut off the catastrophic thinking patterns. Telling myself the mantra: “Numb yourself of your worrying” worked. I literally numbed my brain of my irrational fears and would not give them hardly a second or two to entertain them. I was literally numbing my thoughts from worrying, and it felt different and simplified for me mentally.

     With the new coping mechanism, my brain felt solidified during the last three days of my isolation. It was valuable time to really contemplate what works and transform and grow myself mentally and spiritually.

     I’m free of the Covid virus now, but not just a victim of the virus, but also a beneficiary to a miracle! Here’s to the “end in sight” to my 20-year battle with debilitating anxiety.

     Since then, with a little troubleshooting, my numbing method is working realizing that worrying about things does not change the outcome.  As of today, I’ve gone for 18 days without an anxiety attack!  I notice I am happier and less anxious. Praise God for putting my Covid experience to amazing purpose!