My Therapist, My Self
A Stand-Up Comedy Routine Performed by Carl Blumenthal
Editor’s Note: Carl performed a different version of “My Therapist, My Self” at the July 19, 2018 New York City Peer Specialist Conference.
Carl: Welcome everyone. Welcome. It’s an honor and a privilege to perform at the NYC peer specialist conference. I call this skit “My Therapist, My Self” because my therapist, Nina, and I are as tight as…well, Michelle and Barack. But don’t take that the wrong way.
First a disclaimer: No mental health workers were harmed during the making of this comic routine. I really love my therapist and psychiatrist.
You’ll hear today a sample of what Nina and I talk about during our therapy sessions. Because Nina’s big on patient-centered care, she’s going to let me say a thing or two about my recovery. Right, Nina?
Nina: I can’t promise you anything. That’s because I’m a refugee from the Soviet Union, a socialist turned social worker. I left when the KGB wanted to lock me in a mental hospital for demonstrating against the regime. Now I’m afraid the CIA is following me.
Carl: Aren’t we all paranoid? Thankfully we live in a democracy with separation of church and state. That means we can choose between possession by the devil and surveillance by OMH. God bless America!
Nina: Here’s something else to celebrate: Due to the insanity of global warming, the National Weather Bureau is changing the names of hurricanes to brands of psychotropic medication. Now, we’ll have every drug from Adderall to Zoloft to thank for our destruction.
Carl: On a lighter note, have you heard this joke: If New York doesn’t drive you nuts your therapist will.
Nina: That’s right Carl. So, take a hike—if the subway’s late. Grow your own—if the food’s rotten. And pay the price—if Medicaid won’t. For God’s sake, take responsibility for your recovery.”
Carl: Talk about responsibility. Do you remember the day I found you in your office tearing up your abnormal psychology textbook?
Nina: Yes, I thought some smarty pants doctor had discovered a cure for mental illness. Thank God he was wrong. Just think how bad that would’ve been for business.
Carl: Even if you were ready to throw Freud out the window, there’s no denying the importance of childhood trauma? I remember one of my mother’s religious fits, when she tried to drown me in the bathtub—a test of whether I could walk on water like Jesus.
Nina: Forget your mother. You’ll learn a lot more from my books: How to Take the Mad out of Madness, Why Therapists Make Lousy Lovers, and Medical Marijuana is the Best Thing Since Thorazine
Carl: Self-help is great. But what about empowering peers with mental illness? When discussing my case with doctors you’re all about my poor insight, low competency skills, and lack of impulse control. Sounds like I need toilet training.
Nina; Don’t worry. I’m no fan of shrinks. They’re like tour guides showing you a foreign country where the language is impersonal and condescending. To them you’re just a broken machine that needs fixing.
Carl: As far as I’m concerned, my treatment team analyzes me as if they’re picking meat from my bones. If only they’d invite me to lunch, I’d bring my homemade barbecue sauce. The secret ingredients are lithium and Prozac.
Nina: At least I’m interested in your dreams. Not the ones about becoming a chef. The nightmares about losing your health insurance. Who will pay me for putting up with your craziness?
Carl: If you need money so badly, why did you become a social worker? I hear you wanted to be a doctor but flunked anatomy. I hope that doesn’t mean you think my mind is a compound fracture.
Nina: Are you worried I don’t take your bipolar disorder seriously? My job is to keep you from doing anything foolish. If you fly without a parachute and land in a garbage dump, I’ll kick your butt.
Carl: So, what’s your reaction to this dream? I’m in heaven. The American Psychiatric Association and the big drug companies sit in judgement next to God. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin both demand admission. While the Donald claims he’ll make America great again, Vlad swears Russia already rules the world. God’s diagnosis: “You’re both deluded. Now take your Risperdal.”
Nina: Doctors think they’re gods and God thinks he’s a doctor. What’s a social worker to do?
Carl: How about joining the peer movement for better mental health? Admit it. Social workers are in denial about their own mental illness. Jump on the bandwagon before psychiatrists claim they’re sicker than you are.
Nina: Does that mean we get to counsel each other?
Carl: Of course. I’m sure you have a recipe for ribs you’re dying to share with me.
Carla Rabinowitz Honored with 2018 CIT Advocate/Family Member Award
This Award was given for “efforts to have NYPD receive crisis intervention team (CIT) training.” On August 16, Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) International—a leading organization dedicated to promoting safe and humane police responses to people experiencing a mental health crisis—presented its 2018 CIT Advocate/Family Member Award to Carla Rabinowitz, the advocacy coordinator at Community Access.
Ms. Rabinowitz was recognized for building and leading a coalition of more than 200 agencies, Communities for Crisis Intervention Teams (CCIT NYC) and successfully pushing the New York Police Department (NYPD) to train its officers to more effectively and humanely handle encounters with people in crisis.
When the NYPD launched a CIT program in June 2015, it was the culmination of a coordinated advocacy campaign that owed much of its success to Rabinowitz’s organizational savvy, industriousness, and commitment. To date, more than 6,500 NYPD officers have completed 40 hours of CIT training. However, recognizing that the initiation of this training did not completely put an end to people in emotional distress being shot and killed in police encounters, Rabinowitz has kept working for more change. She focuses on three related goals: ensuring that the training officers receive is high-quality and effective (by invitation, she continues to monitor CIT training sessions); encouraging the NYPD to achieve its goal of training 15,000 officers more quickly; and positioning CIT to be an important part of broader criminal justice and mental health reforms.
When the NYPD first launched its CIT program, it did so in response to an action plan developed by the Mayor's Task Force on Behavioral Health and the Criminal Justice System. Just as Rabinowitz’s CCIT coalition was instrumental in encouraging Mayor de Blasio to form this Task Force, it is now holding it to account, resulting in its reconstitution in April 2018 as the NYC Crisis Prevention and Response Task Force. Both Ms. Rabinowitz and Community Access CEO Steve Coe have been selected to serve on the Task Force.
“I am honored to receive this award from CIT International,” Ms. Rabinowitz said, “I take it as an affirmation that the work we’re doing matters, and I remain as committed as ever to fighting for a fairer, safer New York City for us all. I am grateful to all my partners in the CCIT NYC coalition. We’re not done pushing.”
Community Access expands opportunities for people living with mental health concerns to recover from trauma and discrimination through affordable housing, training, advocacy, and healing-focused services. It is built upon the simple truth that people are experts in their own lives. To find out more, go to http://www.communityaccess.org.
Bruni in the City: My Choice Not to Have Kids
A Column by Christina Bruni
Flouting White Middle-Class Rules About Childbirth
As a Lefty, I want to talk about a new 2018 book Trust Women: A Progressive Christian Argument for Reproductive Justice by Rebecca Todd Peters.
My own life narrative is atypical. A woman I hired told me my story was “unusual.”
I don’t think and act like a lot of people of my race and gender. I’ve always gone Left when everyone else goes Right.
Christian social ethicist Rebecca Todd Peters asserts: “The public rhetoric that insists women must justify their abortions represents a thinly veiled racial and class bias that does two things: It attempts to impose white, middle-class values about marriage, sexual activity, and childbearing on everyone. And it focuses on individual women’s behavior while effectively obfuscating the complexity of their day-to-day lives and the viability of their various choices.”
The feminist author proposes: “Public policy ought to focus on addressing systemic social problems rather than attempting to police and control the behavior of women and their bodies.”
In her view the real issue is that women who have abortions are told they need to take responsibility. The truth is that “difficult real-life moral decisions stand in contrast” with the prevailing white, middle-class politicians’ and anti-choice crusaders’ perception that women who terminate pregnancies need to take responsibility.
Trust Women tells a different story through statistics about women’s reproductive health choices:
• 91.6 percent of abortions happen in the first trimester;
• 73 percent of women indicate they could not afford to have a baby at that point in their lives;
• 74 percent cited interference with their education or job/career or responsibility for existing children or other dependents;
• 49 percent of women who had abortions in 2014 were living below the federal poverty line;
• 95 percent of women terminating pregnancies think it was the right decision for them;
• Between 50 and 60 percent of women who have abortions were using some form of contraception the month they got pregnant; and
• 60 percent of women who have abortions already have children.
According to Rebecca Todd Peters: “Women also face a host of barriers when trying to obtain birth control: cost and lack of insurance…difficulty accessing a pharmacy…challenges in getting prescription contraception…in scheduling appointments and getting to a clinic or doctor’s office.”
These barriers were greater for women living below 200 percent of the poverty line.
My Own Story
Let’s face it, doesn’t every woman out there have hard-luck romance stories under our Hermes-H or other belt?
One of the psychics I went to told me: “Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.”
This waterfront fortune teller told me I’d meet a lot of turkeys along the way. Yes, she used the word turkeys to talk about the guys I’d meet.
Taken in this context I haven’t been so quick to drop my skirt to get into bed with just any guy that walked on by in my life.
As a woman with a mental health diagnosis, I didn’t want to get married and raise a family.
Yes—I’ve known without a doubt since I was 15 or 16 that I didn’t want to have kids—not even one kid.
This stance of mine doesn’t fit into the white middle-class heterosexual norm that prevails in American society.
It’s this world that I was born into that I so intuitively rejected as not being the right lifestyle for me to live.
Leading yet again to how I championed everything Left of the Dial in my memoir.
I still haven’t found Mr. Right nor have I found Mr. Almost Right either. And I definitely haven’t found Mr. Not-Right-Yet-I’ll-Take-Him-Anyway.
In this dry climate with no prospects does it make sense to risk getting pregnant by having sex just to prove you’re a normal woman?
This is the double-bind or double-standard women are held to:
If we’re not having sex we’re viewed as being screwed-up and that there’s something wrong with us.
If we’re having sex and, heaven help us, too much sex, we’re viewed as having a lack of morals.
What Do You Say?
Isn’t it time to give the boot to restrictive regressive political policies that make it harder and harder for women to remain child-free by choice?
Isn’t it time to stop judging women for the choices we make?
Isn’t it time to accept the multitude of expressions of what is “normal” in society?
It’s time.
I for one have failed at living a mainstream life.
I have failed to please the people who stand in judgment of me even though they haven’t met me.
I have failed to see the logic in overpopulating the planet.
More to the point: not only did I not want to have a kid: I didn’t want to go through the experience of being pregnant.
Pullout: “One of the psychics I went to told me: ‘Love’s been up and down and all around for you. It’s been to the dogs.’”
Book Ends: "Art of Recovery" by Simon Heyes and edited by Stephen Tate
A Column by Kurt Sass
Use the Tips that Work for You
Art of Recovery is a 58-page chapbook out of England from South Somerset Mind www.southsomersetmind.co.uk. It is a combination of a guide to recovering from a mental breakdown, case studies and quotes from individuals ranging from Nelson Mandela to Albert Schweitzer to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Mr. Heyes is a former patient at the Summerlands Hospital and has laid out his theory for a successful recovery.
Mr. Heyes believes there are two steps needed to begin the recovery process. The first is to believe that recovery is possible and the second is to be realistic and to realize that there are no quick fixes.
One very strong and powerful point he makes is that recovery is not returning to how things used to be, but finding a better, healthier and more sustainable life that recognizes the past, accepts the limitations of the present and is full of hope for the future. In other words, we should not be looking to just return to our lives before our psychiatric breakdown occurred, but to a better more fulfilling life.
Mr. Heyes separates recovery into three stages: Inactive, Reactive and Creative.
I have written a brief description of each stage and listed the tips given for that stage:
Inactive: Broken down-No longer functioning
• Value the pleasures;
• Trust in you;
• Take care of yourself;
• Find positive role models;
• Don't push the limit or set unrealistic goals;
• One step at a time;
• Recognize change;
• Beware of false friends;
• Live in the present;
• Hope is eternal.
Reactive: Beginning to look for ways to reengage with life
• Be comfortable with the uncomfortable;
• Pause to think;
• Find your off switch;
• Don't have negative agendas;
• Find your funny bone.
Creative: Taking charge of your life
• Find community- Don't isolate;
• Rise like a phoenix;
• Slow down;
• Get absorbed in activity.
I did not list all the tips, nor the descriptive details for each. I think the chapbook is a valuable resource for anyone, whether in recovery or not, looking to improve upon their happiness. My suggestion is to read it and use the tips you feel are best for you.
Pullout: “…we should not be looking to just return to our lives before our psychiatric breakdown occurred, but to a better more fulfilling life.”
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
By Anonymous
“911, How can I help you?”
“I’m afraid my brother is going to kill himself. He’s a psych patient, not taking his meds. Says he wants to die. Please send someone before he does something.”
“Has he tried to hurt himself? Is he trying now?”
“No, but I’m afraid he will. He’s been talking about it.”
“OK, we’ll send someone right away.”
Ten minutes later three officers and two EMTs arrive. When I tell the cops what’s going on, my brother yells from the bedroom, “Why’d you do this? There’s nothing wrong with me.”
One of the cops pulls me aside. “Let us handle this.”
My sister and her husband are there too, witnesses to what we all agree is my brother’s dire condition: Depression so severe he’s stopped eating. Only gets out of bed to pee. Apartment filled with garbage. He rejects every choice we give him to change the mess he’s in.
Thus, it takes the crisis team half an hour to convince my brother to come with them to the hospital…or else.
Twelve years before, I faced the same dilemma; only I was the one carted off to a hospital. After a long depression, I had tried to kill myself and the authorities showed up when my wife and a friend called for help.
Here I am committing my brother to a psych ward just as I had been. How can one peer do this to another?
My brother’s OCD and depression have always been worse than my bipolar disorder. He spent years in mental hospitals compared to months for me. Our family alternated between blaming him for his condition and fixing him when he broke down.
As his big brother with a diagnosis, I understood him better but still towed the family line. When he didn’t feel dependent on me, he felt betrayed. This is the kind of double bind that ties families in knots.
His love-hate relationship with our mother consumed both their lives. Since she died three years ago, he’s deteriorated mentally and physically. In the past we’d fight but make up. Now there’s no pleasing each other. It seems too late to change a lifetime of anger and guilt. I’m 67; he’s 62.
I ask myself again: How can I, a peer, think about my brother this way? I’ve tried to treat him with the respect of a peer counselor. He’s smart. We can talk about anything except what he wants to do. Inevitably I lose patience.
How bad can this standoff get? I considered forcing ECT on him when he was in the hospital, a treatment I refused during my last hospitalization. But he gained a little weight and his doctor decided ECT wasn’t necessary…yet.
Now he’s back home and I’m taking care of him. He lies in bed doing nothing and I see myself during my worst depressions—helpless and hopeless.
Do I save him from himself or let him drag me down with him? Or do I leave his life up to him for better or worse? In other words, how do I reconcile being a peer and a brother?
Ward Stories
Organized by Dan Frey, Editor in Chief
Four poets are featured in this Summer 2018 edition of Ward Stories. The themes discussed in these poems reflect some of the experiences felt throughout the mental health community: falling through the cracks, getting back up, healing yourself, a friend’s betrayal and mood swings.
Escape
By J. David Scott
Your floor is my floor
Having walked upon the cracks
And fallen through where I now linger,
I often look up and wonder what it's like
To never use my feet again,
To never ever run again,
Just to fly away.
The Every Day Healer
By Gracelynn
I heal myself
Not because I received a prestigious degree
Or trained with the yogis and great healers of the world
But by the innate healing ability all of us possess
To Every Day
Bring my mind, my heart, my body
To a place of presence
To a place of harmony with the Divine
Of which we are all a part.
To a place of Love.
Day by day
I choose to heal
And become Health itself.
Untitled
By Anna Santacroce
Sister forsythia. Dichotomous dicot flower.
Psychotic psychiatric flower.
Schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type).
I live alone.
I often write.
For my friend with megalomania:
I hope for the best for you.
I often wonder if you remember your words and actions,
Adverse to the lying.
I don't have the same illness.
I must confess.
Do you remember after your tantrums and uses of myself and others?
Or do you just do that lying?
You see yourself in others.
To paint (me) as yourself.
You apply sadism to see myself in your world.
I am not always sure if we are yours.
In your megalomania you imagine a world to target.
Then you lie about it.
Like this personal monopoly.
Gets scarier by the day.
You paint these sadistic pictures to reflect yourself.
Is it love you have ever felt?
Mood Swings
By Ted Walner
The pendulum swings up
The pendulum swings down.
Riding on this ride we go.
As we approach everywhere
One moment utterly depressed.
The next phase in euphoria land
Feeling immersed in these emotions
Takes me nowhere.
I cling and I climb.
I hurt and I love.
One minute blue
The next moment as happy as can be.
Truly, the meds help.
But they don’t terminate my emotions.
Swinging on this chandelier
Flying through all types of peril.
I look up, I look down
And nowhere would I like to be.
As I shift
As I ride
As I fall
I lean to some and hope they are there for me.
Yes, hoping this perilous ride ends.
And…
I am smoothly sailing.
Hoping I find that happy medium.
Hoping I find that calm in the storm
And am stable once again.
Bruni in the City: We Feast Together
A Column by Christina Bruni
Living in Two Worlds
You think it’s a secret only it’s not. I’m aware others most likely pick up that I’m different in some way. Yet I don’t want my MH life to infringe on my other life. I move between these distinct worlds like a chameleon.
Italiani. We feast together. We meet a person for the first time and they are our new best friend for that evening. Everyone is famiglia here.
It was the day after Columbus Day. I arrived early to the restaurant and was seated at our table.
A drop-dead gorgeous guy walked in and was seated with a companion up front. All the guys were handsome and talking Italian at the other tables.
It’s true that I have a striking look: a heart-shaped face and dramatic Mediterranean features. If you saw me you’d think: “Of course, she must be Italian.”
The 900-pound elephant in any room is always what people see even though I wish they wouldn’t. A former hairstylist claimed you can’t tell by looking at someone that they have a mental health challenge. This is most likely true.
Yet I’m a strange girl in other ways: I don’t drink beer or liquor. I won’t eat meat. Instead of a garrulous talker, I prefer to listen to what people are saying and give them the spotlight.
Deride me all you want for my focus on fashion and style. Yet having a hurdle to clear socially is all the more reason I dress chic: to put others at ease as well as for me to feel at ease in their company.
When I walk down the street I want people to think: “Who’s that girl?” I want them to take a second look as I destroy the stereotype of a person diagnosed with SZ.
I’ve thought long and hard about this. It’s the bedrock that the premise of my memoir Left of the Dial is founded on: “Enjoy your quirkiness.”
At the end of the day I don’t care what people think of me. I’ve observed that most people are kinder than you think. Find the compassionate so-called normal people, and gravitate towards them.
It’s the little things that count the most:
That day in October I got a better haircut from a real parucchiere: an Italian hairdresser. She was older and had auburn hair. Snip, snip. She was done in ten minutes.
Figuring out how to apply the new blush helped too. It looks better swiped on my cheekbones not the apples of my cheeks. The rose fresque shade is good. I applied it in the afternoon. At nine o’clock at night the blush was still going strong when I checked my face in the restroom mirror.
I say: ladies, put on your face and go out. There’s a world out there that would look better with you in it. And guys, you’re handsome too. So, go out and paint the town gold.
As hard as it is living with an MH thing, I find that making the effort is worth it. Go on MeetUp.com to join others in the city doing things you’re passionate about. There’s even the #1 New York Shyness and Social Anxiety MeetUp you can join.
Once a month, the Mental Health Project of The Urban Justice Center in lower Manhattan, hosts an open mic with a theme for the month such as “self-care,” “diversity,” “action,” “bravery,” and others.
As I toggle between these two worlds, I understand how it is for a lot of us mingling in disparate environments. Yet feeling like an outsider shouldn’t stop us from doing things.
What the world needs now is MH peers with the courage to show up. To take a seat and be counted. All of us have paid our dues. Festeggiamo insieme. We feast together.
Common ground is the ground on which everyone stands. Be not afraid to get rejected. Plenty of fish are swimming in the sea of friends and lovers.
It’s up to us to cast our nets wide. The unlikeliest stranger could turn out to be the most compassionate. Talk to a therapist if it would help you to set and achieve goals like this.
My Italian therapist tells it like it is. She colludes with me to help me get what I want.
I wish all you loyal readers tanti auguri. Good wishes.
