They Help Each Other Learn to Recover

By Jonnie Bassaro

The News-Times

Anxiety victims chase negative thoughts away

Hank Silverstein had been looking forward to going to the Grand Old Opry in Nashville, Tenn., for months. But when he drove into the Opry's huge parking lot, he froze.

"I was terrified of walking across that lot," he says. "I wound up sitting in my car for three and a half hours while my family went to the show." Silverstein has agoraphobia, a fear of being in open or public places. The phobia triggers attacks of panic.

"The attacks can cause you to have trouble breathing, heart palpitations, you feel like you're choking." He says, "I have willed myself to fall because you feel safer on the ground."

But Silverstein, a gregarious man who engages in conversation easily, has not spent his life cowering in the bedroom.

Despite an ongoing battle with his phobia demons, he has earned masters' degrees in geology and earth science, taught science in New York City public schools for 31 years, and served in the U.S. Army Reserves.

Now 57 and retired, he lives in Mahopac, N.Y., with Meryl, his wife of 33 years. He has become a lapidary and volunteers at the Museum of Natural History of New York City, polishing the amber collection. He also hand-crafts jewelry and sells it at craft fairs - often in open fields.

"Not bad for an agoraphobic," he says.

He credits his productive life to Recovery, Inc., a community mental health organization he joined 20 years ago.

Recovery teaches its members how to control phobias, depression, anxiety, and physical symptoms of nervousness like ties through force of will.

It was founded in 1937 by Dr. Abraham A. Low, a Chicago psychiatrist. Low, who died in 1954, wrote the book, "Mental Health Through Will Training" which Recovery groups use as a teaching text. The organization, which is nonprofit, now has between seven hundred and eight hundred groups throughout the United States, Canada and other countries.

Dr. Low, developed a technique called "spotting," whereby a patient could spot signs of defeatist thinking within himself.

"I've learned my own danger signals," Silverstein says. "Sometimes the signs are physical. One is when I begin to grind my teeth." Once he recognizes a sign, he works to change negative and fearful reactions into positive thoughts.

Recovery members also spot for each other during weekly meetings and offer each other words of encouragement.

At a Recovery meeting in the basement of the United Methodist Church in Mahopac, Silversteinnow a group leader, tells six other members how in early June he used 'will training' to avoid a panic attack at a crafts fair.

"I'd been sitting for hours in my booth and I had no customers. The guy in the next booth was selling like crazy. And his stuff was junk, I thought, "Why am I here? Why did my wife get me into this? It's going to be hard to take down the tent ......"

He began grinding his teeth, felt pain at his temples, his vision began to blur and his breathing became labored.

Then his Recovery training came into play. "I said to myself. Stop right here. Look at this from a total view. Who cares if you have customers? This is for charity. You can take it off your taxes."'

Then Silverstein looked to his right and saw a woman who was displaying hand-painted greeting cards. "I am sure she'd spent hours making them. She wasn't selling either. So I felt less alone. Then I walked around for a while and said to myself, 'It's a beautiful day and you're lucky to be outside ......"

His headache began to fade and he began to breathe easier.

"I patted myself on the back because I didn't run away from the scene and I didn't pass out," Silverstein says. Commending yourself for small victories is part of the Recovery method. So is positive reinforcement from peers.

When Silverstein has told his story, Robert Randal I, a white-haired gentleman with a courtly manner, says, "Every act of self-control is a step toward self-respect." Randall, retired from a public relations firm, has coped with recurring bouts of depression and leads a Recovery group in Norwalk.

Dolores Gregory, a group leader from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., says, "Our method seems so simple, but it takes a lot of practice to use these techniques. We learn by studying Dr. Low's book, and by attending the meetings regularly." She, too, has battled depression and has been a member of Recovery since 1970.

Recovery meetings are weekly, last two hours and are free of charge, though a voluntary offering is taken.

"We don't try to take the place of a professional counselor," Silverstein says, "We supplement counseling. Often our members are referred by professionals."

Dr. Jorge Lindenbaum, an internist specializing in hypertension and geriatrics in Pittsburgh, Pa., says, "Recovery enhances my own treatment regime by teaching the patient important selfmanagement skills in coping with illness. It is also a no-cost, supplemental support group to which I can refer patients."

"All Recovery meetings follow a precise structure, which is a comfort in itself," Robert Randall says.

"Those who attend don't have to give their real names. They don't have to say anything. We've had people come to meetings for six months and never say a word."

Blanche, a member who asks that her real name not be used, says she has been suicidal.

"I'd come to the decision that the world would be better off without me. I was hospitalized and didn't want to go home because I didn't think I could live outside a hospital."

She's been a member of Recovery for four years. Recently, she almost let annoyance with her husband escalate into an ugly scene and ensuing bout of depression, but her Recovery training calmed her.

"I was supposed to call a list of people to tell them about a meeting. At supper, my husband asked if I'd done it. I said I was waiting until the next morning because everyone would be at work and I could just leave a one-sentence message on answering machines.

"He said, "Isn't that a little antisocial?"

"I said, 'If you're so social, you make the calls.'

"He said, 'I don't like to talk on the phone."'

Before her Recovery training, Blanche says, she would have either thrown dinner at her husband or meekly gotten up and made the calls, then been furious because she was letting someone tell her how to behave.

"I stopped and said to myself: There is no right or wrong way to view this. You can't control your outer environment or what your husband says, but you can control your inner environment."' Blanche calmly told her husband she would take care of the calls in the morning. He accepted that and her anger began to pass.

"What you hear at meetings are ordinary occurrences," says a woman at the end of the table who also has recurring bouts of depression. "We work on trivialities. When you think about it, life is made up of trivialities."

"I went through years of psychoanalysis and behavioral therapy," Silverstein says, "Nothing showed me how to cope with my chronic problem except Recovery. It has kept thousands of people out of mental hospitals. It has kept people from committing suicide."

And it has helped Hank Silverstein walk across an open parking lot.

Posted with permission from The News-Times.

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