Recovery Was A Lifesaver

By Craig Sumi

The Burlington Spectator

Program offers technique for managing and controlling fear, anger and the symptoms of depression.

Shortly after the birth of her first child, Joyce Oliver felt herself change.

Once an active, vibrant, confident young woman, she suddenly became a nervous wreck. She began questioning everything about her life, running herself down at every opportunity.

How would she care for her newbom daughter? And why was she such a terrible wife? Why would anyone like her?

She dreaded social functions. When in the company of others, her stomach tensed up, her heart raced, and her palms became sweaty.

She was uncomfortable as a mother, fearing she would do something wrong. She kept most of her feelings and fears inside and cried often.

"I had convinced myself I could not cope with life," she says. "I felt so worthless that I thought my family would be better off without me."

She considered suicide.

That was 30 years ago.

Today, Joyce Oliver is once again vibrant and confident. The 57 year old lives in Aldershot and likes to spend time with her grandchildren.

The last two decades of her life have been fulfilling. She credits her turnaround to seeking good professional help, the support of her family, and something called Recovery, Inc.

Recovery is a non-profit mental health organization whose goal it is to prevent relapses in former mental patients and to help nervous people overcome their fear and anxiety.

It's one of the earliest self-help or support groups, founded more than 50 years ago by Dr. Abraham Low, a psychiatrist at the University of Illinois, who observed the need for a structured organization to provide support for former patients.

He also recognized that he could treat only a limited number of patients if he saw them one at a time. More good could be done for more patients in a group setting.

For Mrs. Oliver, Recovery was a lifesaver.

The 10 years after the birth of her first child had been an emotional roller coaster. Once, she had a nervous breakdown and spent two weeks in a hospital. Then she got better. But then she had a relapse. The pattern repeated itself several times.

"It was just small things that would trigger my fears," she says. "If I broke a glass or if I didn't cook a meal properly, I'd get down on myself."

Also at that time motherhood caused her great stress.

"My daughter would cry and one person would say the baby's wet, another person would say she's hungry and another person would say she's just colicky. I was the mother. I was supposed to know what was wrong with my daughter, but I didn't. I considered I myself a failure."

She still remembers the first time she went to a Recovery meeting.

"It was such a relief," she says. "I heard all these other people talking about their fears and symptoms. I thought, 'Isn't it wonderful to see all these people feel the way I do? I'm not crazy. I'm not stupid. Maybe I can be helped like they are being helped. ' "

In a stuffy room in the basement of a Burlington church, Mrs. Oliver sits in one of the chairs that form a small circle in the middle of the room.

There are 10 other participants in this week's Recovery meeting. They all seem normal enough. But that's the thing with mental illness. It's not obvious, like a broken leg or a disease of the skin. It's hidden away, locked in the mind.

Some Recovery participants have had nervous breakdowns. Others have attempted suicide. And others are just too stressed out to function properly day to day.

Mrs. Oliver reads a passage from Mental Health Through Will Training, considered the bible of the Recovery program, written by Dr. Low 40 years ago.

One woman talks about a confrontation with her mother. Another woman talks about a family gathering that turned sour.

In each case, the participants discuss the experience, focusing on how the individual overcame fear or anger. They don't judge, counsel or give advice.

They simply encourage, support and learn. The discussion serves to reinforce some of the Recovery concepts.

After two hours, the meeting ends and the participants go on their way. A week from now they'll be back with more experiences to share.

Within the pages of the book, Dr. Low presents actual case studies that represent his theories of will training, temper control and symptom analysis.

Rather than digging for the root causes of someone's anxiety, (that's left up to the psychoanalysts), Dr. Low has established a set of techniques for managing and controlling fear, anger and the symptoms of depression.

Experts today would call this behavioral management.

It's a simple enough concept. Basically, individuals are taught to spot the symptoms of fear and anger. Once spotted, they consciously work to suppress the feelings, blocking out and not worrying about the disruptive actions of other people.

Once the reading is over, Mrs. Oliver, who is the group leader, invites others to talk about a recent real-life experience where they had faced fear or anger, yet overcame it by using what they had learned through Recovery.

There was a time when mental illness was not talked about, a taboo subject that was shoved way back into the darkest part of the closet.

Says Mrs. Oliver: "People view a broken leg or a broken arm easily and see them as something that can mend. But when you mention problems with the mind they start to conjure up different ideas."

But that attitude is slowly changing.

With the hustle and bustle of today's society, with high divorce rates, with dual-income families, and with the current economic state, mental illness is more and more an open subject.

And with the exposure comes acknowledgment and acceptance that it is a disease like others that requires treatment and healing.

"Awareness is growing, Mrs. Oliver says." With all the stress out there, it is pretty common to see these problems.

"You wouldn't believe the number of people who are out there suffering yet don't know where to turn."

She says one of the toughest barriers people face is actually admitting they have a problem.

For example, someone who dreads going out into the public might attribute it to heredity, or to not liking the people in the crowd.

But if they have the fears on a regular basis, and feel boxed in or trapped, then they should seek help.

"It's made my life so much better," Mrs. Oliver says. "I used to be afraid to leave the house. Now I'm meeting all sorts of new people, getting involved and I'm even going on airplanes. I look forward to each day."

Mrs. Oliver says she feels great but continues to go to one meeting a week.

"To me, Recovery has always stood for people who care about others, so if I can help somebody else by passing on the experiences I've had, then that is what I want to do."

But she also continues to go to meetings to reinforce what she has learned over the years. She says learning the Recovery techniques and living by them takes hard work and practice.

"I feel if all it takes is two hours a week for my own good mental health, then that is certainly worth it."

In the area of health care, one thing the provincial government is attempting to do is establish a more community-based system.

That means things such as the hospital-in-the-home program, where people are treated in their home by a traveling medical team, and increased use of hospital outpatient services.

Self-help groups such as Recovery Inc. are other examples of cost-effective, community-based health care.

Sure, there is always a need for the hard services, such as hospital beds, psychiatrists and hightech medical equipment. But the government should also tap into groups like Recovery and promote the heck out of them. It's good care, and it'll save a bundle of money.

Posted with permission of The Burlington Spectator and the author.

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