JR1
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Dear Wendie, Thank you for your candid and courageous response. More than a year ago, I wrote and published a book about my recovery. That exercise in writing gave me no commercial success, but it did give me a real boost in my recovery. Although I claim to have overcome many of the barriers of my disease, I am still not cured and I seem to be a long way yet from remission. Early in my therapy, however, my therapist recognized that my one real talent, my source of joy, and perhaps the one real gateway to restoring my mind and happiness is my ability to write. So my therapist has continuously encouraged me to write. The direction I have received from my therapist and others has been critical, because I am one who can't take psychotropic drugs to ease my pain and emotional distress. ...and now I have come to the point where I don't believe I will need the meds. As your daughter has been troublesome to you, I have also been troublesome to my wife. Her reactions to me have ranged from anger, frustration, and fear to sadness, guilt, and dispair. It has taken a long time for her to accept the shortcomings in my way of dealing with life, but, as in the case of my therapist, she has encouraged me to continue with my writing--or when she cannot encourage me (I take it to excess at times), she has at least tolerated my effort to write. Part of my salvation and growth, therefore, has come from exploiting my ability to write--practicing daily to refine and develop my skill. That's the reason, aside from sharing my recovery with others, why I spend so much time on this forum. I do not for a minute credit myself with the ability to help others. For me it is merely the exercise of communication--an exercise which tends to keep me from relapsing and from becoming a bigger burden to my wife and others. The functioning of my mind has improved, I believe, because I have exercised my brain regularly and persistently in this way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity In short, others in my life had helped me to discover a talent and an activity which gives me joy, and they have encouraged me to use it to MY (not your) benefit. In every other aspect of my development, I am at best mediocre, mostly dysfunctional, and often a failure. Those potentially negative parts of my recovery, fortunately are "balanced out" by moments of happiness, a feeling of productivity, new friendships, and my feeling that I have a purpose--a reason to live--a passion for something more than suffering. So I am thinking that your daughter also may have a "passion," something to which she may, with encouragement, devote her mind and her energy--something perhaps which you and she may use to balance the pain of her condition. Where people like me might not find a generally "balanced" existence, we may find happiness, functionality, and balance of sorts by employing our passionate interests to abate the pain of our disease. In the long run, as in my case, we may thus strengthen our mind's functioning to a point of more than mere survival--to a point where we may have the kind of fulfillment which we see in others. I am so grateful for my gift, and grateful for the essential role you and others have played in my recovery. I also acknowledge that there is a source of power and strength beyond my understanding to which I am grateful--grateful for my talent and grateful for the ability to use that talent in service to others and to myself. Thank you, Wendie! Thanks for you friendship! Respectfully, Jim James A Rist
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Dee
