Webster’s definition of recovery is:

1. Get back
2. Getting back one’s health
3. Recuperate
4. The action or process of recovering what was lost
5. A return to a normal condition

With the onset of mental illness, the magnitude of such a loss can be devastation and make you feel hopeless. Without hope we fall into the downward spiral of hopeless despair. We all need someone to believe in us, to encourage us, and to reassure us that we are going to make it.

Shame is a prevailing sense of worthlessness which leads to the false belief: I am what I am. I cannot change. I am hopeless.

Our search for significance can lead us down a road that is totally unfamiliar and very frightening. While we may try as hard as we can to understand what is happening, we most often have to turn to a professional to diagnosis our dilemma.

After the diagnosis (which is likened to a death sentence) your next step is to decide to take your medication. This is totally a choice that has to be made; sometimes from relapse to relapse, and becomes a “life” choice. Regardless of what you’ve been dealt, most of us have to come to the realization that without our medications, we usually do end up in a relapse.

Mary Ellen Copeland has developed a wonderful tool to help in our recovery titled, “The Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). This is a daily work book that the patient uses to monitor his/her symptoms, triggers and crisis points. You stay aware of your own recovery. You become more independent in yourself and less dependent on others; however, she recommend that you have a support team of either family, friends, co-workers, etc.

Overcoming shame caused by stigma from others who either aren’t educated about mental illness or don’t know anyone with a mental illness, can be very freeing when you make the decision to walk above any shame they may feel.

Shame can have powerful effects on our esteem, and it can manifest itself in many ways. It often engulfs us when a flaw in our performance is so important, so overpowering, or so disappointing to us that it creates a permanently negative opinion about our self-worth.

That’s why we have to get beyond the passivity, self-pity and destructive behavior that so easily disable us. We have to come out of isolation and withdrawal and reach out to others for our own recovery, and to search for God and His answers. Our inner undeniable need for personal significance was created to make us search for our purpose in life. I truly believe mental illness was the perfect thing that happened to me. You have to believe in yourself even if others don’t.