Sanity Recovered
I would like to step back to November of 1993, the month in which my Windhorse treatment began. I was living in an apartment in my parents’ home, shared by a housemate who was trying to impose her views on me about everything from religion to romance. I was overmedicated on Haldol (and antidepressants with unpleasant side effects), sleeping past noon and dreading the day because it illustrated the tremendous chasm between the condition of my life and the life I had hoped for and failed to attain. Simply, I lacked the skills, health, and personal resources necessary to make my own decisions and adjust my life conditions in a constructive fashion.
My professional supports consisted of a psychiatrist 50 miles away, a psychotherapist in town, and an orthomolecular clinic 200 miles away. While each of these treatments had its own merits, I was unable to attempt and sustain employment, to separate from my parents or enlist their participation in my recovery without undergoing criticism, to find a community of friends that was mature, healthy, and able to foster my own recovery, and to approach mental health care with inside information and outside support so that I would not be so naïve or vulnerable in facing my providers.
My treatments were all localized in offices. None of my providers visited my home; nor did I visit theirs. I sat on a chair or couch, directly facing a provider in an opposite chair and recited my soliloquy of life events, current calamities, historical handicaps, and planned projects. The recitations left me fatigued, hungry, and with a sense that speech itself enacted a process of self-violation. The dosages of medicine rose and fell with the tides of my discourse, but usually increased. I learned gradually, through a circular, destabilizing process of physical discomfort, hour-long sessions of monotonous self-disclosure, anger, guilt, dread, dependency, and despair how to become a mental patient.
My life revolved around the taking of medication and the making of appointments. To soothe the sickness and satiate the soul, there was food. I was in every restaurant within a 20-mile radius of home, looking not just for nourishment, but for a sense of belonging, of economic participation, of having my needs met on demand, and of confronting the strangers who brought such fear and fascination to my fantasy life. I had learned to position myself as a consumer before I knew that term had psychological currency. So I journeyed from home to office to restaurant in a perpetual cycle of confusion and frustration, finding supernatural significance in random, trivial encounters and imbuing every moment and movement with more meaning than it merited. I had, quite simply, no perspective—on illness, on health, or on myself.
Then one day my mother read an article in the local newspaper about Windhorse. The article said that a new mental health organization with considerable success in treating psychosis had begun operating in Northampton. Windhorse aimed to restore a person’s physical, social, psychological, and spiritual connections and balances within a sane environment—a milieu of compassion extended by a team of trained healers. About a week later, we were both in the small Windhorse office meeting Jeff Fortuna, Executive Director, and Eric Chapin, Assistant Director. They explained that Eric had just arrived from Boulder, Colorado and was available to see clients. Jeff seemed to me more sensitive, quieter, and somehow more representative of a typical therapist. Eric seemed boisterous, and I feared him a little because of his size and manner. It was decided, however, that I would work with Eric. Although I found them both to have slightly odd personalities (as if I myself were anything near normal), what I was mostly puzzled by was the name “Windhorse.” They explained that “Windhorse” was the name of a legendary creature famous throughout central Asia for its capacity to give people strength in healing illness or overcoming depression. The horse energy expresses power and the wind energy lifts people up; the symbol conveys discipline as well.
On my first shift with Eric, he asked me if there was any place that I wanted to go or anything that I needed to do. The only place I could think of visiting was a scenic overlook on the side of the interstate highway several miles south of Northampton. I had driven past it many times, but had never stopped because I felt uncomfortable doing so alone. Eric had no qualms about heading for the site or stepping out from the car onto the earth with cars whizzing by, a slippery slope ahead, a view of the vast unknown beyond, and strangers straggling astride the embankment.
We stood there together—or I should say, I stood and he crouched. Dressed in rugged men’s work overalls (Eric was the first therapist I had ever met who dressed like a ranch hand), Eric knelt down to the ground on his haunches, as an aboriginal tribesman might. He explained that he had learned this posture while living in Saudi Arabia as a youth and communing with the Bedouins. I was uncomfortable socially, yet Eric didn’t seem to notice. He just started to talk—about life, his own life, the earth, mind, and spirit. He didn’t say all that much, yet he seemed to believe what he said (though I tended to doubt some of it) and seemed to know that he had arrived at some understanding of human existence that suited his purposes rather well. I had a burning question which I then posed to Eric, “Why do people do what they do?”
Years of unsuccessful living had etched the question into my consciousness. Why do I do what I do . . . why does anybody do what he or she does—because they want to, have to, are allowed to? My experience of life had so deteriorated from youthful hoping and coping into a sickly moping and groping; my memories of prior joys so transfigured into patterns of purposeless pain; my habituation into the role of mental patient so engrained and debilitating . . . that I was emblazoned with a senseless anger, a haughty hostility, a de facto dependency, and a dangerous tendency toward self-destruction. I could scarcely fathom what or why anyone else on the planet did, what they thought or felt about their own situation and the larger human condition.
Eric seemed to respect the question and enjoyed contemplating its indefinite possibilities. In this brief, brave, benign meeting between our two minds, we found the seed of a friendship. The psychologist in overalls whose overall concern was to achieve peace of mind for himself and others, and the mental patient who had lost pieces of his mind through illness, dormancy, and senseless judgement, formed a link based on shared interest in understanding the mind and the world it inhabits and mutual concern in improving my health.
So I was relieved, startled, and simply seduced by Eric’s calm and nurturing nature. For all of my universal questions about the human condition now had an objective reference in the person of Eric. Who was Eric? Why did he do what he did? What did he intend toward me and toward himself and others? Would he please or disappoint, cajole or control, speak truth or misinformation, help or hurt? When it was time for the shift to end and Eric suggested we meet again later in the week, I felt the joy of newfound friendship, the fear of the unknown, the responsibility of committing myself to this relationship and its requisite tasks, and the hope of having a hold on a useful truth, a higher level of health, and a wholeness of being.
Eric and I soon fell into the habit of two three-hour shifts per week. On each shift, we would first go to the Northampton YMCA for a brisk swim in the big, cold pool, shower, and change clothes, then drive to a Mexican restaurant for two bean tostadas each and glasses of water. We ate Mexican food because it was inexpensive, mostly vegetarian, familiar to us both as former Texans, and the restaurant provided a quiet but open atmosphere for us to converse. The meals became rather festive, and we alternated buying a basket of totopos chips for the two of us to share.
Eric told stories about his life and asked me questions about mine. His stories were colorful and genuine, painful and promising. He had survived most of the things I had sent my life fearing and avoiding: separation from family, beatings, economic stress, short jail sentences, cigarettes, alcohol, car accidents, injuries, and sexual antics. Yet he seemed so placid about it all. Perhaps this was because he trusted his body: his size and strength, his like for physical labor, and his “grounded” connection to the earth. He clearly also trusted his mind: his anger was more than manageable, his fears all but dissolved, his love of humanity abundant, his spirituality meditative, and his psychology contemplative.
Faced with such a formidable friend, I could not help but hold him up to the heights of heroism. He had faced the world, found a place, and endured. Through sheer force of energy, will and grit, he had survived and prospered. Here was a therapist not of credentials but of essentials. He was schooled in the streets and in the school of hard knocks, so as a therapist he offered not merely insight but determination and the method to do right. Eric’s speech, sensitivity, strength, and stamina gave him a sometimes magical aura. He seemed to care about things that I cared about and to not care about things not worth caring about. In short, he offered a compassionate alternative to the set of rules, feelings and beliefs I had acquired about my own life and the lives of others. The not-yet-apparent difficulties with this scenario were that I believed our speech itself would have a magical healing power, that I expected he would overlook no detail in my recovery, and that I assumed the relationship would endure eternally.
Schedule
Early in treatment, Eric began discussing the importance of schedule. He alluded to it while explaining the significance of a three-hour shift (sufficient time for dinner and a movie), in asking about the timing and sequence of my activities throughout the day and week (from biological processes, to social activities, to work and leisure) and in philosophical preachings on how best to use one’s time. He seemed genuinely curious about what I was doing when, in order not simply to raise my consciousness about my activity level and my potential, but to inculcate an awareness of the reactions connecting events and of the sense of structure, discipline, and spirituality resulting from a well-ordered life. As I have since read, one consequence of schizophrenic-type illness is impairment in the ability to judge the passage of time, with attendant limitations such as procrastination. I think Eric was trying to demonstrate that I could counter this debilitating tendency by making my use of time explicit.
One day Eric brought a written schedule to my home: one sheet of paper with spaces indicated for the days of the week and three time slots per day—morning, afternoon, and evening. He inquired about the upcoming week and wrote my responses in brief form on the schedule paper. I felt honored that he found my life’s events worthy of transcribing, indulged by his attendance to my needs, concerned that it might or might not happen again, reluctant to comply with a formality I had previously not needed, puzzled as to the source of Eric’s abiding wisdom, and uncertain as to the meaning of it all.
Eric then suggested I buy an appointment calendar to keep all my upcoming events organized. As I barely had but a few events per week to remember, I thought this too would be a superfluous waste. I relented and purchased the datebook. My overwhelming sentiment was that the purchase signified a transition from non-conventional methods of organizing my life toward use of mainstream materials. It further signified that I need not rely exclusively on my own mental resources to remember my life’s business but could enlist supplemental help. I needn’t do things the hard way. This simple suggestion illustrated that Windhorse had techniques for simplifying and structuring my life that might be obvious to the healthy person but forgotten by the sickly.
Mind-Body Synchronization
Eric and Jeff explained to me that I needed a mind-body synchronization practice and that rigorous exercise would fill this need. The goal of the practice was to make the mind and the body establish unifying patterns and rhythms for a sustained period, relieve the mind from its incessant burden of psychotic thinking, and animate and liberate the body from its psychotropic medicine yolk and medicinal side effects. Eric suggested that we swim at the YMCA, an activity he gravitated toward. I consented because I had enjoyed the sport as a lifeguard and instructor in my teens. I had not swum much in the preceding five years, however, due to the neuro-muscular side effects of medicine, had avoided health clubs out of anti-social tendencies, and minimized exercise in general due to fatigue. Eric seemed convinced that we were doing the right thing and persuaded me to purchase a one-year membership at the YMCA rather than rely on chance occasional visits. He was enthusiastic and spoke glowingly about the value of what we were doing. I naturally assumed that Windhorse had discovered a miraculous “swimming cure.”
Eric and I swam together for several months and I began to notice several things: (a) Eric enjoyed the swimming more than I did; (b) I enjoyed talking to Eric and eating with him more than swimming with him; (c) several months of swimming had not cured my illness; and (d) I was under Eric’s sway and needed to rebel and assert my wishes. I mentioned to Eric’s wife, Janelli, at a course we were both taking at Windhorse that I was “kind of sick of doing what Eric wanted to do.” She responded “Yeah. So am I.” This affirmation gave me the courage to ask Eric if we could do other things together or just talk, as I had become somewhat enchanted with our conversations. Eric said that would be fine; all I needed to do was ask. This sequence of events created in me an awareness that Windhorse treatment was not written in stone, that the model as presented to me might have shortcomings or lack efficacy, and that at some level, I had autonomy and could request improvements in my treatment interventions.
If Windhorse didn’t offer a miraculous swimming cure and was partly determined by the exercise of my preferences and was not immutable, then just what exactly was it? Was I right or wrong to try to shape my treatment? Would my healers encourage it or resent it? Would they inform me of the implications and consequences of these decisions? Was my assertiveness a mature expression of autonomy that signified a newfound friendship with myself or a childish rebelliousness that would make me my own enemy?
Psychosocial Techniques
Eric and Jeff employed a variety of techniques to get me to verbalize and transcend those elements of my personal history that thwarted my emotional development. First among these was the genogram. The genogram was simply a diagram of my family tree on a large sheet of paper. Eric himself inscribed most of it after questioning me extensively to identify all the members of my extended family, their relationships, and their brief biographies. I was fascinated by the notion of the genogram. It seemed to capture and express so much of who I was. I had been born into a particular family. I had learned its rules, beliefs, attitudes, customs, preferences, feelings, strategies, suffering, and so much more. To give voice to this familial context of my psychological inheritance was to express something essential to my identity and elemental to my character.
Furthermore, to tell this grand plan of the family inside a man to my caretakers, Eric and Jeff, in a formal team meeting was to link the family dynamic to the therapeutic context and, consequently, to the wider society and world. I couldn’t believe two strangers could generate that much interest and enthusiasm in knowing about another person’s relatives. It demonstrated that Windhorse had specific, psychosocial tools that I had not previously encountered and that attracted my fascination, that I would enjoy using, and ultimately find helpful and healing.
The second technique Eric employed to get me beyond my past and toward living in the present world was “processing.” In this approach, Eric would simply get me to start talking about my past and, when I broached a painful topic, he would simply face it calmly and squarely, with curiosity and interest, briefly frame it in the language of transpersonal psychology or Buddhist thought, then suggest that I simply “let go” of the whole package as it no longer had any authority to rule my life but was merely a drama or “storyline.” It was, in effect, no longer real. As Eric had told stories from his past to me, I began to recite stories to Eric—in restaurants, on park benches, in my home. No matter the story, he seemed able to cast it in an acceptable light. When I told of trying to hurt myself but recanting, he said “Well, there are the thinkers and the doers.” When I told of how my mother’s words had humiliated me, he said, “How unskillful of her.” When I described the intensity of emotion in my family and the patterns of conflict typically aroused, he said, “Can you imagine trying to bring this down one class level?” (In other words, what might these explosive energies have engendered in a family of less financial means?)
Eric was concerned not simply that I articulate these stories. He wanted me to transcend them by letting them go. He knew people whose lives consisted of little more than futile and endless self-psychoanalyzing—rehashing the past verbally and thus condemning themselves to live within it. He wanted me to be out of the whole syndrome, free and clear. He did, however, feel that it was important to achieve internal clarity about one’s feelings and experiences in order to be able to live happily in the present. He himself had spent three years in therapy and shared insights not simply of his own recovery but of his therapists’ and teachers’ teachings about the process of recovery.
One of these insights was the need to summon total compassion for oneself. In order to fully recover, Eric said I shouldn’t continue to judge or suppress unpleasant emotions or shut down my compassionate responses, but should open my heart fully and with total compassion for myself and all beings. I should forgive others and myself, help others and myself, trust others and myself, know others and myself. It would take time to learn, but to become happy, or even recovered, would require, in Eric’s view, cultivating tremendous self-acceptance. I was of course very relieved to hear these words. They gave me permission to continue on this path of recovery as long as necessary and to continue hoping that the quality of my emotional life would improve and the future would be brighter and healthier. At the same time, however, Eric seemed a little judgmental of certain of my lifestyle choices—such as how much to work, whether or not to live at home, on what to spend money—and I had to reconcile these criticisms with his compassionate character and philosophy.
The third way in which Eric and Jeff assisted my psychosocial recovery was by providing a structure and focus that supported my venturing out into the community for recovery-promoting activities, such as support groups, workshops, alternative healers, and courses. Team meetings and family meetings provided opportunities for reflection and evaluation as well as scheduled points of reference in the life of my recovery. Eric and Jeff positioned themselves as mentors, friends, and healers who were assuming responsibility for keeping my recovery on track, my life in progress, and my support steady. With these resources in place, I felt the courage and drive to step out into the community to meet new people, learn what I could learn, attend to both daily business and unconventional projects, and see what this grand enterprise of living could be like in a new mode.
Community
The Windhorse community consists of clients and their families and staff and their families. These members gather approximately once a month for parties in people’s homes to celebrate housewarmings, holidays, Windhorse occasions, graduations, and goodbyes. Most of the parties are potluck, with offerings arranged by telephone, sign-up sheet, or alphabetical guidelines. The parties tend to be festive, calm, and harmonious—unlike college beer parties or stuffy status-seeking events. Children are welcome and often there are speeches, toasts, or performances. Other ongoing community events include a hiking group, gardening project, staff meetings, a course in the skills of recovery, book readings, guest speakers, theater projects, a client newsletter, retreats, and an assortment of ad hoc groups that meet briefly around a variety of issues.
The Windhorse community is welcoming, accepting, educated, mindful, reflective, caring, and not a cult. It consists of surprisingly functional families; its members include both children and seniors. This community will treat anybody, no matter how ill or atypical, with dignity and respect. All persons are treated like person, not patients. I find this community to be far more accepting than the local community (where I experienced some social mishaps), and far warmer than its New England locale might suggest. Working relationships and friendships between men and women are surprisingly harmonious, based on mutual like and respect, and rarely sexist. Indeed, my connection to the women of Windhorse has helped me to overcome many misogynistic attitudes. There is a special quality of closeness at Windhorse because people help each other. Client insight is valued and to be a client is a respectable role.
As my involvement at Windhorse continued, a chief benefit was having somewhere to go, to show up and be noticed, so that I would actually get on foot and into the car, be in motion, and face the world—at times with a joyful optimism and pride that I could actually be doing something that I enjoyed and was good at, was learning from, and felt surrounded by people for whom I cared. My experience of community, on a fundamental level, consists just of people expressing an interest in me, and me expressing an interest in other people. In these elemental exchanges, however, remarkable transformations can occur over time. Fear, anxiety, and worry can be reduced, loneliness and alienation prevented, bad attitudes and hopelessness corrected, bitterness and hostility abandoned, apathy and irritability untied, low self-esteem lifted, and behavioral problems averted. Who wouldn’t benefit from such a closing of Pandora’s box?
Employment
In the few years prior to my Windhorse treatment, I had been relieved of duties as a teaching assistant in a graduate program at a major university, following academic incompletes and a growing gulf between me and my colleagues and students. After moving back across the country to be with my parents, I found part-time work as a Sunday school teacher, but was unable to contain the unruly students. I worked part-time on the telephone in a market research firm, but failed to complete a sufficient number of calls. I tried door-to-door soliciting for an environmental organization, but was promptly fired after failing to bring in enough cash. My experiences of work were disappointing and demoralizing, degrading and destructive. The world it seemed did not want to let me earn a living or even participate. I began to loathe the very notion that I would ever return to work, preferring to hibernate at home and venture out only to eat.
Half a year after my Windhorse treatment began, I felt sufficiently revitalized and hopeful to seek another job. I knew that I could not work full-time, could not handle stress, would have difficulty relating to employers and colleagues, and was not likely to obtain and maintain employment in any event. As luck would have it, I went to the Starpoint Clubhouse one day to pursue job leads. That very evening they were interviewing for part-time positions as telephone counselors in a program funded by the Department of Mental Health and a DMH consumer initiative grant. The confidential, non-crisis telephone support service was staffed and managed by recovering consumers. I applied and was hired, perhaps in part because the supervisor was a classmate of mine at the skills-of-recovery course being taught at Windhorse. Not only that, the local newspaper interviewed the new hires and took photographs that were published the following day. I had risen from sick and cruel obscurity to quick and cool celebrity in twenty-four hours. More important, I had secured a position where my illness was regarded as an asset, not a liability; I had entered a job environment where my needs would be not only respected but also rehabilitated; I had joined a community that would provide collegiality and companionship.
This warmline job provided many occasions for fun and learning as well as a focus on the more serious issues facing many people. It brought me into the world in a new capacity—that of healer and server—and helped to rekindle my interest in psychology which I had not studied since college. Finally, it was simply a leg up, a step toward the adult world of responsibility, and a foundation from which to continue this tremendous process of healing, growth, and awareness.
Termination
Although Windhorse made a pivotal contribution to my recovery through support, education, and community, in some ways it fell short of my expectations. After I had been seeing Eric for a brief period, Windhorse began acquiring other clients. My schedule with Eric had to be rearranged to accommodate his new demands, and he even suggested that I consider seeing a different Windhorse therapist. This indicated to me that, on some level, Eric did not really enjoy or was not fully committed to working with me. The Windhorse image of ideal, perfect treatment generating dramatic, unprecedented outcomes soon began to fade in my mind.
Eric’s will was monumental at times, and I kept trying to maneuver myself around and within it in such a way that it might diminish and its impact on me recede. But I was unable to attain this feat within the treatment period. Toward the end of treatment, Eric remarked to Jeff in a team meeting that he felt the only thing I might still need would be to return to the YMCA for more swimming, but that he didn’t want to be the one to force me to go. It seemed that his huge will, to which I had become so accustomed, was thus withdrawing from my life, yet I had not been able to resolve my feelings about it. I concluded that Eric’s will existed primarily in the service of his own wishes.
As treatment began to withdraw, Eric himself reduced the number of contact hours between us, virtually without my consent. He kept telling me that I did not require any more treatment, that I was, in effect, sane, though extremely neurotic. Eric harbored a view that psychiatric patients might have no greater ongoing need for psychotherapy than ordinary people do. (How to reconcile this with his no medication, no vitamins, etc. approach is a problem—just what exactly do mental patients need in Eric’s view, a shrine and a cushion?). I had become so accustomed to facing lfe with him—though this relationship was far from perfect—that I did not see how I could face life without him. And then, on one of our final shifts, when I asked Eric what my next step could be, he counseled that since I had spent several years learning how to be a mental patient, it should take approximately the same amount of time to unlearn these roles and learn productive citizenship. I had followed Eric’s tutelage for a few years, paying close attention to everything he said, in the hopes that he would say those things that would enable me to overcome my illness. And now, at the close of the treatment, he was telling me that these two years themselves would have to be unlearned, on my own, in order for me to become well. What in the hell was going on?
After a year and half of working at the warmline, I left, exhausted from the continual focus on people’s suffering. Shortly thereafter, I graduated from Windhorse. To graduate from Windhorse is to cease formal treatment, though one might still receive “aftercare” and certainly everyone is invited to maintain affiliation with the community. Graduating is regarded with some pride, as it indicates that, in principle, a client has learned a great deal, overcome many obstacles, and has the means by which to advance his or her own life. While graduation is usually a joint client-team decision, in my case it was precipitated by Eric telling Jeff that he had taught m everything he knew about recovery. Since there was no relevant material remaining to be taught, there was no reason for me to continue treatment.
Needless to say, the ending of my treatment, with its implication that wondrous Windhorse had served me well (presumably any remaining psychological difficulties were entirely my fault and responsibility, not theirs) and that I should sever myself from this community I had never fully belonged to provoked a long period of suicidality. I felt not only abandoned but cheated. I had extended hope and trust that had, at times, been met with criticism, apathy or evasiveness. Though my treatment had effectively turned my life in many new directions, I had not enjoyed it very much because there were too many unresolved questions and too many personalities whose proper role in my life I could not determine. Yet the bulk of the disillusion was having to face the fact that so much work on my health still needed to be done, and I did not know when, where, how, or if it would occur.
Fortunately, I changed psychiatrists (again) around the time of my graduating, and my new doctor took my suicidality seriously, reaching out to me by telephone, offering the hope of new medications, and somehow establishing in my mind that he was genuinely on my side. It was a new start with a therapist whose, gentle, mild protective approach contrasted greatly with Eric’s. A year later, I began orthomolecular treatment at a clinic near New York and started to learn an entirely different way of approaching mental health and treatment.
Windhorse Literature
The Windhorse literature is already sizable and continues to grow; its centerpiece is The Seduction of Madness, by Dr. Edward Podvoll. I will here focus on a few of the concepts appearing in the literature and try to illustrate their applicability to my case. To me, much of the Windhorse literature has a peculiar quality of being recognizably true, yet difficult to invent; its authors have made simple and at times obvious observations on complicated and abstract matters in language that is both surprisingly concrete and illustratively metaphorical. It expresses generalizations and universalisms that do not discredit the authenticity of individual experience.
The inclusion of the Windhorse literature into treatment gives it a certain pedagogical quality. Through taking courses, such as the “Skills of Recovery,” clients are expected to understand and appreciate these concepts and apply them to their own lives when needed. The writings are canonical; they are quoted and discussed, consulted, and disseminated. This scholarly emphasis in treatment has both positive and negative consequences. When one begins treatment, typically rational thought is at a low ebb, and sensation and feeling are suppressed. It is therefore difficult to concentrate on or understand new ideas, so making any meaningful connection with the literature is unlikely. The benefit to a tutorial approach is that just as many clients may lack the inclination to study the abstruse, so too they need to be informed of the obvious. In my own case, by gradually accumulating obvious information about ordinary matters that I somehow lacked, I was able to teach myself how to feel healthier and behave more constructively.
Dr. Podvoll identifies the “psychotic predicament” and the resulting “stages of psychotic transformation.” The predicament itself occurs when personal character meets the force of circumstance: someone faces a situation that he or she cannot resolve with his/her own resources and is not willing to adapt. A battle within the self ensues that echoes this outer conflict. With groundlessness, switching out, loss of doubt and self-surrender, and wild identification, the stage is set for psychotic transformation which includes speed of mind, desynchronization of mind and body, absorptions states, insight and power, thinking or acting beyond the law, conflicting commands, and death and rebirth. While such stages may seem too abstract or symbolic to capture someone’s actual experience, I feel that they are more than mere metaphors; they have a factual basis in my own psychological phenomena. The stages of transformation I experienced occurred while I was a graduate student on the west coast and began a decline from harmony and connection toward total alienation and withdrawal.
The stages of transformation can and should be unwound if one is properly supported in a therapeutic milieu. I cannot imagine how I ever could have accomplished this lengthy and laborious task of restoration without the Windhorse community. Physically, I needed to learn to hold my head up, to breathe, and to guard, not risk, my physical safety. Emotionally, I needed to choose feeling over not feeling, compassion over hostility, and kindness over contempt. Socially, I needed to choose independence over dependence, peace with authority over rebelliousness. Intellectually, I needed to choose awareness over ignorance. Every one of these choices needed to be considered and contemplated, tried and applied, sustained and ingrained.
Constance Packard, MSW, a long-time Windhorse board member and the mother of a former client, has written a set of guidelines for family members to help them face the challenge of caring for an ill relative without disrupting their own lives (1993). The five guidelines she articulates are: (a) cultivate an attitude of acceptance and respect; (b) choose happiness as an orientation; (c) set limits and boundaries; give space; (d) show full expression and appreciation; be honest; and (e) find community in the social environment. My own parents read this document. Its effect on them, and subsequently on me, was profound. My parents started treating me with more awareness, compassion, and sensitivity. They became more able to support and encourage me. The intensity of their emotions toward me reduced and a more calm nurturing manner of engaging me arose. In short, my parents became in some way my healers, or at least became more apparent as allies in the struggle I faced.
Perhaps an example would illustrate these developments. My father has a side that can be angry and cynical. If my father showed this side in my presence, I could conclude that he was angry at me, in which case I became fearful, or that he was angry at something else in the world and that I should share his sentiment. In either case, I internalized some anger. After reading Connie’s guidelines, my father began to show me a more compassionate side. I then concluded that he was neither angry with me nor with anything else in the world, so there was no need for me to be angry or fearful. I began to feel more joyful, to release old baggage, and my recovery grew in leaps and bounds.
Clearly, there is much information clients and their families need to acquire in the course of treatment, whether through therapy itself or reading materials or attending seminars. Not all of this information will be useful at the time it is acquired. Some may seem tangential, odd, or mistaken. What seems silly or digressive today, however, might have great use tomorrow after one has made a step in a new direction or resolved some intermediate difficulty. Having a body of literature to consult with open-minded critical awareness can be a liberating and comforting adjunct to the therapeutic process. It may even prove easier to tolerate than actual interventions in which personalities must play an important role.
Conclusions
About a year and a half ago, Windhorse staff approached me and asked me to consider joining their board of directors. Here was the opportunity I had been waiting for. It would be intellectually challenging yet avoid the dangers of senseless intellectualizing. It would use my business skills, yet toward a socially valuable end. It would expand my world socially, yet safely and soundly. It would allow me to give much back to the community that had given me so much, yet without sacrificing personal needs or compromising political purposes. It was fitting and fantastic; I felt uniquely honored.
I have served on the Windhore board for over one year, learning about how a small non-profit organization handles its business matters and how a cohort of conscientious clinicians evaluate services to clients. I have written and spoken at the meetings about many topics that strike chords in me and enjoy articulating my personal experience. I have become, at long last, an insider in a small world I understand and appreciate, free of the painful pressures and senseless strivings that prompted my original descent into the morass of madness a decade ago. Today, I still visit restaurants and therapists, and enjoy monologues, meals, and meandering. I do so, however, with comfort and awareness, knowing that if I open my heart, people might embrace me, yet we will each continue to lead independent lives. If I open my mind, I will find the contents not too horrific to bear. A journey out into the world has become not a trip of alienation and defiance, but of integration and self-reliance.
I learned many obvious but important truths about the human condition and my own situation from Eric and others. I learned that I had a body and that this body had both needs and wisdom that could, would, and should override my mental attempts to dominate it. This body requires not simply nourishment, but exercise and hygiene.
I needed to be told that I had an obsession about food. Food had become so important in my life that it defined many of my choices (Where to eat? What to eat?) and limited my availability for other realms of activity. When choosing between dinner and a movie, I always chose the dinner. When trying to live on a budget, I did not know how to economize on food. Between meals, most thoughts were about food. Eric’s strategy for addressing this tendency was to “cut through” my excessive appetites by suggesting that we take a walk or have a talk before dining so that I might relieve the emotion that was fueling the appetite before trying to feed the appetite. This was not only a reasonable and helpful approach, it inculcated an awareness that perhaps the force of many emotions could be mitigated by releasing their energy during a period of waiting. In any event, it was a safe strategy for striving toward health.
I needed to learn that I could and should live within my means. I had always depended financially on my parents. I knew very little about how to spend, save, or invest on my own. Eric told me stories about how he had been forced into financial independence at the age of 18, how he had lived in a trailer in graduate school, and how he and his wife watched their spending “like a hawk.” When Eric and I went on shifts together, I watched how he watched his money. He ordered food carefully, noting the price. He gravitated toward thrift shops and second-hand stores. Although I had perhaps briefly entered one or two thrift shops in my life, I was now exposed to and instructed in the art of buying from every thrift shop in the region on a regular basis. Eric took me shopping for clothes at Army Navy stores. He told me about local auctions. He encouraged me to subscribe to a frugality newsletter. When I asked his opinion about whether to enroll in a 3-day workshop on group psychological and symbolic healing, he said it was mostly a question of money—whether I had the tuition and didn’t mind losing it for a novel experience. Yet, when Eric lost a $100 deposit for an item he was unable to purchase, he seemed unusually calm about the occurrence. “Oh well,” he said, “there it goes.”
The result of all of this consciousness-raising about money was that I began to think more economically and weigh purchases more carefully. If one could live on very little money, then why spend a lot of money? If most other people were budgeting and economizing, then why couldn’t I budget and economize? If money would always have to be a part of my life, then why shouldn’t I start paying some serious attention to how to make it, save it, spend it, or invest it? An understanding and experience of money could further my mind and perhaps shift my struggle away from madness. If I understood the game of living in a monetary society, then perhaps I could learn to play it and even enjoy it.
I needed to be told that I should try to differentiate myself emotionally from my parents. Differentiation can be a puzzling concept and requires both skill and health to learn. Initially, I assumed that I should simply avoid my parents in order to establish myself as different from them. This went on for sometime, leading to a feeling of estrangement that seemed to benefit no one. It left me alone much of the time and at times facing difficult situations with just my own resources. I began avoiding many people and situations out of a newfound habit, and the conviction that at some level my avoidance was a prerequisite to accomplishing the noble task of “differentiation.” It was only after I graduated that my parents came back more fully into my life, and it was only after I changed neuroleptic medicines and resumed orthomolecular treatment that I found the strength and confidence to manage a heathy process of differentiation. I also needed ongoing Windhorse involvement, successful work experiences, and close friendship to assist my goal of differentiation. Eric was absolutely right that much differentiation was needed, but many conditions were not in place at the time to support it.
I also needed to be told that I needed community and how to live in one. I had acquired many distorted and dysfunctional habits for social relationships and saw community as something that I could not have and did not understand, and so I resented or belittled it. Eric seemed to prize the opportunity for having communal relationships and managed them with considerable skill. I realized that community was something I might want and would need to learn how to have. I felt that community might provide a touchstone or an anchor that I had been woefully missing. Eric offered a number of guidelines, such as, “What you tell one person isn’t what you tell another.” This discrepancy is not a form of dishonesty, but arises naturally as we stand in differing relationships to each other.
I needed to learn a better way to treat other people (including myself) with sensitivity, concern, and respect. I needed to see that no harm is done when one errs on the side of compassion. I needed to try to do good, be good, and feel good—to realize that I am a good person, or if not yet, I can become one. I needed to know that it feels better to have the genuine compassion, respect, and camaraderie of a small therapeutic community than to megalomaniacally seek the glory of recognition in the world theater. I needed to experience that life can get easier as you go along, but that you must first start somewhere to attack the inertia. I needed to realize that some people, and by extension maybe even many people, really do want what’s best for me.
Affiliating with a mental health organization that cultivates a kind, compassionate whole person view of healing necessarily promotes changing one’s world view and one’s view of oneself. In its idealism and social values, the Windhorse culture opposes the cynical world view. It gives its members an opportunity to shed the bitter and bilious baggage of previous life experience in the outer world. Personally, I had in the course of my young life reached many convictions about the intentions of others that needed to be revised. Windhorse provided a safe and skillful setting in which to unlearn past prejudices and learn new ways of understanding and approaching the world.