Public Comment

MENTAL WELLNESS: Organized Activity Alongside Others Can Heal 

Jack Bragen 

In the mid to late nineteen eighties, I worked at numerous jobs, and I succeeded at some of them, meaning I kept the job six months or longer. Some were too hard for me, and some I could do. But eventually, I became burned out on conventional employment and couldn't keep doing it. I'd worked myself too hard. I'm wondering how much of a role being medicated played into this. Being medicated with antipsychotics could be contrary to working. 

The reader should keep in mind that the words expressed here are strictly an opinion. 

It seems to me that being heavily medicated will block the ability to work. And if you push it hard enough to try to work while on heavy meds, you could burn yourself out. That's apparently what happened to me in my twenties. I bought the lies I was fed that the medication simply corrected a brain malfunction, and that yes, I should be able to work, to some degree. I in fact did work, and I pulled this off through massive effort. The effort level made me able to do things I should not have been able to do. And there was a price to pay for this. 

Working jobs entail creating a high energy level so that you can effectively compete. Medication blocks this. When you push past the barrier created by medication, you defeat the effectiveness of the medication, and then the doctor might need to raise the dosage. Then you find yourself pushing even harder against an even stronger barrier. 

Yet, there is such a thing as staying close to one's comfort zone, which can feel safer and calmer than pushing it. Certainly, it is easier to seek comfort. And you won't necessarily be rewarded by people if you prove that you can do more. 

I'm theorizing of two zones people could have concerning whether we should try pushing the envelope or not. Here is a term for you: "Safety zone." This is in the same vein as comfort zone. But violating safety zone as opposed to comfort zone, is a stronger form of pushing it, to the point where we can sustain damage, or could make a dumb mistake with ramifications. People will push beyond both. That's an explanation for some of the mishaps that take place that are explainable as human error. 

For example, if your work entails driving, you must not push yourself too hard. If you push it too hard while driving, you could cause an accident. Only you can answer the question. You are about to get behind the wheel, and do you truly feel calm enough and stress free enough so that you can pay full attention to the road? 

The same principle applies to other areas of life. If you push it too hard in terms of stress, and if you have hypertension, you could give yourself a stroke. How does that help you? 

In the nineteen eighties and nineties, a pastime of independent mentally ill people was often to sit around and smoke and drink coffee. We could get away with doing this, because we were not living under the same level of scrutiny and restriction. And we don't have the smoking part of that anymore. And it is just as well. The collective action of making smoking as inconvenient as possible could be a blessing. 

In 1990, it was a tremendous relief to me that I didn't have to work to survive--I had obtained Social Security and SSI. Yet this had a downside, because the motivation to work for most people stems from the unmitigated need to earn money to survive. This means there isn't nearly as much incentive to have stick-to-itiveness. When your housing, food, electricity and so on depend on keeping it up with the work, it provides the push at your back that may be needed. 

Social Security can be a lifesaver if you need it. In 1990 I needed to be off work because I had been very ill. There are two sides to this coin. 

Use it or lose it. If you give up on things because they seem too hard, you could be depriving yourself of activity that's beneficial, albeit uncomfortable. Yet you should not "should" on yourself. The concept that we ought to be going to work is not a fit for everyone and ties in to your level of health, your sensitivity and/or being thin skinned, and whether you're truly able to keep it up. Work is not a one size fits all. 

In my attempts to better my living conditions through work of various types, people have come out of the woodwork to mess with me and to ruin what I was trying to do. Many people can't handle it when a peer is able to do well for oneself. A series of disruptions took place through the intentional actions of others. For one thing, I was assaulted. The Concord Police claimed it was "mutual combat"--the officer said there was no law against it. Other disruptions took place, and I do not have space, and it is not appropriate, to bring them up here. 

But when you have a successful activity, it can benefit the condition of the mind. If you are in contact with other people in your field of pursuit, you can sync with them. This is a different feed for your take on reality. When you do this, it will combat many of the symptoms of mental illness. When I did television repair, my frame of mind was not about being a mentally ill person. When you are focused on finding the bad transistor, resistor or capacitor that's causing a customer's television to malfunction, there is no additional space in the thinking to see yourself as an institutionalized mentally ill person. 

When you interact with people within a professional context, it causes the subject matter of your thinking to be other than about mental illness or symptoms. This can be a very healing thing.  

Self-esteem is boosted when we work a job and compete with the general population. If your caseworker lines up something like being trained to retrieve shopping carts in a Target parking lot, this is not very good for self-esteem. But the money still helps. 

I recall, in the late nineteen eighties, being hired as a bus person at a Denny's, in conjunction with a case worker--who I could see hobnobbing with the store manager while I was bussing tables. It was humiliating. 

If your work makes you feel humiliated or upset, and not empowered and elated, something is wrong. This is aside from the challenges of a job, wherein you are going to feel some level of being uncomfortable. A job is never going to be totally comfortable, and if it was, no one would pay you money to do it.