About These Blogs

Welcome to "Beyond Mental Illness." This site was created to give advice to people who have a psychiatric history and now are working to re-build their lives. It is definitely possible for people with psychiatric histories to have meaningful lives with important contributions, and these pages are designed to give suggestions on how to do so.

There is minimal discussion of medication here. Medications can be an important step for some people, but they are only one step. Medications can help mitigate some symptoms, but they cannot do everything a person needs. The author hopes to give suggestions on filling other needs people with mental illness have.

Right now the blog has two composite characters. One is Tony, a young man who has recently been released from the hospital and is low-functioning. The letters addressed to Tony are here on this page.

The second character is Kayla, who has been stable for a while but needs advice on taking next steps and moving forward. The link to Kayla's letters is: beyondmikayla.blogspot.com.

The author recommends people interested in mental health consider reading the following books: http://beyondmentalillness.blogspot.com/p/recommended-reading-list.html.

Monday, April 1, 2013

Maintaining Focus

Dear Tony,

One point which is both very difficult and very important is not to think too far ahead.

In her book Nadia Comaneci said that when she was growing up and training for the Olympics her dreams were of obtaining new skills. She never saw the larger picture of fame and fortune.

Admittedly, she grew up in strict conditions in a Communist country. Those conditions can’t and probably shouldn’t be replicated in this area today. But I have found that idea of simply focusing on the next few steps, of imagining and fantasizing of building new skills, to be very helpful.

We can only go one step at a time, and (at least at the beginning) I could only work on one thing at a time. Thinking too far in the future can be discouraging as you realize how far away it is. Certainly don’t give up on your dreams. But put them away for now. Focus on what you can do. Try to direct your thoughts as much as possible on the next few steps.

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