Benefits

My mother wrote in journals, sometimes for herself alone and sometimes to share with me.  They covered all different kinds of subjects.  The following is what I titled “Benefits” for obvious reasons.  The point she makes here is one she repeated often and to many.  I hope you find it as useful as I did over time and time again.

In Recovery, one of the benefits of what is called training is the application of remedial techniques over and over in many contexts of daily living.  Training takes time, which situation offers opportunity to learn intellectually and to utilize that intellectual knowledge while living ordinary life until it becomes a living part of the person in training.  Therein lies an important message!

Patients suffer symptoms – enduring symptoms!  These symptoms cause not only much physical discomfort (torture) but mental discomfort as well.  There is only one word in the vocabulary of nervous symptoms – DANGER – imminent uncontrollable, pressing, threatening.  The patient is under the tyranny of symptoms and wants more than anything to get rid of this tyranny NOW!  Patients think, “How long can I stand this? Will my body old up under such agony? Can my mind function and keep from going berserk?”  It becomes paramount for self-protection, to find relief now!

In Recovery, members are urged to have the Will to Bear this “torture” and wait until their condition responds to the techniques they are learning to apply.  There is an added incentive for them to take hope that this urging from others may pay dividends of relief if they put the techniques into practice.  The hope engendered by others who have done it and are obviously much improved or even well.  But working on symptoms to get some relief is not the only way to go about Recovery training.

The principle at work in practicing Recovery on other than the symptoms is this:  Everything in life dovetails.  If I practice waiting patiently for my three-year-old daughter to climb into the car (“I want to do it myself!”) rather than picking her up and placing her in the car in spite of her wishes, then this practice is “money in the bank” of my training because it doesn’t matter if you are waiting for your child or for an elevator or for anything, it’s all the same thing!

So when a symptom strikes, causing much stress and urgency to get it to leave, if you have practiced dozens of times where only your impatience, arrogance of not wanting to wait (like all average people have to do in average life) are involved, then that practice has already prepared you to handle the seeming crisis of the nervous symptom and members find they can  stand the mounting stress of the symptoms, knowing it is the same idea as waiting for anything else in life.  Everything passes in life, and waiting patiently , the Recovery way, is a great boon to the patient, especially after extended training.

There is no expense involved, just time while improvement slowly leads to more improvement and finally to sustained mental health with all it’s benefits!