Common Threads of Recovery

A modern therapist room with leather armchair across another chair, small round coffee table between them, large window showing greenery outside, a wooden sideboard with desk lamp, and potted plants.
A modern therapist room with leather armchair across another chair, small round coffee table between them, large window showing greenery outside, a wooden sideboard with desk lamp, and potted plants.

Power of Human Connection

People who have recovered give much credit to family, friends, peer supporters, mental health providers, or in some cases even to sympathetic strangers, who showed kindness and understanding to them.

Remember that you cannot support a loved one without having their trust and connecting with them emotionally.

Sense of Purpose in Life

It may be work, religion, parenting, creative pursuits, political and social activism – whatever the person is passionate about that gives meaning to their life.

Everything that stands in the way of pursuing one’s goal in life stands in the way of recovery.

Rejecting Predictions of Doom and Gloom

Stay away from anyone telling you that following one’s dreams is “denial” or “grandiosity.” Many people diagnosed with serious mental illness receive advanced degrees, have successful careers in demanding fields, travel the world, and raise families after doctors and other figures of authority told them that this would be impossible and advised them to be “realistic” and to give up their dreams.

If somebody tells you that all the poor wretched mentally ill person can hope for is “to manage their symptoms,” live on welfare, or at best to have a low-paying unskilled job – don’t believe them.

They either have an agenda, or don’t know what they are talking about.